Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 123
Chapter 123
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Now those days as a shepherd felt like they belonged to a distant past.
Back then, Turan would often gaze eastward while tending his sheep.
That direction represented the world he imagined—something infinitely incomprehensible and vast.
He never dreamed that in just a few years, he would have traveled across nearly all of that vast world, only to find it too confining and turn his gaze westward beyond.
* * *
“So this is Turan’s hometown…”
Early in the morning, Bije finally landed in a valley of Hisaril Hill, carrying Turan’s group.
Meisa’s voice held a slight tremor as she looked around.
Solif, brushing down the grass beneath his feet, remarked:
“Will your father and mother be able to live well here? There’s literally nothing here.”
Short, sparse weeds barely reaching ankle-height dotted the earth.
The distant hills and valleys were all barren, with barely a few trees growing.
“As long as the sun shines so I can worship, I’m content.”
“If we can manage food and water, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already spent a year confined to a room.”
Hearing the Baraha couple’s composed response, Solif sighed lightly and shook his head.
“At least we bought plenty of entertainment from various cities on our way here, so you won’t be bored. Even if this is a poor area, nobles don’t need to worry about sustenance.”
Even Keorn used to hunt wolves around these parts.
The fact that leopard magical beasts had appeared meant there were quite a few animals at the foot of the Sky Mountains.
Of course, since humans couldn’t survive on meat alone, they would need to find a water source and land for farming.
Fortunately, Turan, who had roamed this area extensively since long ago, had already made preparations.
“The hideout I’ve planned is over here.”
Turan led the group to a small basin located a few kilometers south of their landing spot.
It was quite deeply excavated, with the cliffs above complexly folded so that it was difficult to look down from above, and even the entrance was concealed.
“How did you ever find a place like this?”
“What else was there to do around here besides herding sheep and wandering around?”
Even when he had been weak, Turan as a noble could easily run dozens of kilometers in an hour.
There was virtually no terrain in this area that Turan didn’t know.
As they entered the basin, everyone gasped at the spacious interior.
Despite being enclosed, sunlight entered well, the ground was level rather than sloped, and the short grass growing made it seem suitable for farming.
“This is really nice. We just need to supply water.”
“Groundwater?”
“Looks like we’ll need to use some strength again.”
Having become experienced in earth manipulation magic from the reclamation project in the south, they immediately began digging up the ground outside the basin.
With the powerful nobles’ magical power, deep tunnels of several dozen meters appeared everywhere in an instant. Even in such barren wasteland, it didn’t take long to capture a groundwater stream or two.
“Here, water! Quite a thick stream!”
“Good. Let’s stop working and draw it over from there.”
Shortly after, they appropriately channeled the groundwater to create a small well inside the basin.
The clear water was sufficient not only for bathing and watering crops and livestock, but also for drinking.
Next came building a house to live in.
Naturally, any usable timber for house construction in this area would have already been taken by others, but Turan, being a local, had anticipated this situation.
“Both of you, move aside. I’ll place all the pillars on this side.”
“Who brought the straw?”
“Is this it, right here?”
During their journey through various cities, they had purchased all the necessary materials for building a house.
From wooden pillars and doors to glass windows, roof tiles, and bricks—things difficult to obtain in this remote area.
Of course, a house couldn’t simply be built just by having materials, but they weren’t amateurs in construction either.
They had experience rebuilding burned villages in the past, as well as quickly constructing residences for the pioneers who had flocked to the reclamation project.
They compacted the ground, arranged the prepared materials using telekinesis magic, and immediately transformed any missing or misaligned parts with magic, resulting in the building rising rapidly.
“Our son is good at building houses too!”
“Though he seems to be doing the least work…”
As his wife praised Solif, Godis spoke somewhat curtly, then received a light smack on his back from her palm and discreetly averted his gaze.
After several hours, a fairly impressive brick house stood in the middle of the basin.
It was three stories high with about ten rooms.
It was designed spaciously enough to accommodate not only the Baraha couple’s bedroom but also any future visitors.
After all, even Turan’s group would be staying here tonight.
“Building and decorating a house yourself is actually fun. I never thought I’d enjoy this.”
“Yet you kept avoiding choosing the furniture to put inside.”
Solif, who had been whistling while setting down a bed, laughed awkwardly and left his spot, having no retort.
Turan turned his gaze out the window to look at the well, then voiced a thought that had just occurred to him.
