Shepherd Wizard

Translator: Pai_

“Huff, huff...”

“P-please, even a short break.”

“No. At the very least, we must widen the distance to the next oasis before the day ends.”

In the late afternoon, Borea Shatik firmly rejected the plea of the exhausted civilians.

He was well aware that their frail bodies struggled to endure the forced march, and that many had already fallen behind.

But surely, being pushed to the brink of death was still better than actually dying.

“Look behind you.”

“Ah...”

A small shadow at the edge of the desert where heat shimmered.

Those who saw it, without exception, groaned and began dragging their bloodied feet again.

Even though it was clearly several kilometers away, it was visible, what it was, was a giant.

A mythical creature that had supposedly been eradicated by the gods in the distant ancient times.

“Mom, my feet hurt.”

“I know, just for a moment... ah!”

“Give him to me.”

The woman, who had been struggling to lift her whining child, gasped in surprise when Borea suddenly reached out and picked up her child.

He was a high-ranking wizard, not even a knight but a nobleman and the leader of this group, yet he hoisted a mere commoner’s child onto his shoulder.

With the child, light as a feather, perched on his shoulder, Borea raised his voice.

“When we reach the next oasis, you’ll be able to sleep and rest for at least half a day! Just hold on a little longer!”

His resounding voice was loud enough to reach the hundreds behind him.

Perhaps some would be unable to endure and fall behind, but at least some would be able to make it to the next oasis.

Since the giant wasn’t particularly fast when not in close proximity to humans, they could still secure rest time.

Of course, during that rest, he and the other wizards would have to distract the giant or scavenge for food in the area.

Either way, it would be too much for the already exhausted civilians.

“Damn it, why the hell are we even...”

“If it were just returning, we could’ve gone back long ago.”

Borea turned his head toward the grumbling he heard.

Two knights who had been quietly complaining were startled when they noticed his gaze.

"Are you dissatisfied?"

“N-no, sir.”

“I understand. It’s hard to accept why we’re going through all this for the people of Enril.”

They were wizards of the House Parsha, rulers of the Gray Zone, and were originally enemies of House Zahar, who ruled the Enril Desert.

And yet, they had split into several groups to help evacuate civilians from the giants, doing all they could for relief efforts.

Why? For what purpose had they been doing all this?

“The family head has ordered it. Protect the people of the Enril Desert. We merely follow orders.”

On Borea’s chest, several medals were sewn, a glorious symbol showing that he had participated in multiple important battles as a member of House Parsha.

As he spoke in a solemn tone, he suddenly softened his manner of speech.

“Just endure a little more. I believe it. I’m certain that once the situation at the main base is under control, the family head will come for us.”

He didn’t believe those knights were lacking in loyalty compared to him.

They were simply weaker, more exhausted, and had reached their limit faster.

As he comforted them and continued marching, one of the knights who had gone ahead shouted in a panicked voice.

“Trouble, Borea-nim! A giant is approaching the oasis from beyond the hills up ahead!”

“Damn it...”

If they couldn’t rest at the planned location, they wouldn’t be able to replenish their water supplies.

Others who saw Borea’s face darken began whispering in fear.

“It can’t be helped. I’ll lure that thing away elsewhere. Keep marching toward the oasis.”

“Will you be alright?”

"I have to try."

As a noble of the Earthmover Bloodline, he was able to accelerate by making the ground he stepped on rise up as he ran.

By applying this ability, luring the giant away was certainly possible.

At the very least, compared to the other knights, his chances of survival were far higher.

“Please stay safe.”

“I’m leaving them in your care.”

Borea handed over the leadership to another noble and quickly set off.

As he moved, almost as if flying, the giant that had been hidden behind the hills soon came into view.

“Good to see you.”

[“You, food?”]

Borea immediately raised his gun and fired at the creature babbling nonsense.

Bang. With a sharp noise and a piercing scream, the giant started striding after him.

“Come on, slow bastard!”

With a shout, Borea's body slid across the desert.

If he could lure the giant far away from the oasis and circle back, he would be able to rejoin the group.

But it was unclear whether he’d have time to replenish the magic power and stamina consumed in the process.

No, how long was this situation even going to last?

Just as a cynical thought began to cloud his face, a pitch-black shadow passed overhead.

‘Damn it, what now...’

Had he run into a flying magical beast while off guard?

He hastily looked up and saw an enormous golden eagle.

As massive as the giant itself, it instantly swooped down on the creature chasing him.

[“N-no, stop! Ack!”]

Crunch. With the sound of bones breaking, the eagle’s beak and talons tore into the giant in an instant.

The surrounding sand surged up to bind the giant’s arms and legs, appearing as if it were magic controlling the earth.

A magical beast that could use magic, and one strong enough to hunt a giant...

As Borea stood there dumbfounded by the incomprehensible situation, the giant let out a final death cry and scattered into light particles, some of which were absorbed into the eagle's body.

Then, to Borea’s astonishment, the eagle suddenly shrank and transformed into a human form, approaching him.

“You’ve been through a lot in many ways, Borea.”

A young man with familiar features, his gray hair tied back.

Overcome with emotion, Borea dropped to one knee and saluted respectfully.

