Shepherd Wizard-Chapter 208

Translator: Pai_

A knight whose head was crushed collapsed on the spot.

Right beside him, Phoenix quickly raised his hand to block the blood splatter from hitting his face and spoke with a dumbfounded expression.

“Hey, isn’t this usually when you’re supposed to hear at least one word out?”

“I figured that’s what you guys wanted.”

The thought that the best strategy was to do the opposite of what the opponent wanted was something he had to keep to himself.

Because even as he gave that answer, he was already launching a second attack.

However, unlike a moment ago, Phoenix skillfully blocked the attack flying toward him.

A mysterious mass of mucus formed between his hands, entangling the steel ball and stopping it.

‘What is that technique now?’

It seemed to be an application of an alchemist’s skill, but there was no time to analyze it in detail.

The two other possessed bodies next to him had already realized there was no intention to talk and were launching attacks as well.

Turan blocked the pitch-black flame flying at him with wind and kicked away the opponent attempting close combat.

In the meantime, Phoenix, who had dispelled the mucus used for defense, immediately picked up his bow and aimed it at him.

‘That bow.......’

He still remembered just how terrifyingly fast and powerful the arrows shot from that bow were when he had infiltrated Axum before.

A weapon with a guide rod attached to the bow to adjust the trajectory, reducing the size of the arrows to less than half, thereby allowing high tension to be applied to smaller projectiles.

Tung, even faster than the sound of the bowstring being plucked, the arrow launched in that manner flew out.

But thanks to his much-enhanced magic power, Turan recognized and successfully defended against the attack.

“Damn it!”

As he deflected the attack with the Guardian magic artifact on his forearm, Phoenix twisted his face and let out a low curse.

If the distance had been greater, he could have threatened with various techniques, but this place was too narrow for using a bow.

At that moment, a commoner burst out from a hidden door in the corner.

Panting heavily as if he had been running, he was wearing a white gown that reached down to his knees.

“Hurry up! Do it now!”

“I thought we had to wait?”

“There’s no time for that!”

While the two other possessed bodies were exchanging blows with Turan, Phoenix swiftly tossed the orb that had been held by the dead knight.

The commoner, holding an item that resembled the ‘key’ they had found in the library, fled through the back door.

Even while engaged in battle with the other two possessed bodies, Turan could tell from their exchange that the commoner was another puppet of the Monarch.

He had just destroyed one a moment ago, and yet the Monarch was already using a new body?

It was a situation different from the expectation that shifting consciousness from one body to another quickly would be difficult.

It seemed that within a short distance, the consciousness could be transferred quickly, or something had been set up so that upon destruction, it would immediately move to the next body.

In any case, what he had to do remained unchanged.

Kill these bastards here and take that key.

Whatever its purpose, if it was something the Monarch was doing, it had to be stopped no matter what.

But there were many obstacles to chasing right away.

The surroundings were made entirely of Red Fortress outer wall material, meaning he couldn’t break through and had to follow the path, and the route the Monarch had disappeared into was blocked by Phoenix and the two possessed bodies of House Zahar.

‘Just breaking through head-on would...... be dangerous.’

Though he had grown stronger by obtaining the Shepherd’s symbol combination, the opponent was still a god powerful enough, even if not on the level of Badal or Haroon.

If they had tried direct combat, he might have been able to end it quickly, but they were blocking the passage and sticking to defense, making it hard to take them down fast.

“What is this place?”

Just then, someone slipped in through a hole in the ceiling, causing everyone to turn their heads.

Solif, who had dropped down abruptly, looked around with a puzzled expression and said,

“What the hell is going on here?”

“Stop them!”

At Turan's shout, Solif responded with a loud “Good!” and immediately summoned a pure white flame, threatening the three possessed bodies of House Zahar.

The underground area, which had been dark just moments before, instantly lit up so brightly that not a single shadow could remain.

“Kh...”

The silver sun's flame was nearly a natural enemy to those who were derivatives of the Night Hunter.

Though he did not possess the Healer bloodline and thus couldn’t wield perfect power, his quantity of magic power was overwhelmingly superior, and unlike the possessed bodies, he was a fully intact human being.

There was no need to bear spiritual loss to draw out the power of bloodline combinations.

