Chapter 56

After questioning a few more people, Turan learned that the eminent person who had died was none other than the head of the great House Ravista. Naturally, the villagers did not know why someone so important had died, but the circumstances suggested old age. If the head of a great house had been murdered, the entire marshland would have been in an uproar, not merely unsettled.

'Well, even gods grow old and die. What could the head of a great house do about it?'

Turan recalled the head of Arabion as he had seen him before: a being who scattered thousands of lightning bolts with a gesture, scorching the earth, like a natural disaster in human form. The thought that even such people could not defy their allotted lifespans brought home how fleeting everything was.

That evening, Turan stayed in the hall where the villagers held their gatherings and tried the local marshland food for the first time. As befitted a lakeside village, most of it was fish, all thoroughly steamed or boiled. The dishes had a rather unusual flavor, thanks to the assortment of local spices added to mask their strong muddy smell.

“Come now, eat your fill!”

“I hear you've traveled a long way, young fellow. Tell us what's happening out in the world!”

“We're all country folk who've never been beyond these parts.”

“There must be all sorts of wonders out there, eh?”

Dozens of villagers had soon crowded into the hall, all eager to hear the distant traveler's stories. They asked him to recount his travels in exchange for food and lodging. The terrain of Shiraf Marsh made passage difficult for wagons and carts, so even peddlers seldom traveled between the marsh and the outside world. Tales from travelers were precious here.

True to their word, everything from their clothing to their architecture differed greatly from the western wilderness only a short distance away. It felt much like his first visit to the Enril Desert.

While the parents chattered, several children who had come along tried to pet Vije on the perch beside Turan's waist. She opened her beak wide in a fierce refusal, frightening a few of them into tears.

“None of that, Vije. Be nice.”

At his playful reprimand, Vije clicked her beak as though snorting, then lowered her head and tolerated some of the children's petting. Turan gave her head a gentle stroke before recounting a few suitably adapted episodes from his travels.

The Sky Mountains at the western edge of the world, his voyage on the distant North Sea, the rocky mountains of the Gray Zone, the endlessly bountiful Dakayn Plains, the cities of the forest region, now devastated but once filled with enormous trees...

He had received requests like this several times when blending into nearby villages while posing as a commoner, as he was doing now. By this point, he had become quite a passable storyteller. A middle-aged man who had been listening quietly spoke up.

“Come to think of it, I heard there's a sea if you keep going east from here. Is that the one you mean?”

“No, that's the South Sea. I went to the North Sea... Here, this should give you an idea.”

Since people who had spent their entire lives around the village were getting confused, Turan sketched a simple map showing the places he had visited, drawing on the basic information Keorn had once given him. He had not taken proper measurements during his travels, so the land areas, latitudes, and longitudes were all a mess. Still, it gave a reasonable idea of where the different regions lay in relation to one another.

“Oh, so this is...?”

“That's where we live? It's so small.”

“You've been to all those places, young fellow? You couldn't walk that far in years!”

“I wonder what's beyond those mountains.”

Studying a map that wealthy merchants would gladly have paid a fortune to possess, the villagers happily chatted about places they had never seen.

* * *

The following morning, in return for enriching their village with his stories, Turan received a set of local clothing and a pair of shoes. The clothes were made of a loosely woven, tough material that let air through and resisted wear, with sleeves and legs cut to roughly half length.

The shoes, by contrast, were about twice as thick as ordinary leather shoes and rose above his ankles. Their exteriors were coated in an unfamiliar whitish substance. He was told it was sap from a tree that grew nearby, applied to keep water from seeping in.

“If it keeps water out, it'd be wonderful for boats.”

“Some people do buy it for just that. Mind you, keep it away from fire! Even a tiny spark will set it ablaze.”

After changing, Turan left the village and followed the road they had pointed out. Their clothes certainly made traveling far more comfortable. Tough as a noble's body might be, wet clothes clinging to the skin and water squelching inside one's shoes were just as unpleasant. Of course, there was a difference in whether one suffered from colds and all sorts of other illnesses.

Perhaps bored with riding at his side, Vije left her perch and flew around the area a few times before returning with a wild boar. Monster or not, watching her carry a beast that looked a hundred times her weight was astonishing.

“Keep wandering off alone like that, and you'll get hunted again.”

Vije cried out in protest at his joke and bumped her head against his side. In any case, thanks to her, they could lunch on a stew of wild boar prepared in the local style.

Turan finished his meal, enjoying the firm crunch of the fat, so unlike that of domesticated pigs. After another hour's walk, he came to a city named Slop. Unlike cities elsewhere, its boundary was marked by a wooden palisade rather than a stone wall, presumably because of the region's soft ground. Even this relatively dry patch, solid enough to build a city on, felt oddly soggy underfoot.

“Hm? You there! That... doesn't look like a crow. What sort of bird is it? Don't tell me it's a monster?”

“It's called a black eagle. It's not a monster, just a well-trained bird. It won't hurt anyone.”

“Hmm...”

As expected, bringing Vije into a city drew far too much attention. The policeman looked somewhat suspicious and only let Turan through after he offered two copper coins.

“It's all right.”

When Vije gave a somewhat dejected cry, Turan comforted her with a few pats on the back. A little later, as he made for the busy shopping district to find suitable lodgings as usual, something peculiar caught his eye.

A black pillar stood amid the rows of shops. Approaching it, he saw lettering engraved into its surface, clearly made with magic—earth alteration, to be precise.

[Ishiel Ravistas, Master of Ravista, Guardian of Shiraf Marsh, and Mother to All Who Are Injured or Ill, has departed this world at the summons of the gods in heaven.]

[Let her sons and daughters pay their respects before this pillar.]

