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TWL Chapter 75: Whispers from the Beyond
🕑 Added 2024-01-28 05:39:24 +0000 UTCLann was so tense that he barely dared to breathe, with his body completely contracted and the hair on his body standing on end.
What he had in front of him was the objective of his trip: the secret laboratory of Tomas Moreau.
A few dim lamps illuminated the laboratory, plunging the room into a darkness that barely allowed the outlines of what was inside to be glimpsed.
There is an experimental table in the middle of the lab, with notes and objects scattered about. Against the wall, there is a row of eight incubator-like things that have the unique atmosphere of medieval Frankenstein. They are made of heavy metal, glass, and plastic tubes.
Each culture chamber contains a person, with only simple breathing devices and syringes connected to them to maintain basic life needs.
Out of the eight people, four of them had only skin and bones left. At first glance, they looked like zombies or even skeletons. Lann suspected that they were already dead.
Two others had an extremely thin figure, their arms looked like dry wood, they barely looked like a human being. They were submerged in their capsules as if they were motionless specimens.
As for the last two people, bubbles bubbled out of their cultivation chamber from time to time, and the people inside would occasionally flex their fingers to prove that they were still alive. Next to the capsules of these two, violently torn armor lay scattered, along with weapons such as swords, crossbows, and shields.
They are soldiers from Cintra, members of the expedition team brought by Lann!
Lann remained motionless, as he saw about ten meters away in front of him, a humanoid figure that did not really look human.
Looking from behind, his hair is sparse, and there are only a few places on the top of his head where long strands of knotted hair are scattered, and the skin is peeling in other places. He is not fully dressed and the clothes on his body are not only stained with mud and blood but are also torn with holes everywhere.
As he turned around, Lann saw his face. Half of the glasses were hanging, behind the glasses, his eyes were cloudy and damaged. Beneath her eyes was only half of a rotting nose, with holes in both cheeks revealing rows of black, rotting teeth.
It also had a hole in its neck, and when it moved, it made a hoarse sound, as if it were spitting. No one could consider this figure truly human.
It was a zombie, an undead, a half-dead being, or something else. But Lann knew better that the most intuitive description of this anomaly was that it was a magical creature.
The magical creature that appears in this place and acts like its master will naturally have only one name - Tomas Moreau!
Professor Moreau looked at Lann, and through his shattered eyes, Lann could still perceive emotions.
Then, a sound came from the whole body - not from the mouth or throat: "You have arrived."
Lann's gaze shifted downward. In front of Tomas Moreau was a huge experimental culture tank that looked like a shark tank. Black Wind was being soaked in it, with several infusion tubes inserted into his body, making a feeble hissing sound.
Not far away, there are several cultivation tanks of the same style, with wild boars, lions, leopards, drowners, griffins, and even a forktail with only half of its body soaked in the tank.
They all shared something in common: they were dead.
"You have arrived." Tomas Moreau said again.
Lann's brain was working like crazy, doing everything it could to extract every available information it knew from The Witcher Series.
Regarding the life of Tomas Moreau, Lann remembered that in The Witcher Series it was mentioned that after the failed experiment with his own son, he accepted his destiny, returned to his wife and died shortly after.
But that was over a hundred and fifty years ago! Although Professor Moreau's appearance and attitude really fit the description of 'dead', the problem was that he was still moving! During that time interval, something must have happened that Lann was unaware of.
"You have arrived." Tomas Moreau said for the third time. This time, without waiting for Lann to react, he suddenly smiled.
“It just so happened that I was short of research materials recently, and as a result, they came...”
The professor pointed at the Cintra soldiers in the cultivation tanks, then slowly pointed at Black Wind, and finally moved his finger in Lann's direction.
"Now... you have arrived, you have all arrived, it is wonderful."
This 'you' obviously did not refer to just Lann, but included all members of the exploration team, including the druid and Geralt. It seems that Tomas Moreau had had them in his sights since they were in the Valley of the Nine.
Only he could control the portal within the ruins to instantly reach this laboratory, and he only allowed Lann to arrive.
Why did he only allow Lann to get to the lab? Lann began to wonder why he didn't bring them all in at once, harvesting experimental materials like herbs.
Lann warned himself to stay calm; Facing an ancient monster that had existed for over a hundred years, he definitely could not defeat it.
Is backtracking to the portal a reliable option? There was a rumbling roar, and a strong wind came from behind him, and without needing to look back, Lann knew that the portal had already closed. Anyway, entering a portal that can be controlled by the enemy is meaningless. Just close it.
Lann rolled his eyes and said in a tone as if they were meeting for the first time. "Your Excellency Sorcerer, excuse the untimely visit, but according to our information, I thought this was an ownerless place."
"I'm Lann Lannister from Cintra, how should I address you and what kind of research do you do here?"
Hearing Lann's question, Tomas Moureau who seemed to have lost part of his mind, actually bowed his head and thought for a while. Then, in a tone that seemed recited by heart, he responded to Lann:
"My name is Tomas Moreau, and here, on July 18, I have begun the biggest project of my life, much bigger than any of my research so far, because it is directly related to me and my son."
