Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 87
Chapter 87
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When Turan first ventured into the world, he met a beast hunter named Midan in a small city.
The superstition that hunting beasts could turn even commoners into mages was widespread everywhere, but what left a lasting impression on Turan was Midan’s distinctive gaze.
A look that fixated solely on a single, unwavering goal, as if everything else in the world held no value.
Though their connection ended in a somewhat absurd manner, it wasn’t long before Turan encountered a second person with a similar gaze.
That was Obil, the Pyre Lord, who believed that by burning people and bathing in their ashes—guided by wisdom bestowed by the gods—he could awaken a new bloodline.
And now, Bisen, a noble of the Karmain family whom he hadn’t seen in a while, bore that same look in her eyes.
Yet, she hadn’t had it when they first met.
However, questioning her about it now wasn’t exactly feasible.
Right beside them, people were screaming as they burned alive.
Turan immediately used telekinesis to begin freeing the bound villagers.
“Wait!”
Startled, Bisen—perhaps trying to stop him—quickly gathered moisture and crafted an ice bow and arrow.
But as she fired at Turan, Solif, standing nearby, conjured a hammer of light and intercepted it.
“Nice try!”
Though Bisen’s magic had grown stronger since their last encounter, it still hovered between mid-tier and upper-mid-tier.
Naturally, Solif, a top-tier noble, easily shattered the ice arrow with his hammer, which then struck Bisen’s abdomen.
“Urk…”
Bisen collapsed, vomiting everything she’d eaten and passing out face-first into her own mess.
Even that was restrained—if Solif had struck with full force, her stomach would’ve been torn open, killing her instantly.
Meanwhile, Turan finished freeing all the villagers and handed Solif a chain artifact.
“Subdue and watch her. She might try something strange, so stay alert.”
“Don’t worry.”
Leaving the confident Solif behind, Turan hurried toward the burning villagers.
Meisa created a vacuum around their bodies to extinguish the flames, but they were already on the brink of death from severe burns and suffocation.
“This…”
Turan turned to Meisa, who looked back at him helplessly, and pulled out a healing potion artifact.
“Make this. I’ll administer it.”
“Can we save them?”
“It’ll be enough.”
The healing potion artifact was considered somewhat underwhelming because its effectiveness diminished against stronger magical beings.
But a potion potent enough to work on top-tier nobles like them was practically an elixir of life for commoners.
Turan quickly sorted the burn victims.
Using the holy relic’s senses, he gauged the brightness of the magical spark within their bodies.
He set aside a few who were already dead and prioritized the critically injured. Meisa handed him a bottle of sloshing liquid.
“Done!”
“Give it here. We’ll probably need more.”
Turan propped up the worst-off victim’s head, drew a dagger, and slit open their charred, fused lips.
He then inserted a metal tube—usually used for Meisa’s meals—into the opening and poured in the potion.
Moments later, the onlookers gasped in awe.
“Oh…!”
“H-He’s alive! A dead person’s coming back to life!”
The body of someone who seemed moments from death split open, revealing fresh, pale skin growing beneath.
Fused fingers, smoke-damaged lungs, heat-ruined eyes—all healed in a process that resembled resurrection more than recovery.
Turan pulled the tube from the throat and tossed the empty bottle to Meisa, shouting,
“Next!”
He continued pouring potions into several patients until he noticed Meisa’s magic dwindling. They switched roles—he prepared the potions, and she administered them.
Three, five, ten, twenty.
Sadly, a few succumbed along the way, but most of the critically injured survived.
“Phew…”
Turan sighed in relief and patted Meisa’s shoulder.
She wore a dazed expression, still processing the abrupt ordeal’s end.
“Good work, Meisa. There shouldn’t be anyone urgent left now.”
“Oh, yeah… We saved them. We did.”
Meisa stared at her hands in disbelief.
While she’d rescued people from danger before—like during the dark elf subjugation—healing the severely injured seemed unfamiliar to her.
“Yeah, we saved them. I’ll handle the cleanup, so go change your clothes.”
