Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 132
Chapter 132
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Discord
Three weeks after the true lord’s return.
Kalamaf’s situation had definitely improved compared to before.
The most significant change was that all threats lurking around the city had been completely eliminated.
The new knights who had appeared were quite popular as they actively participated in relief efforts, unlike their previous counterparts who had been cold and indifferent.
Through this, Turan could freshly appreciate why various mage families employed knights.
This type of work was certainly much more convenient and effective when delegating to others rather than running around personally.
As the situation stabilized somewhat, he asked Bije to consistently patrol the surroundings instead of hunting nearby.
From the main road stretching toward the western forest region to the rugged mountain range they had crossed.
Bije flew thousands of kilometers daily, continuously using tracking magic to check on every human passing through.
Unless someone approached disguised as an ordinary traveler, it would be nearly impossible for a mage moving openly to escape Bije’s surveillance network.
Unfortunately, the interrogation of Kadram showed little progress.
After trying to wake his mind through harsh torture, then attempting empathy or comfort, and various other techniques from soul magic, the wall he had built in his mind remained unbroken.
Just as Turan was swallowing a sigh of disappointment,
News arrived that Meisa had finally succeeded in extracting her soul form’s avatar through soul magic for the second time.
“You can bring it out now?”
“Yes. It felt like some kind of membrane suddenly broke, and then it just popped out. It was a strange feeling.”
“Could I see it?”
At Turan’s words, Meisa immediately closed her eyes, awakened her spiritual perception, and brought out her soul form.
Seeing its shape, Turan slightly furrowed his brow.
‘This is…’
The deer antlers and wings were the same as Turan’s, suggesting they were characteristics of the Storm bloodline.
But strangely, there were two additional peculiarities.
A bronze chain loosely wrapped around her wrist, and several unidentifiable metal needles stuck in her head.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if this is strange or not.”
Since one couldn’t look at oneself in a mirror while in soul form, the only way to know one’s appearance was to ask someone else to describe or draw it.
For this reason, Turan had asked the librarian to draw his appearance so he could check it.
The black dust floating around his body and vertical slit pupils were probably characteristics of Zahar.
Following this logic, these two features must be characteristics of Meisa’s other bloodlines, probably Pyromaniac and History.
After seeing the drawing of her soul form, Meisa frowned just as Turan had.
“This bracelet and this…?”
“Looking at it in this portrait, it seems like decorative items, but in reality, it feels like needles are stuck in there.”
The bronze bracelet could be interpreted as related to Pyromaniac since it was an ornament, or it could be related to History since the arm symbolizes strength.
But the needles stuck in her head didn’t resonate clearly with either bloodline.
This puzzling question intensified when Solif also succeeded in releasing his soul form not long after.
His symbols were burning hair, a white halo, golden scales covering various parts of his body.
And just like Meisa, needles stuck in his head.
“The needles in the head don’t seem to be ordinary bloodline symbols no matter how I think about it.”
“Right. If we exclude those, having three each would make perfect sense.”
Meisa’s bronze bracelet was probably the symbol of Pyromaniac, and Solif’s golden scales were likely the symbol of Guardian.
Then what were these needles?
They could try pulling one out to learn more, but if that damaged the soul form, the consequences would be truly horrific.
The soul being immortal didn’t mean it couldn’t be damaged, just that it wouldn’t easily perish.
Just as an animal’s body doesn’t disappear after death but becomes food for other creatures and is digested into waste, ‘transformation’ was extremely easy and irreversible.
* * *
After a busy month normalizing Kalamaf,
Turan turned his head as he sensed massive lumps of magical power approaching from the southeast.
‘They’ve finally come…’
Shortly thereafter, a Berk knight guarding the eastern gate rushed to inform him of visitors.
As this was an anticipated situation, Turan immediately summoned Solif, Meisa, and the nobles of Kalamaf.
Shortly after, the Zahar nobles entered the prepared negotiation venue.
“Hmm…”
Solif, looking at the middle-aged man standing in front, groaned softly and alternately glanced at Turan’s face.
Similar reactions came not only from the various nobles of Kalamaf but also from the Zahar nobles themselves.
The face of the person leading the Zahar nobles bore such a striking resemblance to Turan.
His grandfather, Talis Zahar, smiled kindly in an oddly unfitting manner and said:
“Nice to meet you, Turan. Is this our first direct meeting?”
“Yes. Please sit down first, offering you a cup of tea would be the proper etiquette.”
“I gratefully accept.”
In the tense atmosphere, only Talis and Turan conversed like a relaxed host and a guest from afar.
After cups of stone herb tea, a specialty of the gray zone, were passed around, Turan spoke softly:
“However, you arrived later than I expected.”
Considering that Zahar’s capital was somewhat east of the Enril Desert, it would actually be quite fast for news from Kalamaf to reach them and for them to arrive within a month.
