Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 37

Chapter 37

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In ancient times, when giants ruled the fertile Enril Plains, they devoured everything with their huge bodies and turned it into desert.

The giants who needed to drink enormous amounts of water daily couldn’t endure their thirst, so they enslaved humans and extracted their blood to drink, killing thousands each day.

However, on a pitch dark night without even moonlight, the Frea divine tribe’s night hunter came and shot all the giants dead, saving humanity.

The liberated humans offered their three most beautiful maidens as brides, and the three children born from them each inherited powers to hide their bodies, control shadows, and create poison.

After the night hunter ascended, the three brothers fought over who would succeed their father to rule the desert.

The eldest who could hide his body left not wanting to fight his brothers, but the second who controlled shadows and third who made poison fought fiercely, throwing the desert into chaos and causing many to fall into despair.

Finally the eldest returned to defeat his two younger brothers and claim desert supremacy – he became the ancestor of Zahar…

[You]

[Are not]

[The night hunter]

At those distant echoing voices, Turan recalled the contents of the religious text bought at Komad’s bookstore.

Just why was that god’s name suddenly being mentioned?

‘Is there some connection with the Zahar nobles already inside?’

Thinking about it, though Turan was also a distant descendant of the night hunter, considering his bloodline mixed with another family, he could hardly be considered pure Zahar.

After pondering thus while advancing through pitch black space for several minutes, Turan’s senses caught an alien life form.

Based on using the holy relic so far, ordinary creatures had small flames burning in their hearts while magicians and monsters had those flames spread throughout their bodies.

And in the single case of the merman Armani, other races seemed to have flames transferred to different body parts than humans.

But the interior of the being sensed now resembled none of those.

Should he say inside a large shell the interior was empty, with flames flowing like water to move the body?

It looked like blue flames controlling it from inside a doll.

As Turan carefully approached it, the life form buried in darkness was revealed before his eyes.

[□□□-]

Most noticeable first were the asymmetrical eyes.

One was too large and the other had two small glass beads rolling around separately scanning surroundings.

The nose was just a sunken hole and the mouth gaped open oval-shaped with saw-like teeth embedded inside, while both arms and legs were long with an extra joint each making them creak unstably.

The mucus flowing over peeled skin looked highly viscous at a glance, seeming difficult to wipe off once stuck.

A life form with twisted, unpleasant appearance just to look at.

But when Turan took one step closer to examine it more carefully, suddenly it seemed to recognize him as it whipped its head around and screamed.

[■□■□■□!]

As if all recognizing Turan from that single scream, three or four monsters approached with alien movements and immediately swung what could be called large hands or forelegs… Their speed and force could overwhelm even decent nobles.

“Kuk!”

While accelerating thought, he saw five fingers like humans, and hook claws attached to their ends.

As that slowly approached, Turan leaned back to dodge while rubbing his hands to create sparks then radiated them forward without forming proper shape.

Perhaps unfamiliar with light and heat from living in darkness, they screamed and retreated back from the fire.

‘How did they detect me?’

He was currently maintaining complete invisibility magic unique to Zahar bloodline.

Using invisibility magic in such darkness was almost as simple as breathing.

Meaning these monsters had power to see through even Zahar invisibility.

Fortunately their detection range wasn’t very wide.

When he moved about twenty meters away to where they could only sense but not see him, the monsters lost him and scattered after looking around.

‘Good, I have first strike advantage for now.’

In the pitch black darkness, Turan loaded stones in his sling while watching blue flame afterimages flowing about.

With sufficient preparation time he could fully infuse magic power while spinning the stones several times.

Though not very efficient as effectiveness sharply decreased compared to power input beyond a certain point, it was useful when needing to precisely silence one target in one shot.

‘Take this!’

Crack! The sling stone shot with about one-tenth magic power instantly caved in the monster’s head.

After confirming other nearby monsters didn’t react to the attack, Turan approached it.

‘Good, it’s dead.’

The stone had precisely pierced the middle of the mucus-covered face and exited through the back of the head.

After retrieving the fallen stone, Turan returned to where the corpse was and attempted magic power absorption.

Before long he felt power seeping into his body.

‘At least it’s definitely a magical creature…’

Other races like ordinary humans or animals had no magic power so nothing could be absorbed when killed.

Same for dark elf necromancers and such.

So these beings should be classified as monsters or magicians.

The strange thing was the amount of magic power absorbed from this bizarre life form wasn’t very much.

Based on experience accumulated absorbing power from killed monsters, creatures with such speed and durability should give more magic power.

Moreover for unknown reasons, the holy relic didn’t absorb its magic power this time.

‘Just what are these things really?’

Hard to call them monsters when unclear what they’re based on, and above all there were too many identical ones.

Expanding his senses detected over fifty or sixty within just hundreds of meters.

[You are not the night hunter-]

That annoying echo again.

While sighing, Turan quickly moved positions sensing presence from behind.

The nobles seen earlier were approaching.

* * *

“Stop.”

Ferga Zahar frowned at the sight before him while giving orders.

What appeared before the dozen nobles moving with him was a corpse of the bizarre life forms appearing here…

“What? Did we come this way before?”

“Who knows. When did we last have proper direction sense.”

Ignoring his friends’ muttering, Ferga unhesitatingly touched the undulating mucus skin to examine its wounds.

Wound location between the eyes, weapon something egg-sized…

He thought this must be the source of that faint earth scent that had led him here.

“Everyone, show me your weapons.”

After checking each person’s armaments, Ferga’s face turned serious.

Chakrams, bow, daggers, axe.

None of their weapons could make such wounds.

It didn’t seem like tooth or claw marks either to suggest they fought amongst themselves.

