C33: Hemwick Charnel Lane PT1
1/19/26
-------------------------------
My return to the dream is uneventful though the doll would say otherwise.
"Welcome back, Good Hunter." She stops and tilts her head as she examines me, "you look a bit different now. A bit stronger…hmm, healthier maybe" She thinks for a bit on her answer as she judges my condition and all the abnormalities that come with it.
"Nice to see you too Doll. I've been on a bit of a while journey. I've actually been meaning to ask but since you can channel blood echoes."
"Are you able to channel Shades Essence too?" I ask and she tilts her head again but with a confused expression.
I extend my hand and release a few pieces like how I did during the alchemy session, "it's this."
I inform her and she steps closer. Her segmented fingers taking my own hand between hers. Our fingers seemingly lock together as due to my newfound physique, my own now hidden segmented hands snap together with hers.
Of course it has to be mentioned that it's easier for mine to match hers since my originally human hands have simply mutated while hers were meant to be this way when she was made. Like humans but with a lack of fat, her 'skin' simply matches her bone-like outline.
She feels my hand up and down as I keep release the shades essence. Her body glows a bit. Not a type of golden glow or anything like that but a spiralling light blue to purple that matches the hue of the essence.
"How peculiar, Good Hunter. It bears a similar nature as echoes of blood but just slightly different as it feels more targeted towards the mind. If you may provide me with some more. I might be able to study its nature further to grant you new aspects you would be able to enhance similarly to blood echoes." Her expression appears fairly tame at first but as she continues on her tangent, she begins to grow more excited.
She soon completely stops as my other hand rests upon her head, completely disregarding her headset, I ruffle up her hair a fair bit as I say. "I appreciate the help, I'd like you to research this but don't push yourself for my needs."
She seems surprised by my actions as technically I am too but it reminded me of when I was younger alongside Mar and she would go on tangents like this but about battle strategies or new techniques she created for her Rakuyo. While i didn't like her much, we both got along when it came to our training and witnessing each other's growths.
The doll curties to me as she then tells me the requirements of her research. It comes down to around 20k echoes which i give 15k of and then hand over the coldblood dew variants i picked up which sends it a bit over 20k but it's fine. "I can get more"
I let her know but first, I have to spend my echoes. I still have 526,890 on me. Firstly, I choose to finally buy my personal axe from the messengers though I do try not to touch it in case I get teleported somewhere even worse than when I first put on my clothes.
That drops me by about 50k echoes which still sucks to see but then i choose new skills in hope of enhancing my current skills through fusion. The first of which is the physique type like the vitality, endurance, skill, bloodtinge and arcane skills that I previously got the minor version of. These ones are the intermediate versions
These make me feel horribly bloated but my intentions pay off as I get a system message.
[The system has detected the Host possessing multiple physical based skills. Synergy detected with Blood-Hunter Physique. Would you like to assimilate these skills into your physique?]
"Yes" I accepted and soon those skills all vanish while I get two new levels to my physique, making me feel much stronger even if it's not by much. My intermediate stamina also got absorbed which along with the new levels had boosted that even further via a small bonus from merging the skill, it was the same way in my original hunter's physique as it had boosted stamina. Compared to what i assume would be the physique without the stamina boost as endurance and stamina are different
This overall cost me about 90k which means I'm down to 386k echoes after buying the weapon too. I'm unfortunately about 14k off from being able to purchase all the adept skills. Though im not sure i could even fit them into me as just the intermediate ones had made me feel full like a bloated pufferfish.
Though I'm also a bit sad that it was only just that many levels for the physique. Not that I could do anything about it as they were all level 1 skills, even the stamina one which I had longer still only counted as level one. I know I shouldn't be complaining but the xp that was saved up by that skill should have gone into consideration or something.
'Hmm.' I bitch and moan to myself as I think about whether I should spend the rest of my echoes now to further upgrade my physique manually or hopefully save it to get the adept versions and further upgrade my physique. Maybe it would gain some funky evolution bonus if I do all these that are currently available.
In contrast I was ready to go T-pose out of nowhere and roll around into the roaming beasts like a giant beach ball if the skills hadn't merged together like they did. I wasn't joking about the pufferfish analogy. I'm sure if I had the swelling up feeling long term, it might have mutated my body into something comparable to the brutes (huntsman minions).
I wipe some sweat off my head from the imagery as I try to burn it from my mind but in attempting to do so, it instead gets lodged deeper into the recesses of my mind.
To help distract myself, I step into the workshop and begin cleaning my weapon when I'm jump-scared by an old cripple past his prime. All it would take is one more kick down some stairs to take care of him.
"I see you're hard at work" he speaks up out of nowhere while im cleaning my saw cleaver. A shiver runs up my spine and I immediately feel a headache coming on just knowing he is nearby, his voice grating at my nerves.
"Someone has to since a certain cripple has done nothing for the past few years while I was napping. Especially since I'm now all but certain the healing church was one of the major reasons behind the beasts. Yet you have done nothing while they carry out their experiments and do all sorts of evil in this land. Only getting yourself crippled for no reason when a simple solution was available." I ranted to Gehrman as I began reassembling my weapon back to normal.
"And what solution is that?" He asks but he isn't sure if he wants to hear the answer when he already knows how crazy I am from my childhood ideas of lining the streets with molotovs as a self defense mechanism should any beast have attempted to come after people in their homes.
Click -Shun-
My saw cleaver shimmers in the little bit of moonlight entering through the open windowsill as I activated It's trick form.
"Well, Murder, duh" I say with an expression that exhibits signs of saying 'obviously, what do you think a hunter is for'.
Gehrman only shakes his head and I shrug and make my way back to the church lamp after teleporting. Taking a right from the entrance doors. I begin my exploration anew, I know what the 'right' direction I have to go is. So I'm not gonna.
