Chapter 103

It had been about two days since visiting House Berk.

Turan stayed in Ashiz’s room, collecting various information about House Carmine through the books that Ashiz brought him.

There was much to learn, from the extensive history of their house since its founding to information about the vassals under them.

Of course, Orem’s library also contained knowledge about House Carmine, but the problem was that all of its information was outdated.

“Hurry up and turn the pages already. How can a young man be so slow at reading?”

“You’re just too fast, elder. I’ve already finished reading this, you know.”

Turan responded to the grumbling librarian while turning another page of the book.

Originally a spirit of the library, the librarian had the ability to never forget the contents of a book once read. So even if Turan forgot something later, he could always ask and be reminded.

“A spirit, huh? Too bad I can’t see it...”

“Hmph, do you think I’m some kind of spectacle to be gawked at?”

Of course, from Ashiz’s perspective, it simply looked like Turan was talking to himself in empty space.

During the day, Turan diligently gathered information, and around midnight, he infused magic power into the handheld mirror to attempt communication with Meisa.

Since they had agreed in advance to communicate at this time, it did not take long before magic power was infused from the other side as well, causing the mirror to distort.

[Ah, it worked! Turan, can you see me clearly?]

“Yeah. It’s working even more smoothly than I expected at this distance. The magic power consumption is manageable too.”

Beyond the mirror, Meisa’s eyes sparkled with excitement, delighted that the magic artifact she had created was functioning properly.

At that moment, someone beside her shoved her aside and leaned in to take a look.

[Let me see too. Oh… are you really in the Takein Plains right now? That’s fascinating.]

As Solif casually intruded, showing his face, Meisa furrowed her brows slightly behind him and gave him a firm pat on the back as if telling him to move away.

“Get your burdensome face out of the way.”

[Burdensome? That’s harsh to say to such a handsome face.]

After exchanging some lighthearted banter with Solif, Turan had to spend a bit of time appeasing Bije, who was still sulking on the other side of the mirror.

At any rate, he was relieved to confirm that she had returned safely.

Once things settled down to some extent, Turan gave Ashiz a chance to see Meisa’s face as well.

“M-Meisa?”

[It’s been a while, Ashiz.]

“It’s really you? Your hair color and eyes are the same, but…”

Ashiz, who only remembered her from when she was as thin as a skeleton, gaped with his jaw nearly dropping at how much she had changed.

Anyone who had known her before would have undoubtedly asked, “Who are you?”, so his reaction was understandable.

After staring at Meisa’s face in amazement for a while, Ashiz murmured softly.

“You don’t resemble aunt as much as I thought.”

[You think so?]

“Yeah. If anything, you seem to resemble my mother a bit more... Anyway, I’m really glad you stopped that ridiculous fasting. You never listened when I told you before.”

[Aha…haha…]

Hearing Ashiz still believe that her refusal to eat had been for the sake of flight magic, Meisa could only respond with an awkward laugh.

“You didn’t stop just because you wanted to look pretty for someone, did you?”

[Th-That’s not it.]

Ashiz, who had been enjoying teasing her, noticed how Meisa’s blue eyes shaking nervously. He glanced at Turan, then lightly tapped the mirror to change the topic.

“Anyway, this is the magic artifact you made?”

[Yeah. I didn’t realize I had a talent for this kind of thing. Could you give me some advice?]

“I’m not sure if my skills would be of much help… but what issues did you have?”

Though still inexperienced, Ashiz had received proper training as an enchanter, so he was able to pass along several useful techniques to Meisa.

About twenty minutes later, when the magic power ran out and the connection was cut off, Ashiz turned to Turan with a deeply moved expression.

“Meisa has completely recovered! And her expressions look much brighter than before… I’m really glad to see she’s doing well.”

Seeing Ashiz shed tears of emotion, Turan let out a small chuckle.

He had known since their first meeting that Ashiz was a soft-hearted person who was easily moved to tears.

“The joy of eating is an important part of life.”

“That’s true. Ah... this is really nice. Seeing her face like this makes all my accumulated worries just disappear.”

Watching Ashiz smile so brightly, Turan found himself smiling as well.

*

The day after the dramatic family reunion.

Having gathered most of the necessary information, Turan left House Berk.

Inside his large-capacity pouch, he carried an additional twenty or so books that Ashiz had personally purchased for him.

"It’d be boring, so you might as well read these."

Ashiz had handed them over with such a casual remark, but the books he gave were not something to be taken lightly.

Although the Takein Plains were abundant in resources and made luxury goods easily accessible, thick books that were neatly transcribed inside were not cheap.

It was clear that Ashiz must have spent several months’ worth of allowance to obtain them.

