Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 7
Chapter 7
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In one day, Turan caught a total of seven masu while patrolling around the city.
He felt like he could become addicted to the thrilling pleasure that came with absorbing magic power from dead masu corpses.
It was almost disappointing to think that once he reached his limit for absorbing magic power, he wouldn’t be able to feel this pleasure anymore.
Of course, consuming masu wasn’t just about this base pleasure.
Around the time he absorbed the fifth masu’s power, Turan’s magic power had grown about 1.5 times stronger than before meeting Keorn.
At this rate, theoretically he could become dozens of times stronger in just a few months of hunting, but…
‘It won’t be that easy.’
Magic power growth through absorption decreased with each repetition, and it was difficult to grow stronger using weak masu’s magic power.
Moreover, staying in one place hunting would naturally deplete the masu population.
That’s why strong nobles would go on pilgrimages to find masu worthy of their level?
Therefore, Turan captured alive rather than killed two of the weakest ones he found, which weren’t even worth absorbing.
A squirrel with a tail five times thicker than its kind that it used as a weapon, and a badger that was somewhat larger and could change its fur color to match its surroundings.
When he brought them tied up with rope to city hall, the official in charge widened his eyes.
“Two of them?”
“Yes. They’re perfectly fine except for one stone hit to the head. Together that’s 25 rum bounty, correct?”
“Well, about that…”
The official trailed off as if trying to pull something, but when Turan glared at him with wide eyes, he quickly handed over the money.
“Here you go.”
This enjoyment of earning money was another thing he learned after coming down from the hills.
With 25 silver coins in his pocket, he returned to the inn where the serving girl greeted him with a smile.
“Young brother! You came back alive? Will you have dinner here too? Bread and soup again?”
Turan was about to order the cheapest menu like this morning but changed his mind.
Since he could earn money whenever he wanted anyway, he wanted to find out why expensive food was expensive.
“Give me the most expensive one.”
The serving girl’s eyes widened at Turan’s words.
“Wow, looks like you earned some money! I’ll tell the chef!”
Though he hadn’t known, it took a full hour just to prepare the inn’s most luxurious menu.
But seeing the food placed on the table made the wait worthwhile.
Fresh soft and savory wheat bread with tart fruit jam, whole roasted chicken basted with seasonings, and pork ribs topped with sizzling cheese…
For a shepherd who had lived his whole life eating smelly mutton and grain porridge on the desolate hills, it was an astounding array.
Before he knew it, while frantically chewing and tearing into everything enjoyably, all the food on the table had disappeared without a trace.
“…Someone didn’t steal this, right?”
“Of course not. But brother, you’re so skinny yet eat so well!”
“It makes me happy to see someone enjoy such a rare feast so much!”
Even the chef who usually rested in the back kitchen came out to say this – it seemed this menu didn’t sell well normally.
Anyway, thanks to this he discovered the pleasure of fine dining.
* * *
After about three days passed this way, Turan had succeeded in catching over thirty masu.
Though he only collected proper bounties for five of them, even that was enough to gather over a hundred silver coins, some of which he exchanged for gold coins for convenient storage.
His improved proficiency with tracking magic contributed to these excellent results.
After several experiments, he learned that when targets weren’t in range, he could track them by finding their traces.
Taking the first Blade Crow he caught as an example, he would target ‘droppings of crows larger than children’ and move in the direction where the droppings continued to find the masu.
While Turan was flourishing like this, Midan’s group seemed to have little success, grumbling darkly about how they might not even be able to pay their room fees at this rate.
One day, two of Midan’s sworn brothers followed Turan as he went up to his room to rest, raising their fists threateningly.
“Hey, skinny!”
“Heard you’re earning good money lately? Share some with your colleagues.”
Naturally, in less than a minute they were thoroughly beaten by Turan and rolled down the stairs.
After a brief commotion, hearing the whole story, Midan bowed to Turan on their behalf.
“I sincerely apologize. I’ll strictly scold both of them. This will never happen again…”
“Are things very difficult?”
At Turan’s question, Midan hesitated before answering honestly.
“We are short on money.”
Midan and his sworn brothers were originally gangsters from a large city of over 100,000 people, but after meeting someone who became a magician by catching masu 2 years ago, they quit being gangsters and switched to masu hunting.
But not only was it difficult for ordinary people to catch masu together, the reality was that unless it was strong enough to be identified as a masu just by looking at the corpse, bounties weren’t paid for corpses.
So they were barely surviving by doing odd jobs while traveling between cities to hunt masu.
‘To think it took them 2 years to catch three.’
Well, how much could they hunt when they weren’t even professional hunters, let alone magicians, but originally gangsters?
Plus it would be difficult to spend all day if they needed side jobs for living expenses.
Hearing this story, he could understand why officials treated masu hunters like thugs.
How could they look kindly on people who lived pursuing just one uncertain possibility while others worked diligently?
“Honestly, in about three days we’ll have trouble paying for rooms. This city is too small, there aren’t many odd jobs we can do. But I don’t want to beg from a young friend. After causing this trouble, asking for money would be shameless…”
“Here.”
Turan searched his clothes and handed him ten silver coins.
Enough money for four people to stay at the inn for about three days with some haggling.
Midan looked at him with an expression of disbelief.
“Why?”
“Even though times were tough, you tried to include me because I looked dangerous traveling alone. This is repayment for that.”
The moral code Turan learned from his mother was simple.
Treat others as you wish to be treated, and repay both kindness and enmity as received.
From that perspective, Midan’s past kindness was worth enough to repay with a few silver coins.
The misdeeds of his subordinates had already been repaid with fists.
“Still, it feels wrong to just take this…”
“If you feel uncomfortable just taking it, how about giving me some information? Stories about cities you’ve traveled to while hunting would be good.”
