Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 116

Chapter 116

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When Solif had gone aboveground to confront the Baraha mages who had surrounded him, Turan was meticulously cleaning the prison interior with tracking magic and telekinesis, removing all traces of their presence.

The principle behind using a medium in tracking magic was to designate a specific “target.” Since tracking a hair directly was much easier than tracking the person it came from, this cleanup proceeded quickly.

After eliminating all traces left in the prison, Turan planned to expand his tracking magic’s range to handle any remaining evidence throughout the temple while Solif created a distraction outside. After all, Baraha, being relatively close to Zahar, might have collected potential tracking mediums somewhere.

At that moment, he sensed five powerful mages descending toward the prison from above.

‘They’re splitting their pursuit forces? Are they that confident?’

Since he couldn’t simply ignore enemies targeting those who had escaped, Turan approached them while remaining invisible.

Having moved toward each other, it took barely seconds for Turan to encounter the pursuit team.

‘Two mid-upper ranks, two upper ranks, one top tier… hmm?’

Just as he was impressed by their considerable skill, Turan’s eyes widened upon seeing the symbol residing within each of them.

All five bore Zahar’s symbol—eyes glaring in pitch-black darkness.

While still puzzling over this, Turan quickly identified their leader through their conversation.

She was Alma Zahar, one of three heir candidates to the Zahar family whom he had heard about in the trading city of Komad.

‘They’ve reinforced security with an heir candidate? Are Zahar and Baraha much closer than I thought? Or do they have some separate agreement?’

Before he could fully process these questions, the Zahar mages discovered the tunnel and immediately began their pursuit, with Turan following closely behind while remaining invisible.

Fortunately, since none of them created any light, staying close behind wasn’t difficult.

‘Subdue, eliminate… yes, elimination is necessary.’

If any of them were vessels for Zahar’s gods, subduing and questioning them would only provide information to the enemy. After all, he had no means to capture a god’s soul as it returned to its base.

Yet letting them go would mean they would pursue Meisa’s group.

The conclusion was simple.

He would eliminate them instantly, leaving no trace of who had attacked or how.

Having formulated his plan on the spot, Turan first scattered Fire Soul on the ceiling and detonated it, forcing the Zahar nobles to take cover.

As expected, they hid in corners and activated invisibility to assess the situation.

A perfect scenario for an ambush.

Turan switched his Holy Relic to the Warrior bloodline and heightened his emotions to draw out its power.

As he tensed his muscles, heat rose to his head, and a growling sound escaped from deep in his throat.

Without invisibility magic, he would have been discovered instantly.

Gritting his teeth to suppress his excitement, Turan approached Alma, who sat motionless, wrapped his arm around her neck, and twisted.

With a sickening crunch, her neck rotated nearly 180 degrees while stretching to twice its length.

‘Got her.’

The resistance he felt suggested she had been wearing some protective magical device similar to Turan’s Guardian amulet.

Conventional defensive magical devices were typically specialized against projectiles or direct attacks, offering little protection against this kind of contact.

Before Alma’s body could even hit the floor, Turan immediately drove his fist into the back of the second target’s head.

This wasn’t a calculated attack but one purely driven by a Warrior’s impulse.

The head burst like a watermelon, breaking invisibility and splattering blood and brain matter in all directions.

“An enemy!?”

“What in the—!”

“Lady Alma!”

After preparing for a post-explosion attack, they were shocked to witness a comrade’s sudden death.

The Zahar nobles cried out in alarm, but unfortunately, their calls never reached each other.

While invisible, their voices couldn’t be heard by one another.

The second victim’s particularly spectacular death had even prevented them from noticing Alma’s corpse lying in the corner.

Then, when another person collapsed with a gaping hole in their chest, they realized the attacker was one of their own kind—and an extraordinarily powerful noble at that.

By that point, only two survivors remained.

“We’re under ambush! Invisibility, no—light!”

A contradictory situation where Zahar nobles, who wrapped themselves in darkness, needed to summon light to identify their enemy.

As one hastily dispelled invisibility and attempted to illuminate the tunnel with unfamiliar light magic, they too were struck by the invisible attacker, their upper body crushed diagonally.

The last survivor fled toward the tunnel exit while invisibly sobbing without sound, desperately hoping that the unknown enemy wouldn’t notice him.

Of course, this hope vanished seconds later with the sensation of his spine collapsing.

After dispatching the final survivor, Turan, still breathing heavily, stomped repeatedly on the body, crushing it and tearing it into two pieces before finally regaining his senses.

