"Test Subject 1. Witcher knight. Male in healthy condition. Thirty two years old. Internal organs bear 89% similarity to that of normal humans.
Examination of musculoskeletal structure shows denser and enlarged bones in shoulders, arms, and chest. Preliminary tests also show his skin is comparable to boiled leather.
Scans on the heart, liver, and other internal organs have revealed the taint of magical energies. Their effects on the organs are similar to the results of organ magic-infusion processes.
Subject's life force seems to have been drastically reduced due to overdrawing. Observations so far suggest that the subject's lack of elementium talent and influence of magic energy is the cause."
"Initial conclusion: the system of witcher knights possesses aspects of body refinement and magic-infusion. In reality, they are merely humans whose bodies have been forcefully improved by runic energies.
Since they possess no talent for drawing in elementium, the runic energies used their life force as a substitute in the strengthening process."
The three adepts surrounding the knight finished the last of their tasks and prepared to move on to the other specimens.
One with bloody hands and a scalpel in one of said hands removed the last organ from the still living witcher knight's body and passed it to his assistant, who in turn whispered to cast preservation spells on it before placing it in a jar filled with a special liquid.
The last one, responsible for observing and noting their findings down, scribbled on the parchment and nodded to the other two before they all moved deeper into the dark stone chamber.
On their way to the more interesting specimen, they passed by a platform similar to the one the unfortunate witcher knight lay on, all three of their expressions growing disdainful at the sight and the recollection of the findings they obtained from the creature there.
In their bid to understand everything about the knights, they'd not only captured a few of them, they'd snagged a few of their mounts and given one on an in depth dissection.
What they found worsened their opinion of the knights and their leaders even further. The mounts that were the pride and joy of the knights, that they'd used to chase down so many potential spellcasters, were nothing before the eyes of these Adept researchers.
They were expecting some kind of genius genetic manipulation or an unseen, unique application of magic. Instead what they found was sloppy crossbreeding between normal warhorses and a certain wild beast, the offspring of which were fed some substances that juiced them up as they grew.
In Lethon, even the poorest and most destitute Adept, if there was such a thing, would not even stoop so low to practice such crude implementations in order to gain mounts or servants.
Rushing past that disappointment as though it would infect them, the trio of researchers went straight for another, more muscular knight laid flat on another platform, the latter restrained completely, his eyes the only part of him allowed to dart about frantically.
The Adepts immediately went to work, the one with the scalpel opening him up from the throat all the way down to his crotch. After spreading the skin and flesh underneath wide open with the right tools, he picked up a saw and went to work on the steellike bones.
Soon, they too were out of the way, leaving subject two's organs at the mercy of his captors. The earlier scene of examination, scribbling, and preservation repeated itself as the pungent smell of blood and chemicals intermixed to create something haunting.
"Test Subject 2. Spellbreaker knight. Male in healthy condition. Twenty seven years old. Internal organs show a considerable deviation from that of normal humans. As high as 50%.
Increase in density and size of musculoskeletal structure is even more pronounced than that of subject one. Same for the strength and toughness of his skin. Knives without enchantments only leave faint marks.
Even without deeper and more rigorous tests, the effects of runic energy infusion on the subject's organs are clearly visible, being more extensive and thorough. Subject's strength and physique is also comparable to that of body refining pseudo adepts.
Compared to his predecessor, this subject's life force is almost doubly enhanced. Its potency suggests he can live for more than 200 years before growing weak from age.
"Initial conclusion: spellbreaker knights are witcher knights with elementium talent. Judging from our preliminary findings, we can safely conclude that possessing elementium talent is the main prerequisite for advancing in the witcher knight path."
As they each processed the findings and engaged in their separate tasks, the three surprisingly shared a similar train of thought. They were all wondering what kind of monstrous talent the Fourth Grade knight possessed.
For him to have advanced and reached such a height in this wasteland of a plane (elementium wise) his affinity for magic had to be something rarely seen, even in Lethon.
On another note, they'd come to understand why the Spellbreaker knights always fared poorly in one on one confrontations with their colleagues. Their innate attributes were sorely lacking, but their special and well made equipment bridged the gap.
And even though the Adepts on the frontlines still surmounted this equipment obstacle and came out on top almost each time, it was inefficient, slow, and incompatible with the clan's timeline.
The only thing stopping them from seizing control of this plane were these pesky knights. If they were removed, the war would be over and they could shift their focus to the plane's resources, fattening their pockets and enriching their libraries and knowledge stores with the gains.
Engineering these removal methods was the reason for all these "in depth" and inhumane dissections and examinations. Every ounce of data they obtained would prove pivotal in that endeavor.
A lab dedicated solely to that had been built and it was right below this stone room. In there, runic energy was being studied, the findings used to design pathogens and insects that could track, feed on, and destabilize its usage.
