Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 70
Chapter 70
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As soon as Asiz finished explaining, Turan immediately brought the mask to his face.
At first it felt cold and hard, but when he infused magical power, it quickly transformed into something warm and fluid that clung tightly to his face.
As he had been told, he could feel a constant drain of magical power, but it was easily manageable with his natural recovery rate.
“How is it?”
“You aged terribly in an instant. It’s perfect.”
When Turan spoke to Asiz, his voice came out much rougher than his original one, like steel being scraped.
Looking in the mirror beside him, he saw a middle-aged man with sun-darkened brown skin and impressive bushy black beard.
However, looking closer, his neck and below still showed Turan’s relatively pale skin, making it look somewhat awkward.
‘Right, come to think of it, the scars remained too…’
Well, if it could change the body’s form too, Solif wouldn’t have noticed anything strange either.
If it had that level of functionality, they wouldn’t have just used it to impersonate mere pirates.
At that moment, Asiz, who had been quietly watching, asked Turan:
“By the way, I didn’t know beard would grow too. That’s not real, right?”
“Of course not.”
Just in case, he tried pulling out a strand – it came out painlessly and immediately crumbled away.
Other than that, even when touching it, there was no sense of discomfort in the sensation – it was truly perfect.
“Even without knowing what its paired item is, this alone is quite useful.”
While saying this, Turan felt a strange vibration in his chest.
The source of that vibration was the item he always wore as a necklace – the Imitator holy relic.
“Why is this…”
“Could that be the paired item?”
Thinking about it, they did have similarities.
From the bloodline name of the holy relic’s owner being “Imitator” to its function of absorbing others’ magical power to recreate bloodline abilities, and the mask being an item that imitates others’ faces.
However, if it was paired with an item from a god who had slept in the sea thousands of years ago, that would mean this mask was also a holy relic, but its contained magical power and functions seemed too inadequate for that.
In the first place, if it was such an item, why would the Baraha family have carelessly let it circulate outside?
“Aren’t they too mismatched in tier?”
“Completely mismatched. The difference is like between your Guardian magical device and the magical lamp attached here.”
Before appraising the magical devices, Turan had first asked for an appraisal of the Imitator holy relic.
Until now, rather than properly understanding this item’s functions, he had been using it through trial and error experimentation.
However, after attempting the appraisal, Asiz said he absolutely could not evaluate this item with his skill level.
He said this must be among the highest tier of holy relics?
To properly understand it, they would probably need to ask Asiz’s mother or brother.
“That aside, if they’re a pair, what should we do? Just put them together?”
Turan tried removing the mask and touching it to the holy relic, but not only did nothing special happen, even the earlier vibration stopped.
It seemed they needed to be used together.
“No reaction.”
“How about trying to infuse magical power while they’re touching?”
Following Asiz’s suggestion, when he infused magical power into both items while they were in contact, immediately a deep “woong-” sound resonated and both the mask and holy relic began vibrating.
A clear signal that anyone could understand meant there was some relationship between the two.
Turan exclaimed as he felt an enormous amount of magical power draining from his fingertips.
“Yeah, this seems to be the right method.”
The two vibrating items consumed Turan’s magical power with surprising greed.
At first he thought it would stop soon, but as one minute became five, then ten, then twenty minutes, he started feeling his magical power becoming strained.
But if he stopped infusing magical power here and something went wrong with the items, it would be too wasteful.
Eventually they even called Solif, who had been playing in his room, and the three nobles together infused magical power into the resonating items.
After the sudden magical power absorption phenomenon ended, all three of them had nearly exhausted their magical power to the limit and were completely drained.
Turan, Solif, and Asiz all collapsed onto the large bed without any particular order.
“I’m so dizzy I could die.”
“Hey, if you were going to do something like this, you should have called me earlier. I was in the middle of practicing levitation magic…”
“Like I knew this would happen.”
The three who had collapsed from exhaustion and dizziness only recovered their strength about an hour later.
Asiz, who had used relatively less magical power since he joined last, touched the mask with his finger and said to Turan:
“This mask… I can’t appraise it anymore. Like your necklace.”
Meaning its grade as a magical device had increased tremendously.
Turan struggled to his feet and immediately picked up the two transformed items to observe them carefully.
The first noticeable change was in their appearance.
The previously translucent mask now had wave patterns engraved on it, while the holy relic showed a face wearing a hat with bells.
