Shepherd Wizard-Chapter 158.2

Translator: Pai_

After spending a rather unsettling morning, Turan skipped his usual breakfast routine and his commute to Varaha, and instead immediately summoned the army.

It was an elite unit made up of only twenty-five nobles, without a single knight.

Even Meisa was among them, so though the number was small, the force was strong enough to go head-to-head with a typical great noble house.

“Is everyone ready?”

“Yes, Family Head!”

Turan, hearing their resolute response, loaded them onto the enlarged Bije and soared high into the sky.

Some of the people in Kalamaf City looked up at the enormous bird that nearly blocked the sun and exclaimed in awe.

“It’s the Family Head’s bird!”

“O Golden Eagle, please shield us with your mighty wings.......”

Unaware of the prayers being muttered below, Bije grumbled in a sullen tone.

-I could go faster without these guys.

-Cut them some slack. This time it's better to travel together.

Perhaps because they’d just recently had fun messing with the Ruvan army as a duo, Bije was quite dissatisfied about slowing down with so many people aboard.

It wasn’t too far a distance, and soon they arrived at a mountain range blocking the space between the Gray Zone and the hilly region.

Turan brought Bije to a halt mid-flight and asked a nearby noble.

“Which direction from here?”

“Just a bit further east, Family Head.”

The one who answered was a noble whose territory included Solon, a city located nearby.

The reason they had flown here was precisely because of this man’s report.

An unidentified force had entered the Gray Zone.

Originally, they had planned to approach and gather more details, but astonishingly, the unknown group had erected an opaque barrier around their entire camp, hiding the interior from view.

That alone was enough to confirm that the group was a wizard army composed of multiple nobles.

For this reason, Turan had to give up attacking the fleeing army of the House of Ruvan.

After all, his most important strongholds were Kalamaf and the Gray Zone.

A few more minutes eastward, Turan picked up a presence through Tracking Magic and altered Bije’s flight path.

Before long, they spotted a camp nestled on one side of the mountain range.

“Hmm.......”

“That’s definitely a military force, no doubt about it.”

It was a formation quite similar to the one Ruvan’s army had used, which Turan had defeated not long ago.

The location was near the peak, making it difficult to definitively determine whether it was in House Carmine's or House Parsha's territory.

Staring down quietly at the location, Turan brushed off his clothes and said,

“I need to get a closer look. Wait here.”

Before anyone could respond, Turan jumped off Bije, using concealment and flight magic.

Then, using Magnetism Magic, his body lunged forward as if pulled by an unseen force.

Though it consumed a great deal of magic power, for a short time it allowed him to fly at a speed comparable to, or even faster than, Bije.

It was the result of his efforts to crudely master the technique demonstrated by Badal Aravion in the past.

'Now then...'

In no time, Turan reached the outskirts of the camp and first examined the barrier surrounding it.

Normally, people set up barriers like fences to conserve magic power, but this one was a carefully crafted spherical barrier extending from ground to ceiling.

Not even a Zahar noble could penetrate such a barrier without breaking it.

Every time one crossed it, the whole thing would have to be taken down and reinstalled, and the time and effort to make it were absurdly immense, no one usually used such a method.

‘Zahar...... no, they’re definitely on guard against me. I can’t even sense who’s inside due to the magic in the barrier. Who the hell are these people?’

His original plan had been to infiltrate and identify the intruders, but with this kind of setup, that was going to be nearly impossible.

Turan paused there for a moment, weighing his options.

Whether to launch a surprise attack and annihilate them outright, or to make proper contact and uncover their identity.

After a brief moment of deliberation, Turan settled on the latter.

If he attacked first and killed them all, negotiation would be impossible afterward, and more importantly, he hadn’t come alone this time.

It would be troublesome if word spread, through the mouth of anyone among those who came with him, that the head of House Parsha had recklessly wiped out a force stationed at the border.

After all, those in the position of Family Head of a great noble house were expected to display a corresponding level of dignity.

‘Let’s see.’

With the fluidity he had grown accustomed to during repeated combat with House Ruvan, Turan immediately fired a railgun toward the upper part of the barrier.

With a flash of light, the barrier warped and tore apart, dispersing into magic energy and vanishing.

Though smaller in size, it was sturdier than the barrier used by the Ruvan army. Even if the attack had been intended to kill, it likely wouldn’t have inflicted a critical blow.

Unless over a dozen nobles from the Barrier Master Bloodline had gathered here, it was clear they must have brought a Sacred Relic-grade artifact.

"We're under attack!"

"Everyone, defensive positions!"

As expected, chaos erupted within the enemy ranks, but only briefly. Turan soon sensed Bije flying in from afar, carrying the army of House Parsha.

It must have been due to witnessing the aftermath of the railgun blast.

On the other side, the unidentified force also seemed to detect this, as they stopped floundering and turned their eyes warily toward the sky.

Thanks to that, Turan was able to approach the mysterious force without interference and observe their identity up close.

A few of them had conjured orbs of light, but this level of magic drain was something he could withstand.

‘So it’s the House Carmine, huh.’

More than half of them wielded the combined powers of the Rapids Bloodline, which controls water, and the Frost Bloodline, which controls cold.

The question was, why were these people encamped here?

Weren’t they supposed to be busy reclaiming their capital, which had been seized by the Great Sea Serpents by now?

Judging from the sensitivity of his Sacred Relic, their composition didn’t quite match that of a full-scale invasion force.

One high-ranking noble, five or six mid-ranks, about a dozen lower-ranks, and sixty or so knights made up the group.

Standing right next to the Carmine encampment, Turan shifted from complete Concealment to a lower-level version that only hid his appearance, and opened his mouth. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

[How dare you bring an army into House Parsha's land? Does the Family Head of House Carmine desire war not only at sea but also on land? If not, then get down on your knees this instant.]

Empowered by Wind Magic, a voice with no discernible origin echoed eerily through the Carmine troops.