"Was the decision made at the meeting just now?" Stepping out of the portal, Allen entered one of Kaer Morhen's castle passages that lay outside the anti-flight ritual zone and asked at once. "There are only two or three days left before the planned departure. I thought it was going to fall through."
The so-called "meeting" referred to the Wolf School's year-end council of master witchers, which had already been going on for several days.
Allen had only attended the first session. For the following days, he hadn't gone at all; instead, Vera relayed the outcomes to him after each meeting ended.
This wasn't because he was young or for any other reason that caused the other Wolf School masters to exclude him.
It was simply because the content of the meetings was far too trivial.
Either Aristo wanted to organize a winter hunt, or Danthe hoped to procure another batch of Mahakam dwarven dark beer—that was Danthe's favorite—interspersed with a few master witchers discussing and arguing over the body and flavor profiles of wines and beers from different regions, each insisting their own system's choice was the best.
Then there was the daily tallying of money turned in by returning witchers, the merchant caravans arranged to purchase supplies down the mountain, whether the goods had been affected by the war, whether everything had arrived—
It had absolutely nothing to do with the scene Allen had once imagined: Wolf School master witchers, voices hoarse, discussing the future of the School and the situation on the Northern Continent beneath dim candlelight flickering from rust-stained candlesticks.
In fact, Wolf School master meetings never involved such topics at all.
Because in the past, the Wolf School didn't need development, nor were there any new policies or measures to speak of.
How would they develop, anyway?
At its core, the development of a witcher school boiled down to just two things: gaining more new members, and taking on more—and higher-quality—contracts.
The way witcher schools recruited new blood was either by taking children from others or adopting orphans. The former had a nice name— the Law of Surprise— but in essence, it was no different from taking or even trading children.
That depended on luck, and it wasn't exactly a method worth promoting.
Adopting orphans also depended on luck.
Don't be fooled by the fact that in any city on the Northern Continent, countless abandoned orphans could be found in the lower districts or the darkest corners, and that children who voluntarily or forcibly went missing during wars were innumerable.
In reality, children had the lowest chance of survival in any environment.
The Wolf School wasn't an orphanage of the Temple of Melitele. They didn't take just any orphan; they only wanted healthy, able-bodied male orphans.
That requirement alone was already quite demanding.
Not to mention witcher schools—even nobles, wealthy merchants, priests, or even ordinary farmers would adopt such male orphans. As long as the environment wasn't too harsh, feeding them a little was enough; once grown, they became excellent laborers, loyal attendants, or diligent apprentices.
With the extremely high mortality rate of witcher trials, witcher schools had no competitiveness whatsoever in the eyes of other factions, or even an ordinary farmer.
Wolf School witchers also possessed a strong sense of morality. When encountering a male orphan who met the criteria, they generally wouldn't compete with other factions for him.
In fact, unless a particular boy harbored a deep hatred for monsters and was determined to become a witcher, most Wolf School witchers would even refuse candidates whose resolve wasn't firm.
Thus, there was a counterintuitive fact: each year, among the Wolf School's new apprentices, the seemingly easier route of adopting orphans actually brought in far fewer recruits than the Law of Surprise.
Of course, the Law of Surprise didn't bring in many each year either.
Back to the main point: because the Wolf School master meetings were so tedious, after the first day ended, Allen explained the situation and decisively skipped the rest.
Training the young witchers of the Witcher Corps was several times more important than attending meetings—especially given that only a month and a half remained before the expedition to Dol Dhu Lokke.
Yes.
From beginning to end, Allen had always intended to take his Witcher Corps with him on the expedition to Dol Dhu Lokke.
All that talk about "still hesitating" and "Dol Dhu Lokke is very dangerous" was just motivational rhetoric aimed at spurring on habitual slackers like Ice and Silo.
In fact, the effect was excellent.
Although the Red Riders' standardized synchronized breathing technique was still somewhat unstable in real combat, for all the young witchers to master it within such a short span of a month and a half was already extremely impressive.
Moreover, it wasn't just the synchronized breathing technique—they had also learned the Red Riders' standardized synchronized legion combat spell: Blade and Shield, and could cast it freely.
They were only lacking a bit of proficiency.
And Allen had no shortage of ways to improve that.
Returning to the meetings—skipping the Wolf School masters' council had another benefit besides training apprentices: avoiding awkwardness.
