Chapter 5

While during the day the sun singed the earth and left the ground cracked and dry, at night the moon brought with it a bone-chilling frost.

When the first rays of golden sunshine shone down from the horizon, countless frozen corpses would begin to melt.

For a traveller, the treacherous conditions at night could spell imminent disaster.

Caravans transporting goods relied upon the protection of knights and hired guards to ensure their safety, but many still did not ever make it to their destination.

However in the woods some distance beyond a nameless slum, a young man seated on mossy log was contently tending to a fire.

Lighting a fire in the wilderness carried significant risks. Fierce beasts like wolves and jackals could detect the smell of smoke from tens of miles away. Moreover there was one other far greater threat.

"Monsters." Konlan muttered to himself. 

Held in his hand was a long stick which he used to occasionally poke the headless corpse of the creature he had killed. The creature's rotten flesh, which somehow still allowed it to move at incredible speed, produced a unique scent as it burned. 

Konlan recognized the creature from the Witcher games. 

The nekker. 

Following the conjuction of the spheres countless members of this hideous and violent species were trapped on the continent. Nekkers were among the few monsters capable of reproducing on the continent and while they could be killed by a team of trained knights, nobles still preferred to hire a Witcher's services to eradicate their nests. 

Killing the nekker took little more than a swipe of his knife, but the tens of others that followed gave him a small headache. 

It wasn't difficult to kill a nekker. His strength exceeded theirs by multiple times and the sharpness of his blade meant that any attempt to defend was laughable. 

However the nekkers were as stubborn as they were savage. The death of their companions did not make them stop for even a moment, the scent of blood, even their own, only roused them into greater frenzy. 

Facing attacks from all sides and lacking any form of armour; Konlan had felt a twinge of familiar helplessness. 

Memories of the things he had done to survive rushed back to him and his judgement became clouded with anger. 

What followed was a whirlwind of destruction. 

Sighing, Konlan picked another shard of bone out from his hair. 

"I suppose I had some pent up emotions after all." He mumbled to himself. 

Despite the dozens of dismembered corpses strewn around him, Konlan couldn't help but chuckle at his own humor. 

'I should've thought through my plan more thoroughly.' 

Within the confines of the slums, information circulated rapidly. In an environment lacking privacy, trust or even a shred of humanity; secrets never remained secret for long. 

Perhaps the only thing that had brought him joy in that place was stifling his laughter as he listened to unfaithful husbands, who weren't skillful enough in the covering of their tracks, being chased down the streets by their cleaver-wielding spouses. Following closely behind would often be a string of equally wrathful mistresses. 

Petty marriage squabbles could not catch the eye of those who held real power in the slums. Most gossip in the slums was like this; harmless, entertaining. 

However, if the topic were to stray from drunken misdeeds and oddly shaped rashes, to anything that could threaten the upper echelons, then the powers in the shadows could no longer remain still. 

Talk of escape was common in the slums. It was done crouching in winding alleys or murky sewers where the omnipresent eyes and ears of those powerful figures could not reach.

But no matter the precautions taken, greed still managed to overcome. 

Sharing information on routes to nearby cities or settlements was banned in the slums. To have even the slightest link to anyone caught guilty of this crime spelled certain death. 

Entire families; mothers, fathers and children alike had lit up the night sky as their bodies became sustenance for raging pyres of flame. Occasionally a gust of wind would scatter a pile of fallen leaves and those haunting screams would echo in Konlan's mind once more. 

This ruthless ban on the circulation of information had lead to Konlan's present situation. 

He was lost. 

Although he had no problem meeting his basic needs thanks to his superhuman physique; life in the wilderness could even be described as comfortable. This did not change the fact that he was currently wandering blindly through a vast ancient forest, a place that had existed long before man stepped foot on the continent. 

While men believed themselves to be the masters of the continent, countless other races having fallen to the mighty human race.

In towering frozen mountain ranges, swamps thick with poisonous miasma and virgin forests where no living thing had ever tread for millennia; there remained the remnants of powers that had once made the continent shudder. 

"Vampires, The Wild Hunt, The White flame...." He mumbled and trailed off. 

There were countless beings in the world of The Witcher that could sever his head from the rest of his body and because he had thought himself too important to turn a page; Konlan's only knowledge regarding this world came from three seasons of a Netflix television show. 

Konlan rubbed his temples with a mixture of frustration and regret, "I should've read a book." 

Sighing, he got to his feet. For an instant the twinkling canopy of stars in the night sky brought him a fleeting sense of peace; then it was gone. 

The fire hissed sharply as Konlan used the skull of a large boar he had killed to pour water on the flames. Standing motionless he watched the plumes of smoke drift upwards.

This scene was shattered by a sudden gust of biting wind. The fierce gust scattered the winding plumes and extinguished the final traces of the fire's warmth; the glowing embers on the forest floor glowed brightly for an instant before being snuffed out into blackness. 

As he had grown accustomed to over the past days spent in the forest, Konlan effortlessly climbed to the upper branches of a tall oak and rested his back against the broad trunk. His legs dangled precariously on either side of the branch but his calm expression belayed no sign of fear. 

On the basis that he did not engage in any strenuous battles or badly deplete his stamina, the incredible physique of a super soldier could maintain peak condition for more than a week without requiring sleep. 

While physically he was in peak condition, slaughtering the nekkers had not caused him to break a sweat; the mental fatigue of walking alone for hours in a forest that seemed to have no end was a heavy toll on his mind. 

In order to preserve his own sanity, Konlan chose to sleep each night. Without fail or deviation he would wake just before dawn the next day, his superhuman metabolism and chemical processes meant that it was impossible for him to sleep longer any longer than this. 

The feeling of fatigue that had so often accompanied his life on earth was now completely foreign to him. His transformed cells operated like countless tiny machines, constantly outputting a surplus of energy that kept his mind and body sharper than any ordinary human could experience.

Had the formula for the serum been lost, the Marvel Universe might've been entirely dominated by individuals like Steve Rodgers. Perhaps the war would've ended in a matter of weeks. 

Closing his eyes, Konlan sank his consciousness into the countless details detected by his acute nervous system. Just a few meters away a rabbit rustled in its burrow, grooming the sparse fur of its newborns. High above a kestrel soared through the skies, relying on the clouds to conceal its hungry gaze. 

Konlan felt his eyelids grow heavier. 

'Goodnight trees.' He thought sleepily. 

Then. 

[ Would you like to draw a multiversal character card? ] 

"Fuck!" Konlan shouted. 

His eyes processed the ground growing increasingly large in his vision with perfect clarity as he plummeted to the earth below.