Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 174
Chapter 174
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Discord
The northeastern part of the world, the so-called Frostwind Forest with its subarctic climate, naturally has thicker walls and windows in its buildings compared to other regions.
Of course, for mages, especially nobles, such cold is nothing, but noble houses aren’t inhabited only by nobles.
For this reason, the sound of Ruban family’s main gate collapsing didn’t reach those inside the buildings with much vividness.
Those who felt it most acutely were the few knights on night patrol.
“What the hell…”
“It’s an attack! An attack! Those Baraha bastards, no…”
The young Ruban knight stared blankly at his senior, who was muttering half-dazedly as if he’d heard that sound somewhere before.
What his terror-filled eyes were looking at wasn’t the present.
It was a few months ago, when they had invaded the southern Baraha lands as an expeditionary force.
The mysterious attacks that suddenly flew from invisible locations, driving dozens to their deaths…
Who was it that said it was the head of distant western Parsha flying over to save his friend?
The mysterious attacks pierced through barriers and defensive magical devices alike, carving deep scars into one side of their camp.
There was only one thing they could do.
Run north with their tails between their legs, praying that the attack would hit somewhere else, that they might see tomorrow’s sunrise as they went to sleep.
The familiar noise brought back the fear and helplessness they had felt then, making his whole body tremble.
“Are you alright, sir?”
“I’m fine, no, I’m not…”
While the young knight struggled to help his collapsed senior, lights began turning on throughout the previously dark buildings as Ruban nobles also started rising from their beds.
Having been awakened from deep sleep, they raised their voices with drowsy eyes.
“Prepare to fight back! Everyone act according to the emergency procedures!”
Having been beaten once when they attacked the Baraha family, Ruban had done some training for such situations.
Anyway, this wasn’t a massive invasion but this kind of surprise attack, so their numbers wouldn’t be large.
If they responded calmly, they could definitely hold them off—
“What the…?”
The Ruban noble’s eyes widened at the number of enemies entering through the distant gate.
Dozens, hundreds, two hundred, no, more than that.
Even if most of them were knight-level, wasn’t this close to the full force of a great family’s invasion?
How could such a force approach the capital Slon without anyone knowing? Did that make any sense?
While his brain froze at this incomprehensible reality, the invading enemies began firing magic in all directions.
* * *
“Save me, please save me!”
“Don’t retreat!”
“Surrender! If you don’t surrender, we’ll kill you all!”
The Ruban main house located in the center of Slon city.
It was literally a scene that perfectly fit the description of pandemonium.
Baraha mages’ pride—flame magic—poured out in all directions, burning buildings and brightly illuminating the dark night, while those who poured out from there repeatedly sought out and fled from figures difficult to distinguish as enemy or ally.
The war situation was naturally an overwhelming advantage for the Baraha-Parsha coalition forces.
This side had come in with perfect formation and mental preparation, taking the initiative, while the other side was suddenly being beaten while sound asleep.
Moreover, this side had about five hundred people with a fairly high ratio of nobles assembled as elites, while the opponent had only about five hundred with a ratio of nobles to knights of about one to ten.
After all, during wartime they would pull forces from vassal families to increase numbers, but in peacetime there would naturally be fewer.
Just then, a mid-tier noble who had rushed out without even properly equipping magical devices and tried to attack was brutally killed by the coordinated assault of a dozen knights.
“Kugh—”
Bang bang, one of the things making the battlefield chaotic was that sharp noise.
The Ruban noble who had been riddled with holes from a dozen shots opened his one remaining eye wide and tried to attack somehow, but before he could take even a few steps, he was completely silenced by another volley.
Firearms.
The prototype of what the Freya gods called the ultimate weapon of their original world made its debut on this very battlefield.
“Just a dozen knights hunting a noble with even the Guardian bloodline, how tremendous…”
“Actually, it was easy because the opponent didn’t know what our weapons were and had a close-combat bloodline.”
At Solif’s admiration, Turan glanced in that direction and shook his head.
For example, if Turan had faced those firearms while knowing about them, he could have neutralized them quite easily.
Just covering them with flames that didn’t contain much magical power would cause the gunpowder they were holding to explode.
Moreover, the fact that they were still difficult to manufacture due to technical problems was also a weakness.
Right now, many of the important parts were made with magical devices to roughly compensate for insufficient technology.
Therefore, among Parsha’s mages, only about a dozen with the most outstanding firearms handling skills had guns.
“Well, that’s a problem time will solve… Hey! You there! I told you not to kill children!”
