Chapter 59

As he made his way east, Turan first combined his newly acquired sulfur with most of his remaining saltpeter to make Spirit of Fire. He kept a little saltpeter aside so he could show people what he needed when he went looking for more.

The resulting Spirit of Fire amounted to a little over three fist-sized lumps, only slightly more than the saltpeter he had started with, since saltpeter made up the largest proportion of the recipe. It was a shame that charcoal powder and sulfur, which he needed in much smaller quantities, were available in virtually unlimited amounts.

Continuing east, Turan experimented with various ways of using his Spirit of Fire. He found that the most practical methods were scattering it on the wind to attack with a wide-area explosion, or detonating it beside his body for propulsion.

'The propulsion does hurt a bit, though...'

That was inevitable, considering that he was essentially striking himself with an invisible force to propel his body. Detonating it beneath his feet hurt somewhat less, but during one experiment he forgot about the flammable coating on his shoes and blew them up.

After several days of traveling and experimenting, Turan took hold of Vije's legs and began flying again. Vije, who had shed the last of her fatigue thanks to the hot spring, was itching to fly, but more importantly, traveling through these wetlands had proved harder than he had expected.

First, there was the rain, which fell at all hours. Once it stopped, he could simply blow the water off his body, but while it was falling, he had no choice but to get wet. He could hardly stop each falling drop with telekinesis, so he would need a barrier instead. And to travel that way, wouldn't he have to keep creating new barriers ahead of him as he moved? Since losing his waterproof boots in the experiment, he also had to endure the thoroughly unpleasant sensation of water constantly sloshing inside his shoes.

Second, the mosquitoes and other insects that swarmed him at night were unbearably annoying. Other regions had their share, but the wetlands were excessive. Whether he slept outdoors or stayed in a village, the moment he lay down and closed his eyes, insects crawled all over him, making him itch from head to toe. Their teeth and stingers could not penetrate his skin, but simply having them crawl over him was revolting. If even Turan, a former shepherd accustomed to sleeping outdoors on his travels, felt this way, someone like Asiz would probably have been clamoring for a Barrier-user after a single night.

It might have been worthwhile if he had gained something in return for all that discomfort, but inquiries about saltpeter in several nearby villages and cities had yielded nothing useful. As for the White Elves, there was no point looking. If there were any leads in this region, Lida would have found them long ago.

So he soared high to escape all those annoyances and sped east for a day. After swiftly covering several times the distance he had walked over the past few days, he found a brilliant blue horizon unfolding before him.

It was the South Sea.

* * *

Even the smell of the South Sea was different from the North Sea he had visited before. The North Sea had smelled chiefly of cool, briny water, whereas here, he might have described it as the mingled scents of many living creatures amid the warmth.

After savoring his first sight of the sea in a long while, Turan headed south, passing several fishing villages before reaching a port town. It looked large enough for a few thousand people at most. Rather than a trade hub like Abacha or Komad, it seemed to scrape by catching and selling fish from the surrounding waters.

Once inside, he first sought out a fishmonger, bought several dozen horse mackerel, and headed to a deserted stretch of shore. There, he fed them all to Vije.

He had remembered the advice of the young lady from House Dirmin, whose name he could scarcely recall anymore, and following it worked better than expected. Vije enjoyed the horse mackerel far more than the meat of land animals she had eaten on their journey.

"I heard you liked these. Are the southern horse mackerel good too?"

[Yes! Delicious!]

After treating hardworking Vije to a special meal, he returned to the market to look for saltpeter and, as expected, found some for sale. As always, however, money was the problem.

"... Five gold coins for this?"

"It's an elixir of eternal youth and everlasting life! Can you put a price on life!? Do you want to watch your father and mother die of old age!?"

"Both of them are already dead."

"Oh, no... I mean, it was just a figure of speech."

Come to think of it, the saltpeter merchant in Banipel had said exactly the same thing. Apparently, it was a sales pitch shared among saltpeter merchants. Of course, if this really were an elixir of eternal youth and everlasting life, Lida and the other Ravista nobles would not have been searching desperately for White Elves.