For normal people, it would take several months to walk, and even decent knights or nobles would need nearly a month to reach it.
But in reality, the time it took for news to travel would have been much faster.
They must have arranged some kind of messenger magical beast for delivering news, though perhaps not as excellent as Bije.
Moreover, according to what the Berk knight had just reported, they hadn’t walked but had come riding in a carriage (deer car) pulled by a giant reindeer magical beast.
Considering that this magical beast also possessed upper noble rank magical power, it probably took them only one to two weeks.
‘They must have been busy assessing the situation.’
What was the identity of the noble family he had brought, what had they been doing all this time—there was much information to gather before conversation.
After all, in such negotiations, knowledge is power.
In other words, they had probably come now because they felt they knew as much as they needed to.
Whether that was truly the case would become clear through this conversation.
“It’s because our land is so vast and there’s so much work to do. We were particularly busy with matters in the east until recently.”
What Talis was referring to was naturally the commotion Turan’s group had caused in the Baraha capital a few months ago… At his words, the Zahar nobles all turned their gaze toward Solif standing behind Turan.
Turan pretended not to notice this and calmly sipped the tea that had been served to him.
While doing so, he freshly gauged the number and strength of his opponents.
‘One at the highest tier, two in the upper ranks, and nine in the middle ranks…’
Given that they would have received reports from those who had stayed here that Turan’s strength was above the highest tier, and that he had even brought an entire noble family with him, this was a weaker force than expected.
This suggested that the fact that Turan could capture and imprison a god’s soul hadn’t yet become known to them.
In other words, it seemed the connection between Arabion and Zahar had not yet been restored.
While intensely thinking, Talis asked in a casual tone:
“So, am I the level of conversation partner you wanted?”
“You are sufficient. After all, there probably won’t be discussions deep enough to require my great-grandfather to come.”
Talis’s eyes twitched slightly at the unexpected form of address.
Though there was no other change in his facial expression, Turan could tell that his opponent was somewhat shaken.
“Where did you hear that?”
“I heard it from Leto.”
There was no need to keep secret that it was Turan who had killed Leto, the Zahar noble who had infiltrated Arabion.
After all, Meisa, who had escaped at that time, was now standing right behind him.
Of course, at that time, Leto had thought Turan was Talis’s son, not his grandson.
“I see. Well, I won’t pursue that matter. But… it seems we have much to discuss regarding Alma.”
As Talis spoke, Turan could sense some of the Zahar nobles behind him harboring murderous intent.
Presumably, they belonged to the faction that had supported Alma.
In contrast, those showing little reaction would be supporters of either Ferga, who had died in the labyrinth, or Rahman, the only surviving heir.
After organizing his thoughts briefly, Turan frankly admitted that he had killed Alma.
“I express my regrets about that matter. I had no particular desire to be hostile, but they showed hostility first. Our side suffered considerable damage as a result.”
In reality, he had ambushed them and massacred them instantly, but there was no way they could know this.
The only vessel present at that time had died instantly without even knowing how they were being attacked.
Though he had never experienced losing his physical body, based on his experience of leaving his body as a soul form, it wasn’t easy to properly observe the material world in that state.
Since one couldn’t rely on physical eyes and could only observe spiritual flows, everything appeared like countless scattered lights.
Even without that, they couldn’t present a vessel’s testimony as evidence anyway.
Not unless they were planning to openly reveal their secret.
“You…!”
Bang! One of the Zahar nobles sitting nearby crushed the table with a blow and stood up.
Talis, without even turning to look at him, spoke quietly:
“Sit down, Kaiso.”
“You heard him, Lord Talis! This bastard killed Alma…”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
A voice incomparably lower and colder than before.
Though he hadn’t released any magical power, the pressure in that voice alone made the Zahar noble who had stood up tremble before sitting back down.
As he bowed his head deeply, Turan noticed that Talis was staring at him intently.
‘What is it?’
Surely he wasn’t looking to see if Turan was upset by his display of anger.
No, rather, it seemed like he was trying to gauge Turan’s reaction to his words.
After thinking briefly, Turan decided to provide an appropriate response.
“If you want compensation, we can negotiate that later. But I believe there are more pressing matters to discuss first.”
“That’s right. So… will you return?”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate to say I’m returning to Zahar. As you may know, half of my bloodline is Arabion.”
“You’ve probably already reached a point of no return with them.”
Talis glanced slightly toward Meisa, who was standing quietly behind Turan.
It would have taken considerable time to gather information about the battle that had occurred in the forest near Jabilin City.
Indeed, when Zahar decided to collect information in a specific area, their speed and accuracy were truly formidable.
The fact that they hadn’t properly known about Turan until now was simply because they hadn’t considered him a subject worth attention.