Solif shouted sharply and immediately transformed the cloak on his back into a spear of light.
A Baraha knight who had been about to split an eleven or twelve-year-old child in half flinched and looked at his family head.
“You idiot! I’m sorry, I’ll maintain discipline!”
A Baraha noble who grabbed the knight’s head with a crunching sound and quickly bowed his head, causing Solif to click his tongue and turn away.
Watching this, Turan quietly comforted him.
“You’re working hard.”
“Well, I can’t say I don’t understand. The Ruban bastards did terrible things when they came down… Still, the children are innocent. It’s not like we can manage this place after wiping out those guys’ lineage.”
Unlike Baraha at its peak, maintaining public order in two regions with the number of mages reduced by more than half was nothing short of a delusion.
They were already having quite a bit of trouble just controlling the magical beasts emerging from one place in the Land of Lakes.
“Aaaaah!”
Just then, a Ruban family noble could be seen screaming at the top of her lungs as she fled.
A sturdy woman who appeared to be around thirty spread both hands, and ten claws made of black energy extended.
“What, a skill?”
“Indeed. We found one.”
Turan moved toward the Ruban god—probably half white elf inside—woman.
She had half-butchered an unlucky Baraha noble and was targeting a second when she saw Turan approaching and her eyes widened in shock.
She seemed to have recognized who he was.
“You…!”
Regardless of her reaction, Turan focused on the opponent’s inner symbols visible through his Holy Relic.
Ruban family’s symbols of History and Guardian, plus a purplish bubbling swamp—
“This one’s Shadow.”
“Get away from me!”
The unnamed half-elf screamed with a terrified expression and immediately turned to flee from him.
At this, Turan immediately reached out toward her.
“Bije.”
With a single mutter, the golden eagle that had been hiding in his body emerged from his fingertips.
The moment the meter-long golden eagle took flight with ominously glowing eyes, lightning struck down from the sky, hitting the fleeing woman.
“Ahhh!”
The woman looked back in shock and tried to counterattack, only to despair.
Dozens of meters in the air, at an unreachable distance between her and her opponent.
Flying Arabion was the greatest natural enemy of ground-crawling Ruban, and among all the skills she possessed as a god, there was nothing that could overcome this.
Actually, Turan had let Bije fight freely for this very reason.
Due to flying creatures’ characteristically weak durability, it was dangerous to deploy her against other powerful mages with strong firepower, but against Ruban nobles who could only do close combat, she was literally a natural enemy.
“Please, have mercy…”
“Kill her.”
If she had been an ordinary Ruban noble it might be different, but there was no mercy to spare for body snatchers.
Bije chirped cheerfully and continued dropping lightning.
Turan took out his jewel box over her half-charred corpse and collected her soul.
He could see the half-elf form, uglily distorted by the intertwining of two races’ spirits.
* * *
After about ten minutes of dealing with escaping Ruban nobles or accepting their surrender as prisoners throughout the main house.
Finally, the two families’ coalition forces arrived at the family head’s residence in the center of the main house.
Only by occupying this place and dealing with Ruban’s family head could the war truly be considered over.
“He didn’t run away, did he?”
“Yeah. Though he probably didn’t have time to escape anyway…”
Through the power of his Mimic Holy Relic, Turan could tell that Ruban’s family head had been holed up inside the main house from the beginning, not moving.
Had he prepared some plausible trap, or was he too dispirited to even flee?
Now, as they entered while finishing off the few remaining Ruban nobles, they could see that the latter was the answer.
“Hello, we meet again. You don’t look too good?”
“I can’t say I’m happy to see you.”
At Solif’s sarcasm, Ruban’s new family head, Calais, forced a smile as he looked at them.
When Solif had said before that he’d given him a few good hits too, Turan had thought it was just boasting, but seeing his current state, that didn’t seem to be the case.
From his barely standing posture to the smell of blood wafting from various parts of his bandages.
If a mage with family-head-level magical power had difficulty with even that level of movement, he must have truly been at death’s door when originally injured.
After all, if he hadn’t been injured to that extent, Berit wouldn’t have just watched as she rescued the dying Solif.
Compared to Calais in his half-dead state, Turan and Solif were in perfect condition.
They had at most captured and killed or accepted the surrender of half a dozen top-tier Ruban nobles they encountered along the way, so they hadn’t particularly lost any magical power.
After confirming that others had withdrawn around them in preparation for the gods’ confrontation, Turan questioned Calais.
“Will you surrender?”
“Can I ask first if you’ll spare me if I surrender?”
