Shepherd Wizard

Chapter 124

Translator: Pai_

The end of the Sky Mountain Range.

Turan, who had poked his head up to the highest place in this world, opened his eyes wide at the sight before him.

‘What on earth is that......?’

Turan had been determined not to be surprised by anything on his way up.

If it was a place no one had crossed for thousands of years, then nothing would be strange no matter what was there.

But he had never imagined that not only the land beyond, but even the sky itself would be different.

Something stark white was visible beyond the neck he had carefully stuck out.

This place should be too high even for snow to fall, and yet the unknown white substance was filling not just the other side of the range but the sky itself.

So much so that it was hard to believe it couldn’t be seen from far away.

As Turan stared blankly at it, he realized that thinking it was white had been a mistake on his part.

There were reds and blues, greens, and from those came yellows, teals, purples, all kinds of mixed colors.

There were even more varied hues of light that could only be seen through the eyes of the Illusionist Bloodline.

It only looked white because it was the result of all those lights being gathered and wildly mixed together.

And it wasn’t just visual stimulation he could sense.

His sensitive sense of smell, capable of detecting the scent of blood from several kilometers away, was now picking up countless odors he hadn’t noticed a moment ago coming from inside that thing.

The smell of burning wood, animal droppings, concentrated strawberry jam, sour sweat.

Hundreds, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of different smells were contained within it.

If he focused for a moment, he could hear sounds too.

The murmur of people, the cries of beasts, the rolling of stones, a buzzing noise, and even music being played by unknown instruments.

Looking closer, it was difficult to define that thing as even a substance.

It scattered like gas, rippled and flowed like liquid, hardened like solid and broke apart on impact.......

Suddenly, an understanding dawned in his mind.

That thing was, in itself, nothing at all, and also everything in this world.

“Ah.”

As he barely opened his mouth and let out a groan, he realized that the sound he had just made was also one of the substances within that thing.

No, even the body he looked down at was the same, most of it had become composed of that.

Only a very small part remained that could be called his actual body.

Had it always been this way? Or had it changed because he reached this place and observed that thing?

With the thought, his entire body immediately began to melt and flow, being absorbed beyond the edge of the cliff.

‘Wait.......’

Within the substance that flowed out was all the information that defined him.

Turan, child of Karim and Bizella, the hunter who chases the wind and hides within lightning.

The savior of Kalamaf, one of the Three Main Gods of the southern frontier, night.......

“Stop-!”

The moment he shouted with all his strength, his breath caught in his throat.

Only then did Turan realize he was standing at the summit of the Sky Mountain Range, in a place where even a single handful of air was scarce.

No, even that breathless sensation soon disappeared.

His muscles, blood vessels, even his lungs that needed oxygen, had all flowed away.

All that remained here was an extremely small part that should have been his true essence, something no better than dregs.

No, perhaps that tiny remaining part was actually.

“Turan, Turan! Wake up, come on!”

At the shrill voice, Turan opened his eyes and felt a hard sensation pressing against his back.

Through his blurry vision, he saw Meisa with tears in her blue eyes and Solif with a deeply furrowed brow.

‘I’m alive.......’

From the hands touching the ground, to the esophagus and lungs that could inhale and exhale, everything felt vivid and real.

As if what had just melted away a moment ago had been a lie.

Though for some reason, he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

“Where is this?”

“Right below the Sky Mountain Range. You went up alone and fell down. Don’t you remember?”

“Not at all.......”

Turan held his throbbing head and recalled the scene he had just witnessed.

That mysterious substance which had covered the land beyond the mountain range and even the sky.

Maybe it was because he had stared at it for so long, Turan was hit by a headache that felt like every fold of his brain was being finely crushed.

“More importantly, what do you mean I went up alone? Didn’t we arrive together?”

“The rope suddenly snapped halfway up. I called out to you with all my strength, but you ignored me and just kept climbing.”

Turan had taken the lead simply because, with the power of the Earthmover Bloodline, it was easier for him to carve footholds into the cliff.

