Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 24
Chapter 24
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Afterward, despite continued questioning and torture, Obil only rambled incoherently without revealing meaningful information.
To questions about which god told him, he only repeated “It was a god,” and to questions about who else was like him, just “I’ve seen several.”
He was either not of sound mind, or clearly pretending while looking for a chance to escape.
Turan suspected it was the latter.
If he truly wasn’t in his right mind, he would have instinctively tried to use magic power to break the vines and died by Turan’s hand.
Since there was no reason to keep him alive either way, and maintaining the restraints was consuming a lot of magic power, Turan briefly exchanged gestures with Bisen before slitting Obil’s throat with the dagger.
Watching this, Gil, the youngest of Bisen’s group, frowned.
“Ugh…”
“What’s wrong?”
“No, just…”
As he muttered that killing someone who couldn’t resist while tied up felt unsettling like butchering, Bisen sighed and reprimanded him.
“Don’t say such foolish things. We could all have died here if things went wrong, and you feel sympathy? Besides, thinking of how many people he killed, even making him suffer more before death wouldn’t be enough!”
“Though dealing with a noble of this skill level would be difficult anyway.”
Kebek the healer added.
As he said, there weren’t many ways to subdue a magician, especially a noble, who was determined to die fighting.
Even with eyes and hands restrained, they could still create fire anywhere and shoot it in all directions.
To prevent this, you’d need either magical devices that suppress magic power – which were extremely rare – or direct suppression by a noble several levels more powerful.
Or continuously stunning them with lightning spells or physical blows could work too.
That’s why Turan had deliberately used a troublesome method of restraint instead of immediately crippling Obil.
He figured if he mutilated the body right away, Obil would struggle desperately thinking he couldn’t survive anyway instead of answering questions.
While Bisen’s group chatted, Turan wiped the blood from his dagger and opened a notebook he had picked up beside the bedding.
Inside were detailed maps of the surrounding area, attack plans, and numbers of people killed.
He probably wanted to gauge how many he had killed and what his target number was, and this could serve as evidence that Obil was the Burner.
If this wasn’t enough, they could also call the girl rescued from the village as a witness.
Also, in the back of this notebook were several unknown formulas written down.
Given the names of plants and minerals written, they seemed to be recipes for the liquids placed in the corner of the open space.
When asked about these, Obil had likewise only answered “The gods told me.”
Thinking it might be a clue to the identity of these “gods,” Turan committed the notebook’s contents to memory.
As he put away the finished notebook, Bisen approached him.
“Then, now…”
“Let’s absorb.”
Turan, Bisen, Gil, and Asha – four people gathered around the dead Burner’s corpse.
While healer Kebek stepped back with a regretful expression and sighed, the four extended their hands and pale green light began flowing from Obil’s body.
Shortly after, they felt power flowing through their bodies transforming their flesh.
Stronger bodies, sharper senses, more powerful magic…
After absorption was complete, they gathered evidence like the Burner’s severed head and robe before leaving the cave.
Since the Burner had mainly operated around the outskirts of a city called Marob, Turan and Bisen’s group went to Marob City Hall the next morning to claim the bounty.
The officials were flustered at the nobles rushing in together, and shortly after the lord came out personally to greet them.
“Congratulations, Lady Bisen. A new star has risen in the Karmaine family.”
“You flatter me.”
Amusingly, upon arrival they found evidence to prove Obil’s identity wasn’t really needed.
This was because Marob’s lord didn’t want to get into disputes with a magician from a not-too-distant great family.
He might have calculated that if the captured Burner was fake and incidents continued, he could use that to incur debt instead.
After being hosted as guests in Marob city for a day, the total bounty received was 1,500 gold coins.
Since they had agreed to split the bounty fairly in exchange for magic power, Turan’s share was originally 300 coins, but after final adjustments he received half the total at 750 coins.
Though in combat Turan had done almost everything, they considered Asha’s contribution in tracking and Bisen’s name value in receiving the bounty.
‘This is way too much…’
The problem was the volume and mass of these 750 gold coins.
He had long since disposed of the old sheepskin bag he used when first coming down from the hill, and now used one made of monster cow leather bought from a shop in Zabilin city.
But even a good bag can’t hold more than its size allows.
At this rate he would need to either dispose of the gold coins somewhere or find someone to carry luggage.
Surely getting to the Enril Desert wouldn’t cost this much.
“Well, we’re thinking of hunting some monsters while traveling around more, what about you, Lord Turan?”
“I plan to go straight to Abacha.”
“Ah…”
At Turan’s refusal, Bisen’s group showed somewhat contradictory attitudes of both disappointment and relief.
While hunting would be much safer and easier with him joining, someone among the four would have to give up magic power.
Before parting, Bisen approached and spoke in a small voice.
“As I said yesterday, about that one’s story…”
“Yes, I won’t spread it around elsewhere.”
On the way to the city, Turan and Bisen’s group had agreed to keep secret what the Burner had claimed.
Whether true or false, they judged it would cause too much social chaos.
Turan didn’t explain everything he suspected to her.
They weren’t close enough for that, and he also found it difficult to explain that strange gaze.
It was hard to express beyond “unusually clear gaze,” and how many people in the world had clear gazes?
Anyway, it would be difficult to investigate this right away.
He was already pressed just going to learn about his own birth.
After watching the runaway noble group heading west one last time, Turan turned his steps east toward his destination.