"I have been waiting, my lord."

***

Turan, who had rescued Borea while he was moving alone, also hunted down the giant that had been pursuing the group Borea had been accompanying, instantly.

In doing so, he managed to absorb a small amount of essence the giants had possessed.

‘They really were just bones and scraps. This unnatural hunger and aggression must’ve stemmed from that...’

Compared to other races that had retained their near-peak strength, the giants were absurdly weak for the infamy of their former glory.

This was because Monarch had sent them down with barely enough power to maintain their physical form, nothing more.

The energy needed to move such massive bodies had to be granted as strength, but the lack of it left them weak and sluggish.

Had those things moved as swiftly as humans with that bulk, even Solif or Meisa would’ve struggled to fight one-on-one.

“First, let’s return to Axum and begin regrouping. Gather any other nearby survivors there as well.”

“Then what about you, Family Head?”

“I’ll finish clearing out the giants in the desert before the day ends. After that, we’ll need to discuss how to rebuild this place.”

Even now, in the Enril Desert, at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, people were wandering like Borea’s group, fleeing from the giants.

Naturally, there had also been many instances of people attacking and looting each other to secure scarce resources.

Turan recalled something Mago had once told him.

Hunger and scarcity could turn even sheep into wolves.

And making sure the sheep didn’t become wolves by keeping them well-fed, that, too, was his responsibility.

“I’ll send you straight to Kalamaf first. Get support there. Once you’ve recovered a bit, join the reconstruction projects in Axum and the other cities.”

“Understood!”

Neither Borea nor the other wizards of House Parsha asked how Turan could transform into a golden eagle or how he could perform spatial transfer.

They were too exhausted to ask such things, and partly because they vaguely assumed it was simply something Turan could do.

From then on, Turan continued to travel through the major cities of the Enril Desert, including the city of Comad, which he had visited in the past, searching for giants, hunting them down, locating survivors, and sending them to Kalamaf in a repeated cycle.

In just one day, Turan had driven the giants to extinction and saved hundreds of thousands of people. The next place he headed was the western forest region.

The dark elf lords, who had just begun establishing their territories and ranks after a long period of conflict, now faced an unexpected catastrophe.

“Run!”

“A devil, a devil is coming-!”

As the cries of fleeing dark elves rang out in shreds, the shadow of a golden eagle loomed above.

Turan slaughtered all the undead spirits the dark elves released, converting their magic power back into essence and absorbing it.

The purge did not end with just sweeping away the dark elves on the surface.

He also intended to deal with the dark elves slumbering underground, ones the players had never managed to finish off.

He remembered well the atrocities the dark elves had committed in the past. This time, he intended to wipe them out completely.

“What the hell is that?”

“Is that the so-called devil from the surface?”

For the dark elves, who had never once emerged from underground since the descent of the Preah God Tribe, this was an absurd disaster.

Hundreds of meters below ground lay the subterranean world.

A brilliant civilization that had flourished there for thousands of years was unilaterally destroyed by a single transcendent being.

“Do not retreat!”

“If we fall, it’s all over!”

Turan, feeling like the worst villain imaginable, let out a dry laugh as he exterminated a dozen dark elf lords, hundreds of necromancers, and over several hundred thousand dark elves.

Their desperate cries of asking what they had done wrong to deserve this were ignored.

Compared to those who made decorations out of entrails or played instruments using living beings, he figured simply killing them cleanly was doing more than enough.

At last, he stopped the purge only after he scoured the entire world with tracking magic and could no longer sense even the faintest trace of a dark elf.

***

“Phew...”

Exactly one week.

Turan, who had been cleansing the other races across the world, returned to Kalamaf not because his strength had run out, but because he needed rest due to mental fatigue.

This wasn’t a matter that could be fixed by using essence to recover.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t impossible, but manipulating one’s own mind in that way was a difficult and dangerous domain.

Reshaping one’s mind to be colder and immune to fatigue could quickly distort it to the point where one no longer knew what their original self had been like.

Could someone like that even be called the same person?

Especially now, when even the body could be changed at will by consuming essence.

Just as he was going through the piled-up paperwork to cool his head, the door to the office opened.

“What the, when did you get here?”

“Just now.”

“You come and go with spatial transfer, so I never even notice.”

Ashiz, carrying a large stack of documents, made a remark that sounded somewhere between a complaint and a comment, then dropped the stack on the desk with a thud.

“How’s the situation?”

“Complicated, what else. You dumped tens of thousands of people in Kalamaf’s front yard, remember?”

“Was it that many?”

“Luckily, we had a way to feed them. Otherwise, there would’ve been a riot for sure.”

Naturally, the grain needed to feed them all had been brought from the Takein Plains, where Morgen City was located.

Since the transport route had already been connected, moving large amounts of grain hadn’t been difficult.

“But there’s not as much for me to handle as I expected. Even though you were gone for quite a while.”

“I processed most of it under my own authority.”

“Ah.”

Turan immediately understood why Ashiz had changed his approach to handling the work.

Originally, to make decisions was to wield power. So, no matter how close Ashiz was as a friend and confidant, it was essential to respect the rights of the family head to some extent.

