Chapter 6

In the end, Turan managed to get the information he wanted for the price of a beer. If he wanted to find monsters with bounties on them, he simply had to visit city hall and ask the official in charge. When he asked what city hall was, and what an official was, the waitress burst out laughing.

“You don’t even know that? You really are a country boy!”

Still giggling, she explained that city hall was a building in the center of the city where various public affairs were handled, and that officials were people employed by the city’s lord. Since the sun had already set, he could go there the following morning to inquire.

“But why are you looking for monsters? Don’t tell me you’re a monster hunter too?”

“What’s a monster hunter?”

“You know, those people who believe hunting monsters will turn them into wizards.”

Apparently, a superstition had spread that ordinary people could gain magical powers by hunting monsters, and some risked their lives doing just that. Most people treated them as lunatics, but a surprising number pursued it as a way to rise in the world. While Turan was listening to her explanation, someone planted a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Lena. Becoming a wizard by killing monsters isn’t a superstition. It’s a fact. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

The speaker was a man who looked somewhere between thirty and forty. His overgrown hair and beard gave him a thoroughly unkempt appearance, yet his eyes were strangely clear.

“Midan! You’re still alive?”

“What, did you think I’d died? I told you. I’m not dying until I become a wizard.”

“Sorry, Miss Lena. Our leader’s always making a nuisance of himself.”

Three men approached behind the man called Midan. Armed with a long spear, a bow, and a hammer that looked fit for demolishing buildings, they were all large and muscular. When Turan quietly removed the hand on his shoulder, Midan flinched and stepped back.

“Whoops. Sorry about that.”

“It’s all right. Could you tell me more about what you just said?”

“Hmm? Which part?”

“About becoming a wizard by killing monsters.”

“Oh, so you’re interested in that too, young man?”

Seemingly pleased by Turan’s interest, Midan grinned and explained. Wizards grew stronger by killing monsters and taking their power. By the same principle, an ordinary person who killed a monster could gain its power and become a wizard. He claimed to have already seen several wizards who had gained their powers that way.

“That’s why the four of us hunt monsters. To become wizards.”

“We’ve already killed three!”

“We’re nearly there.”

Midan’s subordinates—sworn brothers, by their own account—chimed in one after another. Turan was astonished to hear they had killed three monsters. The only one he had ever seen had been powerful enough to tear dozens of ordinary humans apart with ease.

“Three? Has one of you already become a wizard, then?”

No sooner had Turan finished speaking than the people on the inn’s ground floor burst out laughing.

“Of course not! The only wizards in this city are the lord and the three knights in his service.”

“If just one of us became a wizard, helping the rest of our brothers would be much easier.”

“Truth is, we nearly died more than once killing those things.”

Only four wizards in a city that looked to hold at least a thousand people? Turan was beginning to understand why Keorn kept saying the world was short of wizards. Just then, Midan glanced at Turan’s bag and asked a question.

“You said you’re hunting monsters, right? You’re awfully ill-equipped for it. Don’t you have a weapon?”

“A weapon?”

Turan took the sheepskin sling out of his pouch, expecting them to laugh at it. Compared to their metal weapons, it must look rather shabby. Contrary to his expectations, however, the monster hunters reacted quite favorably.

“Oh, you put a stone in that and throw it?”

“Looks well worn. You must have used it a lot.”

“How big are the stones you use?”

“About the size of an egg.”

“That ought to be more than enough to crack the skulls of ones that used to be rabbits or foxes.”

From what they said, they had never intended to hunt monsters born from dangerous predators like the leopard Turan had killed. They only hunted those that had once been herbivores or relatively small, weak animals—ones a person could defeat barehanded in their ordinary forms. Of course, depending on their innate abilities, even those monsters could kill an ordinary person in an instant.

“Would you be interested in hunting with us? We’ve been wanting another ranged fighter.”

“No, thank you.”

Turan refused without hesitation. He had no intention of openly revealing himself as a wizard, and the paltry monsters they sought were not his targets in the first place. Fortunately, Midan did not press him, merely expressing his disappointment before backing off.

“Well, that’s a shame. Let me know if you change your mind.”

After chatting a little longer, Turan took his room key from the waitress and went upstairs. As he lay in bed trying to sleep, he heard the monster hunters talking on the ground floor through the floorboards.

[“Midan, why were you trying to bring that greenhorn along? Honestly, he didn’t look like he’d be much help.”]

[“Right. Scrawny little thing looked like he’d bawl his eyes out if you hit him once.”]

Midan’s subordinates—or sworn brothers—were mocking Turan behind his back. They had acted so friendly downstairs only moments before. But the villagers had given him more than enough experience with two-faced people, so his feelings were not hurt. He simply sighed and let it pass. That was just how people were.

A moment later, he heard Midan answer.

[“Well, he just reminded me of myself when I was young. Wandering around out there alone with nothing but that, he could have nine lives and it still wouldn’t be enough.”]

[“You’re too kind for your own good, big brother.”]

[“You can say that again.”]

After listening quietly to their conversation, Turan closed his eyes. There were indeed good people in the world as well as bad.

* * *

The next morning, Turan filled his stomach with the dark bread and soup the inn provided, then visited city hall. Standing in the center of the city, it was an impressive four stories tall and crowded with citizens attending to all sorts of business. Only after making his way past an old man and a middle-aged woman arguing over a building rental did he find the official in charge of bounties.

“What d’you need?”

When Turan said he had come looking for monsters with bounties on them, the middle-aged official gave him a look that suggested he was a pathetic layabout. The man would prostrate himself on the spot if Turan revealed he was a wizard, but he chose not to. If he passed himself off as a lowly knight, the local lord might come to seize him for service, just as he had once feared. If he revealed he was a noble-caliber wizard, he would waste his time being lavishly entertained as an honored guest.