“Should we make a small pond and introduce some fish too?”
“How would you bring those here?”
“There’s a lake about four hundred kilometers away, so using fluid manipulation magic to bring water and fish together…”
“Come on, you’d definitely get caught passing by.”
“I guess so.”
He seemed to have been carried away with the fun of creating a residence with magic and had thought too ambitiously.
After completing the hideout, the five people and one eagle hawk shared food and drink in the small garden in front of the house, celebrating the end of their journey.
* * *
As the feast was winding down, Turan quietly rose from his seat and headed toward the back, prompting Solif to ask:
“Hmm? Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d visit the house where I used to live.”
“Want me to come along?”
“It’s fine, take care of your parents.”
Considering they would be separating again soon, Solif should cherish his time with his parents.
Understanding this, Solif simply nodded and turned back.
At that moment, Meisa quietly approached from behind and said:
“I want to go too.”
“It won’t be very interesting. I’m just going to take a quick look since we can’t be seen by others.”
The reason they had found this place and built a new house despite several inhabited villages in the area was clear.
It was in preparation for the possibility that someone might later trace his movements and visit his hometown.
If they had settled in a village, their identities could be easily exposed with just a little inquiry.
“It’s night anyway, so we won’t be seen, right? I’m curious too. I want to see where you lived.”
At Meisa’s words, Turan smiled helplessly and pulled her along.
Soon after, they took off from the basin with Bije, who had been patting his stomach after devouring jerky.
After flying together for about a minute, they spotted a sheep farm situated on a low hill.
“Is that it?”
“Yes. It hasn’t changed at all, even though it’s been quite a while.”
It had been just over three years, not quite four?
It was too short a time for much to change with new residents.
Focusing his senses on detecting presences, he felt three people and two dogs inside the house.
It seemed they were keeping sheepdogs, unable to handle them with magic like Turan had done.
“They’ve repaired the fence that was damaged, and it looks like they slaughtered the sick one… The village elder must have brought in a fairly skilled shepherd family from somewhere. I thought they might just send up one of the village troublemakers and be done with it.”
As he was explaining what he saw, Turan noticed Meisa staring at him intently and turned to face her.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just that hearing you talk like this makes it real that you were actually a shepherd. I couldn’t quite believe it before.”
“Is that so?”
“Anyone would think you’ve lived your whole life without ever doing hard work.”
Feeling his face, Turan smiled awkwardly and shook his head.
After observing his childhood home, Turan moved to a cliff about a kilometer away from the house.
There stood a small gravestone.
“What’s this…?”
“My mother’s grave.”
“You buried her here instead of in the village cemetery.”
“I thought the villagers might dig her up later if I buried her there. We weren’t on good terms, after all.”
Recalling the past history Turan had shared, Meisa’s eyes showed sympathy.
Turan tidied up the neglected grave, then folded his hands and closed his eyes before it.
In his heart, he recalled the experiences he had gone through and the secret history of his mother and father that he had discovered.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Mother?’
Of course, the answer came from within his own mind.
Back then, Turan had been too young and weak to handle such secrets.
Bizelra probably didn’t even know how much potential Turan had been born with, how powerful a mage he could become.
“If my mother were alive, I’d have so many questions.”
“Like what?”
“What kind of person my father was, why exactly she fled… things like that.”
But the dead couldn’t return to life.
Turan suddenly recalled the soul magic he had been diligently practicing recently.
Wasn’t it said that those who awakened spiritual awareness could see and communicate with souls of the recently deceased?
Though “recent” probably didn’t extend to several years.
After spending a few minutes like this, Turan opened his eyes when he sensed a presence beside him.
Bije stood next to him with his eyes closed, head bowed deeply toward the grave.
“You…”
* * *
After returning to the hideout and staying for a day, Turan’s group began preparing in earnest for their ascent of the Sky Mountains.
In truth, there wasn’t much elaborate preparation needed.
They had already purchased and stored almost everything necessary for survival in their large-capacity pouches during their journey.
It was sufficient to have Bije catch a couple of deer from a distance to prepare a large quantity of fresh meat.
“Well then, we’ll be on our way.”
“Please don’t push yourselves too hard. This place is already quite adequate as a residence…”
“Don’t worry, Father. We’re just going to look around. Just look.”
As Solif made his bold declaration, the concern on the Baraha couple’s faces only deepened.