In terms of climbing speed using those footholds, Solif, with the strength of the Guardian Bloodline, should have been much faster.

However, even after climbing at full speed again and again, the distance between them and Turan only grew farther instead of closing.

While he was gasping for breath and barely holding on, Turan had suddenly fallen from above, completely naked.

Meisa, seeing this, had quickly followed and used flight magic to catch him and bring him down here.

"I, saw. Up there-"

As Turan tried to speak, he realized he didn’t know how to describe what he had seen.

A substance that was nothing in itself, and yet at the same time, everything in the world.

Unless one had seen and felt it directly, there was no way to convey its true nature.

No, was all of it even real?

Perhaps it had been a kind of hallucination brought on by the lack of breathable air.

But judging by the fact that his clothes had disappeared, it was definitely true that his body had melted once.

“Wait, where’s Bije?”

“She was with you, wasn’t she?”

“I didn’t see her fly off anywhere.”

Only then did Turan realize that Bije had been clinging to his side when they climbed, but was now nowhere to be seen.

Thinking it over, he recalled that when his body had melted, Bije had melted with him and flowed out together.

‘No way... Did she go beyond and never come back?’

-I’m right here!

Just as he was hit with a wave of dizzying despair, a thin, girl-like voice echoed inside Turan’s head.

Startled, he turned his head, but Solif and Meisa looked at him, clearly not understanding what was going on.

“What’s wrong?”

"Just now, I heard a voice."

Even though it was the first time he heard it, the voice felt oddly familiar.

It didn’t take long for him to realize what it was.

A golden eagle with a familiar form suddenly sprang up from the center of Turan’s chest.

“W-What!?”

“Bije!”

Bije, who had suddenly popped out from inside Turan’s body, let out her usual chirp and perched on top of his head.

Looking closely, her build seemed slightly smaller than before.

Whereas she had once been a golden eagle of normal size, now she looked more like a kestrel.

Anyone unfamiliar might even mistake her for a young golden eagle chick.

"What's going on?"

-I melted and fused with Turan! Now I can fit perfectly inside!

It was a riddle-like response, similar to when they first met.

But this time, he could roughly grasp what it meant.

It meant that the souls of Turan and Bije, their essences, had melted and fused together, allowing not only their souls but even their bodies to become one.

Even more, thanks to the now stronger soul bond, they could now transmit each other’s thoughts as voices.

‘Come to think of it, there was already magic that could manipulate souls.’

The Tamer’s Soul Bond magic binds the soul of a human and a magical beast, enabling a low level of emotional exchange.

Primitive as it may be, it’s clearly a form of magic that interferes with the soul.

He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of that until now.

Just then, Solif waved his hand and said,

“Anyway, it’s good you’re safe, but let’s pick up the stuff you dropped first. It’d be a problem if someone picked it up. And put on some clothes too.”

*

As he checked using Tracking Magic, Turan found that all the important items, such as the Mimic Relic, the Guardian Magic Artifact, and the Large-Capacity Backpack, had fallen not far away.

Since they were all heavy items, it seemed they had dropped straight down due to their weight.

However, the clothes he had been wearing had all ridden the wind and flown far off into the distance.

Since he had worn them for a long time, he could track them using Tracking Magic, but they had scattered dozens, even hundreds of kilometers away, meaning even riding Bije, it would take quite a while to retrieve them.

“I’ll just make you new clothes for you this time.”

"Some of them were gifts, so I need to find them."

“I doubt even Ashiz would tell you to skip rest and go around searching for clothes in this situation.”

Though there wasn’t anything physically wrong with him, Turan was suffering from a severe sense of fatigue.

For an ordinary person, it would be comparable to coming down with a heavy flu.

It was never a good sign when a noble, who typically doesn't fall ill, ended up in such a state. What he needed now was rest.

With Meisa’s continued urging, Turan changed into a disguise outfit from the Large-Capacity Pouch and returned to the hideout.

The Varaha couple, who had been planting a few edible plants in the garden, were surprised when they suddenly saw the group return.

“What? You’re back already?”

“Don’t tell me you succeeded...?”