Hadn’t he heard that hospitality between nobles was an important matter of etiquette, and that refusing it without due care was considered rude? In short, the best course was simply to kill whatever monsters he could nearby and leave quickly. Not that he needed to risk his life to conceal his identity.

“You can’t take this away. Hand it back when you’ve read it.”

The sheet the official handed him a moment later listed the monsters’ appearances, sizes, traits, sighting locations, and bounties. Weak, harmless monsters almost always had to be captured alive to collect a bounty. Only aggressive types hostile to humans could be killed and brought back as corpses. The reason was that weaker monsters had undergone so little mutation that their bodies were indistinguishable from ordinary animals, and plenty of people tried to collect bounties by killing normal animals.

“One thing to watch out for: even if you kill a monster by accident, don’t abandon it. Bring it to the city. Unless the knights disperse its mana, it’ll become a dangerous wraith. Leaving a monster you’ve killed to rot is punishable by death under city law, so bear that in mind.”

“Understood.”

Having already experienced the terrifying consequences of abandoning a monster’s corpse, Turan took the official’s warning deeply to heart.

“Some of these look rather dangerous for ordinary people to catch. Don’t the knights hunt these ones?”

The official answered as though Turan were the strangest fool he had ever encountered.

“Do you think they have that much time on their hands? A knight’s job is to keep order in the city and repel enemy invasions. Hunting monsters is work for layabouts like you.”

At that, Turan looked down at the sheet in his hands.

Blade Crow.

A crow with feathers as hard and sharp as blades. Can swing them to deflect arrows and similar projectiles, and attacks people by dropping feathers from above.

Known to carry off dogs and young children from the city outskirts, eat them, and scatter their remains...

If wizards were humanity’s guardians, surely it was their duty to hunt down creatures like this without delay. As he had suspected, though, few seemed to take pride in protecting humans. Feeling somewhat bitter, Turan left city hall and headed toward the outskirts. The buildings gradually thinned until he was beyond the city altogether, greeted by the familiar wilderness.

‘Shall we begin?’

After making sure no one was nearby, Turan thought of the monster he had read about at city hall. The blade crow, a man-eating monster that preyed on children...

“Search for crows.”

The moment he spoke the incantation, hundreds of different sounds filled his ears: feathers brushing together, wings beating, beaks pecking at things.

“Ugh.”

Turan grimaced and canceled the spell, overwhelmed by the sheer variety of sounds coming from every direction. There were so many crows around the city that the Search spell could no longer distinguish his target.

‘This approach won’t work.’

How could he search for only the monster? A crow with mana? He tried that once, but the spell failed to activate at all. Apparently, possessing mana could not be used as a condition for Search. Next he tried the condition of a crow that ate humans, but once again it picked up too many targets. It was probably including those that had fed on corpses.

“This is tricky...”

He had rarely encountered such problems on Hisaril Hill, where animals were scarce. To find a lost sheep, he only had to search for sheep and locate one separated from the flock. Searching for wolves yielded no more than a pack or two. After pondering for some time, inspiration struck, and he used his magic.

‘A crow larger than a young child.’

Monsters might be stronger than ordinary animals, but carrying off a child would still require a certain minimum size. Just as he had expected, he heard a single bird rustling its feathers. Along with it came a faint smell of human blood.

“Found you.”

Obstacles blocked his view when he looked toward the sound, but now that he had located it, he would not lose it. An ordinary person would have needed at least ten minutes to run that distance. For a noble-caliber wizard at a full sprint, however, three or four minutes was enough.

As the forest where his target lived came into view, Turan cast another spell. Rather than the complete concealment unique to the Zahar bloodline, he used ordinary invisibility, which merely hid him from sight. Complete concealment still consumed too much mana for him to use comfortably, and he also knew from experience that birds did not have particularly sharp hearing.

Upon reaching the crow monster’s enormous tree, which looked as though it would take three people with outstretched arms to encircle, Turan immediately used flight magic to rise into the air.

‘It’s big...’

The crow monster stood over a meter tall even while perched. True to its name, its folded wings were sharp as blades, and traces of blood still stained its pointed beak. Bones lay scattered throughout the nest beneath its feet, belonging to various animals—and, here and there, what appeared to be humans. As expected, it was busy preening, entirely unaware of Turan’s presence.

‘Now, how should I kill it?’

The simplest option was to blow its head off with a sling stone, but he intended to test a wider variety of spells on it. If he relied solely on slinging stones because it was easy, he would have no answer to an enemy immune to physical projectiles. Keorn had also taught him to prepare as many different means of responding as possible.

Glancing up, he noticed a fair amount of cloud cover. There was one spell these conditions were perfect for testing—a technique he had learned only in theory, never having had suitable conditions to try it on Hisaril Hill.

Keeping a little distance from the nest, Turan pointed a finger skyward and recalled a memory. Several years ago, a rare thunderstorm had struck Hisaril Hill, where even rain was uncommon. He remembered the enormous pillar of light that had linked heaven and earth, accompanied by a roar that seemed ready to bring the world crashing down.

‘Come.’

At his fervent call, mana surged out of his body. A moment later, low thunder rumbled among the clouds. The crow monster looked up as though sensing something amiss, but its chance to escape had already passed. Faster than sound, a lightning bolt plunged down and struck the bird’s nest.

[CAAAAW—!!!]

The crow screamed and tried to flee the lightning that had suddenly struck from overhead. But its prized blade feathers had burned away, their metal-hard edges falling off, leaving it unable to fly. It dropped helplessly to the ground, twitched a few times, then lay still.

After watching carefully for about a minute to make sure it would not move again, Turan descended to the ground and absorbed its mana.