He quickly switched his Holy Relic’s bloodline and took deep breaths, finally calming the surging rage.

‘The Warrior bloodline… as I felt before, it’s truly dangerous. When properly activated, I lose control almost instantly.’

While it granted physical abilities powerful enough to tear nobles apart as if they were ordinary humans, it remained an ability he couldn’t recklessly use against similarly powerful or stronger enemies.

Had he charged at the Giant Sea Serpent in such a frenzied state, he might have ended up split in two like Meisa.

After a moment of self-reflection, Turan absorbed the magical power from the dead Zahar nobles.

While the others wouldn’t contribute much to his growth, someone of Alma’s caliber might provide some benefit.

Next, he collected their magical devices as well.

In the past, when looting the underground labyrinth, he had left items behind for fear of being tracked. Now, however, he could ask Meisa to modify these devices while preserving their power, allowing them to avoid tracking.

This was the privilege of having a skilled enchanter as a companion.

Meanwhile, Turan recalled something he had glimpsed during his frenzied state… ‘As I suspected, one of the Zahar nobles was a vessel. Not the leader, but one of her subordinates…’

After killing Alma, when he had succumbed to his excitement and struck down one of the upper-rank nobles, he saw a soul escape from the corpse and fly away.

It was fortunate that the second person he killed had been the vessel.

He had struck the back of their head while Alma was still falling, killing them instantly.

They likely died without even realizing what had happened.

Naturally, they couldn’t have identified their attacker.

Additionally, he had learned that vessels weren’t particularly special when not actively channeling their divine power.

Even those possessing the bodies of great family heads were mere ordinary nobles when caught off guard.

As he organized his thoughts, Turan looked at Alma’s corpse.

Her body lying on the floor with her neck twisted like a spiral seemed far too undignified for a top-tier noble’s death.

Especially considering her magical power had been roughly equivalent to Solif’s before the Giant Sea Serpent hunt and somewhat stronger than Turan’s own.

Of course, this was the inevitable outcome of allowing a several-fold stronger opponent—one who had heightened physical abilities through battle frenzy—to strike first.

* * *

After swiftly clearing the underground area, Turan went aboveground and first checked on Solif’s condition.

Judging by how he continued to lead hundreds of mages on a chase without major injury, he seemed capable of holding out for a few more hours.

Of course, considering that his pursuers could rotate and recover their strength while Solif had to keep moving and fighting, a prolonged battle would inevitably end in defeat.

They needed to complete their objectives and escape before then.

Turan changed into the clothes of a dead Baraha knight, altered his face, and used tracking magic to search for any remaining traces of the couple throughout the temple.

Unlike underground, invisibility magic was hindered aboveground by the sunlight emanating from the temple walls.

Fortunately, the buildings were mostly empty as everyone had gone to chase Solif, so he encountered little interference.

The few people he did meet simply ignored him due to his attire.

Before long, Turan found and burned a handful of hair stored in a cabinet in what appeared to be a meeting hall, confirming there were no more traces left.

He also checked for traces of Solif but found that they hadn’t kept any to begin with.

‘Good, this should be enough… though perhaps I should visit the mansion once more on our way out, just to be safe.’

Normally, such extreme precautions against tracking magic using hair weren’t necessary.

Unless the tracker was a quasi-family-head-level noble like Turan, ordinary Zahar nobles couldn’t use hair as a medium to locate targets thousands of meters away.

However, their current situation was dire enough that even the Zahar family head might personally pursue them.

They needed to prepare for all possibilities.

After one final check of the surroundings, Turan moved toward his final destination.

‘Now then… shall we go?’

Like other great families, the Baraha family head’s residence was located in the innermost section of the Sun Temple.

As he was about to enter, Turan frowned at the presence he sensed.

‘Someone’s guarding this place even in this situation?’

Not just anyone, but a top-tier noble at that.

When every available hand should have been pursuing Solif.

This paradoxically suggested that whatever lay inside was something that absolutely couldn’t be shown to others.

Since the building was part of the temple, its walls couldn’t be breached, and there were no nearby windows for sniping.

After brief consideration, Turan approached the guard directly.

The guard, noticing his approach, spoke:

“Halt. Who goes there?”

The guard was an elderly man who appeared to be about sixty years old.

Likely one of Baraha’s elders.

Turan bowed his head and stammered:

“E-Elder…”

“Rabo?”