“What’s wrong, Ferga?”

“Someone else is here. Inside.”

“Hm? Surely not a rescue team?”

“We would have noticed long ago if so. How obvious would noisy movement be in this place.”

Not knowing this fact had made Ferga’s group suffer terribly on their first day of confinement.

When they got separated in darkness and called out loudly, they were immediately attacked by over a hundred bizarre life forms.

“First, let’s move in a large circle from now.”

“Why?”

“If someone is eavesdropping on our conversation nearby, moving like this will make it hard to maintain distance.”

Following Ferga’s instructions, they immediately began moving in a large circle keeping the dead monster’s corpse on their right.

Meanwhile, Ferga called over a small-built man beside him.

“Galten?”

“Yes, Lord Ferga. Please command.”

Galten Rosmun, head of the Rosmun family ruling Banipel, deeply bowed at Ferga’s call.

Normally a vassal family head didn’t need such a subservient attitude except to their lord, the main family head.

But Galten and Ferga’s relationship was different, as Galten had inherited the family head position despite relatively lacking ability by marrying Ferga’s sister.

“Need you to set some traps nearby. To catch the rat inside here.”

“Rat, you say?”

“Must be sent by either Rahman or Alma to bury me here while they can.”

“But my siblings are guarding outside…”

“Like they could stop a Zahar noble without preparation.”

Befitting a family that seized power by eliminating all siblings since their ancestor, Zahar power struggles were drenched in blood.

While impossible at the main house where the godlike family head saw everything, they could attempt to eliminate competitors anywhere without watching eyes like this.

“Understood, please wait a moment.”

The Rosmun family had barrier maker bloodline, skilled at embedding magic in space.

They could exercise power simply by making noise when someone passed specific areas, or creating flames and making ground collapse.

Though this labyrinth’s structure itself was made with divine power so ground couldn’t be manipulated, sudden sprouting flames alone would be enough deterrent.

“Imelda, keep illuminating around us.”

“Even with my bloodline ability suited for this, magic consumption isn’t small you know?”

“Have to endure it. Better than having our throats cut in sleep.”

“Well that’s true…”

The noble Imelda with illusion bloodline controlling light spread bright illumination at Ferga’s order.

Though such light couldn’t extend beyond twenty some meters due to the labyrinth’s unique darkness, any unknown assassin likewise couldn’t detect them from outside that range anyway.

And within range they couldn’t maintain invisibility long in this tremendous white light.

“Remember. If anyone gets attacked, create and shoot light toward that area.”

Everyone nodded at Ferga’s instructions.

But there was one person shaking his head – Turan standing behind them.

‘They’re working really hard to prepare among themselves.’

While Ferga passionately gave instructions, Turan was eavesdropping on all conversation while hidden just over twenty meters away.

Thanks to the holy relic’s power he could clearly observe their movements and maintain distance.

Turan gauged their strength through flame sizes.

Though the nine friends or vassals had magic power similar to or much weaker than Turan, Ferga alone had over twice Turan’s power.

That level of power probably belonged only to top ranks even in great families.

‘Should keep proper distance and look for escape methods for now.’

Leaving behind those searching while setting traps and spreading light, Turan walked into darkness.

* * *

For three days after that, Turan and Ferga’s group had a strange cohabitation in the dark labyrinth.

Fortunately the barrier maker bloodline noble’s traps weren’t much obstacle.

Thanks to the holy relic detecting even magic power used in spells, traps were clearly visible.

Rather, due to pitch darkness they sometimes suffered by stepping on traps themselves not knowing clearly where they had moved.

Plus with one illusion bloodline noble becoming useless constantly maintaining light, Turan unintentionally ended up wearing down their strength.

One inconvenience was inability to sleep comfortably.

Unlike Ferga’s group who could take turns keeping watch, alone he would die instantly if caught by bizarre life forms or other nobles during deep sleep.

At least he was somewhat used to light sleeping while camping outdoors.

Unlike Ferga’s group completely unable to gauge direction in darkness, Turan could slowly expand his search range using several locations as bases with the holy relic’s power.

Sometimes certain directions were too blocked by large numbers of bizarre life forms to break through killing them one by one, in which case he borrowed Ferga group’s power.

“They’re coming again!”

“Damn, seems their attack frequency increased.”

“Probably because we keep light on.”

He could easily lure them by throwing fireballs to draw the monsters’ attention, then dropping invisibility to run at full speed until nearly meeting Ferga’s group before barely turning aside.

Though they got the monsters’ magic power, he didn’t mind since catching them barely gave any power anyway.

Thus he would advance to search opened spaces then return to rest in suitable areas, and repeat observing Ferga’s group until more vagrants carrying food and water entered from beyond the ruins… They would track entering vagrants using smell, then naturally take their lives to obtain food and water.

“Keep sending them so we’re starting to have surplus. This too.”

“Probably because they’re sending assuming even the knights are still alive.”

“If we knew this we should have kept some alive instead of letting them die? Inconvenient having no one to serve us.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Judging from their conversation, all knights who entered together were apparently abandoned to the monsters.

Turan recalled Baltas family nobles using their knights as shields.

These people laughing about dead knights were even more contemptible beings than those two nobles then.

Fortunately that meant no need to feel guilty about driving monsters to them.

After such uncomfortable cohabitation exploring for about two more days, a huge door appeared before Turan’s eyes.

Width four meters left to right, height about seven meters, suited for giants…

As he approached, a large eyeball appeared in the middle of the gate and spoke looking down at him.

[You, hunter, pursuer.]

[Conditions not met.]

Saying thus, its gaze moved slightly down from Turan’s face.

[Wave rider, imitator.]

[Conditions met.]

[Will you enter?]