“If there’s a way to return that body, I wouldn’t mind sparing you.”
Personally, Calais had seemed like a not-bad person, so if possible, he wanted to save him.
As a bonus, if that were possible, they might also be able to save others dominated by the gods.
At Turan’s words, Calais’s eyes gleamed cunningly as if grasping at hope for life.
“That’s not impossible. Though it would be somewhat difficult…”
“No good then. Can’t be helped.”
“What?”
Calais looked momentarily dumbfounded at the too-decisive cutting tone.
Of course, Turan could give such a definitive answer because he had the Eye of Truth activated.
The color of ugly lies was pouring from that mouth—how dare he try to deceive him.
The attack began as soon as Calais’s question ended.
As before, Solif’s Sun Cloak wrapped in white flames thrust forward in the form of a spear, and when he barely managed to block it, Turan’s attack came next.
Storm bloodline skill, Wind Blade.
With a slicing sound, his trapezius was deeply cut and blood flowed down.
“Wait, just—!”
Even while crying out desperately, Calais immediately drew upon the combination of four bloodlines.
History, Guardian, Berserker, and the form of a screaming woman.
As the four harmonized, Calais opened his mouth wide and let out a roar, but—
“Oh, this really blocks it?”
Solif giggled as if finding it amusing.
The roar Calais unleashed couldn’t spread further from around him, so it had no effect on the two of them.
This was because Turan had used wind magic to block the progression of air itself, which would serve as the medium for sound.
Of course, if he had simply tried to block it, it would have been pierced due to skills’ characteristic superiority over magic, but Turan used a light trick.
Instead of completely blocking the sound, he redirected it toward the distant sky.
Presumably, if there had been a bird flying somewhere in that high sky, it would now be crashing from an unexpected sonic attack.
“Kugh!”
Just because his trump card didn’t work didn’t mean he could just despair.
Calais suppressed pain with his skill and displayed amazing strength and reflexes to attack Turan, but the moment the shining gauntlet struck his body, it scattered and disappeared as if dissolving.
“…Substitution clone?”
This was definitely one of the assassin class skills—
“Kuk!”
Not missing the revealed opening, Solif transformed his Sun Cloak into a whip and cut off both hands.
Ruban’s pride, the Holy Relic Dragon’s Roar, fell from his body.
Without even time to groan at that dizzying helplessness, Turan emerged from below the vanished clone and directly created Judgment’s Light to wrap around Calais’s neck.
* * *
[“Attention Ruban mages! Your leader is dead! All surrender! I repeat! Ruban mages—”]
In the middle of the battlefield filled with roaring flames and flashing lights, the thunderous noise of firearms and lightning.
Turan’s voice, amplified by wind magic, could exert sufficient influence even in such a space.
Hearing this, Ruban’s mages unconsciously felt their hands drop, and eventually, seeing the corpse floating in the middle of the distant family head’s residence, they completely lost their will to fight.
Though all of Ruban family trained hard, there weren’t many with that over-two-meter height and overwhelming muscular build.
“The family head…”
“Damn it.”
Those with functioning minds had already guessed this would happen.
With dozens of Baraha nobles present, their family head couldn’t be absent, and judging by the earlier thunderous noise, Parsha’s family head had probably come too.
Even if his physical condition had been perfect, it would be difficult to face two family heads from the same great family, and everyone knew Calais was seriously injured.
The violent noise from the family head’s residence had probably been the sound of them fighting.
“Now, those surrendering should all wear this! Any Ruban mage not wearing this will be considered non-surrendering and executed!”
Parsha and Baraha mages fitted those who surrendered with handcuff-type magical devices.
A type of magical device that suppressed the magical power of the restrained person.
It wasn’t as high-grade as the chains used by those who had gone to subdue Solif before, so top-tier nobles could resist it sufficiently, but most of Ruban’s top-tier nobles had died in this battle anyway.
While the surviving Ruban mages gathered in the central plaza with helpless expressions wearing restraints, Turan and Solif searched the family head’s residence for anything useful.
“First, we need to find out where their soul base is.”
“Probably underground. I’ve never seen these guys use anywhere other than underground for such places.”
Of course, underground space itself was the safest place from external interference.
If you made such a space above ground, it couldn’t help but be noticed somehow.
While Solif had the knights who came with him gather and analyze all useful documents, Turan entered the jewel box with a few reliable Parsha nobles as guards.
[Hello? Ah, come to think of it, you probably aren’t happy to see me.]
Like Lesion and the Baraha gang, Ruban’s half-elves also had white, distorted appearances.
