Shepherd Wizard-Chapter 209

Translator: Pai_

"Giants, those are......."

How long had they been staring blankly at the scene?

A murmur from someone unknown slipped into the ears of everyone nearby.

Giants.

A different race from mythology that ruled the Enril Desert in the distant ancient times, before the descent of the Preah God Tribe.

Each one was as powerful as a Great Sea Serpent, so weak gods found it difficult to fight them even one-on-one, but they were hunted to extinction by the arrows of the Night Hunter Otas.

It was said that the flesh and souls of the slain giants were used by the Monarch to create the monsters in the underground labyrinth, and their bones were ground down by the Lame Goddess to make bricks for building the Red Fortress.

Yet now, around this area of Axum alone, at least four, possibly more than five giants had revealed themselves.

Some of them only seemed close because of their massive size but were in fact far away, yet one of them was descending very close to Axum.

If that truly was a being as powerful as the giants from mythology, then the wizards of Axum would surely be crushed without even being able to resist.

'Could this be the result of the ritual Monarch performed?'

There was no way to guess how he had done it or why he had committed such an act.

Could it be retaliation because Turan interfered with his plans?

No, that was a method that didn’t match the behavior the man had shown so far.

There was certainly some gain he sought to obtain through this ritual.

It was just that, for now, they couldn’t determine what exactly that gain was.

In any case, that was something to ponder only after dealing with the immediate task at hand.

"Let’s at least try talking to it. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to hunt it."

"Is that possible?"

"We have to try. Will you help?"

At Turan’s words, Solif let out a scoffing laugh.

"Why even ask? Should we bring the others too?"

"At the very least, even if we just have them fire a cannon, it might be some help."

They still didn’t know how powerful that monster was, but at the very least, it didn’t seem like bullets fired by knights would have any effect.

If it truly possessed strength comparable to the giants in mythology, it was questionable whether even the magic of high-ranking nobles would work.

First, they would have the cannons fired, and if that didn’t work, they would retreat and the two of them would have no choice but to deal with it themselves.

Fortunately, thanks to the quick surrender of Phoenix, not much magic power had been consumed, and it had long since been recovered.

Turan selected a small elite group from the allied army based on the strength of their magic power, and immediately advanced toward the giant.

"Can... can we win this...?"

"Don’t be scared, you bastards! We have our Family Heads with us!"

"Yeah. Those things were defeated once before, after all."

Though there were a few who shrank from the overwhelming pressure emanating from the giant, fortunately, most trusted Turan and Solif thanks to the accomplishments they had shown thus far and moved forward.

Drawing strength from the presence of the Shepherd standing behind them, like a sheepdog confronting a predator larger than itself.

Had they known that these giants were monsters whom even the ancient Preah God Tribe had hesitated to face one-on-one, they would never have found the courage to move.

"Uwaaah......."

Within a few minutes, having exited the city of Axum through the eastern gate, they now trembled before the sight of the giant, which had come within a few hundred meters.

Its height was probably just under fifty meters.

Though the number was fifty meters, it was so high that even at a distance of several hundred meters, one had to crane their neck just to see its head.

At a glance, it looked like a scaled-up human, but upon closer inspection, the overall body structure was entirely alien.

Its head was much smaller than its frame, its arms longer, and its legs shorter by comparison. Its facial features were also uneven and distorted.

Completely naked, its genitals were fully exposed, and shockingly, it had both male and female organs simultaneously.

None among them fully understood the concept of the uncanny valley, but instinctively, all felt discomfort at the sight.

That giant was something entirely incompatible with them.

["Uh......."]

At that moment, the giant, which had been standing blankly, suddenly turned its head as if it sensed the approaching group’s presence.

Its eyes, bulging out like buttons, rolled in their sockets, and drool dripped from a mouth torn vertically.

"Hey, you-"

["Looks... delicious."]

The resonance was so immense that, although it merely muttered as if to itself, the voice reverberated through the entire body even at a distance of several hundred meters.

Well, considering the size of that monster, the distance between them was no more than a dozen meters in practical terms.

Startled for just a moment by that voice, the nobles shuddered once more when they realized that the giant was speaking the same language as them, and then felt fear and disgust upon understanding the meaning of its words.

“F-Family Head. Should we order an attack...?”

