Chapter 55

Seven years ago, when young Turan lost his mother to illness, the village elders had presented him with a document and demanded his thumbprint, claiming they would manage his property for him. It stipulated that the sheep ranch on Hisaril Hill would become the village's communal property.

Turan could read and naturally refused, but the elders said the stupid document had only ever been a formality and forcibly drove him out. Unfortunately, neither his body nor his mana had matured enough for him to dare fight back. The fear that revealing himself as a wizard would get him dragged away by wicked nobles also left him paralyzed.

After being driven from the ranch, Turan lay in a field for a long time before coming up with a way to reclaim his mother's legacy without openly revealing his magic: hide in the sparse brush around the village and throw stones at everyone who came out.

His first targets were the village elders who had stolen his property. Fortunately, stones thrown with all the young noble's strength could fly dozens of meters and shatter the aging men's bones. The first two suffered broken legs. The next lost his jaw and would eat nothing but porridge for the rest of his life. The last took an unlucky blow to the head and died after several days of suffering.

The village's able-bodied men rushed out with weapons to avenge them, but Turan always located them first with his keen sense of smell. He repeatedly struck one or two from a distance before fleeing. Young as he was, he could already run faster than anyone in the village, and no one could catch him.

How many days had that struggle lasted? After another dozen or so people had been seriously injured or killed, the village, effectively besieged by a single twelve-year-old boy, finally surrendered.

That memory suddenly resurfaced because his current situation felt so much like that one. Having just killed one noble, he had seven nobles and thirty-five knights left to face. Individually, they were vastly weaker than Turan, but he could not be certain of victory in a head-on battle. All the more so because, as a coalition army, they possessed a variety of bloodline abilities.

Still, that disadvantage was easily overcome with the right strategy.

"Go up ahead of me, Vije."

At Turan's words as he stepped out of the tent, Vije immediately soared high into the sky. Things would be much easier if he could share his stealth with someone else. Perhaps House Zahar had a secret art for that. Though he had no idea whether he would ever get to learn it.

Several nearby knights cried out in surprise at the sight of the black eagle soaring away.

"Huh? Isn't that the monster Lady Makshi caught earlier?"

"But its wings look fine."

"She definitely said to keep it locked up..."

As Vije's flight threw the camp into a commotion, Turan approached the commander under stealth. He infused his spinning sling with mana and created a wind channel.

'You first.'

With the faintest hiss of escaping air, a stone flew out and pierced the large noblewoman's head. Rather than brutally crushing it as his attacks had before, its sheer speed left a single large hole.

It was an absurdly anticlimactic end for someone powerful enough to have lasted a minute or two against him in a direct fight. Though the launch had been silent, the impact was not, and every eye turned toward the noblewoman as she collapsed.

"Lady Makshi?"

"Sister... We're under attack! Under attack!"

"Everyone, defensive positions!"

Having lost their commander without the slightest warning, the Corel coalition army instantly descended into panic. Naturally, none of them suspected that a Zahar noble had infiltrated their camp. It was simply too outlandish to imagine someone who should have been far away in the Enril Desert suddenly ambushing them here.

That gave Turan ample time to prepare another wind channel and take aim at the second-strongest noble.

'That's two.'

This target was a rather small, slight nobleman. Unlike the first victim, he apparently possessed a defensive magic tool: rather than dying with a hole through his head, he screamed and tumbled to the ground. Still, judging by the pale brain matter leaking from his head, he was unlikely to rejoin the fight anytime soon.

Then one of the nobles finally seemed to grasp what was happening and shouted,

"Stealth! Everyone, make light!"

It would have been easier if he could have killed a third that way. Of course, with the two strongest dead, the balance had already shifted in his favor. It hardly mattered.

Turan clicked his tongue softly and snapped his fingers hard. A wisp of flame sprang from the heat of friction. The instant he fed it a powerful gust, a firestorm rose above his head and swept across the entire camp.

"Aaaaagh!"

"It burns! Water! Water!"

Agonized screams rang out on every side. Had such a firestorm come from a distance, it would not have been particularly hard to counter.

By a wizard's standards, windborne flames did not travel especially fast, and defending against them required only an opposing wind. Turan might have overpowered one person, but not dozens working together.

But erupting suddenly in the middle of the camp, the firestorm inflicted devastating losses on the Corel coalition. Eight knights and one noble relatively close to him burned to death without even a chance to scream. Another five or six knights farther away rolled on the ground, screaming from horrific burns.

Before the firestorm had even cleared, dozens of spells poured toward its center.

"Kill him!"

Was this what it meant to be seasoned wizards who had fought a war? Every incoming spell carried extraordinary force. Flaming arrows, showers of rock, water bombs, spears of light, even real arrows and javelins laden with mana... Enhanced by bloodlines and honed over decades, those spells unleashed power beyond the mana their casters had invested. But there was already no one where they landed.

"What..."

"Stealth! Hurry, light first!"

The Corel coalition's nobles all conjured orbs of light and sent them flying in every direction. Yet even with over a hundred meters around them illuminated, no one was revealed.

"Huh...?"

"There's no one here!"

After unleashing the firestorm, Turan had used wind magic to propel himself swiftly out of the camp. A few spells had struck him along the way, but thanks to his activated guardian magic tool, they had left only minor wounds. Even those healed immediately when he expended the Healer Bloodline mana left over from earlier.

