The Divine Hunter

rk space outside, the bird noticed a magical, yellow light shining in the room.

It stuck its head out and looked around the room.
There was a row of tables in it, and they were filled with crucibles, test tubes, beakers, and tripods.
Witchers would build a makeshift laboratory to make their alchemical supplies, and the laboratory the bird saw was a hundred times better than what witchers would usually come up with.

There was a rack in the corner of the room, and it was lined with containers filled with colorful liquids.
Some of them had weird limbs floating in them.
There were a few metal containers standing in the room.
They looked like coffins.

Alright.
This is it. Roy opened his beak and took a deep breath, then he charged straight at his target.
He landed on a floorboard that had a lily engraved on it, and the floorboard beside it had a rose engraving on it.
In fact, the whole room’s floorboards were filled with lily and rose engravings.

Lilies mean safety.
Roses mean traps.
That’s what the journal says. Azar Javed was a powerful sorcerer, and he decked his laboratory out with magical traps.
It was a dangerous place, but Kalkstein was not one to shy away from danger.
He had been eyeing Azar’s laboratory for a long time now, and the alchemist had been coming up with a plan to infiltrate it.
He even came up with the layout of Azar’s laboratory behind him.
Kalkstein knew all the safe spots and dangerous areas in this laboratory.

According to him, most of the traps were recorded in his journal, while Azar would change the rest every month.
That was the dangerous part of the mission, and Roy would have to rely on his own experience and instincts to avoid those traps.

Roy was feeling a bit magical.
As a human, his physical capabilities far outclassed the regular man.
However, after Kalkstein turned him into a bird, Roy’s physical capabilities did not transfer.
He could fly and hop, but that was it.
As far as birds went, he was a regular bird in terms of strength and reaction speed.
He was so weak that a human child could kill him easily.
The only different thing was that he had a spell on his beak.

However, there was also something good that came out of this.
Roy could still use his character sheet skills, even in this state.
Observe and Teleport were two of the skills he could use, but most importantly, he still had his inventory, and he could transfer items in and out of his inventory.
Thanks to these skills, Roy had more confidence in completing the request.

He turned his head around and scanned the laboratory curiously. There’s an electric trap on that gilded drawer.
That book on the center table is filled with magic glue.
That pot of flower spreads sleeping gas in its vicinity.
That oil lamp will blow up if I touch it.
That rhino head is… safe.

Roy flew to the rhino head specimen on the east wall and observed the room from up there. Experiment journal.
Where would Azar hide that? In a safe box? A hidden place? Not likely.
He needs to write in it frequently, and from what Kalkstein told me, Azar is as mad a scientist as he is.
He’ll have to write any inspiration or breakthrough down the moment he stumbles upon them.
He’ll keep the journal in arm’s reach.
I wonder what Azar is researching lately.

Roy looked at the laboratory tables closely.
Every single table was thoroughly cleaned, and not even a speck of dust could be seen.
Cleanliness was the basic rule of a laboratory.
However, one table was not as clean as the others.

Roy landed on that exact table.
There was a black tripod standing before him, and a transparent glass tube the size of a forearm hung in the middle.
It was filled with colorless liquid and what seemed like a green strand of hair.

The tweezers and heating element were still lying on the table, and the drawers were half-opened. Azar has probably been working on this lately. Roy came to the edge of the table and poked his beak into the drawer, and he felt it pass through an invisible bubble.

The spell on his beak buzzed, and the trap did not activate.
Roy pulled the drawer open at a painstakingly slow speed, and halfway through, he saw a yellowing diary hidden in the drawer.
There was no title on the cover, though there was a line of numbers.
July 1261 – August 1261. July to August? I wasn’t in Vizima then.

Roy flipped to the next page using his beak.
‘Thanks to Rudolf Valaris’ assistant, I have finally procured a strand of her hair.
This shall be the first time I have gotten a specimen of her hair.
Oh, she is a wondrous yet elusive creature.

I have decided to halt all research on witchers and turn my attention to this new creature.
I do not want to do this, but I have no choice.
The blood I received from the witcher is faulty.
Experiments show that the components are a mix of nekker, drowner, Lake Vizima’s fallen vodyanoi, and a steed in heat’s blood.
Either the experiment is flawed, or that brat somehow managed to deceive me under my nose.
He won’t get off that easily.
I’ll make sure he pays.

Rudolf has been pestering me.
He wants me to progress the experiment as soon as possible and come up with a feasible plan.’

Roy paused for a moment, then he quickly skimmed through the journal.
He did not care or worry about the content.
All he wanted was to finish skimming right away.
Kalkstein’s laboratory had a telescope and surveillance crystal.
The latter would copy everything Roy saw. So, magical transcription? 

Roy finished skimming through the thirty-page journal and clumsily closed it with his beak.
He pushed the drawer in and made sure it was half-opened, the way it was before Roy opened it.

He was about to leave the laboratory, but Roy hesitated. Azar Javed has been researching witchers up until now.
I wonder if he has any records of his research. 

Coral was looking into witcher mutations as well, and she helped Roy a lot during the Trial of the Grasses. Maybe he has something Coral will be interested in.

Roy opened the drawer under the first one.
It was filled with a stack of experiment journals, and all of them were about Azar’s witcher research over the years.
However, there was another thing that got Roy’s attention.
Contrary to the soft, yellowing papers of the journals, this book’s cover was as hard as a tree bark.

The cover was worn and out of color.
It seemed old, and the title was written in Elder Speech—Alzur’s Wiedzmindarl’len (Alzur’s Witcher Research Journal).

Roy flipped it open, but he realized that the book was not complete.
It was missing a lot of the content, but Roy skimmed through it and put everything back to where they were before he carefully flew back out the same way he came in.