Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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“Everyone, gather here.”
Halfway up the hill at dusk, the sheep grazing leisurely gathered at Turan’s single command.
They moved in perfect unison without any barking sheepdog guiding the way or shepherd’s staff poking their sides.
It was the result of magical power at work.
According to what he had learned over the past eight years, magic had three main characteristics.
First, when you strongly desire something, it is accomplished using magic power as payment.
Second, directly speaking what you want makes it easier and consumes less magic power.
And third, the more difficult the desired wish, the more power it consumes – or becomes impossible altogether.
The condition of ‘difficulty’ here wasn’t very clear.
Sometimes it was surprisingly generous, granting things that seemed too easy, and sometimes it was stingy, refusing seemingly simple requests.
It was the same when fighting the leopard masu a few days ago.
Even a command to stop, which was far simpler than instant death, barely worked on it.
Yet he could easily control over a hundred ordinary sheep simultaneously.
In contrast, imbuing the sling stone with enough power and speed to crush its head, and ensuring it would hit, was laughably simple.
Calculating the amount of power consumed then, Turan could have made hundreds of such attacks…
Lost in thought while herding all the sheep into the barn, he caught the faint smell of blood from far away.
Like when he detected Labus’s death a few days ago.
But according to his keen sense of smell, it wasn’t human blood. Not sheep or leopard either…
‘Wolf?’
The blood smell seemed just like that of the wolf he had killed and butchered about a year ago.
As expected, shortly after, he saw Keorn walking with the setting sun at his back, carrying a dead wolf on his shoulder.
“Good evening, Turan. Would it be alright if I stayed at your house tonight? I thought I’d pay with this wolf.”
A wolf was quite good game.
The hide could be sold to the villagers, and while the meat wasn’t as good as livestock, it wasn’t bad either.
In fact, it was more than enough payment for one night’s lodging.
Turan nodded.
“There shouldn’t be many wolves around here – how far did you go?”
Thanks to Turan attacking wolf packs whenever he spotted them during his patrols over the past few years, carnivores had been practically extinct in this area for a long time.
Besides, the Hisaril hills were such a desolate place that not many animals lived here to begin with.
“Found it while looking around near the Sky Mountains.”
The Sky Mountains referred to the mountain range that stretched up to the sky, literally as its name suggested, even further west from the Hisaril hills at the western edge of the world.
Some called it the Great Wall, as it truly resembled an insurmountable barrier that humans could never cross.
“It must take days just to reach the foothills…”
“Half a day was enough with my pace.”
Turan wasn’t particularly surprised since he could do the same if he wanted to.
He just raised his internal guard, thinking this magician wasn’t just a braggart after all.
Shortly after, the two sat around a bonfire lit in front of the house, enjoying wolf meat stew for dinner.
Keorn whistled while looking up at the sky.
“The stars are really bright here.”
“Mother told me these hills are among the highest lands in the world. Except for the Sky Mountains in the west, that is.”
“What place could be high compared to those? Visiting there today made me marvel anew. Even nobles probably couldn’t cross them easily.”
“I heard nobles have godlike powers – couldn’t they easily cross mountain ranges?”
“Not all of them. The heads of great houses might be truly godlike, but…”
Keorn boasted about once seeing the head of House Arabion crush a small hill with just a gesture.
“Oh…”
Turan suddenly felt embarrassed hearing this.
He sometimes fantasized that since his power was stronger than expected, maybe it was on par with nobles.
Now hearing this, his abilities were truly insignificant compared to real nobles.
“But don’t you get lonely living alone in a place like this?”
“Well, yes. But I’m used to it now.”
“Why not bring a wife from the village?”
“What woman would want to spend her life herding sheep in a place like this?”
“I think quite a few girls would like to live with a handsome young man like you?”
Turan smiled awkwardly at Keorn’s teasing.
When he was young, there were some girls in the village who followed him around saying they liked him, but after his mother died and he fought with the village, all contact was cut off.
They must have realized the reality too.
That marrying Turan meant living like an exile in these desolate hills for life.
“Well, don’t think too much about it. Who knows? Maybe some passing girl will become your destiny.”
Of course, considering Keorn was the only traveler to visit in 18 years, it was an unlikely story.
After exchanging a few more idle conversations, both men silently watched the bonfire for a while.
Turan was the first to break the silence.
“Why are you doing all this?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know what the village chief promised, but with your skills, you could earn more money much more easily.”
In any village, if you stayed and declared you would protect the place, demanding wealth and women in return, who would dare refuse?
It would be hundreds of times easier and simpler than spending all day in the dust and staying at a shepherd’s house just to catch one masu.
Someone who could catch a wolf from the Sky Mountains in half a day clearly had sufficient ability…
Moreover, it wasn’t like the villagers deserved such kindness.
He was staying at Turan’s house because the village charged excessive lodging fees to begin with.