Since they’d had to physically insert tubes and pour potions into the burn victims, both were covered in soot and pus, their clothes a mess.
After sending Meisa off, Turan gave instructions to the unharmed villagers.
“The injured are healed but will need time to wake up, so prepare places for them to rest at home. And keep away from this area for a while.”
“Understood!”
“Thank you, truly thank you!”
Naturally, they revered Turan as a god for appearing out of nowhere, subduing a demon, and saving their families and friends.
Just as the citizens of Kalamaf once had.
Turan felt a sense of satisfaction from that.
***
“Any issues?”
“None.”
While Turan and Meisa saved the villagers, Solif had kept watch over the chained, unconscious Bisen.
He nudged her with his foot and said,
“So, how do you know this woman? She looks like a Karmain noble. If you’re dating, I’d say break up—her hobbies are nasty.”
“She’s someone I hunted a noble burning people around here with, like I mentioned before.”
Since Turan had briefly explained this in the past, Solif caught on quickly.
“But she’s doing the same thing here now? Why?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
As they spoke, Bisen, half-conscious until then, began to stir.
She glanced between the chains binding her and Turan, asking quietly,
“Why are you interfering with my work?”
“I’d like to ask if you seriously don’t know… but first, my question: Why are you doing this?”
The situation was obvious enough.
Bisen was likely attempting the ritual from Obil’s notebook to gain the Pyromaniac bloodline.
Since she’d copied its contents back then, her knowing the method wasn’t surprising.
But at the time, Bisen hadn’t trusted the method to awaken bloodline abilities and had shown strong disgust toward burning commoners.
People’s hearts could change with time and circumstance, but just over half a year seemed too short for such a drastic shift.
Bisen twitched an eyebrow at the question before answering calmly.
“Well… because I need to obtain a third bloodline. Haven’t you tried it too, Turan?”
“No chance.”
She smirked as if calling him a liar.
Her demeanor was a stark contrast to the resolute warrior he’d met before—something significant had clearly changed in their time apart.
Likely tied to that altered gaze.
“What happened after we parted? Where did your companions go?”
“Oh… You mean Kebek, Asha, and Gil? They’re all dead. Sadly, we had some differences of opinion.”
Her face showed not a speck of guilt as she spoke of killing her comrades.
Turan called to Solif, watching nearby.
“Solif.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think of her eyes?”
“Her eyes? Uh, I don’t know… She just seems too calm for this situation, I guess?”
Unlike Turan, Solif didn’t sense anything special in Bisen’s gaze.
He got similar answers from Meisa, who’d returned after changing, and even the librarian when summoned.
Turan clicked his tongue softly.
‘Is this something only I can feel too?’
“So, you didn’t just suddenly decide you wanted a new bloodline. Why did you start believing in this method? Did a god guarantee it, like with Obil?”
“A god? Yes, it must be a god. That voice. It kept saying to become something greater, asking why I’d forsake the rights given to me…”
Turan frowned at her rambling, reminiscent of Obil’s interrogation.
Midan had seemed normal aside from his kindness, but Obil and Bisen both appeared half-mad and caused immense harm—a shared trait.
What was the difference between them?
The presence of magic?
Or that Midan’s target was beasts, not humans?
Turan continued questioning Bisen, piecing together what had happened to her.
Weeks after parting with Turan, her group wandered Karmain’s western frontier, hunting beasts.
Then, lured by a voice from within, Bisen suggested trying the pyre ritual to her companions. When they recoiled, she brushed it off as a joke.
But by then, she was already half-unhinged, eventually killing and burying her interfering comrades in their sleep.
Afterward, she mimicked Obil, performing the ritual as a pyre lord until now.
“So you didn’t return to your family?”
“No. I’ll go back once I get my third bloodline… Then my parents and everyone else will be proud of me. So help me. You want a second bloodline too, right? You two as well.”
Ignoring her absurd plea, Turan shared the details with his companions and sought their input.
Meisa, rubbing her lips in thought, spoke first.