After Allen's background became known to the Wolf School masters, someone would always look at him strangely during meetings.
This wasn't his imagination.
Aristo, Danthe, and Whitelock—the three Wolf School masters—were fine. But Master Valerius, Master Gregor, and Master Dylan, while listening to reports and discussing ingredients for the year-end feast—
Their gazes would often unconsciously slide from Sol's face at the head of the table, to Vera hidden in the shadows of the candlelight, and finally settle on Allen at the end of the table, as if trying to find common features among the faces of the three.
Among those three, when the other two were caught being stared at, they would instinctively avert their eyes. Master Valerius, however, would simply smile warmly and stare straight back at him.
That was deeply uncomfortable.
Of course, Allen could sense that the masters bore no ill will. On the contrary, compared to the period after the Trial of the Grasses, they had become noticeably more affectionate—almost as if they had gone from seeing him as a promising junior to treating him like a nephew or godson.
He wasn't entirely sure, since in both his lives he had been an orphan.
But at the very least, everyone's speech during meetings had become far more refined. There was almost no swearing at all, as if this weren't the Wolf School's ancient Sea-Keep fortress, but a ball at the Temerian court.
When the matter of succeeding as Chief was raised, no one voiced objections outright.
Instead, it was carefully glossed over during the meeting process, handled as delicately as precious porcelain, protecting his dignity—as though it were they themselves who were "plotting a usurpation."
So him not attending the meetings was a relief for both sides.
Of course, this strange atmosphere would gradually normalize over time.
"It wasn't without conditions," Vera shook her head. "Sol promised them that the handover of the Chief's position would be postponed."
Perhaps afraid Allen might overthink it, the sorceress added immediately, "They don't distrust you. It's just that the news was too sudden. They're worried that, at this special time, it could plunge Kaer Morhen into unbearable chaos."
"It's fine, I understand," Allen nodded indifferently. "I actually think it was too rushed as well.
"Just after completing the second mutation, Chief Sol's witcher career would suddenly end—that would be a real pity."
He truly wasn't in a hurry.
After all, what he needed wasn't that position, nor the title of "Chief."
When everyone in the Wolf School acknowledged you, your name didn't need the Chief's suffix—you were the Chief in practice.
Conversely, if no one acknowledged you, sitting in that position meant nothing at all.
Besides, with Sol as Chief, what was there for him to rush about succeeding?
His influence within the Wolf School wouldn't diminish in the slightest; on the contrary, it would be amplified to the extreme through Sol as a "legitimate" intermediary.
It hadn't been his idea to become Chief in the first place. It was Sol himself who had grown weary of the position, even beginning to doubt his own path of glory, forcing Allen to accept it.
On the surface, the Chief's position seemed like it didn't involve much—only getting busy at the end of the year.
But in reality, once he took over as Chief, all of Sol's interpersonal relationships would have to be maintained, the internal order of the School's witchers upheld, and external scrutiny from the various extraordinary powers of different kingdoms handled.
Just thinking about it made one's scalp tingle.
Allen would have been perfectly happy for Sol to continue as Chief for another three or four hundred years.
An old fellow who had just undergone a second mutation and should be entering the second spring of his career—why retire?!!
Using something that barely even counted as a cost to exchange for the masters' compromise on the "new Wolf School stronghold at Dol Dhu Lokke" was an outrageously good deal.
"As long as you agree," Vera let out a sigh of relief. "Speaking of the second mutation, my own research in that area isn't very deep, but the sorceress I contacted some time ago have recently replied. They're very interested in this technology."
"Tissaia is also very grateful that you're taking the initiative to join this expedition. She's promised to establish a related research project at Aretuza."
"However, Aretuza's technical support will have to wait until after the expedition. Right now, there are already a few sorceress who have time. How do you plan to arrange them?"
"Will you have them come to Kaer Morhen, or send the materials to Thanedd Island and start the research in advance?"
Allen lowered his head in thought.
This was indeed a problem.
The sorceress Vera contacted directly would certainly be no slouches in genetic mutation studies.
But letting them come to Kaer Morhen would inevitably risk exposing certain secrets—such as the mortality rate of the Trial of the Grasses, the eerie growth of the Witcher Corps, and the few male mages in the dungeon.
Sending them to Aretuza, on the other hand, would make it difficult to control the progress of the experiments, increasing the risk of results being stolen—or even tampered with.