Turan reminded them once more that this wasn’t such a dangerous challenge, then boarded the swing attached to Bije’s legs.
After a while, having all three of them on the swing again created a strange feeling.
“I feel nervous for some reason.”
“Me too.”
“A little tension is good for the body. Let’s go, Bije.”
As the eagle hawk took off with the swing, the Sky Mountains soon drew closer.
As they approached, what had seemed transcendently massive even from a distance caused Solif to gasp.
“Hey, I can’t even see the top! Are you sure we can climb this?”
“We’ll try and see. Upward!”
At Turan’s shout, Bije stopped approaching horizontally and began ascending in wide circles.
They rose from their usual flying height of several hundred meters to a thousand meters, twelve hundred meters, fifteen hundred meters, until everything on the ground became tiny.
“This seems pretty easy so far…”
Just as Solif muttered these words while looking down, Bije’s speed began to gradually decrease.
Turan clicked his tongue softly and shook his head.
“It seems like it’s getting harder to fly any higher.”
After first riding Bije and taking to the sky, one of the things Turan had been curious about was how high this bird could fly.
After several test flights, he discovered that the air becomes increasingly thin the higher you go, making proper flight difficult.
The same was happening now—no matter how hard Bije flapped her wings, there wasn’t enough air resistance for the swing to rise quickly.
When Turan, Meisa, and even Solif joined forces to use wind magic, their ascent speed increased slightly, but this too didn’t last long.
Just as water magic is difficult to use where there’s no water, and fire magic is difficult to use underwater, wind magic is difficult to wield where there’s barely any air.
Moreover, this diminished air began to threaten even the breathing of the three people.
Of course, for powerful nobles like them who could sustain themselves for hours on just a single breath, this wasn’t a major problem.
“Bije! Let’s head toward the mountain range!”
Hearing the shout from below, Bije used every last bit of strength to flap his wings and somehow managed to bring them alongside the mountain range… When Turan transformed part of the cliff to create a space where the swing could rest, Bije practically threw the swing down before landing and breathing heavily.
“You’ve worked hard, Bije.”
Though it had been a short flight, Bije showed clear signs of exhaustion from his final effort.
Turan stroked his head and then helped him perch on a metal rod to rest.
“Now it’s our turn to climb.”
“It would have been nice if we could just tunnel through to the other side with earth manipulation.”
“If it were that easy, someone would have crossed over long ago.”
While the surface of the Sky Mountains could be distorted with earth manipulation magic, when trying to dig inward, an unknown material of rock would soon block the way.
Similar to ancient imperial buildings, this material was practically impossible to destroy physically, making such shortcuts impossible.
“Here, take some climbing equipment. One each.”
They improvised ropes tied around their waists to secure themselves together, then began climbing the mountain range on foot.
Meisa, who was in the middle, looked down and muttered:
“It’s so high that I think I’d die if I fell…”
“I told you, we can’t die from just falling anymore.”
One of the natural laws Turan had learned from the librarian was that all falling objects have a terminal velocity.
Although this limit varies depending on the object’s weight relative to its volume and its shape, generally after several hundred meters, falling from a higher place doesn’t mean falling any faster.
Therefore, none of them, not even Bije with his relatively weak body, needed to worry about dying from a fall here.
The rocks below were far too soft compared to the hardness of their bodies.
After reassuring his companions like this and climbing for several minutes, creating footholds with earth manipulation magic made the ascent as easy as walking, but breathing became increasingly difficult.
“Can’t… breathe… damn it…”
“Save… your… breath…”
After silencing the complaining Solif, Turan took a deep breath and created another depression to continue climbing.
The Sky Mountains were certainly worthy of being called a barrier, just like the other boundaries of the world.
Without a top-tier magical beast like Bije, it would take ages just to reach this point, and this place was so extreme that even breathing was difficult for ordinary people.
The only consolation was that the summit was gradually coming into view.
What could possibly lie beyond?
Carrying equal measures of anticipation and fear, Turan led the way, continuing to create depressions for hands and feet as they climbed.
“You… ra!”
“Gi…!”
By now, even his companions’ voices behind him were barely audible.
Whether due to their labored breathing or the thinness of the air itself that carried sound.
Regardless, the rope tied around his waist was still intact, indicating they were following.
Trusting in this, Turan continued climbing the nearly vertical cliff without looking back.
And finally—
“Ah…”
From the very top of the mountain range, he saw what lay beyond.