If Turan were in Keorn’s situation, he would have destroyed all the village buildings, taken the money, and left.
“They’re pitiful people.”
“In what way?”
“Living day by day in fear at the frontier without a magician’s protection.”
The old knight sat across from Turan and explained in a fatherly tone.
While the area around Hisaril hills was relatively peaceful due to its desolation, countless masu roamed the mountains and fields of the fertile lands below, preying on people.
As one who inherited divine power, a magician’s pride was in protecting powerless commoners from masu, and though he no longer served a house, he couldn’t just ignore it.
This was quite different from what Turan had heard from his mother.
Hadn’t she said nobles were oppressors and exploiters, and knights were merely laborers working under them…?
Perhaps reading his puzzled expression, the old knight grinned and offered him a cup of sheep’s milk.
“Well, not everyone thinks like me. There are as many thoughts as there are people in the world.”
* * *
The next morning, Turan was lost in thought while cleaning the barn with a simple gesture.
He was thinking about last night’s conversation.
‘Pride…’
Turan had received quite a shock from that conversation.
To think that knights weren’t just slaves submitting to noble power, but could be beings who found fulfillment in protecting commoners?
Learning this fact didn’t make him want to go beg some noble to employ him, but it did open his mind a little.
At least to the extent that living under nobles might not be so bad if there were people like that…
‘By the way, how should I tell him the masu is already dead.’
Originally he had planned to let him wander around and leave, but he didn’t want to let a good person like Keorn waste time in such a desolate place.
The problem was that several days had passed since he had thrown the masu’s corpse into a deep valley.
Not only would it be a chore to find and bring back that rotting corpse, but it would clearly show traces of Turan’s magic.
Needless to say, if anyone were looking for a magician in this area, Turan would be the most suspicious person.
Sighing and waving his hand, all the sheep’s droppings and urine in the barn flew to the back yard.
Once that dried in the hill’s arid climate, it would make good fuel for the fireplace.
After finishing the cleaning, he had some time left.
‘Should I go look for the elder…’
If he had gone far like yesterday it would be impossible to find him, but he had said he would patrol more around the hills today, so it should be possible to check.
Turan lightly concentrated his mind and chanted while floating above the roof.
“Human search.”
With the spell, Turan’s perception expanded rapidly.
His vision, which could only see about a hundred meters, instantly expanded to the point where he could distinguish grass growing kilometers away, and his sense of smell and hearing amplified even more, catching the rustling of insect legs nearby and faint formic acid smells.
But these amplified senses blocked out all unnecessary information, focusing only on finding ‘humans.’
‘Where… huh?’
While looking around and listening, Turan suddenly turned his head at a voice.
His enhanced vision showed Keorn.
Bleeding from his forehead and shoulder, panting…
Opposite him, the leopard masu that Turan had killed days ago was roaring with its half-rotted body.
* * *
‘Who would do such a thing…’
Keorn gritted his teeth looking at the dead masu’s revenant.
Most living beings instinctively crave life at the moment of death, and magic, the key to omnipotence, forcibly revives the broken body to fulfill its master’s will – this is called a revenant.
Because of this, after killing magicians and masu, it was rule to either absorb or disperse the magic contained in their corpses.
But whoever killed this leopard masu either didn’t know this rule or intentionally ignored it.
If it had been a masu, it would have instinctively eaten its killed enemy to absorb the magic, so it must have been a magician.
Judging by the hole in its head, someone skilled in projectile spells.
[■■■■–!!]
The roar from its rotting vocal cords echoed countless times in the air like a dead man’s cry.
Considering what it was, that wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Take this!”
With a shout, arrows of light shot from Keorn’s hand.
Though powerful enough to easily pierce steel armor, the arrows helplessly scattered upon contact with the shadows covering the leopard’s body.
It meant the magic enveloping its body was far superior to Keorn’s arrow spell.
After neutralizing one attack like this, the leopard, as if to counter magic with magic, melted into the ground and instantly materialized from Keorn’s shadow behind him.
Though he hurriedly raised both arms to defend, hot blood spurted from his forearm caught by sharp claws.
This was mild thanks to his body being tempered by magic – for an ordinary person, it would have been enough to tear off their arm and torso.
‘This… isn’t something a knight can handle. At least a lower noble would be needed-‘
Though revenants become several times stronger through resurrection due to grudges, if even Keorn, an experienced knight, could barely face it, it must have been a powerful masu in life too.
Who on earth killed such a creature and abandoned it?
What was their intention?
[Grrrr-]
The revenant, thinking its prey was caught, approached Keorn while growling leisurely.
The old knight sensed death and gritted his teeth while preparing a final counterattack.
When it pounced, if he could channel all his magic power directly into it with his hand, there might be a sliver of hope…
Making such grave preparations proved unnecessary as a flash of light flew in from far away.
So fast it broke the sound barrier, making it impossible to detect through hearing-
A round stone shattered the revenant’s rotting head to pieces.