At the elder’s response, Turan momentarily widened his eyes in surprise.

Given his simple knight’s attire, he hadn’t expected to be recognized by an elder.

However, his quick-thinking mind immediately improvised:

“Yes, it’s Rabo. Elder Ason has urgently sent me to retrieve a magical device from the family head’s residence to capture the traitor…”

“Go quickly then.”

Elder Ason was one of Baraha’s high-ranking elders whose name Turan had previously heard from Solif.

Since he looked different from the man before him, he was probably outside pursuing Solif.

Having received permission, Turan bowed respectfully and slowly approached, then suddenly reached out his hand.

At that moment, a golden awl that emerged from behind the elder and a white light spear from Turan’s hand collided.

“Tsk.”

Turan wasn’t startled by the elder’s sudden attack.

He had already detected through the scent of emotions that the elder considered him an enemy.

The clash was essentially a confrontation between two people who already knew they were adversaries.

The elder laughed dryly and said:

“I apologize, but Rabo was just a name I tried. I thought someone might try to infiltrate by changing clothes amid the confusion. Besides, Ason isn’t careless enough to entrust such a task to a mere knight.”

“I hadn’t realized. You’re quite perceptive.”

Turan responded sarcastically while secretly feeling relieved.

It seemed that news of the mysterious mimic who had disrupted Arabion hadn’t spread to Baraha yet.

At that moment, the elder frowned as if sensing the magical power transmitted through the awl:

“However, I didn’t expect the intruder to be this powerful. Where are you from? I’ve never seen your face, yet you possess such strength…”

Instead of answering, Turan immediately created a light sword and charged at the elder.

Though the elder’s magical power was much stronger, engaging in a firepower contest with ordinary light magic against the Light of Judgment would be inefficient.

He planned to leverage his more agile body and reflexes in close combat.

Seeing this, the elder responded with an expression of disbelief:

“You dare use light magic before one with the Sun bloodline—”

Before he could finish, the elder realized Turan’s approaching speed was abnormally fast and widened his eyes.

In that critical moment, Turan noticed two additional symbols emerging from within the elder.

‘A vessel!’

The two newly manifested bloodlines were History and Guardian… The emerging fist grasped a shield’s handle and covered it as if shielding the sun.

Simultaneously, the Baraha elder instantly transformed the Light of Judgment into two swords, parrying Turan’s thrust.

Turan’s face involuntarily contorted at the force transmitted to his hands.

‘Even accounting for bloodline abilities, this is abnormally powerful…’

Not only had the overlapping combat bloodlines created a synergistic effect, but there seemed to be something beyond that.

His hands stung painfully, and he felt he might drop his weapon at any moment.

This was likely the same mysterious technique that Ymir had demonstrated previously.

Turan quickly transformed his sword into a larger greatsword to block the subsequent attack.

Once they were within sword range, there was no time for verbal exchanges.

Weapons of gold and white clashed, sending thunderous noise and heat throughout the corridor.

The elder had superior physical abilities and weapon quality due to the Light of Judgment, but Turan was armed with far stronger magical power and superior reflexes.

He could certainly overwhelm the elder if he revealed his Warrior bloodline as well, but…

‘I don’t want to reveal the use of multiple bloodlines before a god. How can I defeat him without fully revealing my abilities?’

Using the Earth Guardian bloodline seemed impractical with few earthen materials around, and the Carmine bloodline would be ineffective in such a dry environment.

The Nagin bloodline would clearly be useless.

Naturally, using Zahar or Arabion bloodlines would be suicidal.

Then, a sudden idea struck Turan, and he quickly stepped back to create distance.

The elder opened his mouth to engage in psychological warfare during this brief respite, but what emerged was an exclamation rather than words:

“You, that is…!”

The Light of Judgment.

As the power exclusive to Baraha nobles appeared behind Turan, the elder’s eyes widened.

Moreover, Turan’s deployment of the halo was remarkably skillful, like someone who had trained for decades.

Turan shaped the Light of Judgment into a spear and shouted:

“Tell the family head! Your son has returned!”

His improvised plan was to pretend to be an illegitimate child of the Baraha family head.

Considering the strict bloodline management in great families, this story would quickly fall apart, but it could at least cause confusion.

However, contrary to Turan’s expectations, the elder appeared far more shaken than anticipated.

His expression resembled someone who had seen a ghost…

“That line, could it be!?”

With these incomprehensible words, a golden javelin containing immense power flew toward the elder.