The Void Pathfinder from the Demon Hunter World

(Note: The recommended background music for this chapter is "Wind in the Caroberta Woods" from The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt soundtrack.)

In a secret room deep underground in Maribor, Marvin found a letter.

Stranger:

I am Alzu. You may not know who I am. It doesn't matter, I don't care. Obviously, I am a wizard. When I was young, I was a freak living in my own mind. I hated knights and yearned for knights. I killed villains and ignored the farmers' requests for help. Until I met my beloved, Lillian. She hoped that there would be no more monsters in the world, and that people could go out without worries in the morning and go home with a smile at night without worrying about monster attacks. With the help of the teacher, we created the Demon Hunter together. Unfortunately, Lillian died and will never come back. Unfortunately, the Demon Hunter is not perfect.

I thought I could research and create more successful works to kill more monsters. I thought it would continue like this. But things changed.

My student Adarlan, he created many powerful monsters despite my warnings, and it's too much for me to bear. I decided to kill Adarlan! He affected my career, which is unforgivable!

I had a premonition of my death. It might be because of Adarlan, or because of his monsters, or something else. I don't care...

-Alzu.

...

This is the famous Alzu's laboratory...

Alzu made special precautions for fellow mages and warriors at the entrance...

If it wasn't for that Katakarn who just woke up and ran into the nosy Marvin, if the wolf-faction demon hunter Norn was not caught and tried, he would have dealt with Katakarn first, if...

Combining the bedroom, laboratory experiment logs, Alzu's other essays and other textual materials as well as previous understanding of Alzu, Marvin sorted out part of the life of this controversial warlock. Note ①

...

No one knows who Alzu's parents are.

He was abandoned outside a noble manor when he was a baby.

The nobles didn't know who the child belonged to, nor did they know if the child was their own, so they kept silent and adopted him collectively...

Because he had no parents, Alzu was bullied by the noble children since he was a child. He became withdrawn and immersed in books and stories. His favorite book was "A Guide to Knightly Virtues".

He imagined that he would one day possess the five virtues and become a truly noble knight.

When facing villains, Alzu would not retreat or ask for help. He would face danger head-on.

Of course, bravery has a price.

Alzu was always beaten and bruised for similar reasons...

Until, he awakened the magic source when he rushed towards the villain again and became a noble spellcaster.

Alzu, who studied under Cosimo Malaspina, showed an extremely outstanding talent for spellcasting and learning ability, and became a powerful warlock and an excellent alchemist, especially good at biological inheritance and biological transformation.

Crazy biological experiments and powerful power made him more arrogant and indifferent to living things.

Until he met his beloved, the sorceress Lillian.

Alzu was moved by Lillian's great ideals and noble sentiments, and decided to help his beloved realize his ideals.

In the process of developing the demon hunter, they created a powerful humanoid monster.

This monster had no reason. It broke the protective shield of the lily silver pendant, resisted Alzu's magic, and killed Lillian.

A few years later, Alzu cheered up again and decided to continue working, just for Lillian.

The demon hunter was born.

But the demon hunter without magic ability was not optimistic, and the experiment lost the support of the Warlock Brotherhood.

Later, Alzu left the demon hunter cult for unknown reasons, and the cult fell apart.

Alzu returned to Maribo and continued his research alone.

Adaran of Urivo, Alzu's student, inherited Alzu's alchemy knowledge and was good at biological alchemy.

Adaran had a twisted love for his work.

He would give each of his works a separate number, such as "Aida, Uri, Ex IX 0012beta", and make a sign with the number and hang it on the monster. Mages and demon hunters collectively called these monsters Aida monsters.

As the creator of Aida monsters, the more twisted and powerful the work is, the more Aidalan likes it, and will release it in the right place.

More and more Aida monsters appeared all over the continent.

This was contrary to Alzu's obsession. In the end, he decided to kill his students.

In that battle, the double cross summoning technique reappeared, and the huge saliva demon destroyed half of Maribo.

No one knows whether the saliva demon was summoned by Alzu or Aidalan, because both died in that battle, and the saliva demon disappeared.

The only doubt is that the saliva demon summoned this time is not as obedient as it was in the last Temeria Civil War.

Alzu's most famous achievements are the creation of demon hunters, Alzu double cross summoning, and Alzu thunder.

The life of this unprecedentedly powerful warlock and alchemist was full of contradictions, with as much praise as there was abuse.