Someone spoke up like that, then suddenly opened their eyes wide as they realized that Turan, who had been at the front speaking to it, was no longer there.

There was no way the Head of House Parsha would have fled out of fear upon seeing the giant. If so.

Before the thought could even be completed, an explosive roar and a horrific scream erupted from the giant’s face.

Turan had stealthily approached and, from close range, embedded a steel ball into the giant’s eyeball.

[“WAAAHHHH-!”]

Unlike the previous mutterings, the resulting sound was on an entirely different level, a pressure so intense it felt like the ground would be overturned by sound alone.

If they had been knights or lower nobles, they might have died from the shockwave alone.

Though the nobles screamed from the pain of their eardrums tearing, they swiftly aimed the cannons they had brought.

“Fire!”

Though none of them could hear Solif’s command due to their ruptured eardrums, it was not difficult to grasp its meaning from his gestures, lip movements, and expression.

Groups of four enchanted the cannons with Ignition Magic, and massive cannonballs charged with magic power were launched one after another.

[“It’s hottttt-!”]

The giant, whose one eye had been crushed by Turan’s railgun strike, let out another scream as it was bombarded with cannon fire.

Of course, the power of the cannonballs was barely enough to pierce the giant’s skin.

Considering that those same cannonballs could easily penetrate walls several meters thick, the level of defense the giant displayed was downright unreasonable.

But for living creatures, there are always parts of the body where even modest force can inflict significant pain.

Targeted with a concentrated assault to its exposed genitals, the monster covered between its legs with its hands and, like kicking gravel, it kicked massive boulders toward the nobles who had fired the cannons.

Just as they sensed the danger from multiple house-sized boulders flying toward them, Solif, who was at the front, extended multiple strands of Light of Judgement and deflected them.

“Don’t worry, keep firing!”

Normally, the mechanism of Light of Judgement is to combine light and fire to cut through matter with intense heat, but Solif deliberately reduced the heat and used only physical force, wielding it like a whip of light.

Thanks to that, the flying boulders failed to injure the nobles with the cannons and instead bounced powerlessly in all directions.

[“You!”]

When the angry giant saw Solif and raised its hand to crush the small dwarf-like figure, a spear of Lightning, conjured by the hidden Turan, struck precisely at that raised hand.

The electric shock lit up the surrounding several kilometers, and the giant couldn't even scream as its entire body convulsed.

[“Guh, grrr...”]

Watching silently in concealment, Turan let out a small sigh of relief.

‘It’s weaker than expected. Maybe it’s not a real giant after all.’

He remembered how close to death he had come just fighting the remnants of the Great Sea Serpent in the past.

Compared to that, this giant was far more manageable.

It might take a bit of time, but it seemed catchable even if he fought it alone.

Well, thinking about it, the difference in strength between then and now was enormous.

Each steel ball he casually fired now was far more powerful than the boulder throws that had once been their best weapon against the Great Sea Serpent Wraith.

If Turan’s group back then had encountered this giant, they might have had to take considerable risks or even accept death.

Back then, even attacking until all their magic power was drained might not have been enough to inflict a fatal wound.

But at least one thing was certain.

This giant was far weaker than the real giants spoken of in myths and oral traditions.

“We can win! Keep attacking!”

Turan revealed himself and raised his voice to boost morale.

Though most couldn’t hear him due to ruptured eardrums, the simple fact that he had appeared visibly was enough to raise morale.

What followed was a somewhat tedious but stable style of hunting.

The nobles continued to fire at the weak points, preventing the giant from easily reacting, while Turan flew around, relentlessly embedding steel balls and lightning strikes.

Solif played the role of an anvil in front of the nobles, and whenever the giant got too close, he would drive a white flame sword deep into its instep to force it back.

Once, he was kicked squarely by the monster, but he blocked it with his Sacred Relic shield and hurled his body backward to disperse the impact, so he wasn’t seriously injured.

After about ten minutes of this, the blood-soaked giant finally collapsed onto the ground, and the allied army’s wizards let out sighs of relief.

“We won.......”

“It wasn’t as bad as we thought.”

“Is this the time to be saying that? Healer! Over here! My bone’s broken!”

The healers prioritized those whose heads had been smashed by rock fragments or had broken limbs, then moved on to fix ruptured eardrums.

Meanwhile, Turan and Solif stood over the dead giant’s body, speaking with serious expressions.