As the possessed bodies of House Zahar quickly retreated, Turan used the opening to follow the path toward the room where the Monarch’s puppet had disappeared.

Seeing this, Phoenix shouted urgently.

“Stop him!”

“There- Aaaagh!”

One of the possessed bodies, who had hurriedly tried to launch an attack at Turan, was engulfed in white flames and screamed as it burned to ashes.

Another, terrified after witnessing this, couldn’t bring himself to approach, and Solif immediately shot a beam at Phoenix who was chasing after Turan.

As he hurriedly twisted his body in panic, he burst out in anger at Solif.

“Don’t interfere!”

“You’re the one who should stay put!”

He didn’t quite understand the situation, but he was certain of at least one thing: he couldn’t let that woman interfere with Turan. With that conviction, Solif relentlessly fired beams toward the path Phoenix was trying to take, blocking his advance.

The look on his face, as if he were about to go insane at any moment, was as good as a reward.

“You damn NPC bastard.......”

Turan had once said that was the term the fallen gods used to belittle modern humans as fake beings.

For spiritual lifeforms who possessed such fake humans to utter such words, it was truly arrogant.

As if forging a weapon from the Light of Judgement, Solif crafted a longsword from white flames and charged at Phoenix.

“Here, have a taste of this NPC’s sword-!”

***

Thanks to Solif, Turan successfully separated the possessed bodies of House Zahar and spotted a spiral staircase.

From below drifted a strong scent of fresh blood, quite unlike the smell from outside, indicating that some similarly repulsive ritual was currently underway.

Rather than descending the stairs, Turan leaped down in one motion and opened the door on the opposite side, where several commoners appeared.

“Oh?”

“Wh-Who are you...?”

A few men and women dressed in white clothes, all of them were commoners, and no symbols could be seen within them.

Which meant they were all Monarch’s puppets.

They appeared to be in the middle of smearing something that looked like human blood and flesh on the walls to create bizarre patterns similar to those above ground.

Seeing this, Turan swept them away with a wind conjured from a light flick of his hand.

Just like the bandits he had encountered during his first journey long ago, the puppets were flung against the walls by the wind and died with their bodies crushed.

‘There.’

At the very back of the room, he saw the puppet that had received the orb earlier.

It was muttering something with six orbs embedded into its body.

That place appeared to be the central core of this ritual.

‘So that was beneath the spot the librarian elder had pointed out. I should’ve come down one more level.......’

With that thought, Turan immediately moved to stop the ritual the Monarch was performing.

It wasn’t about stopping it simply because it was his enemy’s doing, nor was it about morality because many humans had been sacrificed.

It was the most primal, purest sense of danger as a living being that moved him. Without even the time to load the steel ball into his slingshot, he gripped it in his hand and hurled it straight.

The flying steel ball scattered the installed orbs on the ground in all directions and, from the shockwave alone, left the Monarch beside them in a critical state.

“Guhk!”

With a scream, the keys flew off in all directions, and the glowing dark-red pattern faded.

In just a few steps, Turan closed the distance of dozens of meters and realized the Monarch’s puppet was still alive.

‘He got lucky.’

Because his internal organs were already half-crushed, it was clear he wouldn’t survive without healing magic, so Turan prioritized retrieving all the "keys" first.

Unlike the one from the library, their color was faint, suggesting the power within was not substantial.

Perhaps they had been consumed during the earlier ritual.

“Khuh.”

At that moment, the Monarch, who had collapsed in the corner, let out a small laugh.

Turan grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and lifted him up, asking,

“I doubt you’ll answer, but I’ll ask anyway. What were you trying to do here?”

Whatever it was, it didn’t seem like something worth enduring the Allied Forces’ invasion for.

Although the Monarch’s true body was still unaccounted for, House Zahar had already fallen.

Having lost all useful agents, the Monarch had no option left but to hide in the shadows of the power Turan had created and flee for the rest of his life.

Considering that he, riding Bije, could cross the world in a few days, there was no place where the Monarch could hide and establish a satisfactory force.

In response to Turan’s question, the Monarch gave a weak laugh and opened his mouth in a dying voice.

“This... is your fault... I, didn’t plan... to go this far... if only you had given... Meisa.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll... find out soon enough.......”

As expected, he had no intention of giving a proper explanation. His aim seemed only to mock Turan.

