Chapter 66: Vincent Meis

Looking at the huge wolf head rolling on the ground, Wayne quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

This was his first time fighting such a powerful monster. As the effects of the witcher potion slowly faded, he even felt a slight sprain in his arm joints, and waves of stinging pain came from his muscles all over his body.

Using a sword to parry the werewolf's claw strikes directly was still too much of a stretch; next time he encountered such a powerful monster, he should try to focus on dodging, Wayne thought.

Fortunately, the werewolf accepted its fate in the end and did not launch a desperate counterattack. Although investigating the subsequent truth was a bit troublesome, it was better than facing the desperate counterattack of a powerful monster.

Wayne sheathed his blade, hung the steel sword from the grass back on his belt, looked at the werewolf's corpse, and after struggling for a few seconds, finally shook his head, choosing not to dissect it to collect materials.

After all, it was a sentient being capable of speech and thought, and a husband who valued loyalty; taking its internal organs or something like that was still too cruel. Wayne couldn't do it yet—well, for now.

Stepping over the werewolf's corpse, he walked up the steps and entered the wooden hunter's cabin.

At a glance, it was just a fairly ordinary two-bedroom, one-living-room residence; the furniture and decorations were quite old, and there was nothing unusual.

However, the witcher's keen sense of smell told him that the scent of blood extended all the way to the bedroom.

Sure enough, after arriving in the bedroom, Wayne just tapped the wooden floor with his scabbard, and through the hollow sound, confirmed the location of the basement under the floor.

Just as he was about to pull up the hidden wooden door and enter the basement, he suddenly saw a portrait of three people painted in oil hanging on the wall at the head of the bed.

A strong, short-haired middle-aged man, a gentle young woman with long chestnut hair, the two embracing sweetly, and standing between them was a boy of about ten years old, smiling very brightly.

Wayne's gaze narrowed slightly; it seemed this werewolf also had a son, but he didn't know where this child was now.

The werewolf curse is a transmissible curse; not only can it infect others through biting, but the continuation of the bloodline is also a way for the curse to be passed on.

Thinking of this, he did not rush into the basement but rummaged around in the bedroom.

Relying on his keen observation skills, Wayne soon found more than seventy Orens hidden in a secret compartment of the cabinet, and a letter that looked like a last will and testament.

After hesitating for a second, he opened the letter and began to read.

A few minutes later, Wayne put the envelope and the Orens back in their original place with a complex expression.

Judging from the content of the letter.

The werewolf's original name was Sintia Meis. After his wife was murdered, his only son was overly heartbroken, so he sent him to his aunt's house in town to recuperate.

And he himself made up his mind to avenge his wife, starting to look for traces of the culprits in the surrounding lumber camps.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find any results, which made the man increasingly angry, helpless, and ashamed.

This man was also very clear about the dangers of the werewolf curse in his body and understood that he would eventually meet a bad end, so he left behind these savings and the letter.

And from the fragments in his letter, Wayne could see that Sintia's son, the boy named Vincent Meis, also possessed the werewolf curse, and it was the rare type that could maintain its own reason.

In the future, in the plot of The Witcher 1, the town guard captain in Wyzima, the werewolf Vincent, was most likely this child.

And this feeling of seeing characters from a story in reality gave Wayne a sense of the absurdity of witnessing history.

It was just unclear what kind of feeling this child named Vincent would have when he learned from others that his father was killed by a witcher.

Wayne pulled up the wooden door of the basement, walked in cautiously, passed through a damp tunnel seven or eight meters long, and arrived at a space resembling an underground cave.

Just after entering, a bloody, foul stench rushed toward him.

Wayne squinted and looked. Besides some unknown trash, he saw six strong lumberjacks, their hands tied with hemp ropes, hanging from the top of the cave, their feet about forty or fifty centimeters from the ground.

Everyone had their clothes stripped off, their skin covered in whip marks, and expressions of fear and panic twisted on their faces.

Two of the lumberjacks had already had their bellies cut open, their internal organs and blood flowing all over the ground. Judging from their pale corpses, they had been dead for at least a day.

