Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 152

Chapter 152

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About a month after the Parsha-Ravitas coalition forces occupied Baraha.

The Land of Five Lakes, the region controlled by Baraha, was beginning to regain some stability after a period of chaos.

Of course, things weren’t exactly as they had been before.

The recent war had drastically reduced the number of Baraha mages, making it impossible to allocate mages to remote areas beyond the core regions.

Dozens of small villages near the foggy eastern border were destroyed by magical beast attacks, and an entire city was annihilated—mere trifles to a ruler.

Though for those directly affected, it meant the collapse of their entire lives.

As this stabilization process continued, a delegation arrived in Helio, the capital of Baraha.

They were from Ruban, the great family to the north.

* * *

“We have come from Ruban to request compensation as per our agreement.”

“Compensation?”

“The previous head of Baraha promised to cede the northwestern Garam region and the warship Galepiosa in exchange for dispatching 21 Ruban nobles. Having inherited the Baraha name, we believe it is your duty to honor this agreement.”

In the reception hall of the Temple of the Sun.

Solif, the new head of Baraha, clicked his tongue as he looked at the woman before him who was making such outrageous demands.

The Garam region she mentioned was an area with high-quality iron mines that had once been offered as ransom for Solif himself.

And the warship Galepiosa was the enchanted vessel Lesion had used to travel to Ravitas.

“Are you serious? Have you forgotten who your troops were fighting against? You’re demanding compensation from me for a contract that hindered me? Have you lost your mind?”

“Family Head, please maintain a more dignified tone—”

“That person is infuriating me! Do I look like I can speak with dignity right now?”

An elderly Baraha noble who had been cautiously trying to restrain Solif backed away with a startled “eek” at his harsh response.

While Baraha had once been the most obsessed with formality and etiquette among the great families, that tradition had significantly declined since Solif’s ascension.
… After all, when the family head himself behaved this way, what else could be expected?

Facing such a Solif, the woman who had come as Ruban’s envoy continued her shocking statements without so much as blinking.

“The master of Ruban has decided not to seek blood payment for the main house nobles who died in that battle. We sincerely hope that Baraha will respond to this goodwill in kind.”

“My goodness.”

“Is she insane?”

Even the Baraha nobles who had been trying to maintain their dignity couldn’t help but be disturbed by these words.

This was practically a declaration of war.

Recognizing this fact, Solif, who had been fuming moments ago, now asked with a calmer face:

“Just state your business plainly. What do you want? Are you looking for a fight?”

“If the head of Baraha refuses to honor his predecessor’s contract, we will have no choice but to collect by force.”

“So you do want to fight. You should have just said so from the beginning.”

With this brief response, the atmosphere in the reception hall instantly grew heavy.

The head of a great family.

This was the effect of the anger of one of the world’s few strongest beings being directly reflected in his magical power.

“Urgh……”

In truth, it would normally be absurd for a family head to personally attend such a diplomatic event.

Typically, one of his trusted subordinates would handle it.

Yet Solif was handling these matters personally because he not only lacked trust in the nobles of the Baraha main house but also had no trusted subordinates he had personally cultivated.

“Fine, I’ll give you the sugar-coated answer you want. Lesion was a complete bastard, and the new Baraha that stands after capturing and killing him doesn’t give a damn about the idiotic contracts he made. If that bothers you, come fight us.”

“……I will convey your message.”

As he watched the retreating noble, Solif suddenly thought:

If he killed this person now, it might give them a slight advantage when war eventually broke out.

Upon having this thought, he realized it was identical to the kind of thinking his closest friend often engaged in.
… Had his way of thinking become similar because they had spent so much time together, or was it because they had recently removed all those needles from his head?

“Have I been infected?”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Anyway, you all heard that, right? Prepare for war!”

At Solif’s words, the faces of the gathered Baraha nobles darkened.

After suffering all manner of calamities over the past few years, their family’s military strength could hardly be called impressive, even as a polite fiction.

The upper and highest-tier nobles who had formed the backbone of the family’s forces had been virtually annihilated.

While a fair number of mid to lower-tier nobles remained, their forces were too meager to boast of being a proud, unblemished great family.

Considering how difficult it was to recover the magical power lost in the recent war, it would take at least one to two hundred years—three or four generations—to restore their former glory.

And now they were going to wage another war with a neighboring great family in this state?

“Um, Family Head. Might we receive support from other families…?”

“Ravitas is out of the question, but we should be able to get support from Parsha. I’ll look into the details.”

“Understood.”

