The Witcher: Lord of the Empire

Lann thought for a moment and smiled. "In a big battle, isn't it better to have as much information as possible? In times of peace, you can take on more monster hunting missions to keep yourself in shape. Besides, my information isn't perfect, so I need more companions to help me fill in the gaps and remind me to be cautious when I get too confident in my abilities."

"So, Letho, you should not stop thinking, but change the way you think."

Letho frowned and thought for a while, then nodded reluctantly.

Lann put the guardian's spade into his inventory and led the group towards the direction indicated by the cat and dog.

The von Everec family estate was incredibly large. Lann's group crossed an arched bridge and pushed open two iron gates before finally making their way through the garden and into the main mansion.

As the door to the mansion opened, the old wood creaked. The sky was already covered in clouds, and the lack of windows in the building made everything plunge into total darkness.

But that darkness was not a problem for the witchers.

Kiyan, looking around the interior of the mansion with a mix of disappointment and bewilderment.

The room in front of him seemed to have been looted by robbers, with collapsed tables and chairs everywhere, and even broken beams.

As they moved forward, dust fell from the ceiling, creating small waterfalls that spread around them.

Kolgrim voiced what everyone was thinking: "This mansion is going to collapse at any moment."

As the group looked around, two small black clouds materialized again.

"The lady is in the bedroom, across the gallery on the second floor."

"Does she really live here?" Kiyan raised his eyebrows. "There's a gallery, that means he likes to paint, but... Wait!"

Kiyan's eyes flashed with a red gleam, and he suddenly looked up at a portrait on the wall. It was a portrait of a woman, a beautiful woman.

A voice suddenly came from the painting: "Who... came in?"

The voice was hoarse and ethereal, with a haunting echo. The witchers' medallion began to vibrate again.

Then two skeletal hands grabbed onto the frame of the painting. Green flames began to burn weakly, but the canvas remained intact.

A black veil appeared from the bottom of the frame, but upon sensing the presence of the group, the veil and hands quickly disappeared, and the green flames went out.

"A specter?"

The scene had revealed a lot of information. Letho frowned and began to analyze: "A demon summoned by Goetia needs to possess a physical body, it cannot appear as a spirit. So it must be a specter. And a specter capable of moving through paintings?"

Letho then looked at the black cat and dog: "A specter is the soul of a deceased person. Olgierd summoned a demon to protect the manor. In theory, there should only be one woman in this estate. So this specter... Is it the lady we're looking for, Lann?"

Lann nodded. "Yes, it seems that she is indeed dead."

Letho showed an expression of absurdity. "So you came all the way here just to eliminate this specter? I thought you came to solve Olgierd's problem."

Lann nodded again. "In fact, I came to solve the problem. And we don't need to kill this specter. On the contrary, she will help us, although there will be some inconveniences."

As he said this, Lann suddenly took out the jade statue that Olgierd had transformed into from the [Inventory].

Without worrying about possible attacks, he approached Iris's portrait and said loudly: "Madam, your husband has returned." Then he turned to the stairs and shouted: "Iris, Olgierd is back!"

He held up the jade statue of Olgierd high.

The room was quiet for a while.

With a 'Crack', a piece of wood broke off from the ceiling and fell at Lann's feet. With a nimble movement, he avoided the dust that fell like a small waterfall where he had been standing.

Kiyan felt the specter's presence disappear.

The cat and the dog looked at the jade statue in Lann's hand steadily. Now they could feel the breath of their summoner: "You used a sorcerer's magic to bring Olgierd back? But where did you hide him before? Why couldn't we detect him?"

Lann didn’t answer the cat and dog’s questions. Instead, he observed the surroundings. He also had the [Medium] talent and was able to confirm that Iris’s soul had moved away. Then, he placed his hand on Iris’s portrait and stored it into his inventory.

After doing all this, he said to the cat and the dog: "This is not your concern. Take us to the bedroom to find Iris."