Seeing someone enter, the living lumberjacks first let out shrill, fearful wails, but when they discovered that the person who came was a handsome young man, a joy of surviving a disaster quickly surfaced on their faces.

"Save me, save me quickly."

"There is a monster; he is torturing us and always asking some inexplicable questions."

"Someone has been killed, save me quickly, I beg you."

Listening to the cries for help from several people, Wayne took a look and found.

Unfortunately, such characteristics were too common; if one were to look for the culprits based on such standards, about one-tenth of the lumberjacks would be treated as culprits.

Wayne cut the ropes binding them with his sword, then slowly lowered them to the ground. Looking at these lumberjacks who were tortured and covered in wounds, he said loudly:

"Don't worry, I am a witcher hired by Deacon Ozck. The monster has been killed by me; you will no longer be in danger."

"However, you have injuries on your bodies, so just rest here for a while. I will go back now to notify Deacon Ozck and have him arrange for a doctor to help you."

An older-looking bald lumberjack nodded immediately upon hearing this, prostrated himself on the ground to salute Wayne, and said gratefully:

"Thank you, Master Witcher, you saved my life."

"With the Goddess Melitele above, I dare not imagine how my poor children would survive if they lost me."

The other surviving lumberjacks, seeing this, also ignored the pain in their bodies and expressed their sincere gratitude to Wayne one after another.

Wayne responded to them one by one with a smile, then gave a few more instructions, took a roll of clean cloth strips from his pouch, handed it to them to bandage their wounds, and turned to walk toward the exit of the basement.

To Wayne's surprise, just as he crawled out of the basement's wooden door, he immediately heard crying coming from outside the house.

"Father! I beg you, don't leave me!"

"You and Mother are both dead; there is only me left in this world."

Hearing that the source of the crying should be a child, Wayne's heart stirred, and he immediately guessed who the crying person was.

He sighed in his heart, and after hesitating for a few seconds, he stepped out of the house.

Sure enough, beside the werewolf corpse whose head he had cut off, a child of about ten years old was lying on the corpse in great sorrow, crying bitterly, begging his father not to leave him and other such words.

When he heard the movement and saw Wayne walking out of the house, he was stunned for a few seconds, and then, the child's originally clear eyes were immediately filled with hatred.

He roared angrily at Wayne:

"It must be you, you bad person, who cut off my father's head."

"My father is a good person; why did you kill him?"

After speaking, the child did not wait for Wayne to answer, but quickly stood up and rushed toward Wayne in a posture of fighting to the death.

Facing the angry attack of a child, Wayne certainly wouldn't draw his sword to fight back.

With a complex expression, he dodged the child's pounce, used his palm to hold the child's head, and prevented him from getting close to him.

Although he knew that explaining to a child would most likely be a waste of effort, he still said:

"Your father was a werewolf. In order to avenge your mother, he was blinded by anger and killed two innocent lumberjacks."

"These two lumberjacks were also fathers to other children and husbands to other women, just like your father; they also had their own families."

"Child, perhaps you cannot understand it now, but in this matter, it was your father who was wrong."

"He also paid the price for his mistakes."

"You also possess the werewolf bloodline, but this is not your fault. Control your anger and desire for destruction well; do not let them control your reason."

"If one day in the future, you also commit the same evil deeds as your father, I will have no choice but to kill you, just like today."

After saying this, seeing that the child was still in that desperate posture, his tender hands grabbing at his chainmail, even scratching his nails and the skin of his fingers until they were bloody.

Wayne sighed in his heart, and his free left hand made the gesture of an Axii Sign, and an enhanced mind control was forcibly cast into the child's brain.

This intense mental shock directly caused the child's eyes to roll back, and he fainted.

Wayne reached out to hold the child's tender body, looked up at the sky, and after considering for a few seconds, carried the child toward Reuven's lumber camp with a complex mood.

(Thanks to the two big bosses, Beidangyun and Mengxingjiuzui, for the tips!)

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 67 =====