…

Marvin worked for several hours underground, sorting all the undestroyed books into categories.

He planned to give the books related to demon hunters to the wolf and griffin factions in exchange for other knowledge.

As for alchemy, he planned to stay in Temeria to see if King Dad was interested in building an academy.

For magic rituals, he planned to study them first and then give them to teacher Tishaya to see if he could get something good in exchange.

Unfortunately, after searching through all the information, he did not find the famous double cross summoning and Alzu thunder spells on the continent.

He filled the inventory and wrapped two large bags of books with the bedding in the bedroom.

Going out with this look would not only be easy to be discovered, but also look like a landmine thief. Marvin was very dissatisfied with this.

In the end, Marvin and Ned worked all night to move all the books back to the tavern room.

…

Marvin wrote a letter to the king and split the letter into three incoherent letters.

He hired three reputable merchants through the Iris Tavern to send the three letters to Vizima separately within a week.

Why not use the official channel of Temeria? Because he did not trust those messengers, nor did he trust the prince of Maribo, and he did not want to expose his identity.

After that, he lived in the Iris Tavern, practicing magic and ice arrows, reading books, and practicing swords.

...

Because of the elimination of Katakan, he was not kicked out for placing ice arrows randomly in the room.

He did not throw ice arrows directly at the wall, but bought several shields of different materials from the blacksmith shop to practice.

By the way, he commissioned the blacksmith shop to modify his armor and added the same plate armor on the left shoulder as on the right shoulder.

After a week of experiments, it turned out that Marvin thought too much.

The initial velocity of the ice arrows he could shoot was average, and it could fly at most 20 to 30 meters, which did not involve such high-end knowledge as aerodynamics.

What he should consider now is how to reduce the consumption of magic power, condense ice arrows faster, and prevent ice arrows from being blown off by the side wind.

The final ice arrow is a simple needle-shaped object, 22cm long and 0.6cm thick, with 3 blood grooves at the rear end, which not only ensures the center of gravity but also allows blood to be released. It would be counterproductive to over-detail it.

After the ice arrow was finalized, all that was left was to practice continuously to improve the speed, initial velocity and accuracy of the shot.

The book "Tang's Hidden Weapon Technique I" gave him a lot of help.

From the "Germas Combat Technique", Marvin determined the direction of learning unarmed combat.

1. Increase the application of legs, knees, and left hands in swordsmanship; 2. When unarmed, focus on grappling and subduing. If you really want to fight one-on-many, you should show your weapons; 3. Learn the steps of unarmed combat. More depends on future development.

Among Alzu's collection of books, the part of the seal that helps Marvin the most is the seal.

Among the commonly used seals, the Yaden array is larger and has a better suppression effect; the Alder seal has a wider range and greater strength, and can be integrated with the power of ice elements; the Quen shield is stronger, and you can move slowly when casting the Quen seal-active shield.

The Igni seal was abandoned, and it has no advantage over conventional fire magic. The Yaxi seal is also much weaker than the mind bewitching.

In addition, Marvin has obtained a lot of witcher alchemy formulas.

Marvin will not drink the witcher potion, that thing is poison to non-witchers.

The sword oil that Marvin had high hopes for was also abandoned because it would be frozen by the enchantment on the sword. Sword oil is a poison for different monsters, and it will naturally have no effect if it is frozen.

…

More than half a month later, Marvin waited for people from Vizima.

Outside the city of Maribor, there were more than a dozen people responsible for escorting the books back, all of whom were palace guards in plain clothes. Although they all knew each other, both parties still verified the tokens with each other.

“This is the letter from His Majesty. Your Highness, then we will return to Vizima now.”

“Okay.”

…

After all the problems were dealt with and Marvin had rested enough, he set out on his journey again.

After a month and a half of journey, Marvin first went south, then west, and north, walking and resting all the way through villages and towns such as Brumburg, Mayena, Kosria, Carcano, Brugg, and Ham.

During this journey, Marvin successively hunted a pair of griffins, a pterodactyl, a forest spirit pretending to be a land god, a daytime spirit, two swamp witches, two small fog demons, as well as several water ghosts, several evil ghosts, and several robbers.

Of course, hunting monsters is not all about enjoying victory, but also about enduring failure.

During this period, he was beaten away by a cyclops once and a giant petrified lizard once.

