Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 72

Chapter 72

Read it only at Utoon.net!
Discord         

The Zahar noble who left Meisa’s room headed to the reception room on the first floor instead of leaving the mansion.

The elderly maids greeted her with more energy than before.

“Oh, why did you come out so soon? Didn’t you talk more?”

“She was sleeping soundly. So I just left the books she asked for and came out.”

“The sun hasn’t even set yet…”

“She seems to be sleeping more and more these days.”

“It must be because she’s not feeling well. If only she’d eat something to recover her health.”

“We can’t force her to eat if she doesn’t want to.”

The women chattered away, not knowing Turan was standing right behind them while hidden.

Thanks to this, he learned without much effort that this noble’s alias was ‘Leto’ and she was remarkably a direct maid to the Arabion family head.

It was shocking enough that a Zahar bloodline noble had infiltrated Arabion’s main house, but to be the family head’s direct maid?

‘How is this possible?’

For servants of the main house, they typically raised knights’ family members strictly from childhood, and given nobles’ slow aging, there should be limits to how long one could disguise as a commoner.

He wondered if she used a disguise magical device like his, but even the holy relic’s senses detected nothing.

‘Either she has some ingenious method of disguise, or… Arabion maintains their own Zahar bloodline nobles?’

For nobles, bloodline abilities were like boundaries.

They defined relationships by saying “you have the same ability as me so you’re family” or “you have different abilities so you’re an outsider.”

This included both religious and political elements.

Since nobles’ bloodline abilities originally came from gods, their power itself symbolized their right to rule as divine descendants.

For these reasons, nobles strictly formed houses with those sharing the same bloodline abilities.

Though marriages between close relatives within third cousins were rejected, meaning outside bloodlines were often accepted, if a child’s bloodline differed from the house’s, they couldn’t remain.

For example, if the head of House Buyeosa married a noble with Healer bloodline and their child inherited Healer bloodline, regardless of being the head’s child, they had to be adopted into a Healer house.

Breaking this rule by keeping nobles with different bloodlines in one’s house was called bloodline theft, treated similarly to murder-robbery for magical power.

But rules and taboos exist precisely because some people break them.

Perhaps Arabion had been raising Zahar bloodline nobles for quite some time.

Though he couldn’t yet be certain which possibility was true.

While lost in thought, the women’s gossip ended and Leto left the mansion.

Turan tried following her while hidden but had to stop shortly after.

She was heading to the family head’s residence right next door.

‘Following inside there would be… probably not good.’

While Meisa’s residence was strangely lacking in security, the family head’s residence likely had its own separate defenses.

Though confident he could escape from anyone else, he had to avoid confronting the family head.

If the other side decided to attack seriously, he’d likely die instantly before attempting any tricks.

Turan gave up following further and instead stole a hair that was stuck to Leto’s maid uniform.

He even used tracking magic to confirm it was her own hair, in case it was a wig or someone else’s.

‘Good, now I can track her wherever she runs.’

The principle of tracking magic was to use enhanced senses to detect targets matching specific conditions.

The more precise the conditions, the less magical power needed to search wide areas, and using a body part to find its owner was one of the most efficient tracking conditions.

This meant the current Turan could find and follow the target even thousands of kilometers away using this single hair.

There was good reason people feared Zahar’s tracking abilities.

After securing a way to track Leto and letting her go, Turan returned to Meisa’s room and opened the books.

Unlike his expectation of finding important house information, they were just ordinary fairy tales.

The woodcutter who dropped his axe, the frog prince, the star child-

‘All familiar stories.’

These were all stories his mother Bizela had told him at bedtime in childhood.

Come to think of it, it made sense that stories known by an Arabion knight’s daughter would originate from this region.

He checked several times for hidden codes but found nothing particularly special.

Though even if there were codes, they wouldn’t be easily noticeable to an outsider like Turan.

After indulging in old memories while reading fairy tales, Turan soon came to his senses, closed the book and looked back at Meisa.

‘Did she just want to read fairy tales?’

Unfortunately he couldn’t get answers from the sleeping girl, so Turan left the room and began patrolling the mansion again.

He was looking for a place to use as a base, but soon found all rooms up to the fifth floor were wide open and empty like the first floor.

