Chapter 133

"Don't you want to show off your skills?"

Heralt, having had a few drinks, decided to hit on me.

"Heralt, you should be hitting on women instead of me..."

I cringed slightly at the smell of alcohol that came from the witch, but from the look in his eyes, he wasn't going to calm down.

"Are you pissing?!"

She put her arm around my shoulders a little. Someone had clearly had a little too much to drink. Which, given the witches' resistance to poison, was surprising.

"No..."

"Let's go, then!"

He tried to take me somewhere. I was faced with the choice of whether or not to get involved in this provocation. I mean, he's obviously trying to embarrass me.

"I'm not interested."

I decided to ignore Geralt's attempts to provoke me. At least for the sake of Ciri, who I already consider a friend and I wouldn't want to spoil my relationship with her. And a harsh response in this situation could be the real reason for a fight with her.

"Coward, huh? You're a pussy! What do all your women see in you?!"

I frowned slightly.

"Maybe the fact that to me they're not women, but beautiful girls?"

"Pfft!"

Geralt snorted contemptuously.

"Women are women in Nilfgaard!"

"And you can say that again, looking me in the eye?"

Ian, who was sitting a little farther away from me, saw that Geralt was picking on me and apparently decided to intervene. Or maybe she just wanted to pick a fight with the witch... So she intervened in our conversation, or rather in his attempts to provoke me.

"Ian..."

Heralt focused his gaze on her, but afterward he acted a little differently than I'd expected. Instead of making excuses to his ex, he turned his gaze back to me.

"What, you're gonna call a woman for help? That's the kind of man you are, isn't it?"

I sighed.

"Heralt, I'm not a moron, and I can see that you're provoking me. Perhaps in another situation I would have been provoked, but I'm not in the mood right now and..."

"Yeah..."

He interrupted me while giving me an unkind look.

"...you're in the mood to steal other people's women and take their fortresses."

Frowning I shook my head.

"I don't understand your claim, as far as I know Triss broke up with you a long time ago, so who did I steal from you?"

"Don't play dumb with me. just because we had a little fight doesn't mean we broke up!"

He loomed over me, and I was about to respond to his claim, but then he was blown away by a weak air ram that threw him about five meters away from me.

"First of all, I'm not a broad, and this attitude of yours has always pissed me off, even when I've been affected by Jinn's spell. And secondly."

"And secondly, it'll be from me..."

Triss appeared next to Ian.

"...and I'll tell you this, just because you took a break from our relationship doesn't mean you can fuck whoever you want, and I have to sit by the dock like a faithful sailor's wife and wait to see if or when you'll get laid."

"Hey, hey! We actually have a hard job!"

One of the witches approached us, I had already gotten to know him.

"Lambert, stay out of this..."

Triss glared at him at the witch who had gotten into the altercation

"I just, uh."

"Triss is right, keep quiet..."

Lambert was now being looked at by Ian as well.

"...We are not denying the importance and danger of your profession, but only saying that you don't have to be a male in this profession. Especially when your woman is a sorceress and can make communication artifacts and open a portal to you from anywhere in the world."

"Well..."

Lambert thought, and thought very hard.

"Do you think it's very convenient?"

Grinning I nudged him in the shoulder.

"Uh-huh...

"That's right, you've invited a few magical girls here, so look out for one of them. A steady girlfriend you can meet wherever you are. It's very nice and family-oriented.

"Family-wise...

He looked at me in surprise.

"...To be honest I never really thought about family, like most witches."

His voice was thoughtful and even somewhat confused.

I wasn't going to watch the two sorceresses crucify Geralt, I just wasn't interested, so I preferred to spend my time talking to Lambert. So, clapping him on the shoulder, I offered him a walk, and he didn't refuse me.

"Listen, who should I talk to about training?"

"Hmm? You seem strong enough, and you're fast enough."

"My speed. it's going to drop a lot soon, at least for a while."

I shrugged, as if to say that this was a self-evident fact.

"Uh..."

I got a confused look on my face.

"Technology from my world..."

I patted the sandi sticking out in the neck area.

"...and since I've decided to expand my clan's activities to your world and others, I need to protect myself as much as possible from the failure of a technical device. So I'm going to give it up, though I hope Ian and Triss can design a sigil for me that will speed me up."

"Well. if they do, I hope you won't hide a sign like that from us."

"Of course not..."

I shrugged at Lambert's cautious question.

"...the point is for me to sit on knowledge like a dragon on gold. Knowledge must work, then it begets other knowledge. But before I give up the Sandi, I need to brush up on my technique and get a handle on the Wild Hunt. Right now, my style is based more on superior speed..."

"I see..."

Lambert nodded at my words and poured himself some wine thoughtfully. We had already gotten far enough away from Geralt and the two wizards to sit down at the table. In fact, we were on the other side of the dining hall.

"You should talk to Vesemir about training... we're all good swordsmen, but we're not teachers, and Vesemir is a teacher. And he can not only fight with you on swords and beat our witch style into you, he can literally develop the style you have, making it suitable for different situations."

I nodded thoughtfully.

"He was wrong to do that to Ian and Triss, and he was wrong to do that to you, but overall he's a good man."

