Shepherd Wizard

Chapter 149.1

Translator: Pai_

In the past, when Turan captured Cadrum, who had once been a possessed body of House Aravion, he confirmed that the opponent’s possessed body was in a form similar to that of a human.

No different from the spiritual forms of Turan himself, Solif, or Meisa.

Therefore, he believed that Reshion, whom he was to capture this time, would also be similar to a human.

He thought that even the mighty Preah God Tribe, when stripped of their shells, would be no different from them.

[You, how-on-earth–!]

However, the true form of Reshion that appeared was, by any measure, far from human.

The first thing that caught his eye was a smooth mouth without any creases.

The entire body was pure white as if it were covered in marble, and the eyes lacked both irises and pupils, appearing as though golden jewels had been embedded.

On top of that were unusually long ears, drooping like tentacles.

In the midst of it all, if there had not been a few distinctive traits, such as flaming hair, a white halo, and golden scales, it would have been hard to believe that this was Reshion's spirit body.

Clearly, the only additional bloodline he possessed was that of a Healer, so why was there such a difference compared to Solif?

[Aaaaargh!]

As that doubt emerged, a sharp scream from a woman rang out beside him.

[Meisa?]

[M-my head……]

Meisa, who had just exited her body in spiritual form to engage in a spiritual battle with him.

On top of her head were still dozens of needles that had remained stuck due to her recent busyness, not yet having been fully extracted, and they began to emit a jingling sound.

[Return to your body! Hurry!]

She couldn’t even support her own body from the intense pain. After pushing her spiritual form back into her physical body, Turan immediately leapt to chase after Reshion, who had fled during that moment.

Fortunately, the guy hadn’t managed to escape far, as he was still engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat with Solif.

[Help me quickly! This guy is too strong!]

Even Solif had a few remaining needles on his head vibrating, but he simply frowned from the pain and seemed relatively able to endure it.

Perhaps it was because he didn’t have as many needles embedded compared to Meisa?

Turan quickly joined him, and together they weakened what appeared to be Reshion’s spiritual form through brute force, then pushed it into the jewel box.

Just as Solif had said earlier, Reshion’s spiritual form was nearly twice as powerful as Cadrum’s, to the point that even he found it hard to fight alone.

After Reshion’s spiritual form, which had screamed until the end, was sucked into the jewel box, Turan turned to Solif, who was holding his head with a grimace, and asked,

[How’s your head?]

[It hurts a bit, but it’s bearable.]

Now that the spiritual form had vanished, the pain from the needles was gone. Solif murmured quietly and returned to his physical body.

‘I didn’t expect those needles to have such an effect in spiritual form.’

Back when he subdued Cadrum, Solif and Meisa had not yet reached a level where they could extract their spiritual forms from their bodies, so they had not known this.

Feeling his curiosity about the nature of the needles grow, Turan, now back in his body, first checked on Meisa who was beside him.

She was still grimacing from the aftermath of the headache, but she seemed to be doing much better than before.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Now it’s a bit…… When I thought I had to attack while looking at that thing a moment ago, my head suddenly started to hurt.”

It felt like hundreds of needles were violently stirring her brain, Meisa murmured with a slightly fearful tone.

It was clear that the pain she experienced had been far more intense than what Solif had gone through.

“So, did we catch Reshion?”

“For now.”

Turan lifted the jewel box and checked it again, nodding.

Inside one of the specifically enlarged prison sections, Reshion’s spiritual form, with its inhuman shape as seen earlier, was imprisoned.

“How’s the situation on the battlefield?”

“It seems almost completely resolved.”

As Meisa said, from the moment Reshion's head was severed, the army of Varaha had already lost the will to fight.

Only a few of the most loyal followers continued to resist and lost their lives.

The majority either knelt on the spot to show submission or fled far away.

Especially those mobilized from the vassal houses, rather than the main branch of House Varaha, mostly surrendered without resistance.

For them, it didn’t really matter whether Reshion or Solif became the master of Varaha. As defeat became evident, they simply chose to switch allegiance.

Thanks to this, the Lavitas–Parsha allied forces could focus more on tracking down the escapees rather than managing prisoners.

Among those chasers, the most eye-catching was none other than a massive golden eagle.

Bije, who had stayed hidden within Turan’s body during the battle to avoid interfering, came out on its own as soon as its master entered a spiritual state to fight Reshion, and began to track the fleeing enemies.

“A g-golden eagle-”

“It’s the bird of the Parsha family head! Scatter!”

Due to its reputation spreading quite widely from its achievements in several recent battles, the nobles on the side of Varaha tried to flee separately instead of opposing that mythical magical beast, hoping at least one of them could escape.

But mostly, their efforts were in vain.

Even the nobles of Aravion, who could fly through the sky, didn’t dare to attempt fleeing from Bije, what could those on the ground possibly do?

While Turan, together with the nobles of the Lavitas main family, was treating the wounded, Bije killed or subdued dozens of fleeing influential nobles before returning to her master.

The beast, now shrunk to a smaller size, perched on his shoulder and exclaimed proudly.

-Turan! I caught a lot! I did great, right?

“You did amazing, really.”

Feeling the dancing with pride as it seeped back into his body, Turan gathered moisture from the air and created water to wipe the blood off his hands.

Most of it was the blood of nobles or knights from Parsha.

‘More people died than I thought…’

According to what he’d just confirmed while assisting with treatment, there were about 20 deaths from House Parsha.

Considering that there were 136 people excluding Turan and his two companions, that meant roughly one in six had died.

Of course, compared to House Varaha, which had lost nearly half its people, it wasn’t a major loss. But for Parsha, which had fewer wizards, this was still a devastating blow.

If Meisa and other Enchanters hadn’t reinforced their forces by crafting magic artifacts, the damage could have been far worse.

While Turan silently paid respect to the dead in his thoughts, Solif approached, rubbing his head.

“It’s over. Finally.”

“Well, maybe this is just the beginning.”

From post-war handling to the responses of other great noble houses regarding this incident, the thought of what was to come only made his head ache more.

Of course, since it was a fight they couldn’t avoid, it wasn’t even worth debating whether it was necessary.

“Well, it’s over for now, right? If wars always ended this easily in just one blow, it would’ve been nice.”

“Well… we were lucky.”

As the past war between Aravion and Zahar had shown, wars between great noble houses typically didn’t end with a single head-on clash.

They’d wage boring, prolonged battles, slowly eating away at each other’s territories, or use cowardly tactics to strike at each other’s base.

There was no need to go back decades for examples, even Aravion and Parsha were at war.

Both houses had simply deemed themselves incapable of launching a decisive attack on the other, and so they were quietly holding their ground.

Compared to that, the reason this war ended quickly was because both forces were convinced they held a decisive advantage and could finish the other in a single battle.

Of course, looking at the outcome, it wasn’t hard to tell whose belief had been correct.

***