Going along this path, opposite of the direction I fought the Yahar'gul hunters. I found three bloodshot eyeballs inside a tube. Pocketing the ritual item, I continue forward and collect three free bold hunters marks. That's 6k echoes saved from not having to buy them myself from the system.
Carrying on into the entrance of this wooded area. I use my darkvision to spot a multitude of huntsmen gunners scattered around except for one group of four huddled together protecting a small graveyard area with a few shining loot spots.
I begin the hunt.
Sneaking up on a huntsman manually, I take him out but the noise attracts the attention of another as he begins to shoot at me along with that is a dog. I chase him down and slay him only for another huntsman and two more dogs notice me. I clear them all out before a group of two wandering huntsmen notice me and these two while within line of sight of the remaining three but they are also blind so it's fine as I take care of these two first.
Remembering my headache from earlier still present, I activated my new speed skill, aka Soliloquy of Power. My speed is boosted astronomically as my blade directly decapitates the huntsmen and surprisingly, the other huntsman didn't even notice me at all even when im just a few feet from his back.
"Hoo, this is much better than I thought. Im a speed based assassin now" I decided to test this again, taking out the other huntsman here. Seeking some sort of inspiration, I looked through my skill list and reread some of their effects to make sure.
"I should invest more into my crafting, who knows, maybe I can make robot hunters to do my work for me. Though I'm not sure if they will be considered pets or not. I would prefer if they aren't since I have limited slots and supposedly getting more pets would weaken the power of my current absorbed skills." i think this way because I know from experience that as long as any creature/beast dies, it's echoes would be credited to me. Passive farming baby.
Though thinking about the pet skills, I got a strange expression on my face as I had a small realization about my physique. "Wait, what would even happen if I deactivated the skill? I got the vileblood physique from Geralt. Would my body self destruct if I somehow lose that?" Thinking of this, I choose to use my pet sub skills more to level up the 'Skill Pet' skill. That way, even if somehow I got more pets, they should only use up the new skill slots rather than steal the ones from Geralt's taken abilities.
On the other hand, I also turn on lesser energy flow again with a large chunk of my 234 stamina being drained away to just a few points.
"Ruff" "what the shit" I backhand the dog jumping at me from out of nowhere as for whatever reason, it had seemingly shifted its legs a tiny bit and just barely noticed me from the edge of its rotted vision. I beheaded the dog but in doing so, I accepted the gazes of the three huntsmen.
"Damn" I curse and use 'SOP' (Soliloquy of Power) to dash about and behead all four of them before getting a few items here. Two thick coldblood 4, a bundle of bone marrow ash (x9) and plenty of bullets from all the corpses here including all eight of the gunner huntsmen.
I begin trekking my way forward when I'm suddenly ambushed by another dog and gunfire follows it after. I slay the dog and dodge out of the way of the bullet in the nick of time. I spot the huntsman who shot at me and take his head off with a dash. 'Was that other dog that ambushed me with this group too?' "assholes, how dare you sneak up on me?" I kick the dead body, obviously not getting an answer but the bone marrow ash from this guys dead body along with the blood stone shard from the dogs body are nice.
I press forward and encounter some big doors which I push open.
[Welcome to Hemwick Charnel Lane]
"Oh, uhhh, nice to be here everyone. Thank you, thank you. I'll be sure to grant everyone here a gruesome death." I give a quick bow as I light the lantern. I check my echoes but I'm just a few hundred echoes off from my target of 400k. Granted I'm still not sure about getting those adept skills since I could still explode.
"Haaa, screw it. I'll get more money later for it." I say and return to the dream where I talk to the Doll and have her exchange my echoes for more levels. 399,486.
382,926 for my current levels. Jumping straight from my nerfed level 32 up to level 62. Leaving me with just 16k echoes, about 6k more for another level but im already nervous about this as im sure a ton will be stolen. Already sweat is breaking out on the back of my neck in the emotional pain I'm gonna experience in a moment.
Strangely enough, the Doll has a serious expression on her face as I lock in my 29 choices. With my base value of 15 for vitality, I pump in 12 points making it 27. Five goes into Endurance making it a base of 17, 10 goes into strength to make 23 and the last two go into bloodtinge, making that 15. At least that is the optimal situation where nothing goes absolutely wrong.
I feel the echoes draining out of me, making me feel sad and disappointed as that is a lot of echoes. Gradually, I feel my power improving before the shadow mist on me rises once more, planning to snatch from me again when it's Doll that surprises me as I feel my remaining 16k echoes bottoming out and what should have been around nine levels seemingly lost, was instead reduced to just four.
"What" i ask in confusion as Doll helps the rest of the echoes settle into my body and improve my power quite dramatically as I'm still left reeling in the shock of it all.
"Pardon me, Good Hunter. Due to my previous experiences with this situation. I realized that it seems to hunger for your echoes. To protect your body, I had taken the rest of your echoes to form a wall of sorts but there were too few left over and more of your hard work was unrightfully taken from you. Ehhh?!!" She begins explaining how her theory worked and her steps to help save me from my curse. Her work unexpectedly worked which she credited to her slightly increased proficiency in channeling echoes due to being exposed to Shades Essence.
Of course she was promptly shocked by my actions as a massive grin became plastered on my face. I picked her up and spun her around in said joy.
I did this before finally setting her down and giving her a kiss.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Word Count = 2643
Improvements, Hunting beasts and a nice surprise from Doll.
Enjoy
Whether you like the chapter or not, drop a comment. I can't be letting myself get complacent in my writing. I still have plenty of growth in all forms.
discord channel still has the next chapter preview like usual: https://discord.gg/rE6gtg28XH
Patreon.com/Xanok to find me.