The group climbed the stairs, which seemed ready to collapse, and passed through a gallery filled with paintings. The witchers were on alert, waiting for some specter to emerge from the paintings, but the journey was quiet.

Kiyan stopped to comment on a painting of a couple, evidently Iris and Olgierd.

"Happy families are all the same, and unhappy families are all different."

Feeling that he had said something profound, Kiyan nodded and took the painting to show it to Letho. "Look at Olgierd in the painting, doesn't he look any different than now?"

Letho, scanning the surroundings, took a quick look at the painting. "Yes, he is different." As he superficially responded to Kiyan, Letho thought to himself: 'Has this cat always been like this, or was he changed by the experiments, or did he become like this after Lann rescued him?'

Finally, they came to a locked door. But a door was no obstacle for a witcher. Lann kicked it open.

Before them appeared the only illuminated room in the house.

A woman lay on the bed with her back to them. Behind her, a fireplace burned softly, providing warmth to the room.

However, the room was full of broken tables and shelves, covered in cobwebs and dust. It had not been cleaned in years.

Everyone gathered around the bed, watching Olgierd's wife, Iris.

Now, she was just a skeleton dressed in a black mourning suit.

Kiyan looked at the painting, then at Iris, and turned around and threw the painting aside. "You lit the fireplace for her, guarded the house and prevented outsiders from hurting her, but now you don't even want to bury her body?"

The dog made a bass voice: "Our bodies can't do it, and the guard had orders not to approach her."

Kiyan looked at the dog's paws and nodded.

Letho carefully observed the body and asked: "She has no injuries, and the mess in the room does not appear to be the result of a fight. How did she die?"

The black cat gave an unexpected answer: "Her heart was broken."

Letho was stunned, as if he didn't understand the meaning of this sentence. "Do you mean a heart attack?"

The black dog replied in an emotionless voice. "No, her heart literally broke. Iris, like Olgierd, also had immortality. This is hard to understand."

The black cat materialized in the bed next to the woman and described her death: “The guardian looked after her while also helping the master keep her prisoner. She couldn’t leave the mansion and she couldn’t hear our voices like you do. That’s why she was always sad and very lonely. One day, Iris closed the front door, lay down on the bed and… died peacefully, like a withered rose after its bloom.”

The black dog walked slowly and sat in front of Lann: “You brought back Olgierd’s statue, and now you’ve seen Iris’s body. Are you going to bury them together?”

Lann raised his eyebrows. "You care a lot?"

Black Dog nodded. “We were summoned here by Olgierd just to protect Iris. Now that Iris has died and turned into a specter for no reason, we are also trapped here.”

The black cat also vanished in a black cloud and reappeared in front of Lann. “You must kill Olgierd or release Iris’s soul. Otherwise, we will be trapped in this form forever.”

“Don’t you like the way you are now?”

The black cat and dog looked at their small bodies, and for the first time they spoke in unison: “What do you think?”

Lann thought for a while and said: "My goal is to kill Olgierd, but since you were summoned by him, you must know that he has a truly immortal body. I have a way to break his immortal body, but I must see the real Iris, so I need your help. "

At this point, Lann looked at Kiyan.

Unlike Lann, who had a short witcher career and knew little about the means of summoning spirits, Kiyan was very familiar with it.

“Since she has become a specter, the situation is simpler. She is hiding from us now, so we just need to bury her body in a quiet place and recite a spell.”

The black cat shook her head. “It’s not that simple. The specter you saw is just a part of Iris. The real Iris is still asleep. You must awaken the real her.”

"How to do it?"

“Use a canvas as a material to summon the specter, and then she will guide you to Iris’s true resting place.” The black cat said, looking at the painting that showed Olgierd and Iris. “That will be perfect.”

Kiyan looked at the painting that he had thrown aside and smiled. "Good cat."

Saying this, Kiyan reached out to pet the black cat. Naturally, he could only touch a cloud of mist.

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