The reason they couldn’t resist the new family head wasn’t merely because he was Baraha’s strongest member and a powerhouse equal to the former head Lesion.

Turan Parsha.

The master of the newly established great family Parsha and a great mage who had earned the nickname “Invisible Blade” during the recent battle south of Helio.

Everyone knew that this immensely powerful being stood as Baraha’s patron and de facto ruler.

After all, Solif had openly acknowledged that he always considered and consulted with Parsha when making major family decisions.

Because of this, many lamented that the great Baraha had fallen to become a subordinate of another great family, but some actually viewed this positively.

At least they now had someone to lean on in times of crisis, like the present situation.

After the meeting ended, Solif returned to his quarters, sealed the entrance, and recited a magical incantation in his study.
… “Om amogha vai… Ah, this damn thing is so hard to memorize.”

There was a minor mishap where he forgot part of the incantation and had to check his notes, but eventually, Solif crossed through space and arrived at a secret underground chamber beneath Helio City.

Passing through the massive mirror installed there, he suddenly emerged in the basement of Kalamaf, the capital of the Parsha family far to the northwest in the gray zone.

Opening a magically locked door, he saw a merman floating in a large bathtub.

“Taking a bath again?”

“My body’s been feeling a bit dry lately.”

Greeting the merman boy Armani, Solif couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

The head of a great family had used a spatial portal hidden in his private quarters to travel to the capital of another great family, and the one guarding this passage was a merman who could transform into a Giant Sea Serpent?

Would he have believed such a scene could exist if someone had told him a few years ago?

“Where’s Turan?”

“I heard he went to a meeting. I didn’t realize it before, but strong demons are incredibly busy. Though my father was always busy too.”

Though Armani could now freely move about wearing the mask Asiz had made for him, he preferred to rest in Turan’s quarters, the safest place available.

This had led to unsavory rumors that Armani wasn’t Turan’s relative as previously rumored, but his male concubine—though no one really cared about such things, so it wasn’t a major issue.

“I’ll be going then, see you later.”

“I won’t see you later because I’m going to sleep.”

“The sun is still high in the sky, what sleep?”

After exchanging this trivial banter and parting ways, Solif left the family head’s quarters and walked down the corridor.

Servants and mages passing by bowed their heads in greeting.

“Good day, Military Commander.”

“Good afternoon.”

No one seemed to find it strange that the head of Baraha was freely walking around the Parsha family mansion.
… This was inevitable, as a month was far too short a time for news of the events in the eastern Land of Five Lakes to spread here.

Information about the war and the change in Baraha’s leadership had only spread rapidly among the upper echelons who could quickly gather intelligence.

To ordinary people, Solif was simply a family dependent who appeared and disappeared every few days.

‘Actually, I prefer it this way.’

Though he had claimed the position of Baraha’s head out of necessity, Solif was naturally more suited to this kind of role.

A position with few major rights but also few major responsibilities, one he could shed at any moment and walk away from.

Even if he deliberately acted informally, as the head of a great family, his behavior was inevitably constrained to some degree.

He could no longer hide his face and frequent gambling halls or drink merrily with strangers in taverns as he once had.

Of course, this wasn’t the time to complain about such things.

Even though they had diligently built up their strength, the enemy was still powerful and numerous.

Lost in thought as he walked, Solif finally reached his destination.

The office of the Parsha family head.

Though he normally should have knocked carefully and waited for permission to enter, Solif calmly opened the door and walked in.

“Good morning.”

“We’ve already had lunch, what morning? What brings you here? You should still be in Baraha at this hour.”

“Something came up.”

After greeting Turan, who was busy shuffling through documents, Solif threw himself onto the nearby sofa.

Seeing this, Turan frowned slightly and said:

“You’re getting dust everywhere.”

“It’s not that bad… More importantly, Ruban is picking a fight with us. They want to battle.”

Could there be a more casual way to announce an impending war between great families?

Matching Solif’s nonchalant attitude, Turan replied just as calmly:

“Them too?”
… “What do you mean ‘them too’? Don’t tell me you’ve received news as well?”

“Zahar wants to meet face-to-face for a proper discussion. About recent events.”

Turan used telekinetic magic to send the document he was holding flying toward the reclining Solif.

After reading it, Solif let out a soft exclamation.

“A meeting between family heads…?”

“Yes. They want to meet directly at the border between the gray zone and the Enril Desert. Considering the travel distance, they’ve made something of a concession.”

Normally, even the heads of ordinary mage families rarely left their cities, making meetings difficult, and this was even more true for the heads of great families.

