"WITCHES!!"
Keltullis gagged violently, coughing flames into her mouth. A searing torrent of heat surged forth like a pillar, purging every last trace of the stench and poison.
The red dragon was now truly enraged—her fury erupted as a fresh wave of dragonfire, even more ferocious than before, sweeping across the entire Whispering Hills range.
But this time, the three Crones weren't thinking of fighting back—they were fleeing, purely out of survival instinct.
Even as the flames spread like a sea across the land, most of the scattered crows managed to break free. With their wings flapping frantically, the edge of the Whispering Hillock came into view—
And then—
[Bang!]
Just as they reached the final stretch of sky beyond the hill, a glowing violet magic seal surged up from the ground.
The fastest crow slammed straight into what felt like an invisible wall. Blood and feathers exploded into the air like a crimson rain.
Then, hourglass-shaped runes emerged from the void, followed by a cascade of lightning that burst outward, engulfing the entire flock.
[Yrden Sign: Magic Burst]
A massive Yrden formation had been cast over the entire Whispering Hillock—a magical trap so vast that not even a single fly could escape.
Dozens of arcs of lightning struck from all directions, tearing through the dark flock. Even Keltullis had to hesitate; there was no space left to intervene.
The witches zigzagged, crashing into the magical net over and over, trying to find a way out—but the relentless damage overwhelmed them.
With several sharp, tortured screams, the three sisters finally lost their airborne forms and reappeared midair—bang, bang, bang—crashing hard to the ground.
The Brewess, most gravely injured, lay completely still.
"Who?! Who is it… Elder Blood!" the Weavess coughed and staggered to her feet, covered in grime. "Why attack us? We are the Ladies of the Wood—the protectors of Velen!"
Still trying to bluff her way through, she shouted, "We came here to purge the evil spirit of Whispering Hillock! Every true Velen folk knows that!"
The Whispess echoed her cry, "Every true Velen folk knows that, Elder Blood!"
…
No reply came.
Instead, a deeper, heavier rumble began to spread beneath their feet.
Dust and pebbles bounced violently across the ground. With booming, rhythmic quakes, a sudden blizzard swept in.
First fire. Now snow. Whispering Hillock was cursed with catastrophe today.
The three sisters froze.
They turned slowly toward the source of the tremors—opposite the red dragon's direction.
There, rising from the earth, stood another mountain—shimmering with a piercing ice-blue glow, toppling toward them like a glacier collapsing.
"My god!!"
Their ears were shattered by the sudden blast, a deafening pressure that sent them reeling into a haze of vertigo and near-deafness.
In the blur, they glimpsed a small figure perched atop the ice giant's shoulder—waving wildly, absolutely thrilled.
"Hahaha! My god! My god!!" Johnny spread his arms, shouting in harmony with the ice giant's roar, "This is amazing!!"
...
Bright emerald light shimmered—and Lann appeared atop the ice giant's shoulder. At once, the raging giant went still, like a true glacier frozen in place.
"Lann! Lann, you looked so cool just now!" Johnny leapt up the moment Lann appeared and wrapped his arms around his leg. "Can I take Myrhyff out later? There are so many creatures in the forest who used to bully me—can I scare them with him?"
The Godling, as always, was full of childlike joy and unshakable optimism.
"We're still in the middle of a battle," Lann said, chuckling.
"It's gonna be over soon!" the Godling declared, eyes wide with excitement.
And he wasn't wrong.
Saskia, the sorceresses, and the witchers were all preoccupied—either deep in magical research or busy training apprentices—so for this operation, Lann had only summoned the two laziest giants he had: Myrhyff and Keltullis.
That alone was more than enough for a direct assault on the Crones of Crookback Bog.
What Lann truly feared were the strange, ancient tricks these thousand-year-old remnants might have hidden. That's why, using Johnny's intelligence, he waited to strike until they had reached Whispering Hillock.
It was just like fighting sorceresses: give them enough prep time and they'd conjure a meteor to flatten a city—but in a sudden skirmish, all it took was a few dimeritium bombs and a dagger to massacre the lot.
