Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 14 Keorn, the knight of Arabion, was the one who had given Turan a sense of purpose during the long years he spent tending sheep on the hills.
Whenever Keorn spoke of his family, his face would swell with pride. He described them as a noble house where everyone, from the high-ranking aristocrats to the lowliest knights, considered the protection of humanity their sacred mission.
Turan's decision to accept Asiz's proposal after long deliberation wasn't simply because he wanted a high-quality magic device; it was the result of the admiration sparked by those stories. Even if they weren't from the main branch, he hoped to experience the spirit of that noble house through one of its vassal families.
Of course, considering he carried the bloodline of Zahar—the archenemy of Arabion—he was taking a significant risk. However, as long as he didn't reveal his concealment magic directly, there shouldn't be any major problems. The ability to discern bloodlines, like the librarian had demonstrated, was an extremely rare talent.
The next morning, the party—consisting of two men and a horse—headed first to the site of the previous battle. Their purpose was to recover the bodies of the Berk family members who had been massacred by the Dark Elves.
Since Asiz had been unconscious all of yesterday, Turan took the lead as the guide.
"It's this way."
"How on earth do you find your way in a place like this? To me, it all looks exactly the same..."
"You'll learn quickly enough if you wander around alone. Ah, there are the Dark Elves."
Asiz bit his lip hard as he looked at the two headless Dark Elves, then abruptly turned away. Turan guessed that Asiz had been tempted to desecrate the corpses out of lingering rage but had ultimately decided against it.
In the meantime, Turan properly examined the corpses, which he hadn't been able to check thoroughly the day before.
The first thing that caught his eye were their black leather coats, all made in a similar style. Judging by the craftsmanship, they were items produced in a professional workshop, and they weren't particularly worn out.
The second thing was their ears. Based on a female Dark Elf whose head had been crushed, leaving only the area above her forehead intact, her ears were long and bifurcated—a sign that they were likely of quite high rank.
From this, he could deduce one fact.
"There might be a path leading to a Dark Elf city near here."
"A Dark Elf city? I've never heard of such a thing being in this area..."
"They build their cities underground, so they often go unnoticed. They dig a few tunnels leading to the surface, and occasionally, necromancers like these emerge to hunt humans before vanishing back underground without a trace. If anyone has gone missing near here, a good number of them were likely taken by these creatures."
"Where did you learn all that?"
"I read it in a book."
Turan turned his gaze away, avoiding the look in Asiz's eyes—a look he had seen a few times in Orem City, treating him like some great sage. He made a mental note to inform the lord of the nearest city that a Dark Elf city might be close by.
Afterward, the two followed the tracks made by Tilly, recovering the remains of the servants one by one.
It wasn't a pleasant sight, as many of the bodies had been ravaged by scavengers overnight. Asiz's face contorted just as it had yesterday, and his eyes welled with tears, but he did not let them fall.
While recovering personal effects and burying the sixteen bodies, Turan periodically used detection magic to check for approaching Dark Elves. Fortunately, no one came near until the graves were finished.
"It seems we're finally done. I'd like to return them all to their homeland, but..."
"That would be difficult, wouldn't it?"
No matter how large Tilly was, it was impossible for a single horse to carry sixteen corpses—especially since Tilly's back was already laden with the luggage the servants had originally been carrying.
Finally, Asiz transformed a large stone into a square block, carved the words 'My Beloved Family' into it, and placed it in front of the graves as a headstone.
Before long, a faint light began to emanate from the headstone, which had been nothing more than an ordinary rock.
An Enchanter...
Normally, imbuing magic into an object doesn't mean it stays there permanently. Even if Turan applied reinforcement and acceleration magic to his sling and stones, the effect would eventually vanish as the infused mana dissipated.
However, there were items where such magic was permanently fixed: these were called magic devices. To create them, the power of an Enchanter bloodline was required.
After the light faded from the headstone, Asiz spoke with a weary face.