Unless they were at war, they might never meet face-to-face in their lifetimes.

Of course, Turan and Solif could meet and talk whenever they wanted like this, but that was only thanks to the ability of Armani’s Jade Mirror.

Without it, and without a superior means of transportation like Bije, even they would find it difficult to travel for one or two months just to see a friend’s face.

“This smells suspicious. They’re not planning to lure you out and ambush you, are they? After what Lesion did, I can’t help but think in that direction.”

“I’ve already proposed a three-way meeting because of that concern. With Ravitas joining us.”

“Oh.”

“Of course, we can’t rely solely on that for safety, so I’m planning to take various precautions. We should also resolve the conflict with Ruban that you mentioned before then. So we can receive support from Baraha if necessary.”

This proposal also had the effect of delaying the meeting time.

Currently, Osel was returning to his base on his family’s warship through the Southern Sea.

After he returned to his main house, dealt with accumulated work, and traveled back up to the border between the gray zone and the Enril Desert, it would take at least another two or three months.

“Well, at least you’ll get to see your great-grandfather’s face. Caesar, was it? Or Nazi?”

“They call him both. The former is somewhat respectful, while the latter is derogatory.”

Turan had learned the general meaning of these two words from Lesion and the other half-elves of Baraha.

Though he hadn’t been able to fully grasp the historical background behind them, he understood their general connotations.

As they continued talking, Turan suddenly exclaimed “Ah!” and handed over another document.

“You should take a look at this.”

“What is it?”

“News from the spies we sent north.”

A few months after the establishment of the Parsha family.

Turan had finally managed to set up a minimal intelligence network through several nearby mage families.

What greatly helped in this was one of the abilities of the Nagin bloodline—the power as a Beast Handler.

Though not as intelligent and powerful as Bije, if they could tame birds of prey with reasonable capabilities, they were sufficient as means of communication.

Normally, the binding power of a soul contract increased the sense of pressure and obedience felt by the magical beast according to the power of the intervening handler.

With someone of a great family head’s caliber personally arranging these contracts, Parsha’s spies had access to birds that were remarkably more obedient than those used by others.

“…Giant Sea Serpents?”

“That’s right. Armani’s relatives have made quite a move.”

Solif let out what might have been an exclamation or a sigh as he read the news from the spy.

It contained information that Avaccha, the capital of Carmine, had been half-destroyed by an attack from Giant Sea Serpents.

* * *

East-central Enril Desert, the capital Aksum.

This ancient city, notorious as Zahar’s stronghold for thousands of years, didn’t appear at first glance to be built in the middle of a desert.

Fields of green in all directions, air that felt almost humid, and a large lake visible just outside the city.

This was the result of thousands of years of effort by Zahar nobles to make this city more habitable.

After thousands of years of powerful mages exerting their influence, what had originally been nearly barren land had gained an environment capable of supporting a metropolis with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.

In the deepest part of Aksum.

In the only completely dark chamber, two people were conversing.

“He said to meet in about four months? As I’ve felt before, your grandson has quite the nerve. To dare postpone a request from the head of Zahar according to his own preferences.”

“I don’t think we need to give him that time. If Ravitas’s head participates as stated, things will become troublesome, and who knows what tricks he might play in that time.”

In response to Talis’s words, the elderly man sitting across from him shook his head.

“There’s no need to be so calculating. If his identity is as I suspect, four months won’t make any difference in his ability to resist, and if not, we’ll crush him easily regardless.”

A low voice accompanied by a grinding sound.

The elderly man was grinding dried leaves in a small mortar as he sat.

“More importantly, is the Lawyer faction’s lack of cooperation an excuse or the truth?”

“At least the partial destruction of Avaccha is real. Though we can’t rule out the possibility that it’s staged.”

“I wish we could plant more capable spies… Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. They’re putting considerable effort into counterintelligence as well.”

With a quiet complaint, the elderly man rose—surprisingly tall and robust in build.

Even Talis, who was standing right next to him and was not particularly short, was about half a head shorter.

The elderly man’s eyes gleamed sharply as he spoke.

“Accept the request. We’ll meet at the border between the desert and the gray zone in four months.”

“Do you really think that he is ‘that’?”

Talis’s somewhat evasive tone contained a hint of fear.

As if he didn’t even want to mention that existence.

Sensing this, the head of Zahar grinned and deliberately brought up the very word Talis was trying to avoid.

“Until the invasion of Baraha, it was just in the realm of suspicion, but… now I’m half-convinced. That Turan Parsha is the reincarnation of Otas. When we meet and talk, I’ll know for certain.”