In addition to failure, there were injuries. Marvin was slightly injured three times in a month and a half, but fortunately he was not seriously injured.

After sacrificing all the monster remains to the great learning machine, he received a total of bonus attribute points: strength attribute +4, agility attribute +4, constitution attribute +4, perception attribute +3, and spirit attribute +2.

During the monster hunting, he had a conflict with a young demon hunter from the bear faction. This bear cub believed that Marvin was not qualified to accept the demon hunting commission.

After being repeatedly rejected by Marvin in negotiations, the demon hunter from the bear faction planned to force Marvin to leave by force on the way.

The result was that the demon hunter left in disgrace, and Marvin was beaten away by the Cyclops. Perfect.

Because of the increase in learning content and to avoid delays, he reduced the number of commissions in the subsequent journey.

Completed 4 mission commissions in a month and a half. Obtained "Cars Tactical Shooting Method", "Wheeled Vehicle Principles and Maintenance Guide", "Ice Magic-A Variant of Water Magic?", "Biomechanics-Metal Prosthesis".

Marvin couldn't complain about this, only one useful one. The learning machine is getting less and less powerful.

The modified ice arrows are very useful in combat.

In the battles where frost arrows were used extensively, frost arrows were separated from elemental magic and became a separate ability, which Marvin simply named ice arrows. Unfortunately, he did not gain any ability points from it.

Finally, the most important purpose of this trip was the magic place.

Within a month and a half, he found a total of 8 magic places that were functioning normally. With the original accumulated points, he currently has a total of 24 ability points.

…

Since leaving Vizima, Marvin has been thinking and weighing two options: awakening blood or staying alive for a few more years.

First set a deadline, such as 5 years.

After another 5 years, through constant hunting of monsters, through constant learning and actual combat, to what extent can he grow?

Even if he explored all the magic places on the continent, even if he explored the world non-stop, he probably wouldn't be able to accumulate many ability points.

Can he become a high-level warlock by learning and practicing? 5 years is obviously not enough.

His current ability to perform magic is at most a beginner mage.

What about hunting monsters?

Even if he keeps running around the continent, hunting monsters that are strong enough and can just beat them. How many can he kill in a year?

What if all such monsters are killed? What if this method reaches the upper limit?

Through this period of hunting, he has figured out some rules.

The stronger the monster, the more attribute points he gets after submitting the corpse. In other words, the greater the difference between the monster's attributes and his attributes, the more attribute points he can get.

That means this mechanism actually has an upper limit, because the strength of monsters in this world has an upper limit.

Can he grow to the level of Geralt's peak in this way? Hard to say.

The function of the learning machine is not as powerful as he originally imagined. After so long, he has only found these two ways to improve himself, and more of them are a pile of books as rewards.

From another perspective, can he really live peacefully for 5 years?

If the Wild Hunt accidentally discovers his specialness during this period, will they come to catch him before he awakens? Hard to say.

During this period, Vigfortz frees up his hands to use conspiracy methods. Can he solve it? Hard to say.

The longer it takes, the higher the possibility of accidents.

In this case, it is better to awaken the blood first and see what abilities you can get.

Space-time abilities are nothing more than those few: teleportation, transmission, dimensional space...

As the signature ability of the blood of the ancients, world travel is definitely available.

In this case, it is better to awaken the blood as soon as possible and then strategically transfer to other worlds first.

After arriving in other worlds, you will encounter the following situations.

1. The learning machine has no more functions, and the upper limit of the world is too low, so it cannot be strengthened too much. It doesn't matter, just go to the next world.

2. The learning machine has no more functions, and the upper limit of the world is too high. It is very dangerous and easy to break, but it also means that there are more opportunities to become stronger.

3. If the learning machine shows more functions, it will be developed, and it will become stronger very quickly.

So, why not awaken the blood first?

...

Marvin has always had a suspicion that Prince Amavit's body should be specially selected for the purpose of traveling through the world.

Then who is the one who selected this body and his soul? Is it the learning machine? What is the purpose?

Why did they choose him, an ordinary person who has lived a mediocre life?

Coincidence? The goddess of luck?

That's nonsense. In his previous life, he won a bar of soap at most when buying lottery tickets. He had long given up hope for something as illusory as luck.

…

Note ①: The picture below shows Alzu, the most powerful and controversial warlock in the history of the Demon Hunter Continent.