As compensation for the books, Turan had left a pile of roughly smelted gold and silver ingots on Ashiz’s bed before departing from the mansion.

If he had tried to hand them over directly, Ashiz would have stubbornly refused, so this was the better approach.

Leaving Zavilin City, Turan changed his appearance to that of another traveler and leisurely walked across the plains.

The cooling breeze and the golden, rippling wheat fields signaled the arrival of autumn.

‘It would be nice if the Reclaimed Land could become this fertile too... Is the soil composition important? I should take some and see if I can replicate this later.’

As Turan walked northeast, he scooped up a handful of soil and examined it, lost in thought.

It was no secret that Aravion nobles struck their farmlands with lightning every year after the harvest.

He did not understand the principle behind it, but if the same practice were applied to their reclaimed land, it might yield similar results.

Of course, without an Aravion noble to summon lightning every year, maintaining such a method would be difficult.

Walking along the outskirts of the city, Turan reached a secluded area and immediately used Concealment Magic before taking flight.

This way, he would not have to worry about running into any wandering Aravion nobles.

Several days passed as Turan flew east toward House Carmine, conserving his magic power along the way.

His destination was the slash-and-burn farming village where they had once fought against Visen.

As the sun began to set, Turan leisurely entered the village, only to be met with a resident pointing a hunting spear at him.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a traveling wanderer who lost my way... Would it be possible for me to stay for just one night?”

“There’s no place for guests to stay in our village. If you head down the mountain, there’s a larger village below, go there instead!”

“The sun has already set. How am I supposed to make my way down now? Please, let me stay for just one night. I don’t mind sleeping outside.”

“...Tch, fine. But keep quiet and don’t cause any trouble!”

Perhaps due to the lingering trauma from Visen’s massacre, the villagers remained highly wary of outsiders.

Turan spent the night in the village, exchanging a few casual conversations with those keeping an eye on him to gather information.

“Now that I think about it, there have been rumors lately about a noble who’s been burning villagers alive. Has this village been safe?”

“Haven’t seen anything. If something like that had happened, we probably wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.”

Judging from the village’s intact condition, it seemed that Visen’s death was still well concealed.

After confirming his traces, Turan left the slash-and-burn village at dawn and headed straight for Avacha, the capital of House Carmine.

Unlike before, when he had simply moved eastward toward the sea, this time he traveled along the grand roads of the old empire, mingling among commoners and picking up various stories.

“I heard that a horde of magical beasts recently emerged from the sea.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. The high-ranking folks managed to stop them quickly, but the damage wasn’t small. You’d better stay away from the coast for a while. I saw one myself, it was terrifying. That massive creature that swept through the village…”

An old peddler, who was chatting with Turan while sharing a campfire in an open field, shivered as he offered his advice.

Why had the sea magical beasts suddenly attacked the land?

The timing did not align for it to be the result of the Great Sea Serpent Undead's rampage. Instead, it was more likely that the merfolks had triggered unintended side effects while using the serpent’s corpse.

‘Or maybe the merfolks deliberately drove the magical beasts toward the coast…’

Turan sincerely hoped that was not the case.

After all, he did not want to be in a situation where he had to kill comrades who had once fought together against a formidable enemy.

For three days, he walked along the road, gathering various stories from passersby.

When he finally entered Avacha, the capital of House Carmine, for the second time, he immediately noticed that the atmosphere of the city had completely changed.

The sailors and laborers wandering the streets all had gloomy expressions, and the merchants who were shouting to sell their goods carried not joy but desperation in their voices.

The vibrancy and liveliness that he had once felt were now almost completely absent.

After taking a brief tour of the city, Turan headed directly toward the residential area of the House Carmine family members.

‘Their security is quite strict… Well, I suppose it’s natural since House Zahar is also a potential enemy.’

Though not as fortified as House Aravion, which had built the Fortress of Light and even operated security checkpoints, the nobles of House Carmine still lived behind high walls, sealing off their main residence.

Considering that in places like House Lavitas, even key members lived outside the main house, this level of security was still quite extreme.

However, unlike House Aravion, which thoroughly blocked access even from the sky, the upper areas were left open.

Using Concealment and Flight Magic together, Turan easily infiltrated by descending from above.

‘If they plan to go to war with House Aravion, they should really pay more attention to aerial defense.’

Of course, since an airborne Aravion noble would be clearly visible in the sky, they probably relied on that as a safeguard.

Once inside, Turan immediately heightened his senses and, just as he had done at the Aravion estate, infiltrated the mansions of nobles possessing strong magic power.

Each noble had sealed their study in a variety of ways, but having already conducted similar infiltrations multiple times, Turan skillfully bypassed their security measures and searched through their libraries.

