3 A Devilish Meeting

Now for step number two: Challenge and defeat the iron maiden.

After beating Gundar I head east of Harviken towards the most prominent hill visible from the village in search of Jutta An Dimun.

A woman some might remember inspite of her quick and brief appearance. She's one of the few characters in The Witcher 3 your able to actually romance as Geralt. A fierce skellige woman through and through.

The only way to romance her is by beating her in a proper duel. One where If you use potions, signs or bombs against her you would instantly lose on the account of it depending on Geralt's pure skill. For her to even accept the duel you have to be a man of some renown. It's a shame that the developers didn't give her a quest that lived up to the height it was portrayed as in universe.

Anyone that has played vanilla witcher 3 without any of the DLC can tell you that the base game only has five options that you can legitimately romance.

Two of them however aren't involved with the main story of the game in any shape or form. Their quests revolve around gwent and combat respectively. Jutta is the combat option between those two. The gwent option is great as she has her own unique side story, great rewards and it also has a high enough difficulty worthy of a witcher side romance quest line. Though the people that hate or are particularly bad at gwent will probably never see the complete ending of that quest outside of a video on the internet as she's a beast at cards.

Jutta's quest on the other hand is kinda underwhelming. If you waited towards the end of the game to do her quest you could take her and everyone related to her mission down without much difficulty. That's also regardless of the handicap you're under.

Which is a shame as she's presented to be an absolute unit in her own right. She's supposed to have fought some of the greatest warriors the isles have to offer and bested them. No man has ever defeated her in combat and that's in fucking Skellige where nothing earns you more respect than martial prowess for fucks sake. The fact that you can complete her quest line in about ten to fifteen minutes depending on RNG and loading time is criminal... but that's enough ranting for the day.

As I slowly walk up the hill I hear the cries of grown men cutting through the wind.

Upon reaching the very top I see the Iron maiden in all her glory. Three men laid at her feet that no doubt tried to simultaneously test their luck against her to no avail.

She looks more beautiful than she did through the screen. There's actually no comparison to it. She possessed piercing pale gray eyes that beautifully decorate her face accompanied by ashen locks of hair and rosey lips. A lithe fit body showed itself prevalent. Even through the lightly armored thick nordic style clothing your able to notice her athletic figure.

'I can clearly see why so many suitors threw themselves against such a skilled woman.' I thought while respectfully appreciating her curvy toned physique.

We lock eyes for a moment and she opens her mouth to speak.

"I've not see ye here before. What do they call ya?" She asks and then pauses.

"I'm Sigurd Aesirsson." I supply.

"I'm-" She was about to reply but I interrupted not letting go of the lead,"You're Jutta An Dimun. According to hearsay there's been no man south of south of the isles who could best you in combat."

"Yes, I imagine that if you're aware of me you have probably heard rumors about my proposal and came running for the same reason these weaklings did." She said pointing at the men still groaning while lying on the ground, "Sadly for ya I don't just accept the challenge of any man that steps forward. I would see no end to them if I did so. I've defeated Faroe's most famous warriors, men so worthy of respect I don't dare mention their names. And who is Sigurd Aesirsson?"

"Someone who easily took down one of your previous suitors. It's the reason why I even know about this situation in the first place." I finish as a small smirk begins to appear in my face.

"And who might that be?" she asks.

"Gundar of Harviken" I reply to her, "A brave man and somewhat of a worthwhile opponent for what it's worth. Though sadly he doesn't even come close to me in terms of prowess. Neither did his blade for that matter as it completely shattered from a single well placed blow of mine."

When It comes to Skellige women there's no use in mincing words. As long as your actions strike brave, true and you have the might to support your bravado they will always choose you over the next man. Even now I can already notice a shift in her posture and demeanor becoming more welcoming or at the very least as hospitable as someone preparing to shed some blood can be.

Another reason I made it clear and hit home the fact I vastly outclassed her previous suitor is because in game if she doesn't recognize you she sends you on a task to prove your worth. You have to do one of three tasks that could be given at random when you encounter her. One of them being defeating the man I've already fought and won against.

I'm trying to make sure she knows I completed at least one of her prerequisites because the other nearest task involves deep diving and I'm not particularly feeling like retrieving a sword stored in a sunken chest in the middle of the ocean at the moment.

"From what I've heard both you and I suffer from the same predicament. I've also found myself unable to come even remotely close to getting acquainted with defeat. I fear I'm just too good at wielding my blade. I thought that you and I could bond about that, over a bit of ale mayhaps." I finish with a cheeky grin.

Her stoic facade slips a bit and she begins to match my grin,"Hm. Strong in the mouth. Let's see if you're as cocky in the ring." She replies while looking me up and down.