“Since the Soul of Fire worked, the method itself doesn’t seem entirely fake.”
“You’re saying this fire nonsense can really awaken the Pyromaniac bloodline?”
Solif asked incredulously, prompting Meisa to shake her head.
“I’m just talking possibilities. What I don’t get is, if this could awaken bloodlines, wouldn’t it have spread ages ago? We stopped her now, but it’s not exactly a hard method.”
“I’ve never seen anyone actually become a mage by hunting beasts either,” Turan added lightly.
If such methods were truly effective, they’d have spread widely—nobles would be draped in four bloodlines each, commanding armies of commoner knights.
From this, they formed two hypotheses.
First: the knowledge of those with that mysterious gaze was partly true, partly false.
Second: the knowledge was true, but required a specific aptitude to realize.
And this knowledge corrupted the minds of those with that special gaze, which only Turan could see.
“The source of corruption is probably a god’s soul or something like it, right?”
“That’s the only explanation. Where else would this knowledge pop up from?”
“Maybe not a whole soul—just a fragment. Projecting only bits of its past knowledge.”
“Oh…”
Impressed by the plausible theory, Solif soon turned to Bisen and raised a delayed question.
“So, what do we do with her?”
“Kill her.”
“Won’t that soul thing latch onto us?”
“We can’t just let her go. I’ll handle the execution, so stay back. I’ve seen Ymir’s soul, so I’ll know if it tries to get into me.”
“But even if you see it, we don’t have a solution.”
“I’ll try the jewel box first. Even if it goes wrong, we’ll have a few months to figure something out.”
In the worst case, they could negotiate with Karmain’s god and borrow a soul-binder’s power.
Since that god kept switching bodies, he likely employed soul-binders too.
After debate, execution was decided. Turan sent the others back and approached Bisen, bound in chains.
He felt pity for her slumped, powerless form.
Though she’d burned hundreds of commoners, circumstances suggested it wasn’t entirely her own will.
If a god possessed Meisa or Solif and went on a rampage, it wouldn’t be their fault either.
But releasing her risked her repeating this, and letting that knowledge spread was unacceptable.
Turan snapped Bisen’s neck—rendered no stronger than a commoner by the chains—killing her painlessly.
Moments later, as with Ymir, a tiny lump of magic emerged from her body.
Unlike his expectation that it would rush toward someone nearby, it rose skyward, heading somewhere.
‘Will it work this time…?’
As before, Turan pulled out the jewel box containing the librarian and infused it with magic.
The ascending soul was sucked into the box like it was being absorbed.
***
“It’s a very small soul fragment.”
That was the librarian’s first remark after entering and exiting the box with Bisen’s soul.
“A soul fragment?”
“Yes. Think of it as a shard with just the knowledge you mentioned and the urge to achieve it—nothing more. No past memories or anything.”
Though the librarian didn’t know much about souls, his nature as a spirit-like entity seemed to grant him instinctual insight.
“So it won’t cause you any trouble, Elder?”
“It doesn’t have enough power for that, so no worries. But I did think that collecting too many might let it regain a sense of self.”
“Fragments…”
“But if you gather a few more, I might be able to read the knowledge within.”
That knowledge could prove invaluable.
Even the Soul of Fire, if not for the need to conceal his identity, could nearly double Turan’s firepower.
If they could uncover and implement a milder way to awaken bloodline abilities—unlike the Pyre Lord’s extremism—its utility would be undeniable.
Whether Turan, already with four bloodlines, could gain more power was uncertain, though.
Relaying the librarian’s words, Solif asked with curiosity,
“Can you tell which god’s soul it might be?”
“How would I know? I’m not even sure this is really a god’s soul.”
The librarian snorted, then hesitated with a troubled look.
“Hmm, I’m not sure if I should say this. It might just be my imagination, leading to a wrong judgment…”
“It’s fine.”
With an uncharacteristic lack of confidence, the librarian gazed at the jewel box and said,
“It felt faintly nostalgic. I don’t have a homeland, but if I did, leaving it might feel like this.”