“That’s not it. We just came back to rest for now, we’ll explain in detail.”

“Are you eating dinner here? I’ll set the table in advance.”

“We’ll see!”

While Solif and the Varaha couple exchanged words, Turan, supported by Meisa, lay down in an empty room.

“Want me to get you something to drink?”

“I’m good. More than that, I’ll tell you what I saw.”

Though both said it was fine, they quietly sat at the edge of the bed.

Understandably so, who wouldn’t be curious about what lay beyond the Sky Mountain Range?

Turan did his best to vividly describe what he had seen atop the Sky Mountain Range, conveying it exactly as he had felt.

The world beyond the range, the unknown substance that filled the land and sky, and even the phenomenon of being pulled in just by perceiving it.

“Haah.......”

“So any idea of setting up a hideout there is off the table.”

“Yeah. Not a chance.”

From what he had seen directly, that place was not somewhere humans could possibly live.

He guessed even the Family Heads of the great noble houses would feel the same.

It was likely that the fallen gods had also grasped the secret of that place to some degree and thus never attempted to cross it.

“And this part I can’t be sure of, but I think that substance is wrapping the world in a huge sphere. It felt like even if you tried to cross from another region, or go above the sky, or beneath the ground, you’d still be blocked.”

“That big? More than that, I can’t even begin to guess what kind of substance it could be, just hearing about it.”

They debated for a few minutes over what the substance that blocked the outside of the world might be.

Then, as if something occurred to him, Solif pointed at Bije and asked,

“By the way, what was that earlier? Bije coming out of your body. Is that a new spell you learned?”

“This? I don’t really know how to explain it.”

When Turan held out his hand to Bije, she stretched out her beak and lightly tapped his finger, then smoothly melted into him and vanished.

Though she had become smaller than before, the sight of a bird larger than a fist vanishing in an instant was surreal even by a wizard’s standards.

A few seconds later, she popped out from the other hand and chirped.

“Our bodies melted and then fused... it’s like how Light of Judgement mixes fire and light. I think our souls and magic power came to share the same properties, allowing us to merge. Just a guess, though.”

As a bonus, perhaps because Bije’s body had become partially made of magic power, her size could now be adjusted to some extent.

To demonstrate, Turan changed Bije’s form from her kestrel-like size back to her original size, then to that of a dog or a wolf, then to a large predator’s size, and even larger than that.

“Ugh.”

“Whoa....”

As the room, which had been fairly spacious just moments ago, was suddenly filled to the brim, Bije finally returned to her smaller form and did a little dance on top of Turan’s hand.

In that moment, a voice echoed in Turan’s head, saying, “Aren’t I awesome?”

“That’s the limit of her size change?”

“Probably. Though of course, getting bigger doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. The density of the magic power that makes up her body gets thinner.”

When the body gets larger but the amount of magic power stays the same, it naturally suffers in terms of density.

While increasing muscle mass could mean more power, still

Just being able to adjust these traits depending on the situation was already a huge advantage.

“And this is really the last part.”

Before anyone could ask what he meant, Bije flew from Turan's hand and disappeared from sight.

After staring blankly for a moment, Solif groaned and clutched his forehead.

“How is it?”

“...Is it what I think it is?”

"Yes. Now Bije can also borrow my concealment and tracking abilities."

Listening to Turan and Meisa’s exchange, Solif muttered,

“You really have gone off the rails. This is the end of the world. A person with three bloodline abilities is one thing, but a bird doing this?”

At that moment, Bije reappeared and pecked at Solif’s forehead, muttering not to say bad things.

Of course, it was too weak to break the head of someone with the Guardian Bloodline.

“Bije’s original soul form probably matched that of Aravion. But now, after being merged, I think the Zahar form has been imprinted onto her... something like that.”

Even setting aside the Concealment ability, the fact that Bije could now use Tracking Magic was a massive asset.

The essence of tracking lies in amplifying the senses targeted at a specific object in order to find it.

Turan and other Zahar nobles usually used their superior sense of smell for this, but Bije could now utilize the golden eagle’s extraordinary eyesight to identify targets.