"Cocky, huh, I guess I've never heard anyone of the fairer sex finding me lacking in regards to that department either. I'm ready at your mark." I say still smiling as I shifted my posture to a more battle ready stance.

"Ha. Then let's start, may Freya choose the victor." She say with a chuckle while drawing her blade.

After that she makes the first move. A text book vertical strike with practiced precision. I block and get close while our blades are in a stalemate. So close I can feel her breath grace my collarbone as she's almost a full head shorter than me. We hold that for a moment until she breaks away.

She then rushes again but this time I parry. We started to go around in circles back and forth.

I try to pull her in while she pushes me away.

When I decide to attack she perfectly dodges. If I move forward, she moves backwards. If I block, she attacks and so on and so forth. If I were to explain it in layman's terms It's kinda like a deadly game of rock, paper, scissors where she attempts to counter my every move with the opposite of it.

Every move of hers is skilled and purposeful. It's to the point that even someone who has never picked up a sword in their life would be able to tell that she's the real fucking deal.

She's good... really good.

She's at the level of Aela the huntress when it comes to sheer skill at wielding the sword. She moves in a manner so as to tire her opponent out as quickly as possible while wasting the least amount of energy, avoiding head on clashes. You can tell she's probably been fighting primarily against men for most of her life.

She's based her every move centered around taking out a more physically dominant enemy.

Either way we continued going at each other.

We have been fighting for about fifty minutes straight and after a while I begin to see signs of her tiring out. I start thinking that it's about time to wrap things up. I've admired her skills long enough. I wait for her to wind up one last time and I use her momentum against her.

As she she strikes I quickly let go of my sword, grab her wrist and I initiated a basic judo throw.

When she hits the ground and slams her back all the air escapes her lungs and I take a step back to let her catch her breath.

"Enough! Enough! Oh, gods..." she says short of breath.

"I'm not surprised you're having a hard time finding opponents. You're better than all of the men I saw trying their hand at the fighting ring in Harviken. Then again as you've seen... I'm not like most men."

"Indeed you are not. I've been waiting a long time for a man capable of defeating me to come along and finally here you are. Where'd you learn all that?" She said after getting up from the ground.

"Throughout my many adventures traveling the continent." I reply.

"Bet you learned a great deal while traveling across the world. Surely. Would you like to tell me about it?"

"It would take quite a long time to tell tale in regards to all of it." I say while looking into the sultry eyes she's giving me.

"All right. We just need a quiet spot. Some mead as you had previously mentioned and your expressed agreement. So, what do you say?"

"Gladly, so, see ya at the inn?" I add.

She got close to me and whispered into my ear,"Too rowdy. Come to my home near Harviken. I'll see you after dusk."

"Can't wait." I say as I turn heel into direction of the steps down the hill after noting the description of her house down in my head.

As I entered Harviken I start to think of a way to kill time until the scheduled meeting. I sit down next to a tree near the port facing the sea.

I shift my attention towards my inventory looking for some items. I haven't really taken the time to check what's really in it since I got here. It should be as I left it when I finished playing my last sesion. But since I don't have the in game UI to accurately verify. So, I have to do it one by one. Thankfully it's intent based so that speeds up the process. Though I'm not really going to bother properly sorting through it all unless I find a proper place and reason to do so.

I immediately find the items I was looking for.

I take out two bottles of Black-Briar Mead and a long pipe.

I always made sure to install cannabis mods for shits and giggles whether I started a new session of RP or not. It was a sort of tradition that started because of a fight about wether it was actually the first mod I ever installed into the game or not in my friend group. It seems it finally paid off beyond being an inside joke between my friends and I.

I then proceed to set one of the bottles aside and open the other.

I swirled the mead a bit then take a swig and let me tell you... it's fucking amazing. For as big of a group of asshats the great majority of the Black-Briar family are they sure can brew one hell of a mead. Thankfully I have a near infinite amount of the stuff and also remember the recipe. I'm even tempted to sell this as my own in the future amongst a few other things.

My attention is then drawn to the pipe. I put some of the hash inside of it and ignite it using a small scale fire based destruction spell with my finger tips. After taking a long drag I look at the pipe in my hand, "I now dub thee Phantom Pipe. May we have a long friendship that lasts an eternity." I say while looking at the beautiful scenery and watch the day melt away into a picturesque sunset.

After some time I stand up as the time of our meeting nears. It's time for the final step of my genius plan to come to fruition. I have to get there on time if I want to beautifully wrap this day up.

Step number three: Profit

[A/N: Boy I recently started replaying Yakuza 0 and I gotta say... it still holds up to this day. A great piece of a bygone era of genuinely creative, reliable and innovative game making. Also, as a side note RIP for those of you out there who actually wasted real non monopoly money on suicide squad: kill the justice league.]