Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 110
Chapter 110
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Discord
Two days after leaving Bigen City.
Turan flew south with Bije and returned to the reclaimed settlement that was still in the midst of development.
During his absence, the settlement seemed to have undergone yet another transformation.
Not only were there many new buildings he hadn’t seen before, but the population had also grown considerably.
After landing at a suitable location with Bije perched on a rod at his side, the settlers who saw him immediately prostrated themselves.
“O God.”
“You have returned…”
Seeing these people worshipping him, Turan recalled the citizens of Kalamaf who had been praising him, or more precisely, his impersonator.
That had been quite a galling sight.
Most likely, what the Zahar nobles had wanted was for Turan to lose control of his emotions and charge in directly.
They simply couldn’t have imagined that their target would see through their identities and plans in such a strange way and turn the tables on them instead.
First, Turan informed Yoz, who was supervising the settlement, of his return, then headed east where Solif and Meisa were reportedly continuing the reclamation work.
The two were just taking a break after finishing their work.
“You’re back?”
“Yes. Looks like not much reclamation happened while I was gone?”
“We need you for that. How much could we accomplish by ourselves?”
Despite having been separated for nearly two months, Turan and Solif conversed as casually as if one had merely stepped out for a few days.
Meisa, who was sitting nearby, smiled contentedly at this scene before brushing some dust off Turan’s shoulder.
“You’re safe.”
“I promised I would be.”
Though their exchange was almost perfunctory, both of their faces bore subtle smiles.
Shortly after, Turan sat down and explained what had happened in the gray zone several days earlier.
Since their last communication through the mirror had been just before he arrived at Kalamaf, they knew nothing about this incident.
“Wait, so you really threatened Zahar?”
“That’s right.”
“You crazy bastard.”
Solif cursed crudely, but he was clutching his stomach, unable to contain his laughter.
“Really! This is why I have to stay by your side. How could you do such fun things by yourself? That’s too much!”
Unlike Solif, Meisa’s face showed a mixture of concern and reproach.
Like a parent watching a child left unattended by the water.
This unconsciously reminded Turan of being scolded by his mother as a child, making him smile.
Meisa sighed deeply and said:
“I’m being serious here.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh like that… First of all, I don’t make promises or take actions I can’t be responsible for.”
“Are you really planning to retaliate?”
“Yes. If I have to.”
Perhaps sensing the weight behind his answer, even Solif stopped laughing and wiped the tears from his eyes.
Turan then explained to his two companions why he had acted this way.
“Even Zahar doesn’t have an abundance of powerful nobles. They probably couldn’t afford to station a capture team in Kalamaf for long.”
It would be extremely inefficient to tie up one upper-rank noble and two mid-rank nobles for years just to recruit someone of similar power.
Therefore, if he continued not to appear, they would likely resort to more “stimulating” methods like squeezing Kalamaf dry.
In that situation, Turan had presented Zahar with a much clearer line.
If they governed the city properly, he would visit them within ten years at the earliest, or fifty years at the latest.
By ordinary human standards, this was practically saying he would never visit in their lifetime, but for high nobles like them, it was a fairly realistic condition.
“Unless their goal is to capture me, they have no need to maintain such excessive forces. Dispatching a mid-rank noble to govern a city the size of Kalamaf isn’t a bad deal for them either. It’s like planting an eye in the gray zone.”
“And with time, they might be able to recruit you, who they presume to be an upper-rank noble?”
“Exactly. Conversely, if they put pride first, their recruitment target would become an enemy and they’d lose the city too. If they’re running a great family, they should be able to judge which is the more rational choice.”
Between patiently extracting benefits while waiting for a promise to be fulfilled, and fighting a battle for pride that would yield nothing even if won.
Anyone who wasn’t a fool could see which option was better.
Hearing Turan’s explanation, Solif and Meisa nodded in understanding.
Upon closer inspection, it was clear that this wasn’t just an impulsive threat, but a decision made after considering many factors.
“Let’s set that topic aside for now… Has anything special happened here?”
“Just trivial matters. A few dangerous magical beasts crossing the embankment occasionally, or discovering some strange stones—that kind of thing.”
“Really nothing but the usual.”
After chatting for a while, Turan joined the two who had recovered their magical power and strength, and they resumed the reclamation work.
The settlers’ eyes lit up again at seeing massive amounts of water rising into the sky after so long.
* * *
With Turan’s power added to theirs, the reclamation project once again proceeded smoothly as if aided by a favorable wind.
