The Witcher World: The Path to Domination Begins in Velen

As Ron walked through the porch, sunlight streamed in at an angle, casting half of his shadow in the light.

The training ground was the compacted mud in the courtyard. Carl divided the recruits into two teams: one to practice marching and the other to practice slashing. The commands were mixed with the clanging of weapons, buzzing and echoing.

He was about to walk into the arena when he heard the sound of armor plates clashing behind him.

Carl jogged up to him, carrying a dusty bundle of objects.

Your Highness

Ron stopped and turned around.

Karl handed the object forward; it was a piece of chainmail with inconsistent rings, as if it had been disassembled and assembled from different chainmails, with the rings noticeably denser at the seams.

"The blacksmith and his apprentices worked through the night to make it," Karl said, his voice tinged with barely perceptible fatigue.

"Although the craftsmanship is a bit rough, the defensive capabilities are not bad."

He turned the chainmail over and saw that there were several leather straps tied to the shoulders, and the chest area was obviously thickened.

"You've never had any equipment that fits you properly," Carl's voice lowered slightly, "This was pieced together to fit your measurements, try it on."

Ron reached out and took it, tugging at his rough robe, pulling the chainmail over his head. The shoulder area got stuck, so he pulled it down a bit.

The shoulder width is just right, and the hem falls to the middle of the thigh, making it the perfect length.

After putting it on, Ron moved around a bit, testing the range of motion in his arms and shoulder blades, and found it didn't affect anything.

"That's enough," Ron replied, patting Karl on the shoulder. Karl's chin seemed to move behind his visor, clearly showing relief.

"Go, guard the camp." Karl clenched his fist and pounded his breastplate, then turned and walked towards the main building.

In the courtyard, fifteen new recruits stood in two rows. Ron walked to the front of the line and lingered his gaze on each of them for a moment.

The longswords were issued uniformly; they were old items salvaged from the armory, carefully polished, but with many nicks on the blade and coarse linen strips wrapped around the hilt.

The spears were new, but they came in all sorts of shapes and sizes—some were double-edged, some were triangular—but all were polished to a gleaming shine.

The leather armor was shabby but intact, and came from various sources. Some of them still had old sword marks and half-finger-deep tears on the leather surface of their chests.

Ron turned his gaze back.

"Check your equipment." The voice wasn't loud, but everyone could hear it. "Tighten your leather armor and belts. If the linen hilt can't be wrapped properly, change it now. Don't come crying to me later that you can't hold your sword when a fight breaks out."

A rustling sound arose in the ranks. Miko, standing at the very edge, untied the strip of linen from the hilt of his sword and rewrapped it.

Ron watched him finish the last wrapping.

"Set off"

As the procession passed through the castle gates, Ron rode at the head of the procession, flanked by Erwin and five guards, with fifteen recruits trailing behind in a distorted line.

The road ahead in Velen is not easy.

The mud on the road was crushed into a pulp, and a burnt smell filled the air, though it was unclear which direction it was coming from.

Several kilometers west along the riverbank next to the camp, there was a charred village on the side of the road.

It's called a village, but in reality, only a few charred roof beams and a section of earthen wall that hasn't completely collapsed remain.

There was a person lying by the roadside; to be precise, it was a corpse.

He wore a grayish-brown linen dress, was barefoot, and had his face buried in mud and water, his hair tangled with mud.

Ron stopped...

Erwin walked to his side and remained silent for a moment.

His voice, tinged with a faint numbness, said, "Starved to death."

"This kind of thing is common in Velen, so it's no wonder Velen is called 'No Man's Land.' Most of those who try to escape perish on the way... and those who stay don't fare much better."

The group continued forward, and no one spoke.

After nightfall, they set up camp in a clearing in the woods. Erwin sat by the fire, holding a bowl of hot soup in both hands. He didn't drink it; he just held it.

Ron sat opposite him, sharpening the blade with a whetstone.

Erwin spoke up: "Before I came to Velen, I thought I was here to do something extraordinary."

Ron didn't look up, continuing to sharpen his sword.

"Documenting the war, witnessing history."

Erwin looked down at the soup bowl in his hand.

"When I was in school, I often spent time in the library, flipping through the war history manuscripts of predecessors, imagining the bugle calls on the battlefield, the knights charging towards the enemy lines, and the flags fluttering on the city walls. At that time, I felt that war was worth writing about."

"And now?"

Erwin put down the soup bowl and circled his finger along the rim.

"Now?" he said. "Now I just want to forget all of this."

Ron flipped the sword over, held the blade to the firelight, squinted at it for a moment, and nodded in satisfaction.