But Turan was no longer just a mere human family head; he had become, in essence, a god walking the surface.

There was no longer any need to feel displeasure or wary just because a human had overstepped his authority a little.

“So, be grateful to me.”

“Thank you, Ashiz-nim. Shall I assign Bije to assist you with your work?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

After exchanging a few more work-related words mixed with lighthearted banter, Turan dismissed Ashiz and stood from his seat.

His destination was the underground prison.

‘This needs to be wrapped up too.’

With other matters having taken priority, he had pushed it from his mind for a while, but now he remembered, there was still something left to deal with.

No longer using passwords or anything of the sort, he entered, greeting the saluting guards with encouragement. Upon being met with the familiar stench, he clicked his tongue.

“It’s been a while, Badal.”

Badal Aravion, possessing the body of a death row inmate, bowed his head in silence instead of responding to Turan’s question.

Loyal, believing only in the friend who would one day become a god and save him.

Naturally, this was only possible because he had no way of knowing what was happening outside.

To him, Turan spoke mockingly.

“Monarch is dead. His soul, his ambition, everything was burned away as fuel inside me.”

Badal’s continued silence, however, seemed to form the word "lie" into an expression.

“You’ll see it’s not a lie if you look at this.”

Turan instantly created a large gold ingot before his eyes.

This wasn’t brought from somewhere or transmuted, it was creation of matter, something impossible with magic power.

Likewise, Badal, who knew the secrets of essence, widened his eyes in shock.

“No way?”

“That’s right. I fought him using essence, and I won.”

“You bastard, do you even know what lies beyond that door? You’re doing something you can’t take responsibility for-”

“The ones who did things they couldn’t take responsibility for were you bastards. At least I’m trying to take responsibility.”

Turan stopped speaking and placed his hand on Badal’s head.

“I had originally told Meisa to get her revenge on you. But she said she didn’t want to. Said she no longer had the heart to even hate someone like you, that she didn’t want to waste her time anymore, she’d rather use what little she had left to love and care.”

“What...”

“But I’m not such a good person.”

With those words, the body of the death row inmate went limp.

Turan looked at the overwhelming amount of information stored in the extracted spirit form and began absorbing it with admiration.

The power held by the soul of a god who possessed four symbols, something that far surpassed even that of the giants.

He had been feeling a bit drained from exerting himself all day, but even that exhaustion disappeared in an instant.

Eventually, Turan sent up what was now just a shell, stripped of everything, retaining only memories and the personality formed by them.

“Say hello to the others. I already sent Monarch and Phoenix ahead, so you’ll see them there.”

Before Badal could even ask what he meant, his soul literally soared high into the sky.

Kalamaf City came into view all at once, then soon the Gray Zone and the forest region, and eventually the entirety of the Takein Plains, which he once ruled, unfolded before his eyes.

And beyond that, into a space even higher.

“Ah.”

Badal realized where his soul had arrived.

Even if he hadn’t wanted to know, the information forced itself into his mind.

He had come to hell.

A place where he would suffer all the pain he had caused to others in his life, only after experiencing it all could he be freed.

A torment that would last at least several thousand years, perhaps for eternity, now awaited him.

***

After casting Badal into hell, along with the gods sealed in the jewel box, Turan acquired another round of essence in the process.

When combined with what he had gained from purging the other races, the amount was considerable. He handed part of it to Meisa, who had just finished the final cleanup of the Takein Plains.

“How is it? Think you can do it?”

“Just a moment... got it!”

Having succeeded for the first time in shifting her coordinates, Meisa walked into Turan’s arms, hugged him tightly, and smiled.

She had already received a small amount of essence and was exceptionally talented in handling it, but due to her weak presence, she had struggled with control.

Compared to Turan, who had received the presence of the gods, she was lacking- after all, Monarch had absorbed the presence of countless puppets, but even that fell short.

However, by reclaiming the Takein Plains once more and securing a large supply of presence, she had now gained the ability to use a few basic techniques.

“Now, with this, I’ll be able to visit Luska or you anytime I want.”

Turan, who had never been delighted by something like that before, reflected on himself inwardly.

Of course, even after sharing some with Meisa, he still had a substantial amount of essence remaining, this was planned to be invested into Solif soon.

To do that, the first step was to modify the world’s laws so that bloodlines could be acquired through achievements and rituals.

Once the modified laws allowed Solif to wield four bloodlines, Turan would need to share power with him directly.

However, rewriting the laws of the world proved to be far more difficult than he had anticipated.

In order to twist the power that applied to the entire world, he first had to reclaim and possess the existing laws, then reapply them.

But even with the overwhelming presence he had gained after absorbing Monarch, it was still difficult to fully possess the amount of essence required to construct even a single law.

Therefore, he needed to secure additional presence from somewhere, but the presence Turan could obtain from this world had already reached its limit.

To gain more than this, he would need to trigger a massive slaughter and harvest tremendous hatred and fear, but that was clearly out of the question.

‘Then the conclusion is obvious.’

Turan’s gaze stretched toward somewhere beyond the sky.

It seemed he would have to pay Earth a visit again.

*****

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