Chapter 216: Killing to Protect Life
Lynn looked around, and after confirming there was no one else nearby, he ducked through the door curtain and entered.
The witcher's boots creaked on the wooden floor of the shack.
The sound startled the man lying on the cardboard.
He reacted quickly.
Noticing an intruder, he immediately sat up.
And grabbed a dagger lying nearby.
Trying to appear fierce.
"Who are you? What are you doing here? This is my territory! Get out! Or I'll beat you!"
"Aard."
Bang!
An invisible wave of force slammed the man into the shack's wall, and the dagger in his hand was shaken loose.
The man's eyes widened in horror; he knew he had run into a brick wall.
But what he didn't know was that Lynn had held back.
Otherwise, if Lynn had used his master-level Sign to its full power, the unprotected man's internal organs would surely have been shattered into a pulpy mess.
"You... you are..."
Only then did the man clearly see Lynn's eyes.
His liver and guts immediately turned to jelly.
"You're that monster's kin? You're a monster too!"
Lynn grinned, revealing a friendly smile.
"Is it possible that I understand Common Speech, or do you wish to die faster?"
"Or perhaps you think calling others monsters is a compliment?"
"Don't... don't kill me, sir."
The man immediately fell to his knees, raising his hands.
"You are Alfred, Old John's younger brother? Since you just said I'm 'that monster's kin,' then I suppose you know why I've come looking for you."
"I don't know, sir, I don't know anything."
Alfred was filled with regret.
How was he to know there were two such monsters?
Didn't people say mutants were now rare and endangered?
How did an even younger one suddenly appear?
"Don't know?"
The friendly smile on Lynn's face turned into a sneer.
From the man's reaction, it was clear he wasn't genuinely ignorant.
But whether he chose to speak or not didn't matter.
Lynn had other ways to make him talk.
The witcher's middle finger slightly curled, his gaze fixed on Alfred.
"Axii."
A white magical glow illuminated above the man's head for a moment.
Immediately, Alfred stood up, his expression blank.
As if he were a puppet on strings.
The rest was simple.
Lynn asked, Alfred answered.
Except for official sorcerers, ordinary people simply couldn't resist the charm of a master-level Axii Sign.
Alfred confessed everything, without holding anything back.
The situation largely matched Old John's account.
And the truth of what happened then surfaced:
That day, Alfred went to Old John's bakery to collect a debt. Old John pleaded bitterly, but Alfred only wanted money and wasn't interested in anything else.
Seeing that Old John refused, Alfred started making a huge fuss at the bakery entrance, disrupting Old John's business.
It was at this moment that "Geralt," who often bought bread there, appeared.
He beat Alfred, threatened him, and then left.
Alfred, humiliated in the eyes of others, slunk back to his temporary dwelling in the Novigrad slums. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became, so he went to City Hall to report it.
City Hall sent people to Old John's bakery to investigate and gather evidence. After confirming the incident, they issued a wanted poster for "Geralt."
This was the complete sequence of events.
Lynn's gaze shifted downwards.
He noticed that Alfred's clothes carried the exact same scent of perfume he had noticed in the bakery.
"Did you smell an unusual scent coming from that witcher?"
"Yes, he had a strange perfume scent on him. I smelled the same scent the first time I came to Novigrad, when I passed by a stall in the market near the Treto Hill Gate."
The market near the Treto Hill Gate?
Lynn nodded.
Next, he just had to follow the scent to the market Alfred mentioned, and he would surely find the person.
Seeing that he couldn't get anything else out of him, Lynn suddenly reached out and grabbed Alfred by the neck.
The next second, there was a crisp snap.
Alfred's neck was twisted clean off.
If, in the eyes of people in this era, beggars were useless waste.
Then individuals like Alfred were scum, even worse than beggars.
A person like him, if he had even a shred of shame, wouldn't have lacked it entirely.
If he were let go, he wouldn't reform; he would only continue to harass Old John and Greisha.
It was better to just kill him and be done with it.
...
Although Alfred was dead, his body couldn't be left here.
No one might discover it for a short time, but given enough time, the stench of the corpse would surely attract attention.
Lynn still needed "Alfred" to get Geralt out, so the real Alfred's body couldn't be found.
Of course, this wasn't too difficult.
He put Alfred's body into a sack, then put two more sacks over it, and finally tossed it into his runic leather satchel.
The interior space of the runic leather satchel was large. He placed the body in a corner of the space, far away from his other items.
Then, later, he would find an opportunity to throw the body into the sea.
....
If you were to ask, what is a standard feature of a large city?
One of them would definitely be city gates.
Any large city has more than one gate.
The gate Lynn entered Novigrad through was called the Glory Gate.
And this was just one of Novigrad's many gates.
Now, Lynn was heading to another gate called the Treto Hill Gate.
Interestingly, Redania's capital was also called Treto Hill.
In fact, from the name itself, one could discern the gate's origin.
And indeed, that was the case.
This gate was funded and built by the Redanian royal family.
To curry favor with Novigrad's merchants and the Grand Archpriest of the Eternal Fire, they spared no expense or effort in its construction.
They paid a hefty sum to commission the renowned architect, Anna Yayepinkwitz, and her experienced team.
Only then was this gate finally built.
Not far from the Treto Hill Gate, Lynn also found the small marketplace.
However, considering the person was unlikely to comply willingly.
To avoid unnecessary trouble...
Before heading to the market, Lynn used his Deception Medallion to change his appearance and put on a different outfit before proceeding to the market.
.....
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