Chapter 22

It was not hard to guess what misunderstanding they had made. People burned to death while bound hand and foot, and a villain dragging out a girl to be his final victim...

Turan quickly sized them up. There were four of them. Looks were hardly a reliable guide with wizards, but most appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties.

What stood out was the strong scent of excitement and tension coming from all four. They reminded him of himself as a child, going out to hunt wolves with his mother for the first time. He guessed they were novices with little actual combat experience.

"Wait—"

"Ah!"

The moment Turan opened his mouth to explain, the wizard holding a spear of flame let out a cry and sent it flying. Judging by his flustered expression, his nerves had made him lose control.

Turan thrust out one of the arms holding the child to catch the spear, pouring as much mana as he could into his bracelet. As the guardian bloodline's power shielded his entire body, the flaming spear exploded, engulfing him in fire.

"What are you doing?! He was holding a child!"

"I-I didn't mean to..."

The woman with the ice bow cried out sharply as she saw both Turan and the girl in his arms consumed by the flames. A moment later, however, every one of them stared in astonishment.

Despite taking the spell head-on, Turan was entirely unharmed—not burned, not even singed. So was the little girl in his arms.

"What in the world..."

"How?"

He had taken it with his bare body, without even countering it with a spell of his own? Unaware of his guardian magic tool, they could only assume that his bloodline specialized in defense or that he possessed an overwhelming amount of mana. Noticing their fear, Turan lowered his voice threateningly.

"I'm not the one who attacked this village. Attack me again, and I'll start defending myself."

Frightened by his piercing glare, the flame-spearman hastily lowered both hands to show he had no intention of resisting. After a moment, the woman lowered her bow as well.

"Bisen."

"Turan."

All conflict began with a failure to understand one another. Merely exchanging names eased the tension considerably.

The bow-wielding woman, Bisen, studied Turan and asked, "How am I supposed to trust you?"

"Ask this girl when she wakes up. It seems she saw the real culprit."

"She saw the Burner?"

"The Burner?"

"Don't tell me you haven't heard?"

Bisen's eyebrow twitched at his question.

"I haven't."

Looking only half convinced by his answer, she explained. For the past few months, some deranged wizard had been periodically attacking remote villages in the area, tying people up and burning them to death.

The culprit had even earned the nickname "the Burner," and the lord of a nearby city had issued an order to hunt the wizard down. But with not a single survivor, even the killer's gender remained unknown. Until Turan had rescued one today.

"Then this girl should be able to tell us. She's unconscious now, but when I first found her, she said a wizard did this."

With that, Turan laid the surviving girl beside the trapdoor and draped his cloak over her. Their strange standoff ended some thirty minutes later, when she opened her eyes again.

"Are you awake?"

"Where... ?"

"You're at home."

Speaking gently so as not to frighten her, Turan first helped her drink from his leather waterskin. Anguish crossed her young face as though her situation had sunk in. Soon, however, she began describing the culprit's appearance in detail, as Turan asked.

"He had a red cloak, and his face... he had a beard... He looked scary, like the woodcutter."

The girl said that while the wizard was dragging everyone away, she had hidden beneath the trapdoor, peeking out just enough to watch. When she saw him looking around for anyone left, she had hastily closed the door and barred it.

As Turan stroked the head of the girl struggling to explain with her child's limited vocabulary, tears welled in her round eyes. But she bit her lip and did not cry. Pain and hardship could make children grow up so quickly.

Bisen took the girl aside and questioned her again, just in case she was being intimidated by force. Then she bowed respectfully to Turan in apology.

"I'm sorry. Even if the circumstances invited misunderstanding..."

Turan looked down at her for a long moment before letting out a deep sigh and nodding. Being attacked first had angered him, but it had been an accident. Above all, her concern for the child during the attack made him reluctant to lose his temper. Few nobles cared that much about ordinary people. After accepting the other three's apologies, he asked the first question on his mind.

"Did you come here to hunt down this Burner?"

"Yes. We found someone in a place that had only just burned down, so we thought we'd finally caught the culprit..."

Bisen shook her head at their fruitless pursuit, but confidently added that now they had a description, they would be able to catch the killer.

"We have a born Pursuer among us."

"A Pursuer?"

At Turan's look of surprise, Bisen realized her slip and glanced aside. Her gaze went to a particularly petite woman among her three companions.

"Don't tell me you're from House Zahar? Then why are you here?"

The Enril Desert was impossibly far away, and farther west of here lay Arabion territory. Were these the notorious Zahar assassins who had tried to kill Maysa? Yet they all looked far too inept for that...

Perhaps guessing his thoughts, Bisen hastily shook her head.

"No, it's nothing like that. We're—"

But she faltered, unable to finish. As he continued to stare at her, she finally revealed her identity with an air of resignation.

"We're from Abacha."

"Abacha? In Karmine?"

"I'm Bisen Kaman. These are my friends from our vassal houses."

Considering that Abacha—the stronghold of House Karmine—was the very port city Turan was heading toward, this was a remarkably fortuitous meeting. Though, given that this village lay within Karmine's broader sphere of influence, perhaps it was not much of a coincidence.

"Asha's family had a union with a Zahar noble generations ago. That bloodline manifested weakly in her, so although she's good at Search magic, she has no talent for stealth."

The bloodlines of great houses, formed by combining several bloodlines, sometimes degenerated. Usually, this meant that only one of the original abilities manifested. Such cases were called "primordial bloodlines," and even the great houses did not bother trying to reclaim those descendants. Once a bloodline had degenerated, the chances of it combining again and growing stronger were exceedingly slim.

"I don't know how nobles of House Karmine came to be hunting a wizard out here, but it hardly seems a prudent decision. Especially without even any knights accompanying you."

