Chapter 2

"Everyone, over here."

Halfway up the hill at dusk, the sheep grazing idly on the grass flocked over at Turan's single command. They moved in perfect order, without a sheepdog barking to guide them or a shepherd's staff prodding their flanks. It was the work of magic.

From what he had discovered over the past eight years, magic had three main characteristics. First, if he desired something strongly enough, his wish would come true at the cost of mana. Second, speaking that wish aloud made it easier to fulfill, and consumed less mana. Third and last, the more difficult the wish, the more power it consumed—or it simply became impossible.

What counted as "difficult," however, was far from clear. Sometimes magic was so generous that he wondered how it could grant a wish so easily. Other times, it was so stingy that he wondered why it could not manage even that much.

His fight with the leopard monster a few days ago was a case in point. Even the command to stop, a far simpler demand than instant death, had barely worked on it. Yet he could easily control well over a hundred ordinary sheep at once.

By contrast, imbuing his sling with the power and speed to smash its skull, along with a blessing that ensured it would strike home, had been laughably simple. Judging by the power he had spent, Turan could have launched hundreds of such attacks...

Still lost in thought, he had just ushered the last sheep into the shed when a faint scent of blood drifted over from a distance, much as it had when he sensed Rabus's death a few days earlier. But his keen nose told him it was not human blood. Nor was it sheep or leopard...

'Wolf?'

He thought the blood of the wolf he had killed and butchered about a year ago had smelled just like this. Sure enough, before long he spotted Keorn walking toward him with the sunset at his back and a dead wolf slung over his shoulder.

"Good evening, Turan. Would you mind putting me up tonight? I thought I might offer this wolf as payment."

A wolf was a fairly good catch. He could sell its hide to the bastards in the village, and although its meat was not as good as that of animals raised for the table, it was not bad either. In short, it was more than generous payment for a night's lodging. Turan nodded.

"There should hardly be any wolves around here. How far did you go?"

Over the past few years, Turan had attacked every wolf pack he found while patrolling the area, so predators had long since all but disappeared from the vicinity. Besides, Hisaril Hill was so barren that few animals lived there to begin with.

"I found it while looking around near the Sky Mountains."

The Sky Mountains lay farther west even than Hisaril Hill, at the western edge of the world. True to their name, they rose all the way into the heavens. Some called them the Great Barrier, for they resembled precisely that: a wall no human could ever cross.

"It would take days just to reach the foothills..."

"At my pace, half a day was enough."

Turan was not particularly surprised, since he could easily have done the same if he put his mind to it. He merely grew a little more wary, thinking that this wizard really was no braggart.

A little later, the two sat around a campfire outside the cottage and enjoyed a dinner of wolf-meat stew. Keorn looked up at the sky and whistled.

"The stars are certainly bright here."

"My mother told me this hill is one of the highest places in the world. Apart from the Sky Mountains to the west, that is."

"What place could seem high compared to those? Seeing them today left me awestruck all over again. I doubt even nobles would find them easy to cross."

"I've heard nobles have powers like gods. Couldn't they leap over a mountain range?"

"Not all of them. The head of a great house is practically a god, of course..."

Keorn spoke almost boastfully of having once seen Arabion's House Head crush a small hill with a mere gesture.

"Oh..."

Hearing that, Turan suddenly felt embarrassed. Sometimes he indulged in the fantasy that, since his power was greater than he had expected, perhaps he was on the same level as a noble. Now he realized how utterly insignificant his abilities were compared with those of real nobles.

"But don't you get lonely, living all by yourself out here?"

"Of course. But I'm used to it now."

"Why not bring a girl from the village to live with you?"

"What woman would want to spend her whole life tending sheep in a place like this?"

"I imagine quite a few young ladies would be pleased to live with a handsome lad like you."

Turan smiled sheepishly at Keorn's banter. On his few visits to the village as a child, there had been girls who followed him around because they liked him. But after his mother died and he went to war with the village, all contact had ceased. They had probably come to understand the reality of it, too: marrying Turan meant spending the rest of their lives as though exiled to this lonely hill.

"Well, don't be so downhearted. Who knows? Some young woman might pass through, and something could come of it."

Of course, considering that Keorn was the only traveler to have visited in the past eighteen years, there was little chance of that. After exchanging a little more idle chatter, the two gazed silently into the campfire for a while. Turan broke the silence first.

"Why go to all this trouble?"

"Hmm?"

"I don't know what the village chief promised you, Elder, but with your abilities, you could earn plenty of money far more easily."

If he settled in any village and announced that he would protect it, demanding wealth and women in return, who would dare refuse? It would be hundreds of times easier and simpler than trudging through dust all day and lodging in a shepherd's cottage to hunt a single monster. Anyone who could bring back a wolf from the Sky Mountains in half a day surely had the ability to do it...

And it was not as though the villagers deserved such kindness. The very reason Keorn was staying with Turan was that the village had demanded an exorbitant price for lodging. In Keorn's place, Turan would have smashed up the village buildings, taken the money, and left.

"They're pitiable people, aren't they?"

