Chapter 85: Lights Out
The caravan guard with the beard on his face said, "Stop complaining. Those who eat this rice have to endure this. Be thankful. At least we're working for the royal family, and we'll get a good reward when we return."
Sir Royce, who was walking at the very front of the group, suddenly shouted at the caravan guards.
"You lot, come over here and take a look."
The 5 caravan guards hurried over, only to see Sir Royce and the 4 soldiers standing in front of a large pile of mushrooms, pointing and asking them.
"Our food isn't enough. If this continues, I'm afraid we'll run out of supplies before we even leave the forest."
"Take a look, are these mushrooms edible?"
The caravan guards looked at each other, and then the one with the beard shook his head, stepped forward, and said, "It's best not to eat them. I come from a village outside Kaerak City. In our village, many people die every year from accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms."
"However, our Golden Lion caravan has two people who can distinguish whether mushrooms are poisonous or not. One is our caravan leader, Tyrion, and the other is the head cook."
"Unfortunately, neither of them is here."
At this moment, a voice sounded from behind the group.
"Don't worry about the food, Sir Royce."
Triss smiled and said to them,
"I can open a portal to Vizima, Novigrad, or other major northern cities at any time."
Sir Royce hadn't expected that his worrying problem was not a problem at all in front of the sorceress.
He immediately felt relieved.
The rest of the way was uneventful.
After walking for almost five hours in this sweltering forest that was almost driving people crazy, the group stopped.
At this time, the sky outside should have been dusk, but in this airtight forest, it seemed even darker.
Lynn, who had night vision, and Triss, who could cast darkvision magic on herself, were fine.
But Sir Royce and his men clearly showed the limitations of mortals.
Which was that at night, they were no different from the blind.
So, after a brief thought, they decided to set up camp and rest in place, and set off again at dawn the next day.
"The sorceress needs sufficient sleep to avoid affecting her spellcasting the next day. Even putting that aside, a gentleman should not let a lady keep watch."
"So, the night watch will fall to us twelve men."
"Witcher, if you don't object, I suggest we take shifts of four men each, divided into three shifts, rotating the watch. Each shift will be four hours, which will take us right until dawn."
Lynn considered Sir Royce's proposal.
It was quite reasonable.
"Alright, let's do as you say."
So Sir Royce sent his men to prepare for the night.
They found a slightly larger clearing and set up a total of thirteen tents.
The central tent was naturally for the sorceress.
Out of respect for the lady, not only were the other twelve tents some distance away from the central tent, but they also put up a screen around the central tent.
The rest of the people went around collecting firewood and piled it up to make a campfire.
Then, everyone took out their dried rations, stuck them on branches, and roasted them over the fire.
After the dried rations softened a bit, they swallowed them down with clear water.
The taste of these dried rations wasn't great; they were too salty, and even after being roasted to soften them a bit, they were still quite hard.
Sir Royce and his soldiers were professional military men. Although the food was terrible, no one complained.
Lynn was a witcher and wasn't picky about food.
Only Triss, as a royal advisor, frowned, but she still didn't say anything, silently ate some dried rations, and then went back to the tent that had been set up for her.
Since they had to keep watch at night, except for the first shift, everyone else seized the time to crawl into their respective tents to rest. The first shift on watch was Lynn and the three soldiers Sir Royce had assigned to him.
Sir Royce was a nobleman, but the men he brought were commoners.
Therefore, the three soldiers were polite and respectful, bowing to Lynn. "Witcher Master, we'll leave it to you then."
The four men separated, each guarding a different direction of the camp.
And several torches were placed all around.
Only in front of the witcher was there no torch.
Torches could provide light for ordinary people, but the light from the torches would instead affect the witcher's performance.
Due to his mutations, a witcher couldn't see nothing in the dark like ordinary people.
Plus, after drinking a Superior Cat potion,
the dim world before his eyes instantly became clear and bright.
Lynn looked towards the depths of the distant forest, the shadows of the trees like ghostly figures.
But the witcher knew that no matter how strange or frightening those shadows were, they were just the shadows of trees.
A witcher wouldn't mistake tree shadows for indescribable things and then scare himself.
More than that, for some reason, Lynn suddenly had a strange feeling at this moment.
It was as if he had forgotten something particularly important.
But what exactly was it...
No matter how hard Lynn tried to recall, it was like futilely trying to catch smoke with his hands; he just couldn't remember.
Daylight quickly retreated, and darkness enveloped the earth.
In this pitch-black forest, it seemed as if the entire world was reduced to this small camp.
The night wind rustled the leaves, and the crackling of the burning torches became the only sounds in this world.
Just like that, time passed unnoticed.
He didn't know how much time had passed, but finally, a sound of footsteps came from behind him.
"Witcher Master, thank you for your hard work. Is everything alright?"
A soldier came to Lynn's side, straining to widen his eyes.
He was just an ordinary person, so naturally he couldn't see anything.
"Everything is normal."
"That's good. Then leave it to me now. You go and rest, Master."
The witcher nodded, handed over the night watch to the soldier who had come to relieve him, and then found his tent and crawled inside.
He took off his boots and comfortably lay down in his sleeping bag.
Perhaps it was because too many things had happened today, and he had traveled all day, and was too tired...
Just closing his eyes, Lynn fell into a dream.
And in the morning, he wasn't even woken up naturally by the sun, but by Triss.
"How long are you going to sleep, young witcher?"
Hearing Triss's voice from outside, Lynn finally opened his eyes, looked blankly, and crawled out of his sleeping bag, coming outside the tent.
He raised his head and glanced at the sky outside.
It was already well past noon.
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