Chapter 277: Eat This Dragon-Slaying Palm...
He didn't realize that, while retaining the original mutations from the School of the Wolf, the organ in his body specifically for converting stamina into Chaos energy was undergoing a slow, internal transformation.
Lynn, though unaware of what was happening, reacted immediately. He quickly sat on the ground and entered a state of meditation. The whole process felt like an eternity.
The pain of this mutation wasn't as intense as the initial Trial of the Grasses, but cold sweat still beaded on Lynn's forehead. When it was finally over, Lynn was completely drenched, as if he had just been pulled from the water.
However, as he noticed the changes in his body, all traces of fatigue vanished from his face. He didn't alert anyone. Instead, he quietly left the castle and went to the back of the mountain. After making sure he was far enough away not to disturb anyone, Lynn raised his palm and aimed it at a tree about thirty meters in front of him.
"Aard!"
A muffled bang, like thunder on a clear day, echoed through the air. The tree, which was as thick as a man's waist, was snapped clean in half and came crashing down.
He wasn't done. Lynn continued to blast out seven or eight more palms, knocking down several more trees before he finally felt a shortness of breath and a dizzy spell. He knew this was because his Chaos energy was depleted. If he continued to cast Signs, he would risk injuring himself.
He stopped, looked at the chaotic scene, and felt an indescribable sense of freedom and exhilaration.
Normally, a regular witcher's Aard Sign would only be effective up to five meters, and even then, it couldn't topple a tree so thick. A normal witcher couldn't continuously cast Signs like Lynn did, either. This was because of a specific physical trait of witchers.
Inside a witcher's body, there was an organ related to Chaos energy, but it was flawed. Only people with an innate affinity for Chaos energy were sent to magical academies to train as sorcerers. Most witchers, created from ordinary people, had little to no magical aptitude.
This was why their Signs were weak and they couldn't cast them continuously. Even after the Trial of the Grasses gave them the mutated organ to absorb and store Chaos energy, it was still far inferior to that of a sorcerer.
But Lynn was surprised to discover that when he maxed out Griffin Meditation, his body, which had already gone through the Trial of the Grasses, began to change again. Nothing else changed except for the organ related to Chaos energy. The change wasn't just in size but in a deeper, more fundamental way.
If Lynn could see inside his own body, he would find that the organ for storing Chaos energy was no longer the same as a witcher's, but was instead remarkably similar to a sorcerer's. This was the physical mutation brought about by master-level Griffin Meditation.
Next, Lynn tested the power of the Igni Sign. The School of the Wolf's Signs had variant uses. For example, Igni could be cast as a fan of flames or focused into a fiery dragon. He found that the fan of flames had an incredible range of twenty meters.
If it was focused into a fiery dragon, the range was even greater. What did this mean? It meant that if he were to face a few hundred angry villagers, even if he only killed the first few dozen with one Igni Sign, he could terrify the rest into fleeing.
Even against a few hundred heavily armed soldiers, a single Aard Sign could easily shatter their encirclement. Then, he could turn and use an Igni Sign to burn the pursuing soldiers. As long as he maintained a mobile strategy, killing several hundred people would be no problem at all.
His Quen shield was no longer a flimsy sheet of paper that could be broken with a single poke. The range, effectiveness, and duration of the Yrden Sign were all significantly improved. Besides Axii, which was difficult to test, Lynn was extremely satisfied with the other Signs.
What was even more terrifying was that while the power of his Signs had increased dramatically, their Chaos energy cost had decreased. And because of the organ mutation from the Griffin Meditation, his Chaos energy absorption rate had skyrocketed. Combined with his existing Magical Siphon perk, Lynn's endurance reached an unbelievable level.
After mastering both Viper Venomous Arts and Griffin Meditation, Lynn suddenly found himself with a lot of free time. For a moment, he had nothing to do.
But Lynn didn't stay idle. He left the castle and headed deep into the Blue Mountains. With his current strength, he could go anywhere he pleased, with the exception of certain beings like Gaunter O'Dimm and the Elder. Besides, if there were any unknown horrors lurking in the depths of the mountains, if he couldn't beat them, could he not at least run away?
His idea was similar to Henselt's. The Blue Mountains were a vast and expansive mountain range. Could this area be put to good use? This was a bold idea he had only recently conceived. Since the Kaedwen people were systematically preying on the nonhuman settlements within their borders, treating them like a crop to be harvested, perhaps he could take advantage of Henselt's vulnerable position?
Kaedwen people didn't like nonhumans anyway, and elves and dwarves lived a miserable existence in Kaedwen. In that case, why not take those nonhumans and bring them deep into the Blue Mountains, giving them a place to settle? Then, he would be their protector, their new liege.
Before artificial intelligence completely replaced human labor, population was a crucial and valuable resource in any era, as it represented labor. For long-lived races like elves and dwarves, where everyone was a skilled worker, they were an even more immense asset.
Furthermore, bringing them over had another benefit: it could prevent them from joining the Scoia'tael, who were secretly supported by Francesca. Reducing the Scoia'tael's numbers would lessen their overall power, leading to a less chaotic North in the future.
Lynn was not a human-supremacist racist. After all, he was born in a multi-ethnic country and was raised with the belief that people were not defined by their race, religion, or region. In fact, the existence of the Scoia'tael, besides being funded by Nilfgaard, was directly linked to the oppression of elves by the Northern Realms. The common soldiers of the Scoia'tael almost all joined because they were unwilling to live under human oppression and hoped to fight for a better future.
However, the Nilfgaardians, their allies, sold them out to the Northern Realms as a bargaining chip for a peace treaty once the Scoia'tael were no longer useful. Even Francesca Findabair, a sorceress of their own race, merely used them as pawns.
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