After putting on the holy relic around his neck and the mask on his face and activating them, he could tell that not just the appearance but the functions had changed as well.
The flow of magical power surrounding the two nobles before him.
It was drawing some small symbols inside.
‘Asiz has a white anvil and black hammer, Solif has… two glowing white hands holding a ball of fire?’
These must be symbols representing their bloodlines.
Looking immediately into his own inner self, Turan could confirm his guess was correct.
A white cloud holding lightning surrounded by darkness, and within that darkness, a single eye staring intently.
These were clearly symbols representing Arabion and Zahar.
At that moment, Asiz pointed at Turan’s face and said:
“Hey, aren’t you wearing the mask now? Your face hasn’t changed?”
Hearing that and looking in the mirror again, he could see that despite clearly wearing the mask, there was no change to his face.
Could it be that it gained the ability to detect others’ bloodlines but lost its transformation ability?
The surprise was brief – Turan suddenly had a realization and imagined his face changing while looking in the mirror.
Soon after, his face freely transformed from the recently seen Cobinus to Asiz and Solif, and even to women like Meisa and Rida.
Watching this, Asiz and Solif’s eyes widened in shock.
“No way…” “You can change at will now?”
Turan continued testing how much more this item could do.
He could adjust height by 5-10 centimeters, slightly modify bone structure and finger proportions, and freely change skin color and voice almost exactly as imagined.
Though each change consumed magical power, at this level it was clearly a legendary top-tier holy relic.
“It seems this item was indeed a holy relic too. Our magical power just served as a catalyst for growth or power release…”
Just in case, he tried taking off the mask and found he could no longer detect others’ bloodlines as before.
Conversely, when he wore just the mask without the Imitator holy relic, he could only transform into Cobinus’s face.
In other words, these two items had to be used together to access the added functions.
After hearing this analysis, Asiz and Solif looked at the two items several times before tilting their heads.
“This is strange.”
“Right?”
“Indeed.”
How could a top-tier holy relic left by a nameless Freya divine tribe member and a magical device that the Baraha family had carelessly circulated be a matching set?
At that point, Turan offered an opinion:
“Maybe this holy relic wasn’t such an amazing item originally either?”
“What do you mean?”
“One of my questions when I first went there was why both the god and the great sea serpent hadn’t turned into undead. Even if they didn’t transform because they were divine beings, at least their magical power should have remained.”
If someone had come first and absorbed the magical power, there would be no reason not to take the Imitator holy relic.
If they couldn’t take it because they weren’t chosen, like Prince Armani, couldn’t they have just taken the entire corpse?
Someone who absorbed the magical power of those two wouldn’t have been as weak as that baby shark.
“You mean this holy relic absorbed the magical power of those two beings?”
“It’s just speculation. Originally they were decent magical devices meant to be used as a pair, but one received power from the dead god and mythical beast to become a holy relic, while the other pair wandered around as an ordinary magical device for thousands of years.”
He had similar thoughts before but couldn’t be certain, because for a holy relic that absorbed the power of two divine beings, the Imitator holy relic wasn’t particularly impressive.
Though useful in many ways, wasn’t it inferior to items like the potion that could revive the dead or the immortal armor?
But if that power hadn’t been fully utilized and remained accumulated, and was now used to strengthen the mask using the magical power of three nobles as a primer, it made some sense.
Though Turan’s deduction involved many leaps in logic, the other two accepted it since they couldn’t think of any better explanation.
At that point, Asiz pointed to the Imitator holy relic and said:
“But detecting bloodlines isn’t really that useful, is it?”
Unless they were oddities like Turan, most nobles didn’t particularly hide their bloodlines.
In the first place, since bloodline abilities played such a huge role in combat, it was difficult to deceive others about them.
Turan spoke to the puzzled Asiz:
“Now we can verify if Zahar assassins really exist within Arabion.”
“Ah.”
Now Asiz too seemed to realize this item’s true value.
The fact that with this new combination of two holy relics, no spy could escape detection.
After finishing the magical device appraisal, Turan walked around House Berk’s guest house observing the people passing by.
From servants to knights, and occasionally nobles.
The nobles and knights all showed symbols of hammer and anvil, the Buyeosa bloodline, and some knights had latent cloud symbols holding lightning.
And even among ordinary people who weren’t even knights, quite a few were born with such symbols.
‘Well, even my mother wasn’t a knight but had latent Arabion bloodline…’
While observing passing people thus, Turan moved to House Berk’s stable.
