Chương 331: 5.i

Listen you fools! Fighting a wyrm is not like hunting lions or wolves or anything you've ever even laid eyes on! Any true wyrm can end you with a puff of breath! Especially the little ones! Rat wyrms are the worst! Cleverer than the rock or mountain beasts and thrice as vicious! If they catch you unaware you will lose a leg if you are lucky- I've seen the bastards take off a head from an ambush! But proper care of the fiend's white hot fire is only the bare minimum a hunter needs to survive by more than blind luck.

No! The fortunes will not save you from a wyrm's ire! Star blessing burns like everything else does if a dragon belches on you! You think I lost my leg and arm because I just forgot to burn a little sage to a god?! Now then, assuming you lot manage to get it through your shiny metal clad skulls to stop bunching up and keeping your eyes all around you enough to avoid being slain all at once!? Well we can start on what the real dangers of wyrm hunting is!

Any of you got a guess what could possibly be more dangerous than a breath that burns through rock, steel, bone, divine blessing and flesh like it wasn't there? No, it ain't their armored skin ya fool! Leporine Wyrm has skin hardly thicker than a lord's foreskin! No, it ain't armour, it's the sheer immortality of every single true wyrm! The priests and god botherers will say otherwise but there is nothing mortal about Wyrms.

Even that thin skinned leporine wyrm with its delicate hide can keep on fighting you long after it should have died! With a stag, a boar, a lion or even a man there will come a point where the wounds are too much. Where the prey is certainly dead and may in fact fall out of sheer shock of the injury you have done it. THIS IS NEVER TRUE WITH A WYRM! You can crush half of a leporine wyrm's body with a mallet, you can behead the damn things, you can chop them in half lengthwise!

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. You can do all of that and more only to have a coin flip's chance it will not whirl back around and attack you. Spray you in that lovely white death of theirs and see the end of you when your guard is down! You can pierce them through the heart and the damn things may not even stumble!

Oftentimes sure it may stagger or even try to flee but the kill has not been assured even with its life blood drained out all over the ground before you! Never, Ever, Trust that any blow has truly stopped the monsters. The only way you can know the damn things are dead is to beat and brutalize them utterly! Split them into parts! Slice off their limbs! Cut every tendon and muscle! Beat them to bloody pulp and pierce every organ!

Do all of these and even then don't you damn fools even think you can let your guard down! Even after it finally falls and it no longer moves for hours it might still rise up for vengeance when you least expect the damn thing! And as such the fool you would deserve to die if you ever allow the monsters the chance! A wyrm is never dead until you've burnt the thing's flesh and scattered its parts to the four winds! Repeat after me! A WYRM IS NEVER DEAD UNTIL ITS SCATTERED TO THE WINDS!

If by some heaven sent miracle you have downed one of the things you gotta IMMEDIATELY strip its carcass! On the spot! Don't even wait for it to stop thrashing if you can! Hack at its joints and pull every bone away from every other, yank out its innards and skin it! If you've got a fire you should cook it as you do! Depending on the type the meat can be great eating or awful and poisonous enough to slay a dozen men from a bite.

If it's the latter you need to stand upwind of the fire as you burn it or the awful thing's spite will curse you even in death. But even if the smoke is a death curse the body of even the slightest and least of wyrms cannot be left intact! I've seen the corpse of these monsters rise up and take one last vengeful bite out of a man after removing its heart, meat and skin! I've seen flensed empty skeletons lunge upon a man! I've seen their fire spark to life along a spine pulled free of its body!

Some wyrm with great flocks of spawn may fall sooner than you'd expect from these words. Perhaps you might be thinking that makes it safe. I don't want to hear that any of you idiots died from being fooled by that! A wyrm is the closest thing beyond the stars themselves to immortality. Always scatter their remains. -Transcribed lecture by Károly Wyrmbane from the Magarskan handbook for officers.