Surely nobles—even those of minor houses—normally traveled with a host of knights? They could serve as attendants, or even as meat shields, though Turan hated that practice. Bisen and her companions looked incredulous at his words.

"Well, you're hardly one to talk, traveling completely alone..."

"I can take care of myself perfectly well."

Turan answered the flame-spearman's timid objection with confidence. Having just demonstrated that he could take a flaming spear head-on, his claim carried considerable weight.

"Besides, none of you look very old. Did you get your houses' permission to leave?"

Their flinches confirmed it. These four were runaway nobles who had left their houses without permission. Why else would young nobles be wandering around a place like this without a single knight?

"Give up this wizard hunt and go home. It's dangerous."

The Burner was probably no great talent either, judging by how the wizard went around tormenting defenseless villagers. But these four were so inept that even a mediocre wizard might get the better of them. If Turan fought them, hunting down the lot would take less than ten minutes at most. Quite apart from the strength of their mana, they simply reeked of inexperience in combat.

"We can't do that."

Bisen shook her head and explained their circumstances. They had been sidelined within their houses because they lacked innate talent or ranked low in the succession, leaving them without enough mana to grow. Since the monsters supplied to their houses went to the most gifted members first, they had to supplement their power and earn merit this way.

This was a problem shared by quite a few great houses. Strong bloodlines meant a high chance of children being born as noble-caliber wizards, but there were not enough monsters to go around.

Going on a "pilgrimage" like Asiz was one solution, but the cost and safety concerns made it difficult to extend that privilege to everyone. There were only so many knights, after all.

"Lord Turan, could you help us hunt the Burner? Sharing the mana might be difficult, since there are already four of us, but we'll give you the entire bounty. Or... I could give up my share of the mana."

"How can you say that, Bisen!"

"Bisen!"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'd sooner give up my own share."

The other three's protests suggested that Bisen was a fairly good leader to them. The sight reminded Turan of Midan, the leader of the monster hunters he had met in Murei.

"Do you not even know how skilled this Burner is?"

"Definitely a noble-caliber wizard. Several of the villages attacked had multiple knights stationed there as special protection, and they were all killed too."

That was also why the lord of the nearby city had yet to eliminate the Burner. Knights clearly would not suffice; a noble, perhaps even the House Head, would have to go in person. Yet without knowing where the culprit lived or what they did, pursuit was difficult. The attacks were so erratic in both time and location that waiting in a village was hardly practical either.

Had it been a vicious creature that attacked every passerby, like the monkey monster that had once lived north of Valtas, they could simply have gone to it. This was what made human villains even more troublesome than monsters.

"Very well."

He remembered how unpleasant it had felt to see those monster hunters torn apart by the rabbit monster. Complete strangers might have been another matter, but after talking this much, he suspected their deaths would leave him feeling much the same. It also sickened him that someone meant to be a shepherd was slaughtering sheep indiscriminately instead of protecting them.

Above all, if the Burner proved stronger than expected, this would be an opportunity to gain more mana. Turan had now accumulated at least as much mana as a mid-ranking noble, and the low-level monsters scattered along the roads no longer increased his power easily.

"Now that we'll be working together, may I ask which house you belong to, Lord Turan?"

"I can use the power of the guardian bloodline."

In truth, he no longer had any reason to guard his bloodline quite so desperately, but he still concealed it. He did not want the people of Arabion he had befriended to learn his identity, even through rumor. Besides, Zahar's stealth ability was most useful when no one knew about it.

"I see."

Most houses with bloodlines suited to close combat, including the guardian bloodline, held no territory of their own. They had long since been weeded out because of their disadvantage in battles between nobles, particularly large-scale wars.

The few survivors either served other houses as vassals, like Haram, or wandered. Bisen and her companions assumed Turan was one such wandering noble. In any case, he was clearly highly capable, and that was enough.

* * *

Turan and Bisen's group first took the village's sole survivor to another nearby village. Its chief looked half-dazed when nobles, as far above him as the heavens, suddenly descended upon him and entrusted him with a child from the neighboring village.

"Here. I'll give you enough money, so take good care of her until she's grown."

"Of course, my lord! Of course!"

"I'll return within a few years to check on her."

Of course, he was unlikely ever to return to check, but saying so would keep them from treating her carelessly. Turan knew firsthand how cruel the inhabitants of a small village could be to outsiders—especially children.

"You're very kind. She's only a commoner girl with no connection to you."

"Well, yes."

The speaker was Kebek, the oldest of the four. He had the Healer Bloodline. Noncombat bloodlines were normally given high priority, so he had no need to run away, but he said he had joined them out of loyalty to Bisen. He was also the one who had given up his share of the mana for Turan.

"I'm not interested in Bisen, so you needn't worry."

"Wh-what..."

"Your behavior makes it rather obvious."

Kebek flushed in embarrassment. Truthfully, it was less his behavior than the scent of arousal he gave off whenever he looked at Bisen. If that young woman Asha, with her incomplete Zahar bloodline, had a sense of smell as keen as Turan's, she probably knew too.

"What are you two talking about?"

"Nothing!"

Bisen returned after exchanging a few more words with the village chief, and Kebek hastily tried to cover himself. She nodded with an "I see," then turned to Turan.

"I can't stop thinking about what that girl said."

"Could it be true?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of anything like it... Most likely just a madman's ravings, I suspect."

On the way to the neighboring village, the girl Turan had rescued said she had remembered a few words she heard the Burner speak while she was in the cellar. They were strange beyond measure.

["I offer this sacrifice, O god! Your descendant draws nearer to you gods by burning souls and flesh!"]

As the wizard killed the villagers, he had cried out that he was becoming a being closer to a god. That was what the girl testified.