“This thing’s just an empty shell.”

“An empty shell?”

“Yeah. Try absorbing its magic power.”

“Let’s see... oh, you’re right.”

As Solif reached his hand toward the giant’s corpse, he immediately understood what Turan meant.

Though his own magic power had already reached its limit in growth, he could at least sense how much magic power he could absorb from a being. Shockingly, this giant didn't offer even the minimum amount of magic power one would expect from the weakest Magical Beasts that even knights could hunt.

“At this rate, there’s no satisfaction in taking it down.”

Considering that without Turan and Solif, even dozens of nobles armed with cannons wouldn’t have been able to hunt that monster, the result was downright horrifying.

Even worse, the giant’s body, drained of its magic power, soon began to crumble into ash like dust.

It couldn’t even be used to build structures like the Red Fortress.

Seeing that nothing remained, the wizards of the allied army wore expressions like they’d just seen a ghost.

“T-The giant we killed... it’s gone.”

“More importantly, what the hell is going on? Why did a giant appear?”

That question was exactly what Turan most wanted to ask.

What on earth was happening?

***

“A human with wings?”

“Yes! They took everyone away! I barely managed to survive and...”

In the residence at Morgen City.

Meisa frowned as she watched the survivor from a nearby city sobbing uncontrollably.

A noble of House Aravion standing next to her carefully offered an explanation.

“It’s probably the Birdfolk. From the old myths-”

“I know.”

The person who spoke lowered their head cautiously and backed away in response to her sharp tone.

A mythical creature suddenly appearing, what kind of absurd situation was this?

For a moment, she felt bewildered, but Meisa quickly issued orders to dispatch a subjugation force led by a few Aravion nobles.

However, the dispatched force returned in just two days, having suffered devastating losses.

“They’re monsters! We need stronger forces!”

“The Family Head must take the field...!”

“What blasphemy is that?!”

At a survivor’s outcry, the already disgraced nobles of House Aravion shouted in alarm, but Meisa calmly nodded.

“That seems to be the right course. Prepare for deployment.”

She still held resentment toward the nobles of Aravion, but she couldn’t blame all the people of the Takein Plains for it.

Turan wouldn’t have done so either.

Before long, a subjugation force was formed, centered around Meisa, the Family Head of House Aravion.

Composed only of nobles from the Aravion bloodline with flight capabilities and the quick-footed Parsha nobles mounted on Magical Beasts, the force arrived at the site of the previous unit’s annihilation in just a couple of hours.

“Is that it?”

“Ugh, how horrible...”

Where one of the nobles pointed, there were humans impaled on long wooden stakes.

They were already decayed and reeked with a foul stench.

With a wave of Meisa’s hand, all the wooden stakes snapped, and the corpses were laid down neatly.

“Prepare them.”

“Yes, Family Head!”

In truth, preparing them didn’t mean doing anything elaborate.

Given the situation, it wasn’t as if they could leisurely search the bodies and verify identities.

To check if there were any wizards among the dead, they attempted Magic Power Absorption and, after confirming, used Ignition Magic to cleanly cremate the bodies. That was sufficient.

As they were gathering and burning the corpses, the smoke and smell seemed to draw the Birdfolk from afar.

“Are those the Birdfolk?”

“They don’t look that strong.”

Unlike the spirit forms of the Aravion bloodline with wings on their backs, the Birdfolk had arms that had transformed into wings.

After silently observing the subjugation force, they let out a series of harsh screeching noises, then dove at them at terrifying speed.

“Gah!”

An Aravion noble who had no time to respond was struck down with a desperate cry, scattering blood as he fell.

As the startled group attempted to counterattack chaotically, Meisa raised her hammer high and unleashed the power of the Thunder Lord.

With a surge of violet lightning dominating the sky, dozens of Birdfolk instantly collapsed.

It was a deliberately weakened and wide-area attack, so it wasn’t fatal, but it left their bodies paralyzed and completely immobile.

“A-Attack them!”

The Aravion nobles, red-faced with shame at being humiliated before their new Family Head, and the Parsha nobles, angry at having shown weakness before their leader, unleashed their fury.

Overwhelmed by the combined wrath of both wizard houses, the grounded, barely alive Birdfolk were swiftly exterminated.

