Witcher: Master Kiliman’s Grand Ambitions-Chapter 8: The Killer Move

Evil spirits in the witcher world are ugly—this was Kiriman’s first impression.
If one had to describe them, it would be like a corpse buried underground for months, rotting away, suddenly snapping its jaws and claws, with decayed flesh flying everywhere, its face twisted as it lunged at you.
The moment the evil spirit appeared, Kiriman’s body moved.
Without the hesitation or fear ordinary people feel toward evil monsters, he took two rapid strides and charged right up to the ghost. Targeting its waist, he swung his sword in a horizontal slash.
The silver-white blade moved with incredible speed, like slicing through tofu, cutting across the spirit’s body and causing its semi-transparent, mist-like form to disperse significantly in an instant.
However, evil spirits differ from ordinary flesh monsters. Their bodies are mainly composed of necromantic energy. They have no physical form and no so-called fatal wounds. They possess strong resistance to physical damage.
As long as they scatter their bodies like mist, unless they manifest again, even silver swords and regular magic find it hard to strike them.
After the sword hit, it seemed the combination of the evil spirit’s essence and the silver sword took effect. The spirit let out a piercing wail, then its entire body exuded mist as if trying to escape.
But just as it began to turn into mist and disperse, before it could spread around, Kiriman, who was already prepared, immediately stretched out his left hand and formed a soul-capturing hand seal.
Ssszzzt!
A faint glow emerged from his sealing palm, enveloping the area ahead.
The misting evil spirit was immobilized, then like invisible smoke facing a powerful vortex, it howled and twisted, transforming into a tiny struggling ball of light, which was finally absorbed into Kiriman’s forehead.
Only a pile of dust radiating a chilling aura was left behind.
After a brief struggle, the tiny ball of light was quickly crushed, worn down, and absorbed by the invisible storm within Kiriman’s soul space.
Then, a familiar mechanical sound rang out.
...
Captured a faint soul, soul power +3.
...
Phew!
Kiriman exhaled, his heart filled with joy.
The soul-capturing hand seal was indeed powerful and, as he expected, especially effective against ghost-type creatures—truly a nemesis for spirits.
This was the conclusion he reached after absorbing numerous monster souls recently.
From memory, low-level monster spirits like ghouls and water ghosts had no resistance at all against the soul-capturing seal.
The evil spirit’s soul was definitely a bit stronger than theirs but still on the same tier overall. That was why he dared to hunt these evil spirits even without knowledge of other witcher seals.
Moreover, the escape behavior of the evil spirit just now—directly dispersing its body into smoke—was like actively dropping all defenses and charging headfirst into the enemy’s blade, basically a death wish.
However, precisely because he knew the evil spirits’ behavioral logic, he timed his soul-capturing seal perfectly to finish the enemy in one strike.
After easily dispatching the enemy, Kiriman didn’t relax his guard. He continued to grip his long sword tightly, vigilantly watching his surroundings to prevent any sneak attacks from other evil spirits.
He clearly remembered that there was more than one evil spirit in this graveyard, at least three or more. If there had been only one, then Kovirghm, who was killed by an evil spirit, must have been terribly weak.
For some unknown reason, after waiting for several minutes, no other evil spirits appeared. It seemed, as in the game, they were bound within the underground crypt and unable to come outside.
Seeing this, Kiriman no longer hesitated. He exhaled lightly and confidently walked toward the underground crypt’s entrance.
It was dusk. Looking through the narrow tomb door, the underground crypt was pitch black, without a single ray of light.
Only chilling winds carrying the stench of rot blew through, like terrifying ghosts opening their mouths, waiting for prey to walk into the trap.
Even for a witcher, without cat demon potion, it was impossible to fight in such an environment. Even with his killer move against evil spirits, Kiriman wasn’t confident he could win against these elusive spirits in the dark.
However, Kiriman’s expression remained calm, obviously well prepared.
He reached forward with both hands, and a burning fire striker and a torch suddenly appeared in them out of thin air.
He then lit the torch, approached the door, and threw it into the darkness.
The orange-yellow flames moved with the torch, quickly illuminating a large area, breaking the crypt’s darkness and making it seem less terrifying.
After throwing one torch, Kiriman didn’t stop. Another torch appeared in his hand, lit by the fire striker, and was thrown into another corner.
Then a third, fourth, fifth...
Until he had thrown a total of ten burning torches, lighting up the entire underground crypt and dispelling all darkness, Kiriman finally stopped, tightened his grip on the silver sword, and stepped inside the tomb.
Woo woo woo! Woo woo woo!
Perhaps his earlier actions had already angered the evil spirits in the crypt.
No sooner had he stepped into the underground tomb than sudden chilling winds rose around him, shaking the flames on all the torches.
Accompanied by a chorus of wails from the evil spirits, three rotten bodies wielding dark long swords emerged from three directions, surrounding Kiriman in the center.
No words were needed—evil spirits inherently hate living beings. Any creature approaching them would be attacked until it fled or died.
As soon as the three spirits appeared, they simultaneously raised their black swords and swung them toward Kiriman in the center.
Kiriman was completely calm inside. He raised one hand overhead, and a sturdy wooden shield materialized, precisely blocking the attacks of two evil spirits.
With his other hand holding the silver sword, he mercilessly chopped downward, slashing the evil spirit in front into a blurred figure, which let out a piercing, agonized scream.
This evil spirit clearly had no idea what had happened outside and, like the previous one, began to turn into mist and flee immediately after suffering heavy damage, trying to distance itself from the witcher.
Unfortunately, Kiriman was waiting for this moment.
His sword vanished in an instant, and the wooden shield creaked under the blows of the other evil spirits.
In less than a second, the soul-capturing hand seal was completed.
Bathed in a silver-white glow, just as before, when the spirit was halfway through turning into mist, its soul form was immobilized.
After resisting briefly, its soul transformed into a ball of light under the mysterious power’s influence and was absorbed into Kiriman’s forehead.
The other two evil spirits, seeing this, seemed to sense a deadly threat.
They vanished instantly, turning into mist without giving Kiriman any time to react.
After all, these evil spirits were transformed from humans. Though their intelligence had significantly declined, when facing an irresistible enemy, even evil spirits knew to avoid the sharp edge temporarily.
From the start of the battle, less than half a minute had passed. The underground crypt seemed to return to silence, only the crackling of burning torches sounding in his ears.
After waiting a few more minutes and confirming that no evil spirits would appear again soon, Kiriman exhaled deeply.
He took out a glass bottle from his storage space and carefully collected the evil spirit dust left after the spirit’s death into the bottle.
This was a valuable item, worth much more than ordinary monster materials.
A small bottle filled with three portions of evil spirit dust could sell for more than a hundred Orens, enough to buy a cow.