"In what way?"

"Living in fear day after day, out on this frontier without even a wizard to protect them."

Sitting opposite Turan, the old knight explained in a kindly voice, as though teaching his son. The area around Hisaril Hill was peaceful only because it was relatively barren. Down in the fertile lands, countless monsters roamed the mountains and fields, devouring people. As inheritors of divine power, wizards ought to take pride in protecting powerless commoners from monsters. Though he no longer served a house, he could not simply stand by.

It was quite different from what Turan had heard from his mother. Hadn't she described nobles as oppressors and exploiters, and knights as nothing more than their accomplices...? Perhaps sensing his puzzlement, the old knight grinned and held out his bowl of sheep's milk.

"Well, not everyone thinks as I do. Ten thousand people will have ten thousand different minds, after all."

* * *

The next morning, Turan cleaned the sheep shed with a casual wave of his hand, lost in thought. Last night's conversation was on his mind.

'Pride...'

That conversation had shaken him considerably. A knight could be more than a slave who had submitted to a noble's power—someone who willingly protected commoners and found fulfillment in doing so? Learning that had not gone so far as to make him want to seek out a noble and beg to be taken into service, but it had opened his mind a little. Enough to think that, if there were people like that, living under a noble might not be entirely bad...

'That aside, how do I let him know the monster is already dead?'

Originally, he had meant to let Keorn wander around until he gave up and left. But he did not want to leave a good man like him wasting his time in this desolate place. The trouble was that several days had passed since he threw the monster's corpse into a deep ravine. Finding and retrieving that rotting carcass would be an ordeal in itself, and it would bear obvious traces of the magic Turan had used. Needless to say, if anyone went looking for a wizard around here, Turan would be the likeliest suspect.

He sighed and waved his hand, sending all the sheep droppings and urine accumulated in the shed flying into the back yard. Once dried out in the hill's arid climate, it would make excellent fuel for the fireplace. With the cleaning done, he found he had a little time to spare.

'Perhaps I'll look for the Elder...'

If Keorn had gone as far afield as yesterday, he would not be able to find him. But he had said he would focus his patrol more closely around the hill today, so Turan should be able to check on him. Concentrating lightly, he floated above the roof and recited an incantation.

"Search for humans."

As he spoke, Turan's perception expanded rapidly. His vision, which had reached little more than a hundred meters, sharpened in an instant until he could distinguish individual wild grasses growing kilometers away. His hearing and sense of smell grew keener still, picking up even the rustle of nearby insects' legs and the faint scent of formic acid. Yet his heightened senses filtered out all unnecessary information, focusing solely on finding humans.

'Now, where... Hmm?'

He had barely begun listening and looking around when a voice made him whip his head toward it. With his enhanced sight, he could see Keorn, panting and bleeding from his forehead and shoulder...

Facing him, the leopard monster Turan had killed a few days ago roared, dragging its half-rotten body.

* * *

'What bastard could have done this...?'

Keorn ground his teeth at the dead monster's wraith. Most living creatures instinctively yearned for life at the moment of death. Mana, the key to omnipotence, sought to fulfill its owner's will by forcibly reanimating the ruined body. The result was called a wraith. That was why, after killing a wizard or monster, one was supposed to absorb or disperse the mana within the corpse.

Whoever had killed the leopard monster before him, however, had apparently either been ignorant of that rule or deliberately ignored it. It was probably a wizard, since a monster would instinctively have devoured its slain enemy and absorbed its mana. Judging by the hole in its head, the killer must be skilled with projectile spells.

[■■■■—!!]

The roar that burst from its decaying vocal cords echoed endlessly through the air like the cries of the dead. Given what it was, that was not entirely an inaccurate description.

"Take this!"

With a shout, Keorn fired an arrow of light from his hand. The attack could pierce steel armor with ease, yet the arrow scattered helplessly on contact with the shadows shrouding the leopard's body. The mana enveloping it was far stronger than Keorn's arrow spell.

Having neutralized his attack, the leopard melted into the ground as though intending to fight magic with magic, then materialized in the shadow behind Keorn an instant later. He hurriedly raised both arms to defend himself, but hot blood spurted from his forearm where its sharp claws caught him. Only his mana-tempered body had kept the damage to that much. The blow would have torn an ordinary person's arms and torso clean away.

'This... isn't something a knight can fight. It would take at least a lesser noble—'

Wraiths grew much stronger through their resentment during resurrection. Even so, if a seasoned knight like Keorn could barely hope to stand against it, it must have been a powerful monster in life as well. Who on earth had killed such a creature and left it there? And to what end?

[GRRR—]

The wraith approached Keorn at leisure, growling as though it considered its prey already caught. Sensing his death, the old knight clenched his teeth and prepared one final counterattack. If he poured all his mana into his hand and plunged it directly into the creature the moment it lunged, there might be a sliver of hope...

But before the plan he had formed with such grim resolve could serve any purpose, a flash of light came streaking in from far away. It moved so fast that it broke the sound barrier, too fast for anyone to hear its approach—

A round stone shattered the wraith's rotten skull.