One could guess that once someone became a person of interest, it would be nearly impossible to maintain secrecy through mediocre methods.
“I could also establish Meisa as Arabion’s new family head and place my trust in her.”
“Hmm.”
Talis didn’t dismiss this as absurd.
He understood to some extent the significance of having two heirs of great families, Meisa and Solif, standing behind Turan as their representative.
Above all, he had already heard about the circumstances of the “forest battle.”
The fact that Turan had been able to engage in combat with Kadram, who had revealed his true abilities, meant that Turan had surpassed the level of an ordinary highest-tier noble.
At the very least, he was qualified to attempt such a move.
“So, what do you really want? I think we need to know that for this conversation to proceed.”
As if tired of probing, Talis directly struck at the core.
In response, Turan also immediately brought up the main point.
“I want friendly non-aggression with Zahar, and neutralization of the gray zone.”
“Friendly non-aggression and neutralization?”
“Yes. To put it simply, let’s just not interfere with each other. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad proposal.”
If Turan had been just an upper-rank noble as they had previously thought, this would have been a proposal not even worth considering.
A great family would naturally take thorough care of its members, so they would have subdued and dragged him away immediately.
But Talis had a rough idea of how powerful Turan currently was, and how formidable the force he had built up had become.
It had long passed the level where Zahar could crush them like insects.
To reconfirm this, Turan gave a slight eye signal to the two behind him and released his magical power.
It had been quite a while since he had shown his full power, not just a mediocre level.
As the might of three powerful individuals who surpassed even the highest-tier nobles filled the meeting room, everyone drew in a sharp breath.
“Gasp.”
“No, this is…”
Just as one feels pressure from being next to an immensely large creature even if it does nothing, some of the more sensitive nobles who detected the magical power complained of difficulty breathing.
Among them, the only one who remained unshaken, Talis, took another sip of tea and asked:
“Impressive. Where did you gather this much magical power?”
“It’s difficult to say precisely because the sources are so varied. We traveled around and hunted many magical beasts…”
“And you must have killed many people as well.”
Instead of answering this probing question, Turan chose silence.
This silence was also a kind of demonstration.
It carried the meaning: we possess such powerful strength—do you really want to be hostile?
Shortly after, Talis looked around and said:
“I’d like to speak with you alone for a moment. Is that alright?”
“Of course. It would be troublesome for everyone to leave, so we’ll move instead.”
The two left the conference room together and headed toward the office on the upper floor.
On the way, Turan suddenly turned and grabbed Talis’s hand, which had been following behind.
“I saw everything.”
“…I can’t seem to get away with it.”
Talis, his wrist caught, instead of reacting angrily, laughed helplessly and opened his clenched fist.
In his palm were several strands of hair that he seemed to have swiped during the meeting.
Judging by one being long and red and the other short and silver, they were probably Meisa’s and Solif’s.
“I’d like us to maintain mutual courtesy. I won’t collect and store your hair either.”
“Fair enough.”
Having established this gentleman’s agreement, the two finally entered the office and sat facing each other.
Talis was the first to speak.
“Now that we’re alone, I’ll be blunt. How much do you know about the secret of souls?”
“I know that you are the surviving spirits of the ancient gods dwelling in the bodies of your descendants. Your leader is probably the Night Hunter. Arabion’s leader would be the Thunder Lord.”
Talis neither confirmed nor denied the deliberately incorrect answer Turan had provided.
“Then you must resent us, don’t you?”
“If my friends weren’t targets for body-switching, I wouldn’t have gotten involved.”
Turan said this while trying his best to empty his mind.
Between high-ranking Zahar nobles, it was virtually impossible to hide emotions.
They could detect each other’s feelings through scent.
Therefore, the important thing was to openly reveal emotions while subtly twisting their content.
Talis had probably included quite a few lies in what he had just said as well.
“Actually, we’re quite conflicted too. Whether we should crush you—more precisely, all of you—before you grow too large, or acknowledge and leave you be.”
“We don’t have grandiose goals like overthrowing the gods’ hegemony. We just want to survive.”
“But becoming our bodies isn’t survival, is it?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
Talis lightly cleared his throat with a “hmm” and tapped the desk with his finger.
Turan suddenly realized this habit was exactly the same as his own and clicked his tongue.
The being before him, regardless of being a vessel for some ancient god, was also Turan’s grandfather.
Whether such habits were influenced by the physical body or not was beside the point.
“Alright, I’ve heard you out. Personally, I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”
A positive response.
But typically, such responses were usually followed by negative main points.
“However, I think it lacks binding power to end with just words. You probably feel the same way.”
“What do you want?”
“I have a fairly good-looking granddaughter of the family head.”
Talis suggested in a casual tone that it would be good to strengthen their bond through marriage.