Of course.
Finding people for the second mutation research project was undeniably good news.
Over the past month or so, Allen hadn't been idle in this regard either. He had even spent the enormous sum of one hundred experience beads to raise Genetic Mutation Studies from LV7 to LV8.
Academic research, after all, was still research. Unlike skills, which could be put to use the moment they were leveled up, research was a slow, grinding process.
No matter how high the level of genetic mutation studies was raised, it was still necessary to collect tissues from all kinds of different monsters, then test, experiment, combine, and record them one by one. Increasing the skill level only sped up experimental proficiency and provided a certain kind of "intuition," or sense of direction.
Of course, being able to find the right direction among millions of possibilities was already no easy feat.
But the experiments that needed to be done still had to be done, and the tests that needed to be run still had to be run.
Even if genetic mutation studies were raised from LV7 to LV9, or even LV10, extracting a griffin cell and observing gene pairing would still take no less than a full day.
To avoid damaging cellular structures and genes, the cells and solutions had to react slowly and thoroughly.
The reason Sol's second mutation improvement had been so fast was essentially because the scope of modification had been small, and because the research goal hadn't been to make Sol stronger after the second mutation, but simply to let him survive it—to recover from the severe damage caused by the shattering of the Legacy Vessel.
The two were fundamentally different.
And right now, what Allen lacked most was time. So after squeezing in a few days of experiments, he temporarily gave it up and redirected his time toward the Witcher Corps.
Because that was the more efficient choice.
It was easy to foresee that this kind of busyness would not be rare in the future.
In research, the role he was more suited for was that of a research group leader—responsible for setting directions and solving the most difficult problems—rather than wasting time on mechanical experiments.
"Have them come to Kaer Morhen," Allen thought for a moment and made his decision. "But don't let them get involved in the Trial of the Grasses. Hmm… move the location of the Trial of the Grasses to Old Spearhead's cave."
In truth, he would have preferred to keep the newcomers far away from the Ancient Sea Fortress. The equipment in the witcher research chamber could greatly reduce the pain of the Trial of the Grasses—but they were guests invited under commission, after all.
Who could blame them, when the Wolf School itself simply had no way of cultivating research-oriented talent?
That was the price to be paid.
Still, the arrival of this batch of sorceress wasn't without benefits. There might be a chance to recruit or long-term employ some of them, turning them into his own people.
The future of the Wolf School was bright—of that, Allen was firmly convinced.
"Mm, I understand," Vera nodded. "I'll have Mary keep an eye on them."
After finishing the discussion about the Wolf School's Dol Dhu Lokke stronghold plan and the recruitment plan for second-mutation talent, Allen and Vera chatted a bit more—about the Witcher Corps's synchronized spells, and Mary's rapid progress in air-element magic.
Allen had actually considered giving Vera Sunny Gobert's Fire Sorcerer's Spirit and Miguel Courtney's Defensive Sorcerer's Spirit, hoping she would absorb one or even both of them.
Even if the spells didn't match or some overlap was wasted, it wouldn't matter.
After all, those twenty points of Mystery had to go to someone anyway. He didn't know any other familiar sorceresses, and sorcerer spirits probably wouldn't be in short supply in the future.
But Vera refused.
She said she had her own path, and she also advised against letting Mary use too many similar items.
Techniques that were too miscellaneous were harmful rather than beneficial to a sorcerer.
As a result, Allen could only store them for the time being, and instead exchanged them for Miguel Courtney's Cat's Eye Oak Staff and several defensive-series instant-trigger gems.
Vera liked them very much, and immediately embroidered the gems onto her plain linen dress.
To be honest, it didn't look very good—rather awkward and mismatched.
But Vera liked it, and she wore a smile on her face all day long.
Mary even came to him in terror that afternoon.
The reason was that Vera had smiled at her—and even praised her for making rapid progress recently.
After that day, Allen could feel that his relationship with Vera had become even more harmonious.
At the very least, this kind of casual, friend-like conversation had already happened many times.
He didn't resist this kind of development.
While chatting, Allen and Vera walked through the winding secret passageways and arrived at the stone door behind Sol's room.
At that moment—
"——Those damn bastard sorcerers!"
A coarse curse rang out from behind the stone door.
....
📢Advanced chapters on p@treaon📢
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1. Advanced chapters of The Witcher: Wolf School's HuntingNotes.
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