While the Corel coalition stood half-dazed, feeling as though they were fighting a ghost, Turan created another wind channel and shot a noble. Realizing that the enemy was singling out their nobles with unerring precision, the coalition's morale plummeted.

"Uugh, aaah..."

"We surrender! We surrender! Please spare us!"

"Surrender, my ass! Split up and run! He's going to kill us all!"

Turan answered that noble's cry with another stone, proving the suspicion correct. Had he been able to overwhelm them without using his bloodline ability, he might have shown mercy. Now that he had revealed it, however, letting them live was no longer an option. If word spread of a Zahar noble this far west, there was no telling when it might be connected to him.

["Let's attack together now, Vije."]

He used wind magic to carry his voice to Vije overhead. She chirped and plunged toward one of the fleeing wizards. A knight caught in her talons howled as she tore him to shreds.

"Aaaaagh!"

As the remnants of the Corel coalition scattered in every direction, they sensed instinctively that perhaps not a single one of them would leave this place alive.

* * *

"Forty-three in total... Good. Didn't miss anyone."

Turan counted as he tossed the last knight's corpse into the camp. He had killed people a few times in his life, but forty-three exceeded all his previous killings combined.

As the anger heating his head cooled a little, that fact left a bitter taste. Some of them might not have wanted any part in hunting a monster that already had an owner.

Of course, there had been only one way for Turan to spare them: leave without even attempting revenge. Unfortunately, he was not kind enough to go that far for the sake of the innocent. Once struck, he had to retaliate, and once he retaliated, he could not leave future trouble behind.

"Let's clean up first. Ready, Vije?"

[Yes!]

First, Turan and Vije absorbed the wizards' mana. Naturally, the knights' mana did him no good at all; absorbing it merely prevented them from becoming wraiths. Even the commander and the nobles just below her offered only a tiny benefit. On the other hand, his Mimic Holy Relic gained no fewer than six new bloodline abilities.

Unlike Turan, Vije's mana grew noticeably. After all, she had effectively devoured several wizards as strong as she was or stronger. Delighted by her newfound strength, she chirped and danced.

"Don't enjoy it too much. You'll make a habit of eating people."

[I'm strong now! They won't catch me next time!]

"Be careful. There are still plenty of people in the world stronger than you or me."

Of course, there were not actually many people stronger than Turan. At most, there were the great houses' strongest wizards, like Maysa, and the House Heads who ruled over them. Given that there were fewer than ten great houses, that probably amounted to no more than forty or fifty people altogether.

After absorbing all the mana, he searched for their magic tools and found a ring and a single earring. The defensive magic tool that had stopped one of his stones seemed to have shattered, perhaps because it was a single-use item.

Unlike before, he had no need to worry about Zahar nobles tracking him, so he took both and burned the entire camp to erase the last traces.

"We'll have to leave this area for a while, too. Where do you want to go?"

[Anywhere is fine as long as I'm with you, Turan!]

Vije wrote her innocent answer to his question.

"Then let's go that way. We might as well visit somewhere new. It'll be more fun."

North was too close to Arabion, west was blocked by the Sky Mountains, and east was where they had come from. That left south.

According to the map Keorn had given him, a great house lay there: House Ravista, which ruled the land known as Shiraf Marsh. It was also famous for having arisen from the combination of two noncombat bloodlines, Healer and Purifier.

* * *

Unlike the flight from Kalamap, this journey became another forced march. Stealing a soul-bound monster was unquestionably a crime deserving death in wizard society, but with nothing to prove it beyond Turan's word, what he had done was no different from robbery and murder.

Fortunately, things went far more smoothly than when they had fled the Enril Desert. After absorbing so much mana, Vije's speed and stamina were vastly improved. She flew almost without rest, never complaining of fatigue.

After three full days of flying, using tracking magic to avoid travelers, Turan began to notice the terrain and climate changing. By the time low forests and wetlands covered everything around them, he spotted a village in the distance and landed nearby.

"This place doesn't smell very nice..."

A rotting stench rose from the water pooled beneath the reeds. The sense of smell dulled easily, so he soon grew used to it, but it was hardly pleasant.

With Vije at his side, Turan headed toward the village he had seen from above. Since he knew nothing about the area, he intended to ask about local customs and nearby cities.

'Oh.'

He had not noticed from the air, but up close the village looked quite distinctive. Nearly half of each house extended over the lake. Not every house was built that way—only about two-thirds of them, it seemed.

As Turan approached, a dark-skinned middle-aged woman saw him and cried out in alarm.

"Good heavens!"

He wondered why she was so startled, then noticed that she was staring at Vije perched at his side.

"It's all right, ma'am. She's friendly."

"I've never seen a bird like that... But are you ill, by any chance? Wearing all those layers."

Now that he looked, the woman's clothes were far lighter than his, leaving her arms and legs bare. Perhaps that was because it was so hot this far south. Not long ago in Kalamap, his thin clothing had exposed him as a wizard. Here, he was drawing suspicion for exactly the opposite reason. It was rather amusing.

"No, I've just come from rather far away. Is there a large city nearby?"

"A city? You'll find one if you go that way... but things have been awfully unsettled lately."

"Has something happened?"

The last time he had ignored an atmosphere like that, he had later learned there was a war underway, so Turan immediately pressed for details. The middle-aged woman answered cautiously.

"Well, what was it... I don't rightly know the house's name, but I hear it's because their highest-ranking person passed away recently."