"I didn't have much time, so I couldn't do anything grand. I just placed a simple concealment spell so animals won't catch the scent. I thought it would be too sad if I came back later and found the graves dug up..."
On the road heading north from the graves, Turan and Asiz walked in silence. Turan was naturally accustomed to silence, and Asiz wasn't in the mood for conversation.
They walked for several hours with their mouths shut tight. It was only as the sun began to set that Asiz spoke first.
"Thank you, Turan."
"For what?"
"You didn't laugh at me."
Asiz gave a self-deprecating smile.
"A noble bawling his eyes out over the sacrifice of his subordinates... it must have been a pathetic sight."
"Why would it be pathetic?"
"That's what my father taught me. He said those who die in a righteous battle will dwell in the Celestial Palace with the gods, so grieving for them is a sign of weakness. He said a true noble must know how to move forward over the bodies of the fallen... but if grieving for the death of family is weakness, then I don't think I can ever be strong."
"That's not weakness; it's kindness."
Turan thought of his mother's death. That piercing sorrow, the feeling of becoming truly alone as his only ally in the world vanished. He didn't want to consider that a product of 'weakness.'
The conversation lapsed again, but this time the silence felt much lighter. As darkness fully descended, Asiz spoke up once more.
"Come to think of it, since we've decided to travel together, why don't we speak more comfortably? We don't seem that far apart in age..."
"What? Oh, well. Sure."
"That's the spirit! I look forward to traveling with you, friend!"
When Turan gave a hesitant agreement to the sudden proposal, Asiz reached out his hand with a grin, as if they were lifelong friends. It was a complete reversal from his gloomy demeanor earlier; he seemed to be forcing himself to brighten his mood.
A friend.
Thinking about it, this was the first time someone had called him a 'friend.' Turan felt a strange sensation as he shook the offered hand.
*
Not long after they dropped formalities, Turan realized once again that this 'friend' truly came from a different world. He first felt this during dinner.
"This is...?"
"A refrigeration chest. I stocked up on food at the last city."
What Asiz pulled out from the pack on Tilly's back was a metal box large enough for a person to fit inside. On the outside, it didn't look particularly special other than being painted red, but surprisingly, when the lid was opened, a cool chill wafted out.
"Is it always cold inside?"
"Exactly! Thanks to this, most food stays fresh for about a week. If it's too cold, we can just heat it up."
Asiz took out bread and meat stored inside and, as if to demonstrate, conjured a flame to heat the food. He scorched it a bit in the process—apparently, the knights usually did this for him—but the taste was still excellent.
While it couldn't compare to freshly prepared dishes, it was an insult to even compare it to the hard biscuits or dried meat Turan usually ate for preservation. Though Turan had grown used to coarse food while camping, he still preferred something delicious when possible.
The refrigeration chest wasn't the only magic device Asiz possessed.
There was a magic device that produced water at the press of a button, one that automatically built a small shelter if you gathered nearby wood, and one that sounded an alarm if someone approached...
When Turan learned that even the clothes Asiz was wearing had a magic function to keep them clean, he couldn't help but comment.
"Just giving me those clothes would be enough to pay for your life."
Magic devices were by no means common. In Orem City, for example, only the head of the house, Lug, owned a few, and even then, he treated them as family heirlooms and rarely brought them out. Yet here was this young noble, practically dripping with magic devices hanging from his horse's pack.
Hearing this, Asiz laughed sheepishly.
"Items like these aren't worth my life. I promise to reward you with something much better once we return to the main house. If the elders won't allow it, I'll make it myself."
Turan nodded silently at the promise, but he didn't actually have high expectations. People's hearts often changed once their desperate situation was resolved. Even if Asiz tried to brush him off with a cheap magic device after returning safely to his family, Turan wouldn't be disappointed.
He would simply toss his first friendship into the trash and make Asiz pay the price once he had gained sufficient power.
After about a day and a half, Turan and Asiz arrived at Maderi, the largest city in the vicinity.