Many iterations and variants had been created, most of them having experienced full lifecycles in the lab. Success was just around the corner. When the time for the true bloody battle arrived, the knights would be in for a huge surprise.
☀☀☀
Night time…
There were no moons or stars out tonight, their beautiful radiance blocked out by the pervasive dark clouds.
As he stood on one of the tallest peaks in the forest, Greem had his mask on as he observed the giant stretch of green through its lenses, his drones and innate and enhanced senses giving him a clear and concise overview of the battles taking place tonight.
There were four eruptions of elementium with varying degrees of strength, and while others would only be able to pick up on their intensities and locations, he could sense the identities of the parties responsible.
7.5 kilometers to the east, Kiel, a fellow body refiner, tangoed with two spellbreaker knights and came out injured but the victor, one of his opponents dead and the other escaping with severe injuries of his own.
Not one to waste food, Greem promptly sent a message detailing the fleeing knight's movements to Mary and left the rest to her. With her Agility, he would be a shriveled corpse or captive in the next few minutes.
It all depended on her. She did say she wanted more First Grade thralls.
There was another battle taking place 3.5 kilometers southwest, but it was the quietest and least elementium intensive of the four. In fact, without his mask and sharp, method enhanced senses, Greem wouldn't have sensed the Adept there at all.
It was Phantom, an Adept who specialized in illusions. He could imagine how subtlety and caution played a major role in her combat style, so he found nothing untoward or interesting about the happenings there.
For the third battle, it was 15 kilometers to the northeast and also the one with the most elementium in play. One of the spellbreaker knights had self-destructed, probably with that annoying technique of theirs.
Marionette, a plant Adept specializing in seizing control of the bodies of his opponents, was the one engaging the knights there, so he or something he did had to be responsible for that drastic action.
After taking a few seconds to observe these battles, Greem shifted his focus to the fourth and farthest one, deeming it more interesting than the former three since Sir Fügen himself was joining the battlefield.
Three Adepts had fallen this past half month, taking about a third of the clan's acceptable losses. If they allowed the radiant knights to keep adding to this already high number, it would not only affect their ability to quell the natives and monitor the resource harvesting once they took the plane, it would hamper the stability of the lesser planes they'd already conquered since they'd need to reassign Adepts from there to other places.
Let's not even mention their standing back in Lethon.
Clans were ranked according to how many Adepts they had and how much power they could bring to bear. If they fell in these rankings, it would negatively affect certain trade options and relations with other clans.
They had to do something to cull the brazen behavior of the radiant knights. Being the only Second Grade present, the task naturally fell to Sir Fügen and he set out to teach these bumpkins a lesson.
He went along with his direct subordinates and tasked them to deal with the other knight squads and keep watch on the perimeter. No one could be allowed to see what he was about to do.
Strolling into the Radiant Knight's camp with his hands locked behind him, a frosty ring of blue appeared around the ice Adept and expanded to encompass the camp, creating a dome where anything without the appropriate levels of protection experienced drastic drops in temperature.
Every living and inanimate thing save for Fügen and the Radiant knight turned into a block of silent ice. The mercenaries were stuck mid fall, their expressions forever locked in muted horror. Even the flames of the campfire had been frozen solid.
As for the knight, the ice had bound his armored feet tightly to the ground, all his attempts to free himself with eruptions of runic energy failing. The ice cracked everytime, but before he could build up another surge of the energy to weaken it further, it would solidify again.
Aware of the new and powerful enemy nearby, he ceased his inane actions and raised his shield, blocking a stream of frost that coated his metal vambraces in thin, rapidly growing ice.
Letting out a shout, he gathered his runic energy stores and engulfed himself in it, chasing away the chill and generating a wave of energy that blasted away the stream.
His sword arm blurred as he took advantage of the brief respite and launched an attack of his own, the crescent light blade crossing the distance to Fügen in the blink of an eye and slamming into the latter's floating ice shield.
An explosion of light and ice shards occured, the broken pieces of elementium devolving into shrapnel that left deep and sometimes see-through holes in the frozen ground and trees.
From then on it became an energy slugfest. Flame and light slashes met ice shields and ice blasts repeatedly, the battle raging for a full thirty minutes before a victor was finally revealed.
At the end of the day, as powerful as they were, the runic power of the knights wasn't their own. It was an external configuration built into their armors powered by magic crystals.
They slotted these crystals into the sockets in their armor to generate the runic energy, after which they'd draw it into their bodies to power their abilities. With his experience and purpose here today, why would Fügen let his opponent recharge himself?
He did no such foolish thing and engaged all the ice elementium drawn into the vicinity during the duration of the battle, showering the sorry knight in blast after blast of frost until he joined the mercenaries as a block of ice himself.
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Author's note:
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