The Crones were no different. Remove them from Velen's forests, trap them in soil where they couldn't draw power, then set loose two overwhelming monsters—
Lann wouldn't even need to raise a finger.
He gave Johnny a pat on the head and, with another flash of emerald light, dismounted from Myrhyff's shoulder—freeing the giant from his restraint.
And then, the Yrden Sign lit up once more.
The giant and the dragon rampaged freely across the hill, unleashed.
Johnny chattered endlessly at Lann's side, tireless, full of excitement. When the mood struck him, he even broke into rhymes and nursery songs. Lann didn't mind. In fact, he welcomed the chance to witness the history of Velen from the Godling's innocent perspective.
Johnny hadn't even made it to the events of a hundred years ago when a distant rumble began to draw near.
The battle was over.
The ice giant stepped forward and raised a clenched fist before Lann—then opened it, and casually flung the Weavess to the ground like a squashed insect.
She tumbled across the dirt, a half-charred husk of a witch, rolling until Lann pinned her down with his boot. Judging by her injuries, Myrhyff had barely managed to snatch this one alive from Keltullis's flames.
The scorched body let out faint, broken groans as it writhed.
"Sisters… they're all gone…" the Weavess mumbled. "Thousands of years… the Conjunction of the Spheres didn't kill us… neither did the druid… not even those Leshens…"
"But the Elder Blood succeeded, didn't it?"
Lann let out a faint chuckle. "It's the power you've coveted for so long—makes sense that it turned out to be this strong, doesn't it?"
The charred body went still… then began to tremble.
"Elder Blood…" the Weavess gave a low, chilling laugh. "We've waited a long time for you. Looks like you're finally here…"
"You spared me—so you need something from us!"
Lann frowned as he watched her twisted expression, burning with hatred so deep it etched itself into every ruined line of her face.
He could've forced her into a contract and extracted whatever he wanted that way. But—
She was too ugly. Too foul. Just the thought of binding her made it feel like even the system itself might get corrupted.
"I'll ask you plainly," Lann said, shaking his head. "At your yearly Witching Night, the Wild Hunt always appears. How did you contact them? How do you communicate with their world?"
The Weavess reacted as if she'd heard the most absurd thing in existence.
"Hah! The Elder Blood wants to go after the Wild Hunt!?"
"We never contact them! We just send invitations when they occasionally pass through this world!"
Her rasping, mocking laughter echoed across the Whispering Hillock.
"That's the Wild Hunt you're talking about! What are you even thinking, Elder Blood?"
"You actually plan to strike back against them? Hahahaha—cough, cough!…"
Lann's brow furrowed again.
A faint whisper stirred within him—his newly acquired [Instinctive Discernment] trait sparked a gut feeling: she wasn't lying.
The bond between the Ladies of the Wood and the Wild Hunt was completely one-way. Through random cosmic intersections or ritual luck, they would send out their invitations—and then simply wait each year for the Hunt to grace them with its presence.
Yes, they had managed to maintain the connection that way. But the Crones were always on the receiving end—never in control.
That… was bad news. Had he come all this way for nothing?
Then suddenly, a flash of insight lit up in Lann's mind.
"The gathering always happens at the same place, doesn't it?" he asked, sharp now. "Why did you choose that location? Does it hold special meaning for the Wild Hunt?"
The Weavess's wild laughter cut off abruptly. She went silent.
Then started coughing again—muttering nonsense, trying to cover it up. But it was clumsy, transparent.
Another whisper of intuition threaded into Lann's awareness.
He was right.
"So it's the location, then."
Lann extended his hand toward her. "In that case… you're no longer useful."
Before the Weavess could beg for her life, a surge of flame burst from Lann's palm—hot enough to melt stone.
[Igni Sign: Pyromaniac – Magic Burst]
Johnny had been watching everything from nearby.
As the inferno roared, he stepped back a few paces to avoid the heat, clapped his hands, and cheered: "Yes! Yes! The old witch is finally dead!"
"Lann, Lann! You're heading to Bald Mountain next, right? I know the way—I can take you there!"
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