Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 94
Chapter 94
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When the first explosion occurred, no one at the battle scene understood what Turan had done.
Having seen him use Soul of Fire for emergency evasions multiple times, they merely wondered, “Why detonate it when he wasn’t even under attack?”
They only sensed something had changed when the boulder—propelled by both centrifugal force and explosive power, flying at several times the speed of sound—struck the Great Sea Serpent’s vital spot with pinpoint accuracy.
A wound from the past, likely created by some god and almost certainly the one that originally ended this massive beast’s life.
The boulder tore through the stormy flesh, piercing the scales on the opposite side and exiting.
The impact was so severe that the Great Sea Serpent could only gape its mouth, unable to even scream, writhing violently.
“Get back!” the mermaid king bellowed, his voice booming through the storm with the immense lung capacity of a whale.
Watching his children hastily retreat, the king recalled the terrifying attack from moments ago.
“What in the world was that…?”
Though he lived mostly between the sea and his kingdom, the mermaid king had inherited considerable wisdom from his ancestors over his long life, granting him insight far beyond that of ordinary mermaids.
To his discerning eye, the slingshot attack Turan had just unleashed didn’t seem like something a mage of his level should be capable of.
It was the kind of power one might expect from the mightiest human mage lords—those called heads of great families.
Considering Turan’s strength up until now hadn’t been at that level, this was an abnormal display of firepower.
“He must indeed be one of the eternal ones…” the king concluded.
Having harbored doubts because Turan’s power seemed weaker than expected, this reaffirmed his belief.
Swallowing his thoughts, he shielded his children from the thrashing Great Sea Serpent’s aftermath.
[□——-■——-!]
The convulsions of a monster over a hundred meters long produced a staggering ripple effect.
Each time its massive bulk churned the air and water, tidal waves surged, and from the wound Turan had pierced, an immense volume of wind poured out, sparking a magical storm.
A giant octopus, over eight meters thick, floating halfway above the water, was caught in it and flung hundreds of meters.
“Urgh—!”
“Get in my mouth! Hurry!” the sea turtle shouted.
After seeing Solif, who’d been attacking from atop the sea turtle’s shell, dive into its mouth, Turan used tracking magic to locate Bije.
The tidal waves and storm had reached the island, obliterating the already ravaged beach from earlier water pillars and smashing the forest beyond, but thankfully, it hadn’t reached Bije’s inland position.
“Phew…”
Letting out a sigh of relief, Turan tossed aside the slingshot, now tattered from the explosion’s aftermath.
Normally, he reinforced the slingshot with magic when launching stones, but it clearly hadn’t withstood that last blast.
“Now that I look, my hand’s hurt too,” he noted.
His fingers stung, blistered from burns caused by the explosion’s heat.
Considering he hadn’t activated even a guardian artifact to minimize magic use, getting off with just this was fortunate.
As he debated using a healing potion, Meisa approached and asked, “How’d you do that just now?”
“I used Soul of Fire… I’ll explain the details later,” Turan replied.
Truthfully, it was an impromptu idea he’d acted on immediately, expecting a high chance of failure. Yet somehow, it had worked perfectly, as if he’d practiced it hundreds of times.
He’d felt this before while throwing stones—a certainty in critical moments that he’d hit his target.
It might be the result of Turan’s honed skill and intuition, refined through countless throws since childhood.
He hadn’t even used magic to guide the stone to its target this time, relying solely on the wind path.
“More importantly, this technique… with some refinement, it could have a lot of uses,” he mused.
Several applications sprang to mind: filling a large pouch with hundreds of pebbles and Soul of Fire to toss and detonate amidst enemies, or mimicking the dwarves’ old method—packing metal shards into a long, narrow tube with Soul of Fire at the back to fire them.
As his imagination ran wild, the Great Sea Serpent’s thrashing began to subside.
Was it finally on the verge of death?
Turan wasn’t the only one thinking so—the giant octopus, flung away earlier, approached and raised a tentacle toward the serpent.
In that moment, a change stirred within the half-dead beast.
“Get back!” Turan shouted urgently, but the two were already too close.
The Great Sea Serpent, which had been wheezing as if its breath were failing, suddenly widened its eyes and unleashed a burst of green light from its body.
The storm spirit fused with it had escaped somewhere, transforming it fully into an undead.
Though still on the brink of death with its body crushed, it seemed to gain one last surge of strength, opening its jaws toward the octopus and gathering magic in its mouth.
What erupted was—
“Arghhhh!”
A golden flash melted the giant octopus’s body like a heated knife through butter.
Judgment’s Light.