There, a huge horse and a black eagle were playing together.
“Having fun, Bije?”
[Turan! This one is too stupid!]
Bije flew over fluttering and wrote on the dirt ground while stomping its feet.
From past experience, Tili was quite an intelligent horse, but to someone who could freely write letters and form sentences, it seemed unsatisfactory.
“Don’t be like that, just play nicely. Don’t bully it.”
[I’m not bullying!]
Bije went on to explain at length how it had tried various games with Tili and felt frustrated because the horse was too stupid to understand anything.
Judging by that stoic expression, rather than not understanding, it probably just found it bothersome.
While comforting Bije, Turan looked into its inner self with the enhanced holy relic’s senses.
‘Arabion’s symbol… but translucent.’
“Can you try making wind? Not too strong, just a gentle breeze.”
Like a good child, Bije immediately created wind sweeping around the stable without complaint.
Then the translucent symbol activated and Turan saw something like yellow light being transmitted from inside his body.
‘So, Bije has potential for the Storm bloodline but can only use that power with a soul-bonded partner…’
Since no such symbol was visible in Tili beside them, it seemed not all magical beasts had such potential.
Unless Bije had some human ancestor with Arabion bloodline, which seemed unlikely, how did it obtain such potential?
This too was quite a topic worth pondering.
Afterwards, Turan returned to his room to further research ways to utilize the mask.
This time he attempted to create faces of non-existent people rather than those who existed – or had existed.
At first he tried creating entirely new faces but felt an unbearable awkwardness and discomfort, so he changed his method to slightly modifying existing faces.
There were more than enough base faces to work with, not just in the palace but outside as well.
Turan went out daily to observe and memorize people’s faces one by one, then at night he would modify or combine them to create faces of non-existent people.
A young farmer with bold features and cheerful disposition, a scholar with a long face and weak appearance, an old merchant with a hooked nose… Just in case they might need it later, he gave the two holy relics to Solif and Asiz to practice using them, but surprisingly neither could handle them.
This was because the Imitator holy relic wouldn’t apply even its basic effects to anyone besides Turan.
Finally, after spending about a week practicing the mask’s functions alone.
Haram, who had gone to hunt wolves, returned.
“It’s been a while.”
“It has been a while, Master!”
“Don’t call me that.”
After briefly disguising his embarrassment with a gruff attitude, Haram’s eyes lit up seeing Solif beside him.
“You’re extremely well-trained. Are you perhaps from a great family?”
“Huh? Ah, no, of course not…”
He had thought Solif just had a sturdy build at first glance, but apparently to the eyes of an expert who had devoted his life to this field, something looked different.
Haram touched various parts of Solif’s body while exclaiming in admiration and repeatedly asked how he had trained.
Since Solif couldn’t say he had received related education within the Baraha family, he vaguely claimed to have learned from a wandering noble.
After that time which was awkward for Solif alone but entertaining for everyone else, Turan tried training with Haram like before but soon had to stop.
There was no equipment that could handle his physical abilities now.
“You’ve gotten stronger.”
“I was lucky.”
Though Haram didn’t know Turan’s bloodline, he knew Turan wasn’t specialized in physical abilities.
Yet this level of physical ability meant he had accumulated almost top-tier noble level magical power.
“Hmm.”
Haram seemed puzzled about how he had accumulated such power in a short time but didn’t inquire further.
Perhaps he guessed something not entirely honorable had been done.
In any case, having too much magical power wasn’t necessarily only good.
After spending time thus for about three weeks.
Turan realized that a reply to his letter to Meisa should have arrived long ago.
“Asiz, how long does it usually take for letters to go between here and Morgen City?”
“A week at most. Even faster for letters between noble families…”
Even asking Asiz just in case, Arabion’s communication system wasn’t particularly slower.
Meaning if Meisa had read the letter and sent a reply, it should have arrived with time to spare.
There were largely three possibilities for why no reply had come.
First, Meisa read the letter and ignored it.
Second, Meisa read the letter but wasn’t in a position to reply.
Third, the letter wasn’t properly delivered.
Whichever it was, clearly nothing would be resolved by just staying put like this.
“I should probably go to Morgen City myself.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait for Solif’s arm to be healed and all go together?”
Turan shook his head and touched his face with his finger.
“Originally going together would have been safer, but now I have this. If I’m just going in to check and come out, it’s actually more convenient to go alone.”
Now was finally the time to test the results of practice over the past few weeks.