At the sight of Tilly, who was clearly a magical beast, the guards at the entrance fled in a panic. Shortly after, a swarm of men who appeared to be knights came rushing out.
"We greet the Descendant of the Gods!"
Apparently, in this region, nobles were referred to as descendants of the gods.
Immediately invited to the manor in the center of the city, Turan and Asiz met with the local lord and informed him that a Dark Elf city was likely nearby.
"Dark Elves...? Do such things really exist?"
"Yes. I brought a head just in case, would you like to see it?"
"No, no, that's quite alright. Seeing such a thing would only ruin my appetite. Very well, I'll have some patrols sent out. More importantly, that magical beast you brought... do you have any intention of selling it?"
"No, Tilly is like family to me..."
Regrettably, the ruler of this place didn't seem to take the two nobles' words very seriously. Since there was no way to convince him, the two stayed for two days, receiving decent hospitality, before leaving the city and heading north again.
On the fifth day of heading north from Maderi, Turan practiced by blasting an ordinary brown bear that attacked them with a lightning bolt. Asiz watched, looking dumbfounded.
"Hey, Turan. Just how many spells do you know?"
"Hmm?"
"I mean, I've lost count of how many different kinds I've seen while traveling with you! From animal taming to freezing, levitation, liquid manipulation, reinforcement, illumination, binding, instant death, earth manipulation, and now lightning... Did you spend your whole life doing nothing but practicing magic? Or do you have some bloodline ability that lets you learn any magic you want?"
Some of the spells Asiz mentioned were self-taught, but the rest had all been taught to him by Keorn.
To Turan, this reaction was actually quite strange. Aside from bloodline magic, wasn't it normal to be able to cast magic just by imagining it, with the only issue being how proficient one was?
Of course, he had struggled a bit when he first heard from Keorn that such techniques existed. But since answering "it just works" would seem too arrogant, Turan subtly changed the subject.
"We agreed not to pry into my family background."
"No, that was just a joke. There's no way such a ridiculous bloodline ability exists. More importantly, how old are you really? You don't look a day over thirty, but you aren't actually, like, eighty years old, are you?"
"Hmm?"
"Huh?"
When Turan looked puzzled, Asiz also sensed something was off and stopped talking.
"How old are you?"
"I turned forty-three this year, I think."
"My nineteenth birthday is about a month away..."
The expression on Asiz's face upon realizing his new friend was less than half his age was truly a sight to behold. Turan was equally shocked to find that Asiz, who looked only a few years older than him, was actually around the same age as the wrinkled village elders back home.
Then again, even Keorn looked to be in his mid-to-late forties when his actual age was over seventy. For nobles who lived several times longer than commoners, it was only natural that their appearance and actual age didn't match. It was a fact he had forgotten since he hadn't interacted deeply with high-ranking nobles until now.
"Well, a mere twenty-one-year difference isn't that important to us... No, wait, explain that magic skill of yours. How is that even possible? Knowing your age makes it even harder to understand! Even if you practiced from inside your mother's womb, you wouldn't have had enough time!"
Because of the persistent questioning, Turan simply replied that he had practiced magic consistently since he was young.
It wasn't exactly a lie. His way of killing time on Hisaril Hill had been playing with magic in every way possible.
Hearing this, Asiz kicked a pebble on the road with a hollow expression.
"Man, I should have realized when you finished off two necromancers with that much mana. To think there are two such geniuses in this world."
"Two?"
At Turan's question, Asiz nodded.
"Yeah, though not quite at your level. Or maybe similar? That person's bloodline is what it is, after all. Anyway, I know another genius around your age. She's my second cousin."
"Could I ask that person to make my magic device?"
If it was an item made by a genius Enchanter, wouldn't it be even better? At Turan's words, Asiz laughed and shook his head.
"No, she's not from our branch; she's from the main house."
"The main house? You don't mean...?"
"That's right. The Princess of Arabion. The one who might one day become the head of the entire Great House."
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