Turan was momentarily speechless as the secret magic of Baraha’s solar bloodline poured from the Great Sea Serpent’s mouth.
How in the world?
As if mocking his confusion, the serpent then unleashed a massive surge of lightning across its body, targeting not only the nearby mermaid royals but also Turan and Meisa in the sky.
It wasn’t hard to guess this was a direct reflection of Meisa’s lightning barrage that had pummeled it earlier.
While Turan dodged by detonating a handful of Soul of Fire to propel himself, Meisa was struck by the lightning, screaming as she plummeted into the sea.
Turan started to rescue her but stopped, realizing the serpent was now targeting him.
Unlike him, Meisa had fully awakened her storm bloodline, giving her strong lightning resistance—she’d likely survive.
“Mimic…” Turan muttered.
The first word that came to mind as he evaded the successive lightning strikes was that.
No ancient texts about Great Sea Serpents, even those requested from the librarian, mentioned such an ability.
Unlike his holy relic, which stole and wielded the powers of the slain, this seemed to copy abilities it was struck with.
Had its undead form become entangled with the Mimic God while in contact with it?
It used Solif’s power once and stopped, suggesting some limitation, but even so, the situation wasn’t optimistic.
Meisa had unleashed a grand lightning storm early in the fight, bolstered by the cloudy weather—power worthy of an Arabion head.
If it regurgitated all that force, it could kill everyone here twice over.
While dodging lightning and pondering, Turan noticed the storm around them subsiding.
The storm spirit’s departure had stripped the serpent of its weather-control ability.
Moreover, the mermaid royals, who’d scattered from the lightning storm, along with Meisa and Solif—who’d fallen earlier—were now approaching underwater, attacking to draw its attention.
They likely aimed to exploit lightning’s reduced potency in water, but given the serpent’s overwhelming physical might, a single hit could be fatal—an act bordering on recklessness.
“Then…” Turan thought.
He couldn’t waste the precious opportunity his comrades had created.
Unfortunately, the large slingshot had torn apart from the explosion, making that technique unusable again, but with the storm gone, he could revert to a previously discarded tactic.
Turan’s flying form vanished as if erased.
***
“Damn it…” Solif cursed.
Breathing through a tube he’d crafted with water manipulation, he swore at the mythical beast before him.
Moments ago, its casual thrashing had sent waves that knocked him back dozens of meters.
Had it targeted him deliberately, he wouldn’t have lasted long.
His still-imperfect fluid manipulation made him sluggish underwater.
Swallowing his fear, Solif conjured a spear of light underwater and hurled it at the serpent’s belly or chest.
His decades of javelin training as Baraha’s heir paid off, even in water.
“Ugh.”
The attack, laden with considerable magic, stung enough that the serpent glared at him with eyes now fully green.
In other words, that was all it amounted to.
He’d learned earlier that his specialty, Judgment’s Light, could rend scales and tear flesh, but getting close enough risked his life.
Plus, for some reason, the serpent had mimicked his technique earlier, making him even more reluctant to try.
Bracing for a counterattack, he dodged sideways just as its massive tail sliced through where he’d been, creating a fierce vortex.
“Glurk—!”
The breathing tube he’d set above water vanished, and salty seawater flooded his mouth.
Choking on brine instead of air, Solif desperately swam toward shore, using magic and physical strength.
Thankfully, Rowina, passing by, grabbed him with her pincers and hauled him up quickly.
“Cough, hack… Thanks…” he rasped.
“Your leader—where’d he go? He was here a moment ago,” Rowina said.
Catching his breath above water, Solif looked up at her words.
True enough, Turan, who’d been flying and drawing attention, was gone.
Had he finally been shot down by lightning?
Or had he dived underwater like them to evade?
Checking for Meisa, he saw she wasn’t with him either—she was submerged near the serpent, firing light arrows relentlessly.
Her superior mobility let her get dangerously close.
“Should I tell her to back off? She won’t see hand signals from here,” Solif wondered.
Just then, he widened his eyes at an explosion above the serpent’s head.
***
[■■■■■■■■■■■■■■——–!]
“It’s definitely the weak spot,” Turan confirmed.
Using Zahar’s invisibility magic, fueled by the solar bloodline power he’d absorbed from Baraha nobles—the strongest among them—he approached the serpent’s crown, the vital spot pierced earlier by the boulder.
Normally, even with invisibility, he’d hesitate to near a constantly moving head for fear of a stray hit.
Its exhaustion slowed it, and the underwater attackers distracted it, making this possible.
In that state, he poured a large amount of Soul of Fire into the widened hole—once pierced by a drowned god’s arm, now expanded by the boulder—and ignited it as he pulled back.