Several passersby stopped to bow before the memorial. After looking it over briefly, Turan turned his gaze to its final lines.

[Written in the name of Barken Craf, Lord of Slop.]

It seemed a house named Craf ruled this city. For some reason, though, the name felt oddly familiar. Not something he encountered often, but something he thought he had seen a few times...

Turan pondered it. A name he had read in Orem's library? One of Arabion's vassal houses he had learned of during his stay with House Berg? Or perhaps—

“Ah.”

Careful not to attract attention, Turan took a notebook from his High-Capacity Pouch. Orville the Burner, whom he had met far to the north, had gone on a rampage in pursuit of the Pyromaniac bloodline... The name he had given was definitely Orville Craf.

'He came from here?'

Come to think of it, he did seem to recall the man saying he came from a house in the south. Why he had traveled so far north to slaughter ordinary people was another matter entirely.

'A god...'

Those unnaturally clear eyes, and their shared faith in strange superstitions someone had taught them. Before, Turan had merely thought something suspicious lay behind it. Now he was half convinced that the being who had instilled those methods in Orville and Midan was an actual Freyan. He had learned, after all, that some of them might still walk this land in other people's bodies. Of course, he still had no idea why they would do such things.

Could the local House Head have some connection to that unidentified Freyan? At the sudden thought, Turan looked toward where the city's central mansion would stand in the distance, then turned away again.

Powerful as he now was among humans, he was not strong enough to meddle recklessly in a divine being's affairs. Perhaps one day, when he was far stronger and could rival the heads of those great houses, he might investigate.

He had barely finished clicking his tongue at this discovery when another thought made him look around. Sulfur, one of the ingredients for the Spirit of Fire listed in Orville's notebook—perhaps he could find it nearby.

'If you wanted someone to experiment with something, wouldn't you choose a person who could easily obtain the ingredients?'

Just as he expected, asking around the market soon produced an answer.

“You're looking for sulfur?”

“Yes. I heard it's a good antidote.”

“I do have some, though not very much... About a handful, anyway. Interested?”

The merchant demanded a whole gold coin for less than a fistful of sulfur, but Turan bought it without even bargaining. Judging by how the man did not bother checking the coin's size or weight, he was undoubtedly overcharging. That did not matter.

“Do you happen to know how I could get more?”

“Hm? Now, look here. That's my livelihood...”

“It's not as if you get it from some secret place nobody knows about. I imagine I could find out by asking a few other people. Since I've already bought some, why not tell me?”

The merchant pursed his lips, then glanced at the gold coin in his hand and nodded.

“Follow the road out the east gate for about four days, and you'll find several hot springs. You should find it around there. There are plenty of monkeys, some of them monsters, so watch yourself. They're not particularly vicious, mind you.”

“Hot springs? What are those?”

“Pools of hot water that comes up out of the ground. I don't know much about it, but the locals believe soaking in them is good for your health. They say the monkeys like them too.”

The mention of monkey monsters reminded him of the one he had once hunted with the nobles of House Valtas. If even merchants like this knew of their existence, yet no one had bothered to eliminate them, they apparently weren't particularly hostile to humans.

* * *

After one final purchase—a set of scales used to check gold and silver coins—Turan headed straight out of Slop City's east gate. He walked at an ordinary person's pace whenever others were nearby. Once he was certain no one was around, he flew with Vije's help to put more distance behind them. He only stopped after confirming that there was no one within a three-kilometer radius.

“At last, I get to test this.”

[What is it? What are you doing?]

While writing on the ground, Vije realized that the marsh's damp soil had worked its way between her talons. She grimaced and flailed her feet, trying to shake it off. Turan laughed, cleaned the mud from her talons, and chose a nearby tree for her to perch in.

“Wait here for a moment. It should be fine, but just in case.”

[Are you going far?]

“No, not far. I just want to try an experiment.”

Turan broke down several suitably sized trees of different kinds nearby and burned them. The trick to making charcoal was to burn wood without air. He could meet that condition by using earth alteration to make a suitable pit, putting the wood inside, and using ignition magic. Since this was his first attempt, it took some trial and error, but after adjusting the heat, he managed to produce several lumps of charcoal.

Next, he took a lump of saltpeter from his High-Capacity Pouch, purchased some time ago in Banipel in the Enril Desert.

'The proportions were seventy-five, fifteen, and ten, respectively.'

After consulting the notebook again to make sure, Turan crushed about half the lump of sulfur by hand and placed it on the scales. Then he applied telekinesis to the other side until they balanced.

“Good, that's ten...”

Having established how much force matched the sulfur's weight, Turan took out a bowl he used for meals and tipped the sulfur powder into it. Next, he applied half again as much force as that ten to one side of the scales, pouring powdered charcoal onto the other until they balanced before adding it to the bowl. Finally, he applied seven and a half times the force used for the sulfur and measured out the saltpeter powder to complete the mixture. He concentrated so intensely throughout the process that cold sweat trickled down his forehead.

“Whew...”

Inside the bowl, the white, black, and yellow powders lay jumbled together without properly combining. Repeatedly pressing them down with his fingers and stirring produced no change. He even took a little aside and set it alight, just in case, but it merely burned.

'I expected as much, but it has no effect like this.'

Turan was certain the enormous explosion Orville had caused back then had come from this “Spirit of Fire.” It had clearly begun in the black powder laid out on either side of the cave, and none of the other recipes had names suggesting such an effect. Creating it apparently required the “magical bond” mentioned at the end.

'Let's see.'

Resting his hand over the powder, Turan imagined these substances that refused to mix intertwining at a scale smaller than the eye could see, beginning with the smallest units the librarian had taught him about. In an instant, light flashed from the bowl.

When he lifted his hand again, the powder had turned the same pitch-black color he had seen in that cave.