Information must be bought with money – this was common sense Turan learned after coming down from the hills.
Through Keorn’s teachings he roughly knew how the world was shaped and where the great houses were located, but didn’t know the detailed circumstances of each region.
At this suggestion, Midan’s face brightened.
“That’s not difficult at all!”
Having wandered various cities looking for masu for 2 years, Midan knew quite a lot.
Not only did he draw simple maps showing how to get to other nearby cities, he even recommended masu to catch there – though Midan meant it as warnings to avoid them.
As masu were becoming scarce around Murei city, such information was quite valuable.
Just roughly hearing “there’s a city that way” like last time was enough once.
Other stories were also very useful, like which cities had ancient imperial ruins, or which magician houses didn’t allow wanderers to pass through their territory without permission.
What particularly caught Turan’s interest was the existence of a library in a relatively nearby large city.
“You’re saying there are thousands of books?”
“That’s what I heard. Though I couldn’t go in myself.”
Though Turan had learned reading and writing from his mother, he had never read a book.
Naturally, the Hisaril hills and surrounding villages were too poor to have books.
Sometimes Turan’s mother would lament.
Saying there were books she wanted to read to him but could no longer remember their contents.
Because of this, books were vaguely idealized in Turan’s mind as mysterious things containing all the world’s wisdom.
But according to Midan, the library in Orem, a city relatively close to the northeast, had over a thousand such books?
Plus the entry condition was merely-
“If you’re a magician, you can enter…”
“Well, we’ll be able to go in someday when we become magicians too!”
Turan awakened to a new desire he hadn’t known he had, beyond desire for money and food.
It was the desire for knowledge.
Living his whole life on the hills, he hadn’t known…
He wanted to know more about what kind of place this world was.
“Is this worth enough?”
“More than enough.”
He had been thinking of hunting just one more day before leaving this city, but now he knew where to go next.
* * *
In stark contrast to ending things so well, the next afternoon when Turan went out for his final hunt, he encountered one of Midan’s subordinates with his belly split open, coughing up blood.
With his eyes half-glazed, he clearly looked beyond saving.
“What happened?”
“Rabbit, masu… monster…”
“Where’s Midan?”
“Over there…”
Where he pointed lay a familiar shaggy head rolling on the ground.
As if terribly wronged, Midan lay dead with his strangely clear eyes wide open.
Behind him were two more corpses with bodies torn apart.
Finally, a rabbit the size of a cat with red eyes was glaring at Turan while gnawing on something.
With front teeth long enough to touch the ground and grotesquely developed thick hind legs, it saw Turan and immediately charged at arrow-like speed.
“Ugh!”
When he hurriedly threw himself aside to dodge, the rabbit couldn’t control its speed and passed by Turan, but amazingly the tree it had run into collapsed with a cracking sound.
More precisely, the part caught by its front teeth had been cleanly cut off.
‘What the…’
Since it looked too dangerous to test various things against, Turan immediately brought out his trump card.
Stone throwing using his ever-present sheepskin sling.
The stone empowered by magic flew at the rabbit faster than sound, but amazingly it deflected it by swinging its long front teeth.
One shot, two shots, and three shots.
Turan clicked his tongue at the opponent’s ridiculous reflexes.
It seemed he had encountered an enemy immune to physical projectiles, as Keorn had warned about, sooner than expected.
[Keeek!]
As if mocking that this was all he had, the rabbit made a grotesque sound while preparing to jump again by putting strength in its hind legs.
At that moment,
[Keek?]
The rabbit had to stop in its tracks because Turan suddenly disappeared from that spot.
A phenomenon where a presence right in front of it vanished instantly?
Though the rabbit had become smarter after gaining magic power, such a situation was difficult to understand.
Did he run away? How? Where is he now? There’s not even a scent to chase…
Thanks to standing still pondering such questions, Turan was able to approach the rabbit while concealed and stab a dagger under its chin.
[Keeeeeeeek!!]
Turan quickly twisted the dagger stuck under its chin once then let go of the handle and threw himself backward.
If he hadn’t, he would have been torn apart by the enraged rabbit’s swinging front teeth.
The rabbit desperately jumped around swinging its front teeth trying to attack the invisible enemy, but its enemy had already flown into the sky while concealed.
After about a minute of cutting down surrounding trees, the rabbit finally couldn’t find its enemy and collapsed from exhaustion.
Only then did Turan cancel his concealment and land on the ground with a sigh.
“Whew…”
Just when he thought he had dealt with all the strong masu in this area, to unexpectedly meet such a formidable enemy.
Though its small size made it seem somewhat lacking in defense, its speed, attack power, and reflexes were more threatening than the first leopard masu he met.
He felt that the pre-Keorn Turan, who only had stone throwing as a proper attack technique, might have been defeated.
Actually absorbing its magic power, far more came in than when he caught the leopard.
‘Really unlucky.’
Since this one wasn’t among the registered masu at city hall, it had probably mutated recently.
Midan’s group had been careless thinking it would be easy to catch because it was in rabbit form and not large, leading to their annihilation.
What would they have felt if they knew this rabbit’s true identity was something that could instantly kill even decent nobles if they were careless?
After assessing the situation, Turan approached the hunter with the torn belly.
He was still conscious, and having seen Turan fight, wore an astonished expression.
“You, no, you’re… a magician…”
“Yes.”
“Why…”
Since explaining why he hid his identity would be long-winded and meaningless, Turan shook his head and asked instead:
“Do any of the four have family to leave belongings to?”
“No…”
Shortly after, Turan buried the dead masu hunters in a sunny spot near the forest.
Four dirt mounds were the final portion given to those who wanted to become magicians.