The attic typical in such mansions even had rotting exposed floorboards.

Turan realized it was impossible to use this mansion as a base.

‘If they made the mansion like this to prepare for Zahar noble infiltration, it was surprisingly effective…’

Since stealth magic couldn’t be maintained forever and needed breaks, but here that was impossible.

Just shifting position would make half-rotted wooden boards creak, and all walls and floors had holes that couldn’t muffle such sounds.

With noble hearing, even a snore would probably be audible from the first floor.

The only way to rest would be to reveal himself to Meisa and share her room, but he had found too little information here for that yet.

He needed to find at least evidence of schemes within Arabion’s main house like with Solif before he could convince Meisa.

After leaving the mansion, Turan searched for temporary lodging while using both stealth and flight magic.

Though magical lamps on the streets emitted light, it was just enough to drive away darkness so maintaining stealth high in the sky wasn’t difficult… After checking passing people with enhanced holy relic senses for several minutes, he saw a family of four walking in the distance.

One of them had high noble level magical power.

“Today’s performance was really fun, Father!”

“I didn’t like it…”

“Oh my, Dora, you were crying earlier.”

“I wasn’t crying!”

“Don’t be so embarrassed. It’s okay to cry at moving scenes.”

The middle-aged noble chatting warmly with what seemed to be his wife and children had a familiar face.

Kadram was his name?

He remembered him as the commander of Arabion’s dark elf subjugation unit.

Having briefly heard from Keorn that he was the family head’s half-brother and one of his confidants, his house might yield some worthwhile information.

Given the opponent’s power level, Turan was confident he could either escape or subdue him even if alarms activated.

After confirming Kadram’s family entered their mansion, Turan maintained stealth magic while using telekinesis to pick the lock of a window near the roof and enter.

It seemed to be an unused attic, but was still neater than Meisa’s residence.

Apparently maintaining the interior like ruins wasn’t Arabion nobles’ taste but Meisa’s personal preference.

Turan disabled stealth magic and removed his mask while exhaling deeply.

“Phew…”

As his gradually depleted magical power recovered, fatigue washed over him.

Though confident he could escape unless discovered right in front of the family head, infiltrating a great house’s stronghold was still stressful.

Turan took out the Imitator holy relic and absorbed a small amount of Barrier bloodline power before setting up barriers on the attic’s door and windows.

Based on the dust accumulated here, no one would likely come for a while, but this was preparation for unexpected situations.

After securing this safe zone and napping for several hours.

Having recovered from fatigue and restored magical power, Turan confirmed only one or two servants were awake on night watch and immediately began exploring the mansion.

His target was naturally Kadram’s study.

If one wanted to find someone’s personal secrets in their home, the place storing all documents would be easiest.

Fortunately he didn’t need to search the quite large mansion room by room, as he could sense one room in a corner of the second floor was locked with a magical device.

What reason would there be to guard a room more strictly than bedrooms if not a study?

‘This much is nothing.’

Though thoroughly secured from their perspective, such security was nothing before the Imitator holy relic.

Turan checked the flow of the magical device blocking the study entrance, then found its matching key in Kadram’s bedroom.

Kadram, sound asleep after vigorous reproductive activities with his wife, didn’t even notice an intruder entering his bedroom.

‘Come to think of it, the interior security really is sloppy. Almost questionably so…’

Though Turan had saved time entering quickly using the mask, with time and effort, other Zahar nobles could likely infiltrate by disguising as servants too.

That woman from earlier might have used such methods.

How would they handle indiscriminate slaughter in such a defenseless state?

While clicking his tongue at Arabion’s inadequate security, Turan entered the study and found one desk, about ten bookshelves, and various books and documents packed tightly.

Time to check if his desired materials were here.

‘Let’s see.’

As expected, the documents spread on the desk contained rather innutritious content.

Approval confirmations regarding material distribution within Morgen City.

Considering nobles typically lack interest in such things, Kadram probably just stamped approvals.

After properly reorganizing the documents, Turan pulled out and checked documents from the bookshelves one by one before pushing them back.

This was ordinary educational material, this was religious text, this was Arabion nobles’ genealogy…

‘Ah.’