He could spend his savings to buy all the saltpeter here, but that would be a waste of money. More importantly, even buying it all would leave him short compared with his supply of sulfur. After all, making Spirit of Fire required more than seven times as much saltpeter as sulfur.

Thus, as he had done when acquiring sulfur, Turan bought only a little saltpeter and asked where it came from. This time, however, the answers were not so forthcoming.

"Now, why would you ask that?"

"That's a secret!"

"Hey, outsider. Keep asking questions like that, and you'll regret it."

Every saltpeter merchant he asked gave much the same answer, and eventually they began threatening him. It seemed some group was keeping the source of the saltpeter a secret.

'If they can keep it secret, it must be hard to get to.'

If it could be gathered simply by walking for a few days, like sulfur, no amount of effort could keep its location secret. Nor would it be scarce. Combined with the information that it came from the South Sea, that suggested there might be an island somewhere out there where saltpeter could be found.

While he was mulling this over, he sensed someone approaching furtively from behind. He prepared to break the person's wrist the instant a hand reached for his pouch, but to his surprise, the hand went to his shoulder instead.

"Say, young fellow."

Turning, he found that the hand on his shoulder belonged to an aging man in shabby clothes, missing several teeth. He looked like a typical vagrant. The man gave Turan a sly smile and came straight to the point.

"Looking for a place where saltpeter comes from?"

"Yes."

"You've already bought some, but you're still looking for more. Planning to gather it and go into business, are you?"

Since he even knew about Turan's purchase, the man must have been watching him secretly. It was hardly surprising that Turan had not noticed. He did not pay individual attention to the presence of every one of the hundreds of people moving through the market. After a moment's thought, he nodded.

"Something like that."

"Well, I could take you to a place where you can find saltpeter."

"What would I have to give you?"

Only a fool would expect a stranger to guide him to a saltpeter deposit for free. The man answered at once, as though he had anticipated the question.

"Nothing much. Money will do just fine. The saltpeter's on an island, you see. You have to pay your passage when you take a ship, don't you?"

That fit perfectly with his deduction a moment earlier. Turan glanced around before asking the man a question.

"How much?"

"Fifteen gold coins. Not expensive, is it? You can get several times that by digging up saltpeter and selling it elsewhere."

"All right. But I'd like to pay once I've confirmed where the saltpeter deposit is."

"Oh, of course. Why would you trust me with that much money right now? Tomorrow, about an hour after sunset... See that mountain over there?"

"Yes."

The man pointed to a mountain rising around one side of town. It was not particularly tall, no higher than an ordinary hill behind a village.

"Go around behind that mountain, and you'll find a little village. A ship will come there. You can pay when you board."

"Thank you for telling me."

The man chuckled at Turan's thanks.

"I should be thanking you."

Once the man had left, Turan chose a nearby inn at random and rented a room. As soon as they were inside, Vije wriggled and waved her talons, so he immediately took the sand-filled stone tablet from his High-Capacity Pouch.

[That man a liar!]

The tablet's limited space made her sentences short and simple. Still, after so many conversations like this, Turan had no trouble understanding her.

"The man who offered to show me where saltpeter comes from?"

[Yes!]

"What made you think that?"

Vije seemed to ponder his question for a moment before writing again.

[Saltpeter expensive. If knows, dig himself!]

"That's right. Wow, you really are clever. Even people get fooled because they don't think of that."

Turan laughed and stroked her head. Her analysis was so sharp that it was hard to believe she was a black eagle rather than a person.

[Turan knew too?]

"More or less."

Amid the stale odor of someone who had not washed in days, the man had carried the scent of a predator's excitement just before the kill. Turan could recall only one sort of person who smelled that way: robbers just about to commit a robbery.

"It's probably a smuggling ship or a pirate ship. If I go there, they might take my money and try to use me as a slave aboard ship."

He had heard all sorts of stories about life at sea from the crew during his time aboard the Marlin, so he knew a fair amount about such things.

[Then why?]

"Some fellows who can give me information are gathering of their own accord. Why wouldn't I go?"