"Then why did you stay?"

Erwin raised his head, his grey-blue eyes looking at Ron, as if confirming something.

"Because I want to see," he paused, "what someone like you can accomplish on this land."

"What kind of person?"

"A man who didn't treat the dead in Velen as mere roadside stones."

Erwin picked up his soup bowl and took a sip. "I've been in Velen for months. Do you know what I've seen the most? Not monsters, not war, but people who are used to it, who don't care about others, and even less about themselves."

He put the bowl down.

"You're not used to it yet."

Ron remained silent for so long that Erwin thought he would never speak again.

"I'm not a good person."

Ron's voice was low, almost drowned out by the crackling of the firewood. He put down his sword and placed the whetstone at his feet.

"I'm just not used to it yet."

Erwin looked at him. In the firelight, Ron's profile was illuminated by alternating light and shadow, his eye sockets hidden in shadow, making his expression unreadable.

"Then don't get used to it," Erwin said. "This damn world is a mess because too many people get used to it."

On the coast, before it was completely dark, a campfire was lit, its flames flickering in the sea breeze.

The eleven men were mostly shirtless, with a few wearing leather vests unbuttoned, revealing crisscrossing old scars on their stomachs. Their weapons were casually tossed aside.

One of them was squatting by the fire, clutching a dice cup in his hand. His face was pockmarked, and there was an old knife scar on the bridge of his nose that stretched from the corner of his left eye to the corner of his mouth.

"Three sixes!"

He slammed the dice cup down on the sand and glanced down at it.

"Hold"

A few people around him laughed, and one of them kicked him, saying, "You're still owing me again. You haven't treated me to that drink you owed us last time."

"What's the rush? Once this job is done, I'll not only treat you to drinks, hehe."

He gestured with his chin toward the flat-bottomed cargo ship that was stranded on the shoal behind him.

"There was a girl in this shipment. I glanced at her while unloading, and she was really good-looking. I was totally mesmerized."

A bald man nearby chimed in, his voice drifting over from across the campfire: "Just one?"

"Just one, so..." He picked up the dice cup and shook it, the dice clattering together. "Whoever gets the highest number goes first. Let's make it clear, no one gets killed, we need to save the final payment."

The bald man spat into the fire with a hissing sound.

"That last time was good too, but the old man was too annoying and a downer."

"Which one?"

"The village south of Niubao, the time before last."

The bald man tilted his head back, his hands braced on the sand behind him, his belly glowing from the firelight.

"Her father was blocking the doorway with a broken hoe, trembling uncontrollably."

He paused, chuckled twice, as if recalling something amusing.

"I'm too lazy to even draw my sword, I'll just kick him down." As he spoke, the bald man raised his right foot and gestured.

"Crack! Like stepping on a dry twig, the old man fell down but still tried to crawl back through the door, haha."

The campfire blazed, and a burst of sparks shot upwards.

The bald man grinned and licked his lips. "He wanted to watch, so I made him lie there and watch us have sex with his daughter."

The girl was crying terribly, and the old man was inching forward on the ground. "I'm almost done, and he still hasn't crawled up to me."

The bald man clicked his tongue. "Sigh, the mines won't hire old guys anymore. It's so hard to survive these days. I guess I'm saving him some money—damn it!!"

Before he could finish speaking

An arrow pierced his left eye, its sharp tip emerging from the back of his head, spraying blood and bone fragments onto the beach.

His body was still leaning back when he tilted to the side and fell into the sand.

There was a moment of silence, about the length of a heartbeat, then the sound exploded.

"enemy....."

The sound was cut off before it could even utter the first syllable. The arrow had pierced his throat, and his mouth was still open, but air was leaking out of the hole in his throat, and no sound could be brought out.

The remaining bandits finally realized what was happening, grabbed the knives by the campfire, and some even ran towards the ship without taking their knives.

In the bushes along the river

Ron crouched at the front, watching the figures darting about on the beach.

Behind him, Champion Fiona had already lowered his bow.

The archer kept his head down, not daring to look at him.

"My lord, I...I'm so...sorry, I just couldn't help it," Champion Fiona's face was hidden in the shadow of his helmet, his voice muffled as it came from behind.

Ron glanced at him, a shadow seeming to flicker in his eyes.

"It's okay, you don't have to endure it."

Among the fifteen recruits behind him, someone swallowed hard. Miko stood at the very edge, gripping his sword hilt tightly, his arm muscles taut.

Ron drew his weapon, took a step forward, and roared with a ferocious and cold intensity, like the clanging of metal.

"Leave no one alive!!!"