Unlike before, Turan gathered them all in one place and immediately got to business.
Tell him where their soul base was.
[…Why should we tell you that?]
[Because if you don’t, I’ll tear you apart.]
Shaking Kadram’s soul fragments a few times as he had done with Jemel was quite effective.
However, unlike that time, he couldn’t get an immediate answer, because everyone was looking at Calais.
[It seems you were definitely playing the leader role, drug addict.]
[You, really are Otas—]
[Think what you want. So, everyone seems to be watching this guy’s reaction. Should I deal with you first? Anyway, if I absorb soul fragments, I can peek at memories, so it doesn’t really matter. Though it would be a bit unpleasant.]
Of course, actually absorbing soul fragments was much more unpleasant and dangerous than expected, so he had no intention of doing it.
He’d just pretend to absorb while bluffing and tear apart a few, then someone among the remainder would cooperate.
From experience, there weren’t many among these so-called gods with that kind of backbone.
As Turan slowly approached Calais’s spirit form, another half-elf screamed.
[I’ll talk! I’ll tell you, so don’t hurt him!]
[Bartelesina!]
[I’m sorry, Your Highness. But how could I watch you get hurt.]
Turan observed their conversation with somewhat bewildered feelings.
Through his experiences, he had learned that these so-called Freya gods had quite horizontal hierarchical structures.
While there might be power relationships due to differences in strength or knowledge, having lived together for thousands of years, they treated each other more as colleagues than as lord and subordinate.
He didn’t know well, but it was probably also related to the ‘democracy’ that supposedly dominated their world.
But that polite tone and the title “Your Highness” didn’t seem like the gods’ style.
Could it be…
[Don’t tell me you guys had white elf essence predominant over human?]
All the half-elves flinched at this.
So that was it—there was such a difference from the Baraha side.
But why exactly? What was different between the two?
Turan inwardly harbored such questions while poking the spirit form that had spoken earlier with a blade he created.
[Ah!]
[You said you’d talk, right? Tell me quickly. Otherwise, your prince will be torn to shreds.]
[No, please…]
Calais—or rather, the self-proclaimed white elf prince occupying his body—pleaded, but the half-elf called Bartelesina soon honestly revealed the truth.
About a hundred kilometers north of Slon, descending into an underground cave.
Compared to Baraha’s secret space created through spatial movement, it was utterly shabby.
Of course, there were some measures in place for entering the interior.
[I’ll check. If it’s true, I’ll spare you for now.]
[Wait—]
Ignoring Calais who tried to say something, Turan locked each of Ruban’s half-elves in separate prisons and returned to his physical body.
Without his permission, they could no longer exchange even a single word with each other.
“Found it.”
“Where?”
“They hid it in a physically distant place. I’ll go quickly and come back. There isn’t much time.”
“Ah, right. Go ahead.”
Though they had taken various measures, the Parsha main house in Kalamaf was in an extremely vulnerable defensive state.
There were many things to do immediately, like returning to restore the Jade Mirror connection and bringing the army back.
Most importantly, they had to return within three or four days to share the magical power contained in Calais’s corpse with Meisa.
There was also the method of waiting for him to become undead and beating him again, but that wouldn’t increase the magical power they could absorb, and they didn’t know what setbacks they might face against Calais, who might be stronger than when alive, so there was no need to take such risks.
After instructing Parsha’s mages to follow Solif, he mounted Bije and immediately flew north.
Flying for about ten minutes, he finally saw the mountain that long-named half-elf had mentioned.
For Bije, about a hundred kilometers was a distance she could cover in that time even while carrying Turan.
“Is this it?”
Flying around the mountain peak, he soon found a cave visible from above.
A location with all kinds of defensive systems set up with magical devices that had barrier effects from the entrance—making it look even more suspicious.
But for Turan, who had already heard all the methods to break through, it was a meaningless security system.
Though even without knowing the methods, he could have broken through with force.
After confidently breaking through several barriers and special defensive facilities.
Having broken through the last barrier, Turan frowned at the alien presence he felt from the other side.
‘This is…’
A presence similar to humans but somewhat alien.
It felt similar to the dark elves he had encountered before, but also somewhat different.
Could it be?
The moment he entered and faced them, Turan could understand why Calais had been screaming so desperately to prevent him from entering this place.
“A human?”
“It’s a human!”
“How did you get here?”
“Could it be that His Highness sent you…?”
A tribe with skin completely different from humans’ white skin—unnaturally white like marble—and ears split vertically up and down.
What might be the last remaining group of white elves in this world was before his eyes.