Had he seized the local merchants and threatened them with a display of magic, or tortured them, finding out where saltpeter came from would probably have been easy. He had refrained because the merchants were perfectly entitled to refuse to tell him. They had no obligation to reveal the source of their livelihood.

And now someone had appeared who wanted to steal his wealth and freedom—someone on whom he could unleash his sadistic impulses without a trace of guilt. What could be more welcome?

His parting thanks to the man for telling him had been entirely sincere.

* * *

The next day, Turan stayed in his room practicing magic throughout the daylight hours, only venturing out as the appointed time drew near. He politely acknowledged the gate policeman's warning that curfew was approaching and he would not be allowed back inside the walls if he left now. Then he walked toward the place the vagrant-like man had described and found a small village.

A particularly nasty-looking young man lounging in front of the village palisade addressed him insolently.

"You a passenger here for the ship?"

"Yes."

"Go on in."

As he entered the village, he heard a snicker and a muttered "Dumbass" behind him. Just as he was thinking they were making the trap far too obvious, a presence ahead made him frown.

'What's this now?'

He sensed a powerful flow of mana, just as he had at the sulfur hot spring recently. This presence was stronger not only than Lida but even than Aicul, falling only a little short of Maysa.

Surely there could not be more than a hundred top-tier great-house wizards in the entire world. Why did he keep running into them? Unless, like a planet, he possessed some gravitational pull that drew powerful wizards to him.

'A high-ranking Ravista noble... Could it be the heir? But why here?'

Puzzled, Turan continued forward slowly. If someone had set a trap to catch him, they would at least have known better than to tell him to come at night.

In darkness this deep, he was confident he could escape even if Maysa herself pursued him. Were the lesser presences nearby knights serving as bodyguards?

As he walked toward the ship on the shore, analyzing the situation, boisterous voices soon reached his ears.

"Wow, really?"

"Would I make it up? I begged them to spare me, and you know what they said? Crawl between my legs, and I'll let you live! So I rolled right over and kicked him hard in the balls..."

Rough-looking men, unmistakably sailors, sat around a bonfire in front of a sailing ship. Two of them were the knights Turan had sensed. They were probably the highest-ranking men there.

Among the sailors sat a young man, chatting away with easy confidence. From his appearance, he was perhaps five or six years older than Turan. He had cropped silver hair and was rather short, but his broad shoulders and well-trained physique were striking. This was the unidentified great wizard Turan had sensed.

"Oh, give it a rest, you lying bastard!"

One sailor smacked the wizard on the back of the head, yet, astonishingly, the young man merely chuckled instead of losing his temper. Someone powerful enough to be a great house's highest-ranking noble, or even its heir, was letting ordinary people treat him like this?

Turan often disguised himself as an ordinary person too, but witnessing such a scene as an outsider left him dumbfounded. It was like watching a lion brazenly passing itself off as one of a pack of wolves.

Then the silver-haired wizard glanced toward Turan before shifting his gaze to Vije, perched at his side.

"Huh...?"

The wizard pointed at Vije, looking startled. His reaction was like that of someone encountering an acquaintance in an unexpected place. Where on earth could a Ravista noble have met Vije? As Turan puzzled over this, one of the sailors suddenly clapped his hands.

"All right, all right, all our guests are here! Shall we get going?"

"Oh, is it that time already?"

The silver-haired wizard blinked, as though wondering what they meant. The sailor who had smacked the back of his head grinned.

"Fun story, but it's time to board. First, put down everything you're carrying. We'll load it for you."

"Uh... Thank you, but I can carry it aboard myself. I've got quite a few precious belongings in here."

The sailor answered by kicking the silver-haired wizard hard in the shin.

"Can't take a hint, can you? From now on, you're swabbing the decks, you little shit."

"What about the Freyan ruins you promised to take me to?"

"How the hell would we know where those are?"

At the sailor's words, the silver-haired wizard burst out laughing. At first it almost sounded cheerful, but Turan could sense the heavy bloodlust beneath it.

"Damn it, fooled again. You fucking bastards. How many times have I been scammed in this area alone?"

With a whoosh, flames erupted all over the silver-haired wizard's body. Not the usual yellow-red fire other wizards used, but platinum flames as radiant as the sun.