Though they had decent resistance to lightning, their hides and bones weren’t nearly tough enough to withstand bullets.

“Their defense is lacking. Like avian Magical Beasts.”

“But their speed and attack power are dangerously high. Just look at those claw strikes. Now I understand why the first subjugation force was wiped out so easily.”

“That’s certainly true, but...”

One person nodded in agreement as they looked at the arm of the Aravion noble who had been attacked earlier.

After finishing the subjugation and returning, Meisa was greeted by a mass of wizards lined up before the Wall of Light.

“Who are all these people?”

“A report, Family Head! Astorin City has-”

“Our city, Canaan, is in more urgent danger!”

“In Romig, dozens are being eaten every day-”

Everyone’s face twisted at the reports that cities across the Takein Plains were under attack.

***

Having overcome the immediate crisis, Turan decided it was time to gather more information, so he led the allied army back to Axum City and pulled a hand mirror from his pouch.

Though it hadn’t reacted at all earlier, it now vibrated with a high-pitched whine, indicating that someone was on the other side.

“Ashiz.”

[Did anything weird happen over there!?]

“You too?”

At Ashiz’s question, Turan felt a bad premonition and immediately asked in return.

The answer was just as he’d feared.

[Yeah. The color of the sky shifted strangely... and then dwarves appeared. They spoke fluently like humans and used strange tools. They demanded we become obedient slaves.]

Fortunately, they had temporarily retreated due to the attacks by the wizards assigned to protect Kalamaf.

Dwarves who spoke fluently like humans.

Turan recalled the dwarven race that once lived hidden in the canyons of the Gray Zone.

What those creatures said had never reached the level anyone would call fluent.

They were a people who had once built a great civilization but lost their intellect and fell into ruin due to Monarch’s meddling.

In other words, it meant that the ancestors of the ancient dwarves had reappeared in the Gray Zone.

“Well, that’s still better. Over here, a giant has resurrected.”

[...You mean the giant from myth? The one the Night Hunter shot and killed?]

“Yeah. We’ve taken down one so far, but there are probably several more around Axum. Have you checked on the Varaha region yet?”

[Not yet. I’ll check right now and contact you.]

A few minutes after the mirror connection was cut, Ashiz contacted him again and gave a report just as Turan had anticipated.

In Helio City and other areas near the Land of Five Lakes, goblins thought to have gone extinct long ago had begun to appear.

“So it’s really come to this.”

[Do you know something?]

"It's probably the result of the ritual that bastard we're trying to catch performed. Maybe it's even a side effect."

Why Monarch had done this was still unknown.

It could be seen as a form of retaliation against Turan and the natives who had interfered with him, but that was quite different from the behavioral patterns the man had shown until now.

“It doesn’t seem like this situation is limited to just around the Enril Desert. It might be a global catastrophe.”

Turan’s guess was accurate.

The changes were occurring truly across the entire world.

First, in the western forest region, it was not the stragglers barely clinging to remnants of their power, but the true Dark Elf lords, those who once commanded hundreds of undead spirits, who awakened.

Having been dispirited after losing their powerful leaders, they now rallied with joy at the call of the returned lords.

In the swamps of Lavitas, several elf lords who commanded elemental spirits opened their eyes.

Unfortunately, their descendants had long since gone extinct, but even on their own, these beings were formidable and threatening.

Similarly, in the snowy fields of Nagin and the Frostwind Forest of Ruvan, Yetis with thick white fur covering their entire bodies slid across the snow, and in the Grassy Plains, herds of centaurs with the lower bodies of horses began to gallop.

The very first action taken by these ancient different races upon appearing was to reach out toward the prey that had increased to absurd numbers compared to their original era.

The Great Noble Houses and other wizard families could not easily respond to the sudden disaster.

Of all times, it was now, the closing phase of a world war in which numerous Great Noble Houses had clashed in alliance.

With so many wizards either dead or taken as prisoners by enemy forces, there was no way to properly respond to the invasions by the different races.

Of course, even if the war hadn’t happened, wizards, who had long since declined compared to the ancient gods, would not have been able to completely stop these invasions. But at least, the damage would not have been so devastating.

Indeed, the world was returning to the distant ancient times, before the descent of the Preah God Tribe.

Back to the era when countless different races ran wild and treated humans as prey, feasting upon them without restraint.

*****

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