The reclaimed land, which had already covered more than half of the planned area, now extended to over eighty percent, making it impossible to find enough workers even after gathering all the idle people from the surrounding areas.
At some point, they began to notice that no magical beasts emerged even when they burned the forest. It seemed that creatures capable of moving freely within their territory had long since fled beyond the forest to escape the flames that had been advancing from the south.
While continuing to expand the vast reclaimed land, Turan also didn’t forget to hone the new technique he had learned during the battle with the Giant Sea Serpent.
That is, using the Fire Soul to enhance the power of his projectiles.
His first goal was to use it stably with the small projectiles he normally used, rather than only with large projectiles as before, and his second was to control it so that the projectile itself wouldn’t be damaged.
Unlike his miraculous success back then, without precise timing control of the explosion, the projectiles often failed to fly properly, so it took considerable time to master.
“Ugh. I just can’t get used to that sound.”
When a “bang” explosion occurred, Solif, who had been resting, groaned softly and turned his head… There, he saw the launched projectile knocking down dozens of trees as it flew beyond the yet-to-be-reclaimed land.
“How much magical power did you put into that one?”
“Less than a hundredth of my full power?”
“That’s insane.”
“If I used my full power, it would probably pierce through even a high-grade magical device.”
Turan responded to their amazement with an awkward smile as he retrieved the object he had thrown.
Instead of well-carved oval stones, they were round metal objects.
The front end was carved into an oval shape, while the opposite end had a hollow depression, designed to contain large amounts of Fire Soul.
“It must be quite annoying to retrieve those every time.”
“I can’t just discard magical devices. It’s not too difficult with tracking magic. I can even sense them with my magical perception.”
As he said, these metal projectiles were magical devices that Meisa had enchanted herself.
Their functions were quite simple—becoming harder and increasing impact force upon collision.
If Turan were to launch one of these at full power using the Fire Soul, it would likely be a strike capable of penetrating even the body of the Giant Sea Serpent from before.
Of course, given that they were limited in quantity, he had to use them more judiciously than ordinary stones.
“Don’t worry. I can always make more if needed.”
Turan smiled brightly at the reassuring words from their dependable enchantress.
Having a powerful enchanter in their group was incredibly useful like this.
Of course, there was the issue that they couldn’t spend long periods creating powerful magical devices since they weren’t in a completely safe place and needed to prepare for combat, but still.
While they were spending their time on reclamation, tactical research, and equipment reinforcement, new information arrived from the librarian who had extracted the necessary information from the Mimic god’s soul fragment.
“I’ll say this first: I don’t know if this information is true. It’s just what remains in this soul fragment.”
“That’s fine. We’ll take it with a grain of salt.”
“Hmm, saying you’ll take it with a grain of salt somehow makes me feel bad… Anyway, fine. Listen carefully and take notes.”
The knowledge the librarian shared with Turan was mainly of two types.
First was how to acquire the Stream bloodline, which was likely the “Wavecutter” bloodline.
This required two conditions:
Standing on something and riding natural waves for a distance of 10,000 kilometers, and killing ten Leviathans to drink their blood.
“…This is more normal than I expected?”
“I know. Before, we heard about burning people alive and covering yourself with their ashes, so I thought this time we’d have to drown someone or something.”
Turan’s impression was similar to his companions’.
The only issue was what exactly these “Leviathans” were—
“They’re probably some kind of marine magical beast, but I don’t know exactly. This method isn’t particularly detailed, you see.”
In any case, neither condition could be attempted around the reclaimed land for now.
They decided that if they ever went to the coast later, they would try the first condition together and also inquire about what Leviathans might be.
Next came the method for acquiring what was presumably the Mimic bloodline—
“Visit four advancement administrators with the appropriate type of equipment for each and complete the advancement missions.”
Turan didn’t bother asking the librarian what “advancement administrators” and “advancement missions” were.
The librarian’s face made it clear that he wouldn’t know the answer.
Both terms somehow felt similar yet different from the terminology the fallen gods often used, but unfortunately, neither Meisa nor Solif had any meaningful information about them either.
After being disappointed that the first two pieces of information were essentially useless, fortunately, the third and final piece was quite valuable.
“Death Water… you say?”
“Yes. It looks like a recipe. Like that Fire Soul you mentioned.”
Turan didn’t miss how Meisa’s face wrinkled at the mention of Death Water.
For someone who had lost family members to an unidentified poison in the past, a substance that sounded like a poison just from its name would be extremely unsettling.