After searching for several minutes, what caught Turan’s eye was a report about the recent dark elf subjugation.

The first page was about importing large trees at low prices from pioneering territories near the Western Forest region.

A bit further in came content about Turan himself.

Describing him as a contributor to the dark elf subjugation and an unidentified noble specially cared for by Meisa.

The next page had a document with Turan’s personal information, presumably to supplement this.

‘Oh…’

Not only a magically drawn portrait close to his real appearance, but even his past activities were somewhat organized.

These few pages essentially summarized how Arabion viewed Turan.

[A noble with Barrier bloodline of unknown parentage, specializing in stone throwing with slings, power level 4.]

[After saving Asiz of House Berk from dark elves, stayed as a guest and built friendship with the runaway heir.]

[The dark elves’ invasion this time is presumed due to dark elves killed in that battle.]

[Controls the ownerless city of Kalamaf in the gray zone.]

[Controls one black eagle magical beast through soul bonding.]

That it didn’t mention him guiding Kalamaf to another house was likely because recent information hadn’t been reflected.

While Turan zipped around in a day or two riding Bije, normal people would take months to travel such distances.

Meanwhile, the lack of content about the Hisaril Hills suggested Keorn truly hadn’t told Arabion’s upper class anything about Turan.

Reading through the text, Turan frowned at what was written at the bottom.

Judging by at least three different handwriting styles, this document seemed written by several people taking turns like exchanging letters.

[Recent: Returned to House Berk and attempted contact with heir. Excessive friendly relations concerning. Elimination recommended.]

[Said noble’s power is at least level 7. Simple elimination impossible.]

[Leto?]

[Too much. First intercept letters and check reaction.]

[Remember when the heir broke.]

[Why did power level increase from 4 to 7 in less than half a year? Check for errors.]

Leto, the name of that Zahar noble seen earlier…

From this, Turan could tell she belonged to Arabion’s side, or at least Arabion’s upper ranks were aware of her existence.

They were wary of him becoming too close with Meisa and sent a Zahar noble to assassinate him!… ‘I sent the letter three weeks ago, I could have had to fight a Zahar assassin.’

Having never faced a Zahar noble using stealth abilities, Turan didn’t know if he could see through their abilities with the Imitator holy relic.

If possible the fight would be laughably simple, but if not he couldn’t let his guard down even against weaker opponents.

Even with defensive measures like the Guardian magical device, a knife to vital points while sleeping would be fatal.

More importantly, what did they mean by remembering when the heir broke?

Feeling he needed more information to understand the details, Turan first organized the documents back in place while carefully remembering their location.

Now that he knew where they were, he could come back and take them later if needed.

‘Besides, this probably isn’t the only person worth checking for such things.’

Didn’t this mean at least three high-ranking nobles had authority to command Zahar nobles?

Whether the family head was among them was uncertain, but with no one yet knowing of Turan’s infiltration, there was plenty of time.

The subsequent document search was quite boring as expected.

Despite most being administrative documents, he had to read everything in case unexpected meaningful content appeared.

During this, an old letter fell with a flutter from between books.

Turan carefully unfolded it to avoid the paper crumbling.

[To Uncle.

Life here at House Nagin is quite leisurely.

Mother’s relatives are all strangers so we’re naturally awkward.

I can only gradually build relationships over time.

Sirel keeps saying she’s doing well but her letters often seem insincere. Could you check if she’s skipping studies?

And Meisa suddenly sent me a letter calling me a murderer, did something happen in the house?

From Renod.]

Turan opened the Arabion genealogy he had seen earlier to check again.

Renod Nagin, Sirel Arabion, Meisa Arabion.

These three names were under the family head Badal Arabion, with the first two sharing ‘Anieta Nagin’ as their mother’s name.

‘Come to think of it, I think I heard something like this from Asiz.’

Briefly recalling their first conversation about Meisa came to mind.

The family head had three children but the eldest was adopted into the maternal family due to inheriting that bloodline?

‘Meisa sent a letter calling her half-brother a murderer…’

Turan read that letter several times, engraving it in his mind.

Though he had no evidence, he had a gut feeling this contained the reason she was hostile to her house.