After watching the runaway noble group heading west one last time, Turan turned his steps east toward his destination.
* * *
Carrying his heavier bag, as he headed east he began to feel moisture in the headwind blowing against his face.
And also a fishy, salty smell he had never encountered before.
‘Fire magic will be tricky to handle here.’
As expected, when he created a flame in his palm, he confirmed everything from firepower to magic power consumption had worsened.
Instead, creating and freezing water from the air became surprisingly easy.
Additionally, having heard the North Sea area had many clouds, he increased practice of lightning spells that strike from the sky, though this inadvertently caused several approaching groups from the opposite direction to scatter in panic.
Turan’s steps stopped when a world of blue water finally spread out before him.
The North Sea, called the ceiling of this world, had revealed itself.
“Oh…”
Though he had seen illustrations in books, seeing the sea directly made him realize those illustrations hadn’t captured even half the reality.
Such a spectacle of the sun’s radiance high in the sky distorting over the seawater.
After blankly watching the sea for a while, Turan soon came to his senses and walked along the coast.
Before long, he saw a huge peninsula jutting out to the east, and a harbor lined with dozens of sailing ships.
He had arrived at Abacha, the Karmaine family’s stronghold and largest port city on the North Sea.
“Get down quickly!”
“Yes, coming right now!”
“You stupid b*st*rd! I said get down quickly, not carelessly! If you drop and break that, I’ll kill you!”
Abacha’s harbor was truly a place that perfectly matched the description “full of heat.”
Despite the weather approaching early winter, sailors worked shirtless and dripping with sweat carrying cargo, and for whatever urgent reason, curses and shouts echoed everywhere.
Looking around more, he saw an enormously huge fish hanging from one side of a sailing ship.
It had several poles stuck in its body as if harpooned, and seemed to be a monster that had mutated from a fish.
Books said sea monsters were much larger than animals that mutated on land, and that was certainly true.
Leaving the harbor where sailors worked busily, he saw a relatively quiet fruit stall.
Being a place that traded with other regions, it had various fruits he had never seen before.
“Welcome, what can I get you?”
“Give me a handful of those.”
Recalling memories from Murei city, he chose small brown fruits and the fruit seller measured them out while asking for a whole silver coin.
“That’s too expensive.”
“These are dates. They only grow in the Enril Desert. Of course they’re expensive when they come by ship.”
Seeming to recognize him as an outsider at a glance, the fruit seller wrapped the goods with a glib manner.
Since he wasn’t in a position to haggle over one or two silver coins anyway, Turan paid one silver coin he had received for hunting monsters in Murei – plus two copper coins since it was smaller than the local currency – bought the dates, then asked.
“Speaking of Enril, I’d like to go there – where should I look to take a ship?”
“A ship to Enril? Usually only merchant ships go there… you’d have to ask the merchant ship captains directly. But it’ll be difficult unless you’re prepared.”
Whether he was a good person or just happy from selling dates, the fruit seller explained quite thoroughly.
He said merchant ships typically load cargo to capacity so have no room for passengers, and if they take someone, they charge high prices since that means less space for trade goods.
“Where can I meet the merchant ship captains?”
“Well? I’m not really sure, but they’ll probably all be busy during the day so try looking through sailors at places like taverns in the evening.”
“Thank you for the advice.”
Leaving the stall, Turan toured various parts of Abacha city for sightseeing.
Finding a decent theater along the way and watching a play, the day grew dark.
‘Time to go.’
When the sun set and other shops closed, the harbor taverns lit their lamps and announced their presence with boisterous noise as they received sailors as customers.
Turan found and entered one tavern that looked relatively proper and clean.
With fairly luxurious facilities though not as much as noble mansions he had visited, and both staff and customers well-dressed, it was clearly a tavern catering to high-class sailors.
“Welcome, guest.”
Turan sat in an empty seat, ordered a glass of wine and simple appetizers, then quietly listened to the surrounding voices.
The server who had been watching with a questioning expression, wondering if he suited this establishment, accepted him as a customer with a deep bow when he paid.
After about thirty minutes of savoring what must be fairly high-end cheese and wine by local standards, he heard the topic he wanted.
“You’re sailing tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Have to go to that damn desert again… merfolk appearing along the route, and those cursed pirates are so aggressive…”
“That bad?”
“Last time we came back the ship got a hole, you know? Our shipowner is crazy. No matter what, we need at least one knight…”
Two men who appeared to be in their thirties were having a drunken conversation, with one lamenting that their shipowner was such a miser he wouldn’t hire even one knight for the ship, causing several crew deaths on the journey.
Listening quietly, Turan got up and moved to their table.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
“Hm?”
“Not buying anything. Damn, now even peddlers are coming here-”
Turan lightly reached out to stop the man trying to call a server.
“Not a peddler. A passenger, perhaps.”
“Passenger?”
“I’m looking for a ship going to the Enril Desert, and I heard the gentleman next to you say you’re heading there.”
At Turan’s words, the two men’s eyes went round.
“Our ship is going tomorrow as mentioned, but we don’t take regular passengers. Have to unload that much cargo to take one person. We’re even short on crew.”
The story matched amazingly well with what he had heard from the fruit seller.
Turan nodded and placed his hand on their wine glasses.
“I heard you needed a magician on the ship.”
The two sailors gaped as they watched the dark red liquid freeze with a soft sound.