If there was any gain, it was confirming with the Eye of Truth that he was indeed trying to do something.

Turan applied slight pressure and snapped the puppet’s neck, then threw the corpse against the nearby wall for a finishing blow.

The puppet, slammed into the wall at several hundred kilometers per hour, shattered completely with a grotesque noise.

For now, it seemed he had succeeded in stopping the ritual here, so the next issue was helping Solif, who was fighting on the upper floor.

Flying up the spiral staircase with flight magic, Turan soon saw Solif locked in battle with Phoenix.

“Is it over?!”

“Mhm.”

“Damn......”

Seeing Turan, a look of dismay appeared on Phoenix’s face.

Although unclear, he had probably expected the Monarch’s puppet below to accomplish something.

Even so, he likely didn’t believe he could take on both Turan and Solif alone.

Then, Phoenix took a truly unexpected stance.

“I surrender.”

It wasn’t just words. He threw away his bow, knelt down, and raised both hands over his head.

A gesture that clearly conveyed his intention to give up the fight.

Solif, who had been about to bring down his flaming sword, hesitated with a flustered expression.

“What, does this bastard have no pride...?”

Just moments ago, he had been ranting about NPCs, and now this sudden reversal?

Hearing the spontaneous criticism born of sheer bewilderment, Phoenix nodded without hesitation in agreement.

“Yes. I am a beast with no pride. Please take pity on me. I will obey your will, whatever it may be.”

Seeing that, it became clear that the surrender letter he had received earlier had indeed been written by him personally.

Turan was just as dumbfounded by such an attitude.

With the Eye of Truth, he could tell that there wasn’t a shred of falsehood in Phoenix’s words.

But even so, it didn’t change what had to be done.

The body Phoenix was possessing, Rahman’s power, was far too dangerous to leave alone.

“Kill him.”

“Got it.”

By the time Solif responded, the flaming sword had already smoothly sliced through his cervical spine.

As Rahman’s headless body collapsed to the ground, Turan immediately released his spirit form and extracted Phoenix’s soul.

Unlike the other fallen gods, he did not resist and obediently followed Turan’s guidance into the soul prison.

“What was he thinking?”

“Well, I guess we can find out slowly next to Badal. If he stays cooperative, we might even check it separately soon.”

Turan stared silently at Rahman’s decapitated body, then spoke to Solif.

“Collect the corpse, at least. He is your father-in-law after all. Berit doesn’t seem particularly fond of him, but unlike with Meisa, it’s not like she saw her father as a mortal enemy.”

“Ah.”

Of course, by that logic, even Meisa couldn’t really be considered enemies with the real Badal, the one not possessed.

Badal Aravion had become a possessed body long before Meisa, before even her mother was born, likely at least three hundred years ago.

While Solif gathered the corpse, Turan went back down to the second basement floor, had the Librarian memorize all the patterns, and then cleared everything out by summoning flames.

Even as the hellish heat reduced the corpses and patterns there to ash, not a single soot mark touched Turan’s body.

He had preemptively created a vacuum barrier using wind magic.

Breaking through the smoke-filled basement and emerging to the surface, he was met by Solif, who recoiled in shock as he saw the billowing smoke.

“What the hell were you doing down there?”

“It was too messy, so I cleaned it up. What’s the situation?”

Gunfire could still be heard now and then, suggesting the remnants of House Zahar were still resisting, but it was much quieter than before.

Solif nodded to confirm it.

“Well, it’s pretty much over. Even before I got here, most of them were already on the verge of surrendering.”

Declaring that the Red Fortress was fully occupied, Solif added in a meaningful tone,

“So, how does it feel to have conquered the world?”

“World conquest...”

Turan looked out at the half-ruined city of Axum along the path they had advanced through.

“Maybe because it doesn’t feel real... I don’t feel that happy.”

It was probably because there was still something unresolved that left him uneasy.

***

While the allied forces secured the Red Fortress and sorted the prisoners of House Zahar, Turan headed for the residence of the Zahar family head, a relatively safe place.

There, under Solif’s guard, he immediately entered the Soul Prison and found Phoenix.

“Welcome, Turan-nim.”

Phoenix appeared as a man in his mid-twenties, with narrow, nervous eyes, thin lips, and a sharply defined jaw.