Soaring high in the sky and observing in a radius of over a hundred kilometers.

Hearing this, Solif grumbled,

"Why can't I find a magical beast that matches me?"

“You’ll probably meet one when the time is right.”

“What if I just take some random beast up there and...”

“I don’t even know if that’s possible, but even if it is, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Turan still remembered the dizzying sensation he had felt at the summit of the Sky Mountain Range.

His entire body melting away and flowing out beyond that place, leaving behind only remnants barely recognizable as his own.

Not knowing how he even came back from that state, expecting a second stroke of luck and climbing up again would be madness.

*

A few days had passed since the attempt to scale the mountain range.

While Turan quietly recuperated, the others spent their time in their own ways.

First, Meisa began crafting a few spare outfits for Turan into magic artifacts.

She poured her vast magic power into the process and even borrowed the strength of Solif’s Guardian Bloodline.

Considering the power of a magic artifact comes first from the Enchanter’s power and second from the bloodline ability it’s infused with, it was easy to imagine just how powerful the resulting equipment would be.

Of course, crafting such items drained one’s energy for a time, so it was necessary to limit the power to a reasonable level.

“How’s your body feeling?”

“More or less okay.”

“Try drinking this. It’s tea I made with some herbs I picked just a bit ago.”

At the same time, they put effort into caring for Turan, including brewing tea made from crops grown right in the front yard garden.

They received help from Solif’s mother, Romi, who was familiar with the Varaha-style medicinal tea culture.

To this end, she not only used Plant Growth Magic to speed up the crop’s development, but also applied the decay magic Turan had taught her in the past to rapidly ferment the herbs, an impressive bit of applied magic.

Turan, as he reluctantly forced down the tea every day, bitter, sour, fishy, and foul-tasting, with every kind of flavor imaginable, felt a bit of regret for having taught them that magic.

Aside from occasionally helping Meisa with the crafting of magic artifacts, Solif spent most of his time with his parents.

Since they had no servants or maids to handle chores, there was plenty to do: from teaching simple home maintenance methods to procuring items they hadn’t managed to gather yet.

To do this, instead of stopping by nearby villages and risking exposure, he had to ride Bije for over half a day to reach a distant city where he could make purchases. Each time they did, they ended up squabbling so much that one or both of them would return with a small injury somewhere on their body.

Lastly, Bije too was constantly busy, except when giving Solif a lift now and then.

She was completely absorbed in playing around with her newly changed body.

Most of the time, she maintained the smallest size, about that of a kestrel, but when she felt like it, she transformed into a massive golden eagle with a wingspan of ten meters to hunt frightened animals.

Thanks to her Concealment ability, she could snatch prey in complete silence despite her large size, making her truly like a Predator of Death.

She even had the cunning to shrink down again when eating, making it easier to feel full quickly.

And so, about two weeks passed as each of them spent their time in their own way.

At last, Turan was able to come out of his bedroom.

'I'm still a bit dizzy... but much better than before.'

Walking unassisted for the first time in a while, Turan stepped into the garden and basked in the sunlight pouring down from the sky.

Both his body and magic power had recovered long ago, and yet his physical health, somehow slower to return, was only now finally catching up.

Now he understood why that had been.

‘I didn’t expect it to work out like this, not in the slightest.’

The introductory Soul Magic book he had obtained while raiding the Varaha’s base.

He had meditated diligently according to its teachings, but Turan often felt as if there was a thin shell he couldn’t quite break through.

However, not long ago, during a period of focused meditation with nothing else to do, he had a sudden realization.

The remnant dregs that hadn't been absorbed at that time.

What had seemed like mere residue, barely more than scraps, was in fact his unchanging self, and it had served as the medium that drew his true form back from the brink of being absorbed beyond.

Because that nascent, fragile power had forcibly pulled back a form far too massive, it had left him paralyzed as if suffering muscle pain, and the aftershock had caused his physical condition to deteriorate.

Click.

With a sensation like pressing a button inside his head, Turan awakened his Spiritual Perception.

*****

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