Last autumn, in the Kaer Morhen library—an idle afternoon tea chat.
"Huh… so… Vesemir, you mean witchers don't normally carry bombs on them?"
"Of course not! Child, why would you get such a strange idea? Saltpeter is scarce and expensive, bombs can go off if mishandled, carrying them for long periods risks damp… Those things are only made when there's an actual need."
"Oh… I thought a witcher's normal fighting style was holding a sword in one hand, using Signs with the other… and throwing bombs."
Vesemir blinked. A look of nostalgia crossed the old witcher's face, and then he shook his head, laughing happily.
"Ah… In a fierce fight, lighting a fuse with the Igni Sign and tossing Grapeshot to help one man face many—that style really is very powerful. But it's not something you make your everyday habit."
"But there was a witcher master who was especially good at that kind of layered offense. He even left us that masterpiece, Art Is an Explosion. I read the description and assumed all witchers fought like that."
"Heh. Good memory, child. But when you mention the title, you shouldn't leave out the subtitle. I added that part myself—how that master ended."
"…."
Remembering the subtitle, Victor had nothing to say.
"We witchers are professionals," Vesemir continued, "so when you factor in cost and safety, ever since that master, things like the 'exploding sword' have basically become a legend. Most of the time, the sword in our hands is already enough."
…
"Ultimate Art—Explosion!"
Victor plunged his left hand into his herb satchel, yanked out a Grapeshot bomb, and hurled it straight at Sir Tailles—then spun and threw himself into a backward roll.
"BOOM—!!"
The thunderous blast behind him startled flocks of birds into the air, shook the forest, and sent leaves raining down in a swirling storm.
Normally, crude, impure black powder has limited power. And without a tightly sealed iron casing, a bomb's force drops even further. But for Victor—who possessed miraculous alchemy—none of that was a real problem.
His method was simple: mix black powder to the ideal proportions he remembered, toss it into a cauldron and stir to purify it, then sleep three hours to recover his focus. After that, he'd throw in iron ingots and keep stirring, producing sealed iron-cased bombs. The whole two-stage process took seven hours. The cost was about forty crowns.
And the result: two fist-sized Grapeshot bombs.
As for the fact he couldn't use the Igni Sign to ignite a fuse mid-fight—that wasn't an issue either. Victor lit the fuse ahead of time and stored the bomb inside his herb satchel, bringing back to life a School of the Wolf "ultimate art" that had vanished for years.
As he rolled away, he saw it clearly: Tailles didn't even realize what the object was. Grapeshot exploded right in front of the knight at point-blank range.
Victor refused to believe any normal human could still move after taking that.
He flipped over, braced a hand on the ground, and sat up. Fighting through the pain of a cracked shin and multiple internal injuries, Victor pushed himself to his feet—only for shock to flood his eyes.
Because when the smoke and dust cleared, the knight of the Order of the White Rose was still standing.
His armor was scorched and pitted, but he was still upright.
Shock didn't slow Victor down. He forced his breathing steady and reached into the herb satchel again.
If one wasn't enough, he'd throw another.
But perhaps Tailles had been intimidated by the "ultimate art" as well. He didn't advance. He simply stood where he was, facing the witcher apprentice from a distance.
A moment passed.
Just as Victor hesitated—wondering whether to limp forward and throw a second bomb—
Clang.
It was the sound of armored knees hitting the ground.
Then Tailles toppled like a felled monument, collapsing forward with a heavy thud, and went completely still.
Victor didn't know whether to laugh or curse.
So he'd been doing the classic "dead man standing" act… Great. Even in death, the bastard wanted to frighten people.
Limping over, Victor kicked the knight's sword far away. Then he drove the tip of his Mahakam blade through a gap in the armor and pinned Tailles's elbow to the ground, making sure the man still didn't move.
Once he'd ruled out the possibility of being tricked by someone pretending to be dead, Victor finally relaxed enough to flip Tailles onto his back and lift the visor.
And then he was shocked all over again.
Tailles wasn't dead.
He was just bleeding from every opening and knocked into a deep, limp unconsciousness.
That strange whisper—the "voice of slaughter"—curled around Victor's ears again.
Victor pulled his Mahakam blade free and hesitated, caught between striking… and not striking.
Because the more that whisper crooned, the stronger his instinct became: if he listened and killed a man here, something truly terrible would happen.
While he hesitated, an eagle's cry cut across the sky, and the brush rustled.
"Captain! What happened?!"
Hearing that familiar shout—the one that always made him feel oddly safe—Victor's tension loosened all at once. He could no longer keep himself upright. His body swayed.
Angoulême came sprinting in from behind and caught him in time, propping him up before he fell.
She saw Victor's blood-smeared face.
Then she saw Tailles on the ground.
In an instant, she understood everything. Furious and frantic, she yanked her longsword out and was ready to finish it—but she remembered Victor had said killing this man would cause trouble, so she held back, waiting for his instruction.
"Do it," Victor rasped. With that last thread of strength finally slipping, his voice was thin as smoke, but his meaning was unmistakable. "There's no way back anymore."
When the blade went through the knight's skull, Tailles spasmed violently for a while without any awareness behind it, and then the world finally lost all flavor for him.
Angoulême gently laid Victor down on the grass. When she saw his eyes slowly close, tears burst from her as if a dam had broken. She panicked, crying helplessly.
"Captain… no… don't die… please, don't leave me alone…"
"You idiot—don't shake me." Victor had only wanted to rest, but she jostled him so badly he had to crack his eyes open to scold her in a whisper. If she kept that up, she'd make his internal injuries worse.
"Relax. I'm badly hurt, but I'm still very, very far from dying. I'll drink some potions, sleep it off… and in a few days I'll be fine."
"Potions—right, potions!" Angoulême wiped at her face with shaking hands. "Captain, do you still have that life-saving potion I drank before? That stuff was a miracle—one swallow and wounds closed, and my whole body warmed up."
"Spit on that dream." Victor managed a weak snort. "It's not that easy. My grandmother gave me three vials of the real life-saving stuff. Two went to Ciri. I drank the last one myself during that lockjaw incident." As he spoke, he dug two vials out of his herb satchel, bit the stoppers off, and downed them. "What I make is still nowhere near that level, but it's enough for basic healing."
After finishing, Victor looked at Angoulême—still hovering beside him, earnest and waiting for orders with that stubbornly simple expression. For some reason, the frustration of being ambushed and beaten eased a little.
He patted the grass next to him.
"Come on… lie down too. Right here. The sun feels great."
"Ugh… stop it, Captain." Angoulême sounded helpless. Victor's biggest flaw was that he loved jokes only he understood—and when the mood struck, he'd do things that made absolutely no sense in the moment.
Tailles's body was still lying right there. The blast from earlier might've been heard by someone passing nearby. And now the captain wanted her to lie down and sunbathe.
If he weren't seriously wounded, she would've grabbed him by the collar and reminded him this was a crime scene.
Victor sighed for her, quietly regretting that even a few minutes of sunlight at Clearwater Lake was apparently too much fortune for this wild girl.
"Relax, it's fine. Don't be so tense. Put that bundle of alchemy materials down first.
"You came on horseback, right? Did you leave anything important at the inn?"
Used to Victor's seamless whiplash from childish to steady, Angoulême answered immediately. "No. Like you told me in the letter, I switch lodgings every few days. Today was check-out day anyway."
As she spoke, she thought she'd understood what he meant. She moved to help him up.
"So… you mean we run? Together?"
Victor slapped her reaching hand away with a single sharp motion.