What he had not anticipated, however, was how underwhelming the results would be despite his thorough efforts.

‘Not here either…’

As he exited the third mansion, Turan clicked his tongue in disappointment.

Despite searching the studies of three high-ranking nobles, he had found little in the way of useful information.

At best, he had uncovered the same kind of corruption scandals common to any great noble house, things no different from what he had previously exposed in the Aravion estate.

But that was not what Turan had come here to find.

His goal was to uncover the nature of the relationship between House Carmine and the merfolks, how it had been formed, whether it was still intact, or, if it had broken, how that had happened.

Just like the Aravion nobles, it seemed that the Carmine nobles also did not keep god-related secrets in their residences.

Leaving behind his disappointment, Turan exited the Carmine estate and spent the night in a well-maintained inn nearby.

Unlike his infiltration of the Aravion estate, where movement was heavily restricted, he was grateful for the relative freedom of entry and exit here.

Sleeping in hidden corners of a mansion every night had been far more exhausting than expected.

‘Should I disguise myself as an insider and search somewhere even more secretive…?’

The next day at noon, while wandering through the streets of Avacha, deep in thought, Turan heard a street vendor’s cry.

Unlike the other people, who were either depressed or filled with frustration, this one had a surprisingly cheerful voice.

“Get your skewers here! Freshly grilled skewers!”

A bearded man, seemingly around thirty, shouted energetically while skillfully working over a sizzling grill.

His cooking seemed excellent, as customers kept coming without pause.

Watching this scene for a moment, Turan eventually stepped forward and joined the line, purchasing a skewer.

“Keep the change.”

“Thank you, sir! Enjoy your meal!”

As he ate a rather tasty pork skewer, Turan focused his consciousness on the street vendor who was busily working.

In the pitch-black darkness, a pair of eyes gleamed wide open.

A knight bearing the emblem of House Zahar was selling skewers in a place like this, it was suspicious, to say the least.

‘A spy sent by Zahar... Judging by the fact that he’s a knight, he must be of a lower rank than Reto. Should I capture him and interrogate him? Or just follow him?’

After a brief moment of contemplation, Turan decided on the second option.

While he was confident in his ability to make people talk through pain, there were always those on whom such methods would not work.

‘Maybe checking this lead will yield some unexpectedly useful information.’

Infiltrating the Carmine estate himself meant sifting through a vast amount of disorganized information to extract what was relevant. However, intercepting intelligence from a spy would provide only pre-filtered and carefully selected information.

Between the two, it was obvious which would be more useful.

That evening, Turan waited patiently until the street vendor closed his stall and headed home. Using Concealment Magic, he trailed behind at a leisurely pace.

Unaware that he was being followed, the vendor unknowingly led Turan to an old house on the outskirts of Avacha.

“Ugh….”

Upon entering the house, the spy stretched and groaned as if exhausted.

For a knight, running a skewer stall should not have been tiring at all. Was he trained to keep up the act even when no one was watching?

After putting away his merchandise and washing up, the spy collapsed onto the bed and soon began snoring. Only then did Turan start searching the house.

After nearly thirty minutes of thorough investigation, he finally discovered a hidden stash of documents beneath the floorboards under the spy’s bed.

Perhaps the spy had not deemed it necessary to encrypt them, as the collected information was neatly organized in a way that even Turan could easily read.

‘The locations, movement routes, and conversations of House Carmine’s members… He’s gathered quite a lot of information.’

Most likely, this had been obtained through internal collaborators or subordinates.

There was no way he could have gathered such intelligence simply by grilling skewers.

This street vendor was likely a mid-level operative, aggregating reports from underlings.

It was a smart strategy, no one would ordinarily suspect a mere skewer vendor.

And they probably never anticipated that a wizard capable of detecting magic power would pass by and recognize a street vendor with knight-level magic power.

As Turan continued reading through the reports detailing various noble affairs, he came across information regarding Visen.

‘Left with several members of a friendly vassal house but has been out of contact ever since… It is assumed that her family is currently on a pilgrimage outside the house's territory.’

It seemed House Carmine was not only unaware of Visen’s death but also had no idea that her entire party had been killed.

Well, since he had disposed of them in a remote area, it was only natural that they would be difficult to find through conventional means…

Clicking his tongue, Turan continued scanning through the documents until his eyes widened at a section that had been underlined.

‘On the second day of the ninth month, a secret meeting of the house's key members is scheduled. If possible, infiltrate and gather information.’

A secret meeting scheduled for a week later, one attended only by the highest-ranking members.

If he could sneak into this gathering, he was certain he could collect some highly valuable information.