“When I was young, I was attacked by a monster in the forest. A witcher stepped in to help me, and at the time I didn't know that the price of his help would be my son's future."
"The day the witcher took my son, I swore to restore my son to his original state..."
Lann had a strange look on his face. Looking at the chattering half-human, half-ghost creature in front of him, he suddenly had a bold guess in his mind. While he slowly took out the crystal bird skull he purchased from Triss, he asked tentatively:
"I sympathize with your situation, Mr. Moreau. Warlocks are a persistent disease throughout the Northern Kingdoms and have plagued my kingdom for a long time. I wonder how far his experiments have gone."
When faced with Lann's question, Tomas Moreau had no reaction. He seemed as if his mind was on autopilot, reciting his story without any emotion:
"I didn't expect that Jerome's warlock mutation would give him resistance to poison. In the end, the results I obtained in other experimental subjects could not be reproduced in him."
"I was unable to fulfill my original goal, which was to cure the witcher's illness and return him to normal. Instead, his mutation intensified, further increasing his speed and strength, taking him further and further away from humanity."
"Years of experiments, research, and hard work have all come to nothing... Originally I planned to leave this place and return home; my wife would probably be willing to take me back."
"I planned to leave the formulas and mutation inducers here, let them wither along with my dreams, along with my son..."
Tomas Moreau didn't react at all to Lann's little moves, which made Lann a lot bolder. He brought the crystal bird skull close to his eyes. This magic item had the ability to see through low-level magical illusions.
Through the hole where the eyes used to be, Lann saw...
A translucent silhouette glowing with faint green light shrouded the void around Tomas Moreau's body.
It was as if something impure had taken over him. The outline was like boiling smoke, fluctuating unsteadily from Tomas Moreau's body. Occasionally revealing a green mist-shaped arm, sometimes a ragged green cloak, and even... a mist-shaped head rising from the neck of the Tomas Moreau figure.
The facial features on the foggy head are also in the shape of Tomas Moreau.
The half-human, half-ghost figure continued to tell the story: "I did go home for a while, and Lydia forgave me. We spent the last moments together and were buried together."
"But what about Jerome? I have fulfilled my duty as a husband, but I have not yet fulfilled my duty as a father. How can I rest in peace without curing Jerome's witcher syndrome?!"
With each word of Tomas Moreau, the green light on his body shone brighter, until finally it completely separated from his body, forming a hazy and tattered figure in the air, as if he were Tomas Moreau.
Lann's left eye was facing the crystal bird skull, and his right eye was observing the decaying body of Tomas Moreau with his naked eye. The body was now motionless.
He understood that Tomas Moreau had indeed turned into a magical creature, but it was not a zombie at all, but a wraith!
In the Witcher's Bestiary, in the entry on Wraiths we can find the following advice from a healer to a dying person:
"Finish all your business before you die. Bid your loved ones farewell. Write your will. Apologize to those you've wronged. Otherwise, you'll never truly leave this world."
'Not being able to leave this world' refers to becoming a wraith. This ferocious creature is usually found at night, near cemeteries, catacombs, and other similar burial sites, or near places that were important to them in life. Some powerful wraiths retain some of their sanity and memories they had during their lifetime. Tomas Moreau is an example of this.
The conditions for the formation of a wraith are also extremely strict, and there have been no cases of one hundred percent success in the world so far.
Tomas Moreau's awakening was unexpected. Although he had spent his last days with his wife, 'remorse' for his son always tormented him, leading him to be haunted by guilt even after his death. Eventually, he became a wraith, continuing his previous work: curing the 'witcher disease' of his son Jerome.
To achieve that goal, the ancient sorcerer transformed into a wraith and rejoined his own corpse, rising from his coffin and returning to his laboratory.
He was not gone for long, and Jerome, who he abandoned in the laboratory, was still alive. So the poor witcher was once again used as a test subject by his father and continued his experimental research on mutations for over a hundred years. After such a long period of consumption of magic power and intense work, Tomas Moreau was actually on the verge of dissipating.
In The Witcher Series when Geralt revisited this place, more than ten years later, there were no living beings in the laboratory, and Tomas Moreau and Jerome Moreau were also long gone.
However, Lann and his group arrived a little early. This allowed them to reach the laboratory while it was still operational.
Lann and the others made a loud noise when they were dealing with the drowners outside, which alerted Tomas Moreau who was doing experiments. Since he was lacking experimental materials, he skillfully used the magic portal to bring them to the laboratory.
Now, he had captured Lann again using the portal.
Watching Tomas Moreau recite his life as if possessed, Lann felt it was an opportunity.
If Tomas Moreau had truly become 'immortal' somehow, Lann could only think of offering himself as a stable Elder Blood donor to save his own life; while if he was a wraith, even if it was difficult to handle, at least it was no longer something outside of Lann's knowledge.