The resulting cavity was wide enough for a person to pass through.
Leaping inside, he activated Judgment’s Light, swinging the whip wildly to erase the undead’s essence. The serpent roared as if on the brink of death, thrashing violently.
It was like digging into a brain—a natural reaction.
“Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it?” Turan taunted.
Bracing his feet in a narrow groove inside the skull, he whipped around as the body lurched.
Each time the whip burned away the undead’s green glow, its screams and convulsions intensified.
“Don’t!”
A human voice echoed from somewhere.
Turan instinctively knew it was the entity fused with the serpent—the Mimic God’s undead remnant.
“Die.”
Who was meant to die—him, the one threatening its existence?
The answer came swiftly.
“Monster, die. For humans, snake, die…”
That was the intent harbored by the Mimic God’s undead—the lingering obsession it had clung to until death.
How tragic that a god who fought the Great Sea Serpent for humanity had merged with its nemesis.
To end that twisted devotion, Turan squeezed out his dwindling magic, erasing the green glow filling where a brain should be with Judgment’s Light.
The acrid smell of burning undead essence filled his nostrils as he collided with the shaking skull walls for minutes.
Finally, the shaking stopped, and free fall began.
The entwined entity of the Great Sea Serpent and the god’s undead had shattered completely, its magic converging into a single point.
“Thank you…” a faint voice murmured.
Turan gave a slight bow.
“Rest in peace. I owe you a lot,” he said.
The god likely couldn’t hear, but it was the best courtesy Turan could offer.
Soon, with a splash, water began filling the skull, and Turan swam out.
The holy relic’s senses, briefly blocked inside, reactivated, illuminating nearby lifeforms: the mermaid king and royals, Solif, and Meisa…
Spotting Solif and Meisa atop the sea turtle’s shell, Turan flew over with magic.
“Turan! Healing potion, quick!” Solif shouted, his face urgent.
Below, Meisa lay pale and unconscious, her lower half missing.
A devastating injury—without top-tier noble resilience, she’d have died instantly.
Turan hurriedly handed Solif a healing artifact and turned.
“Where are you going!?” Solif called.
“To get her body!”
Fortunately, Meisa’s severed lower half was just within the Mimic relic’s sensory range.
Diving to retrieve it, Turan assessed the mermaid royals’ condition.
“They’re badly hurt, and some are dead… but using all our magic here would be risky,” he thought.
Even injured, killing a defenseless noble drained of magic wouldn’t be hard for them.
They could transform into giant sea creatures, while Turan’s group, without magic, were mere humans.
Realistically, one of them had to conserve magic while the other healed—or risk Meisa’s death.
The healing artifact wasn’t efficient for mages of their caliber, and her injury was so severe that even both pouring all their magic in might not guarantee survival.
After brief hesitation, Turan approached Solif, who was frantically administering the potion.
“Lift her upper body. I’ll align it,” he said.
“Can you reattach it?” Solif asked.
“It’s not burned or melted like yours was. How’d this happen?”
“Probably caught in its final thrashing. I thought she was too close…”
Unlike Solif’s arm, severed and melted by Judgment’s Light, Meisa’s body was relatively cleanly torn.
Whether to marvel at the serpent’s brute force, which destroyed her high-level artifacts, or be grateful for Meisa’s durability despite such a blow, Turan wasn’t sure.
Asking the sea turtle to head to land, Turan and Solif took turns crafting healing potions to treat Meisa.
Calling Bije from inland, they poured all their magic in, and after nearly twenty minutes, they overcame the crisis.
“It’s done. She’ll recover with time,” Turan said.
“She’s alive…” Solif muttered, collapsing from exhaustion.
Turan checked Bije’s wing alignment, then examined Meisa.
Still pale and unconscious, her reattached lower half now circulated warm blood.
Per the relic’s senses, without all their magic—including Bije’s—she’d have died from improper reattachment.
“Phew…”
As he sighed in relief, shadows loomed over him and Solif.
The mermaid king and a few royals, fewer than at the fight’s start, gazed at them with odd expressions.
The king spoke, his tone observant.
“She’s badly hurt.”
“Unfortunately. But she’s past the worst,” Turan replied casually, subtly watching their reactions.
If they turned hostile now, his group couldn’t resist—they’d die.
His remaining magic was so low even Armani as a shark could overwhelm him.
After a tense few seconds, the king said quietly, “Tell me if you need help. We want to recover the corpse quickly, so once she wakes, absorb its power. For now, bring it to the beach.”
As the mermaids turned away, Turan, like Solif moments ago, collapsed onto the sand.