Of course, that didn’t mean they could pass up learning how to make this substance.
Considering how useful the Fire Soul had been, obtaining another similar item would be a significant boost to their combat capability.
Knowing this, Meisa also realized Turan was watching her expression and forced herself to smile, smoothing out her face.
Turan nodded slightly to express his gratitude to her before continuing to write down the recipe that followed.
The ingredients were salt water, graphite, lightning, and sun.
The method was to make two rods from graphite, place them in salt water, strike them with lightning, expose them to sunlight, and “combine” them.
“Graphite is a type of rock. It’s black, crumbles easily, and leaves marks readily, making it good for marking things.”
“Oh, I know what that is. In my hometown, we called it marking stone.”
Solif snapped his fingers as he recognized the description.
“Where can we find it?”
“Since it’s a rock, it just comes from the ground. Besides marking, it doesn’t have much use, so they probably don’t specifically mine for it.”
In other words, it was in a similar situation to the ingredients for Fire Soul—sulfur and saltpeter.
Why did all these combination recipes require such uncommon materials?
At least the remaining ingredients—salt water, lightning, and sun—were relatively easy to obtain, making it much less difficult than creating Fire Soul.
While clicking his tongue in disappointment at the difficulty of finding graphite, Turan decided to ask Yoz, and immediately received an answer.
“I’ve seen such rock near coastal cities. It was when I went to reclaim marshland near the coast in my younger days.”
“Is it far from here?”
“Not particularly far. Probably about ten to fifteen days’ walk for an ordinary person… Should I understand that you’ll be traveling again?”
“I’ll be back soon.”
After learning the exact location, Turan flew east with Bije.
The coastal city to the south was over two hundred kilometers away, but with Bije’s wings, even carrying Turan, it would take only about an hour.
‘It seems the south has more of these things… Although, if we searched thoroughly in the north, we might find them there too.’
Shortly after, farmers near Boronum City in eastern Ravitas received a strange request from a young man who had suddenly appeared.
He offered to pay them for collecting the black, crumbly stones they occasionally used to mark boundaries… “Huh? You’ll pay us for gathering those?”
“Would that be possible?”
“We’re not particularly busy right now, so that’s fine… But are you really going to pay us?”
“This is an advance payment, and I’ll give you twice this amount when you bring them.”
Since it would be a waste of labor to search for this graphite himself, Turan was able to mobilize all the free commoners in the area by offering twenty gold coins in two installments.
It took barely half a day to gather several hundred kilograms of graphite that was scattered around the area.
After collecting the graphite, Turan immediately immersed himself in creating the new substance.
The first challenge was placing two carved graphite rods in salt water and striking them with lightning.
For someone with the Storm bloodline like him, creating lightning was as simple as breathing, but the issue was the intensity.
If he applied too much power, not only the salt water but also the container and the graphite rods would completely evaporate.
Fortunately, after several trials and errors, he figured out how to apply the appropriate amount of electricity.
The next problem was the ingredient called “sun.”
Simply exposing it to sunlight didn’t work, and he realized that it probably required the “Light of Judgment,” a secret technique of the Sun bloodline.
Although Turan himself could create this, since Solif was right there, he asked for his help.
Solif, radiating a halo, asked with a puzzled expression:
“But why does this god’s recipe require the Sun bloodline?”
“I’m not sure… Perhaps his other two bloodlines were Pyromaniac and Illusion.”
Since they only knew of two bloodlines possessed by the Mimic god—Wavecutter and Mimic—this wasn’t impossible.
Or perhaps it was an item that required help from others to create from the beginning.
After many trials and errors, they finally succeeded in creating a perfect production process.
As they imagined everything mixing together while channeling lightning into the graphite and exposing it to the Light of Judgment, there was a flash of light similar to what happened when creating Fire Soul.
And what remained in place of the salt water and graphite rods was—
“…Water?”
“It’s water.”
It was clearly transparent, clear water to anyone looking.
“Did something go wrong?”
“I felt the transformation… wait.”
There was a sizzling sound as if something was burning, and then suddenly a hole appeared in the wooden container holding the water, causing all its contents to leak out.
The identity of what had appeared to be transparent water was in fact a deadly poison that dissolved everything it touched.
As the water that had fallen to the ground dissolved even the soil, creating a deep hole, Solif murmured quietly:
“Death Water… well, the name is certainly intuitive. If you poured this on a person, not even bones would remain.”
Turan and Meisa silently nodded in agreement.