Even in this spiritual realm, he behaved as if he had completely submitted to Turan.

In hindsight, Phoenix’s manner wasn’t particularly surprising.

When he first met Turan in Talis’s body, he had acted arrogantly, but as soon as Turan became the head of a new great house, he had bowed his head without hesitation.

To put it kindly, he was the logical and calculating type; bluntly, he was the classic coward who bullied the weak and groveled before the strong.

And among such types, it was rare to find someone who so blatantly threw away all pride and dignity.

“Let’s get to the point. Do you know what the Monarch was trying to do?”

“I thought I did, but now I’m not sure.”

The words were vague, but the Eye of Truth confirmed they weren’t lies.

Turan twitched his brow slightly, showing his emotion, and asked again.

“In more detail.”

“The original plan was to use the full power of the Red Fortress to pierce a hole in the world’s barrier and flee back to our homeland. He believed that you, Turan-nim, wouldn’t follow him that far. And even if you did, once you knew you couldn’t return, you’d go back.”

“He wanted to open a hole and cross over to Earth?”

“Yes.”

Turan recalled the Monarch’s puppet mumbling while surrounded by the gathered keys.

So that had been a ritual to open a portal to Earth?

“Why go through all the trouble to do that here in Axum?”

“There were few remaining places where one could stably extract power from ancient ruins, and this location, Axum, was said to be near the center of the world, making it advantageous for opening such a hole.”

He could roughly understand the meaning when Phoenix added that it was like piercing fluttering paper, how stabbing the center is easier than poking at the edges.

Though whether it was actually true, he couldn’t be sure.

“You confirmed all of this with the Eye of Truth, right?”

“Of course. But... we ran out of time. If we’d just had one or two more days, it would have been enough.”

According to Phoenix, the failure seemed to be because the ritual had to be performed hastily when Turan suddenly invaded.

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean... exactly?”

“I’m asking if the Monarch had any other schemes he was planning through you all. Did Kim Woong really defect without any hidden agenda?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

That, too, was the truth.

Which made it ironic that they had kept four top-ranking nobles on prison guard duty at all times, fearing he might betray them.

Of course, there was still the possibility that he had made a separate deal with the Monarch, so there was no way to be completely sure.

“What about the Monarch’s true body?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did all this for a guy who wouldn’t even show you his real body?”

“We had no other choice.”

The native forces following Turan Parsha had already matched or even surpassed them.

Now rejected by the world they had once built, they were so desperate that they clung even to a rotten rope. Phoenix spoke in a desperate tone.

You’d think from his words that he was the one who had been wronged, as if he hadn’t helped kill innocent gods and label them all as devils.

“So, in the end, you don’t know anything either.”

Really, the Monarch was something else.

From the attitude he showed in his final moments, it seemed he had been up to something, but he hadn’t even revealed it to Phoenix, one of his last remaining allies?

Then again, judging by how Phoenix had spilled everything as soon as he was captured, not sharing anything had been the right call.

The one most likely to have been told the most was probably Badal.

Otherwise, there would’ve been no reason for him to endure such torture while holding out so stubbornly.

‘He’s not still holding on out of loyalty to the Monarch alone... does he believe the bastard still has a way to turn this situation around? How?’

Wondering what kind of method that could be, Turan asked Phoenix one last question: the location of the new soul stronghold set by the gods of House Zahar.

He received an answer: an uninhabited island in the South Sea, southeast of Axum.

As soon as he dismissed his spirit form and returned to his physical body, something violently shook him.

“Turan! Hey, get up!”

“What?”

It was so urgent that Turan wondered if House Zahar had prepared a trap to collapse the entire Red Fortress.

“Come outside, quick. I can’t explain this in words.”

Wondering what was going on, Turan made his way out, and noticed that the color of the light entering from outside felt off.

It was still midday, so golden sunlight should have been shining through the window but instead, a reddish hue reminiscent of sunset was bleeding in.

Surely, time hadn’t sped up while he was in the Soul Prison...

His thought was interrupted as he stepped outside, and immediately understood why Solif had caused such a fuss.

Under a crimson sky, heated so red that the sun itself could no longer be seen.

Giant humans, so enormous they were recognizable from a great distance, were descending upon the land.

*****

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