"I'm not arguing..."

I shrugged.

"...I don't hold a grudge against him, I don't want to meddle in his life and teach him how to take up the sword and what girls to have affairs with. But since he started provoking me."

I shrug again.

"I get it."

Lambert waved his hand.

"...and you know what, fuck Heralt! We're having a good time, celebrating the complete restoration of the fortress, and it didn't look this good even in the days of my youth! So thank you!"

I was clapped on the shoulder.

"You're welcome..."

I grinned and clapped Lambert on the shoulder, and he laughed merrily and finished his wine, then poured himself another glass. We spent the next ten minutes just chatting, telling each other stories from our lives, or rather Lambert told them mostly, as my stories would have been very monotonous for this seasoned warrior.

In his life there were drow, mermaids, echidnas, werewolves, various cursed, guli and alguli, and each monster required its own battle tactics, its own elixirs that affected the organism in its own way. And the terrain could be very different.

In my case, however, everything was boring...

"And tell me something else..."

Vesemir sat down next to us, just after I'd told one of the few stories I could brag about in such company.

"There's not much to tell..."

I shrugged.

"What do you mean, nothing? According to Ian, you've been a mercenary for years, so how could you have worked so little?"

"Uh, no..."

I shook my head at Vesemir's question.

"...it's just that my way of working doesn't involve overpowering. I guess even if I were a witch, I wouldn't have the stories Lambert has."

"How's that?"

Lambert looked at me in surprise.

"It's just, uh. take my first order of business, the first order the delivery girl gave me."

"Who?"

Vesemir looked at me in surprise.

"A fixer is a person who ..."

I looked thoughtfully at the ceiling of the hall. And how do I explain to a medieval man who the fiksers are?

"...in general, a kind of information merchant, but she not only trades information, but also distributes orders in her territory... Oh! A kind of headman, not of a village, but usually of a city district."

"The neighborhood?"

I was looked at with doubt and I understood why they were looking at me like that, since the cities in this world are small, and for each neighborhood to have its own headman...

"Yeah, except we have one neighborhood as big as your city, if not bigger."

I shook my head and ignoring the witches' surprised look continued.

"...I was still very young at the time. It was just a matter of luck. If those bandits, who were hired to destroy me, had at least someone a little more experienced, or at least not retarded, and they had good control over their base, then my story would have ended there."

"Mercenaries often go hand in hand with luck..."

Vesemir shook his head.

"...So don't minimize your capabilities."

"If you say so, but believe me, back then I was a pale parody of my current self, both in terms of technique and the ability to use sandi. I was only using about five to ten percent of my possible acceleration. And I managed to nullify the gang..."

I shook my head and explained exactly what was going on there.

"Well. you did a good job."

Vesemir stroked his mustache thoughtfully after drinking his wine.

"...especially for a green kid."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. You've done a lot of stupid things, although I'm not familiar with the realities of your world yet."

And Vesemir did feed with our world with the help of training coffins, and even allowed Vic to study himself, and afterwards to change some of his treasure, which was too much worn out, for biological analogs.

According to the witch doctor himself, he doesn't care anymore, he's old and nobody needs him...

Though if the other witches had heard him and tried to shut him up, and Ciri, Ian, and Triss also valued him, and those three girls, well two of them for sure, valued him much more than the other witches, and Ciri all the other witches except Geralt.

The only thing that this old wolf did not expect was that after the replacement of the treasures, the old mobility and strength would return to him...

However, after Vic, with my permission, had actually replaced all his bones, tendons, joints, and muscles, as well as partially changed his internal organs, it would be surprising if Vesemir didn't return to the peak of his form. Though he has even surpassed it, and the sparring sessions he has had alone against Geralt, Lambert and Exel, in which he came out victorious, speaks to that quite clearly.

"You're right. I did a lot of shit back then. in fact I kept doing it until Judy came on my team, she allowed me to do remote recon, which made it less risky for me..."

I smiled warmly with a glance in Judy's direction.

"...but even so, you should have realized that I prefer not to be like you, with a saber on my head, pouring elixirs and potions, but quietly and stealthily..."

"How I wish all young witches acted this way..."

Vesemir shook his head.

"...so many good boys would be able to return to Caer Morhen for their first winter, and it gets easier there. Life would have shaped them up a bit over the year, the mentors would have shaped them up, and they'd have come out of their second year much better prepared."

"Yeah..."

Lambert entered the conversation.

"You may not know this, but we had a mortality rate. sixty percent of the students who graduated died the first year. The survivors in the second year, 20 percent of them died. And after the third year, the death rate dropped dramatically to three to five percent."

"Until three five?"

I shifted my gaze to Lambert in surprise, but it was Vesemir who answered my question.

"By the third year, the young men were finally learning to assess their strength and realized that it was better to give up work than to part with their lives. And still the experience and skills in field work for two years grew a lot. After all, to work in the field is not to swing a sword in a training ring..."

"I see..."

I nodded at Vesemir's words.

"Speaking of training, tell me, could you train me?"

"Sure. we'll start tomorrow."

Vesemir shrugged his shoulders and, agreeing, proceeded to ask me about the orders I had placed.