The Shepherd Alone on the Hill is a Genius Wizard-Chapter 125: A God’s Vessel Revealed (1)

"Nngh."

The librarian who stepped out of the jewel box stretched like someone who had been confined in a narrow space for a long time, turning his body left and right.

Do spirits experience muscle pain too?

Turan gave him time to take a breather before speaking.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Maybe... hmm, somehow my body feels completely powerless. Are we perhaps far from the library?"

While saying this and looking down at his hands and body, the librarian suddenly stared intently at Turan and asked.

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"More importantly, I don’t understand why I can see you right away after coming out of there. Don’t tell me you ordered my kidnapping?"

"Of course not. If anything, I’m the one who rescued you."

After saying that, Turan looked at Meisa and Solif.

Their blank expressions alone were enough to tell him their answer.

"Neither of you can see him, can you?"

"Nope."

"It just looks like you’re talking to yourself."

Since he could see the librarian even when he had only manifested two bloodlines, the condition must be the number of latent bloodlines.

Was his guess wrong that his two companions also had unrevealed bloodlines?

While organizing his thoughts, Turan turned his attention back to the librarian.

"Do you remember how you were captured?"

"I was going about my usual routine when some dopey-looking fellow came by, and I was about to play a trick on him when he suddenly spoke to me. He seemed to know who I was."

"Could you tell me exactly how the conversation went?"

"Well, roughly..."

The librarian, true to his perfect memory, recited the conversation from that time exactly as it happened.

[Oh... there really was a spirit left? My, my, if you were going to erase the traces, you should have removed them completely instead of this half-hearted job.]

[Spirit? Are you talking about me?]

[Are you asking because you don’t know? Hey, AI. Have you heard or said anything strange lately? About the life scholar, or perhaps about reincarnation techniques?]

[...I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you’re not going to read, get out. No disturbances are allowed in the library.]

The source of this c𝓸ntent is frёeweɓηovel.coɱ.

[Tsk, you really won’t talk, huh? Well, we’ll discuss the details when we get back. There’s a friend there who can make you open up.]

"When he said that, I asked what nonsense he was spouting, but then he took out that jewel box and opened it. My consciousness was suddenly pulled inside, and when I came to, it was now."

"...Did the dopey-looking guy look like this?"

When Turan drew Renode’s face on the ground using earth manipulation magic, the librarian nodded.

"That’s him."

Hearing this, Turan felt a chill run down his spine.

Those words meant that Renode had directly recognized the librarian and even spoke to him.

To think that he, who had been just an ordinary noble from a great house with only two bloodlines when checked earlier, could do such a thing.

Moreover, the content of their conversation was also deeply meaningful.

Though he didn’t understand what AI meant, he could guess about the life scholar.

Hadn’t the god who manipulated the dwarves in the library possessed the power to handle life?

The life scholar bloodline must surely originate from him.

As for reincarnation techniques, just as the name suggests, it must be a technique for possessing other people’s bodies.

In other words, Renode or the forces that sent him had noticed that Turan had some suspicious conversation with the librarian in the library and came looking.

Perhaps the god who was the progenitor of that life scholar bloodline was directly inhabiting Renode.

The only fortunate thing was that they seemed to have no idea about the specific content or who the conversation partner was.

The librarian had refused to talk about Turan, and then was sealed until now when he was freed.

"Thank you. For keeping my secret."

Turan hadn’t really expected the librarian to keep his identity a secret.

While he personally viewed him as a teacher of sorts since he had taught him various things, from the librarian’s perspective, Turan was just one of many people he happened to converse with.

Hearing the words of gratitude, the librarian smirked and replied.

"Don’t thank me, I didn’t do it for your sake. That bastard just had absolutely no manners."

"Ah..."

It seems he had only done it because he was annoyed by the questioning attitude that looked down on him.

Indeed, maintaining politeness was always more useful than not maintaining it at all.

While they were conversing, someone tapped Turan’s shoulder from behind.

Meisa looked at him with a somewhat disgruntled expression and said.

"Hey, could you maybe tell us what you’re talking about?"

"Ah."

To Solif and Meisa, it must have looked like Turan was just talking to himself while drawing Renode’s face on the ground.

When he carefully explained everything he had just heard, their expressions turned serious as well.

"Hmm..."

"That’s definitely suspicious, really. Isn’t it certain that there’s something inside that Renode guy?"

"That’s what it seems like."

Most likely, as with Badal in the past, it was probably a case where a new bloodline takes root the moment power is exercised.

Though it’s unclear whether Renode’s personality is still maintained now or not.

While the two were exchanging opinions about this, Turan quietly asked the librarian.

"So what will you do now, sir?"

"Hm?"

"If you return to the library like this, Renode or the forces behind him will come to kidnap you again. And it seems like it would be difficult for you to deal with that."

Hearing this, the librarian looked at him with an expression that seemed to say ’you’ve got to be kidding me’ and said.

"Don’t beat around the bush, boy. You’re saying I should stick with you if I want to live, right?"

"That was indeed what I was trying to say."

"Tsk, can’t be helped. At this rate, I’m becoming the spirit of a jewel box rather than the library spirit... but I suppose this medium is sufficient to remain for now."

Fortunately, the librarian agreed to accompany them more readily than expected.

It would have been troublesome if he had insisted on his duties and demanded to be taken back to the library.

Having succeeded in rescuing the librarian and persuading him to join, there was now only one remaining issue.

Whether to quietly send them back to House Nagin’s base and retreat, or to attack and capture Renode to extract information.

"Let’s attack."

"Shouldn’t we pull back here?"

Meisa and Solif, who had proposed opposing opinions, stared at each other.

After a moment of silence, by tacit agreement, Meisa spoke first.

"Unless they’re idiots, they’ll know the jewel box was stolen, and if we retreat now, it’ll be revealed that the thieves were nobles from Zahar and that the purpose was to rescue the librarian. Then they’ll obviously send people back to Orem City where the library was, and conclude that it was us. But if we kill them all, we can silence them."

After saying that, Meisa took a brief breath and added in a somewhat chilling tone.

"Besides... House Nagin is our enemy anyway, right? It’s beneficial if we can reduce their forces even a little, and if we capture Renode and interrogate him, we can learn a huge amount about the enemy’s identity."

Turan could sense the malice mixed in Meisa’s words.

It was clearly loaded with hatred towards Renode, or more precisely, towards the Nagin house woman who had mocked her in the past.

But separate from that, the argument itself was quite plausible and aligned with Turan’s way of thinking, so he thought the opinion wasn’t bad.

At that moment, Solif raised his regenerated hand lightly and voiced his opinion.

"Well, first... won’t they figure out we’re the culprits even if we wipe them out? Since their original purpose was to retrieve the spirit, I mean the librarian, if they’re all killed, they’ll investigate us first. If we want to prevent that, we’d have to kill everyone in Orem City who saw us, but we won’t do that, right?"