Chapter 10

I surveyed the dirt walls of my new home. The several meters of earth above isolated me from the rest of the world.

The leshen's skull rested on a makeshift shelf that I had cut out from the soil. I smiled and stroked the sloped forehead, contently admiring my spoil of war.

The Leshen I had killed was several decades old, but it was considered barely a juvenile amongst it's kind.

I stretched out my now healed arm and reflected upon the fight.

The Leshen's strength was formidable but it greatly lacked combat experience. It was likely that it had never faced an opponent in the forest that could endure more than a few blows.

The Leshen's use of its powerful wooden appendages was clumsy and full of flaws.

Although I disdained it's oafish use of strength, I knew in my heart that I was lucky to have come up against such a young Leshen.

An elder Leshen was a beast that struck fear in any Witcher's heart. A Leshen's strength grew proportional to its age, and some ancient Leshen's held intelligence no less than an ordinary man.

The Leshen's memories contained images of a vast forest that extended without end. In these forests the Leshen's roamed freely and enslaved wild beasts to their will.

Every Leshen was innately gifted in magic. They were beings that had been birthed by nature and in turn they wielded incredible control over it.

I fell into deep thought.

My current form was fast and deadly. A casual swing of my claws could cut deep trenches in stone.

The thick carapace that protected my more delicate insides was strong enough to withstand ordinary blades and arrows.

Only the Leshen with it's incredible brute strength had been able to break my defence.

I was a powerful predator, but the true power of this world did not lie in the hands of the mundane.

The kings and queens that held dominion over vast empires still bled. Their bodies would weaken with age and one day their bones would be sealed away for eternity in a royal crypt.

Without their armies to protect them, monarchs and tyrants were nothing more than ants waiting to be stepped on.

Magic was the true behemoth of the Witcher universe.

And magic was currently a force that I did not possess.

But...

I balanced the Leshen's huge skull on my palm and stared into it's empty sockets.

I came to a decision.

"You will become part of me." I whispered to the skull.

Closing my eyes I focused my attention on my heart.

The red energy pulsed rythmically as my atria and ventricles contracted and relaxed.

For a time I simply immersed myself in the red energy's presence.

It was me and I was it, inseperable sides of the same coin.

"Begin."

The red energy loyally obeyed my instruction.

I observed, while my eyes still remained intact, as my body gradually began to dissolve. Red liquid seeped out from the cracks in my caprace and my appearance resembled some kind of shattered terrocota warrior.

Once more I returned to a formless state of consciousness supported by the red energy.

This time my evolution was pure and simple.

Fusing genetic material from multiple species held considerable benefits, however I was limited by the small variety of magical beings I had consumed.

Therefore I opted for a simpler choice.

A fully grown Leshen was a monster that could tear apart armoured knights with ease. Even a mighty Witcher, if they slipped up for even an instant, would meet a gruesome end under a Leshen's fury.

The Leshen's DNA was domineering and arrogant. It fought fiercely as the red energy began modifying and editing it.

Due to the distinct difference in life level between the Leshen and an ordinary wild beast, attempting to intergrate clearly inferior genes would be a foolish notion.

I was not stupid enough to do such a thing.

Instead I set my sights on eliminating a few key weaknesses.

The first was the Leshen's vulnerability to silver. This was inherently tied to the magic spread through the world but I was able to solve it with only minor difficulty.

The Leshen was a non-native of this world. It's prescence was akin to a contaminant and the world's will scorned it for merely existing.

Thankfully I had huge reserves of genetic material obtained from the true inhabitants of the world.

By coating the Leshen DNA in a thin layer of native DNA, I was able to disguise myself as a true inhabitant. In the future, when I had wider access to materials, I intended to devise a better solution.

Since I had begun creating my new body, I had felt a faint probing malice watching my actions. After coating the final section of Leshen DNA I was relieved to feel the malice dissipate.

I celebrated my success for a few seconds and then moved onto my next modification.

As beings born of nature, Leshen's had an inhernt vulnerability to fire and heat.

I considered for a moment whether I could eliminate this weakness altogether. However before I could think further the red energy throbbed violently.

I immediately recognised that this was a warning not to continue my line of thought.

The Leshen's DNA was essentially that of a living and sentiment magical tree.

All things were subject to balance and harmony. In the same way that fire could not exist without air, wood also could not exist without fire.

I could chose to forcibly override the balance and create a genome that violated nature, but the cost of this would require me to bathe an entire kingdom in blood.

I no longer cared about how monstrous my appearance became, however the sacredness of life instilled in me from earth was my only tether to my fading humanity. I would not break my promise to not harm the innocent.

Removing the Leshen's vulnerability to fire was beyond my power.

Therefore after completing a few other small modifications, I ceased to interfere in the growth of my new body.

'I wonder how you will react when you see me....

Witcher.