The Wizard's Offer

Afterward, despite continued interrogation and torture, Obil only rambled incoherently without revealing any meaningful information.

When asked which god had told him, he just repeated answers like "It was a god," and when asked who else was like him, he just said "I've seen several."

He was either not in his right mind, or clearly watching for a chance to escape while pretending to be so.

Turan suspected it was more likely the second option.

If he truly wasn't in his right mind, he would have instinctively tried to use magical power to break free of the vines and died by Turan's hand.

Since there was no reason to keep him alive either way, and maintaining the restraints was consuming a lot of magical power, Turan briefly exchanged gestures with Bisen before slitting Obil's throat with his dagger.

Watching this, Gil, the youngest of Bisen's group, frowned.

"Ugh..."

"What's wrong?"

"No, just..."

As he mumbled that killing someone who couldn't resist while tied up felt like butchery and made him uncomfortable, Bisen sighed and scolded him.

"Don't say such foolish things. We could have all died here if something had gone wrong, and you feel sympathy? Besides, thinking about how many people he killed, even torturing him alive wouldn't be enough!"

"Though dealing with a noble of this skill level would be difficult anyway."

The healer Kebek added.

As he said, there weren't many ways to subdue a wizard, especially a noble, who was rampaging with certainty of death.

Even with eyes and hands restrained, they could still start fires anywhere and shoot them in all directions.

To prevent this, you'd need either restraint with a magical device that suppresses magical power—an extremely rare item—or direct suppression by a noble several levels stronger.

Or continuously knocking them unconscious with lightning spells or physical strikes would be another method.

That was also why they had subdued Obil with this troublesome method instead of immediately crippling him.

They figured if they damaged his body right away, he would rampage thinking he couldn't survive anyway instead of answering questions.

While Bisen's group chatted, Turan wiped the blood from his dagger and opened a notebook he had picked up beside the bedding earlier.

Inside were detailed records of maps of the surrounding area, attack plans, and the number of people killed.

He seemed to have wanted to keep track of how many he had killed and what his target number was, and this could serve as evidence that Obil was the Burner.

If this wasn't enough, they could also call the girl rescued from the village as a witness.

Additionally, there were several unknown formulas written in the back of the notebook.

Given the names of plants and minerals written down, they seemed to be recipes for the liquids placed in the corner of the open space.

When asked about these, Obil had given the same answer that "the gods told me."

Thinking it might provide a clue to the identity of those "gods," Turan committed the notebook's contents to memory.

As he put away the finished notebook, Bisen approached him.

"So, now..."

"Let's absorb."

Turan, Bisen, Gil, and Asha, four people gathered around the dead Burner's corpse.

While the healer Kebek stepped back with a regretful sigh, the four people stretched out their hands and pale green light began flowing from Obil's body.

Soon after, they felt the power flowing through their bodies transforming their flesh.

A stronger body, sharper senses, more powerful magical power...

After the absorption was complete, they gathered evidence like the Burner's severed head and robe before leaving the cave.

Since the Burner had mainly operated in the outskirts of a city called Marobe, Turan and Bisen's group went to Marobe City Hall the next morning to claim the bounty.

The officials were thrown into panic seeing the nobles rushing in, and before long, the lord himself came out to greet them.

"Congratulations, Lady Bisen. A new star has risen in House Kamain."

"You flatter me."

Amusingly, upon arrival, they found that evidence to prove Obil's identity wasn't really necessary.

This was because Marobe's lord didn't want to get into disputes with a wizard from a great house located not far away.

He might have calculated that if the captured Burner turned out to be fake and incidents occurred again, he could rather use that to create a debt.

After being treated as guests in Marobe City for a day, the total bounty they received was 1,500 gold coins.

Since they had agreed to divide the bounty fairly in exchange for magical power, Turan's share should have originally been 300 coins, but after some final adjustments, he received half of the total amount, 750 coins.

While Turan had done almost all the fighting, this was considering Asha's contribution to tracking and Bisen's name value in receiving the bounty.

'This is too much...'

The problem was the volume and mass of these 750 gold coins.

He had long since disposed of the old sheepskin bag he used when first coming down from the hill, and what he used now was made from the hide of a cow masu bought from a shop in Zabilin City.

But even the best bag can't hold more than its size allows.

At this rate, he would have to either dispose of the gold coins somewhere or find someone to help carry the luggage.

After all, it shouldn't cost this much to travel to the Enril Desert.

"So now we're thinking of hunting some masu while traveling around more, what about you, Sir Turan?"

"I plan to go straight to Abacha."

"Ah..."

At Turan's refusal, Bisen's group showed a somewhat contradictory attitude of both disappointment and relief.

While hunting would be much safer and easier with him joining, someone among the four would have to give up their magical power.

Before parting, Bisen approached and spoke in a small voice.

"As I mentioned yesterday, about what that guy left behind..."

"Yes, I won't spread it around elsewhere."

On the way to the city, Turan and Bisen's group had agreed to keep the Burner's claims secret.

Whether those words were true or false, they considered it something that would throw society into too much chaos.

Turan didn't explain everything he suspected to her.

Not only were they not close enough for that, but he also found it difficult to explain that strange gaze.

It was hard to express it as anything other than 'unusually clear eyes,' but how many people in the world had clear eyes?

Anyway, it would be difficult to investigate this right away.

He was already stretched thin just going to learn about his own birth.

After taking one last look at the group of runaway nobles moving west, Turan turned his steps eastward toward his destination.

==

As he walked east carrying his heavy bag, at some point he felt the headwind blowing in his face beginning to hold moisture.

And there was also that fishy, salty smell he had never encountered before.

'It'll be tricky handling fire magic here.'

As expected, when he created a flame in his palm, he could confirm that everything from its firepower to magical power consumption had worsened.

Instead, magic to create and freeze water from thin air became surprisingly easy.

Additionally, having heard that there were many clouds toward the North Sea, he increased the practice ratio of lightning spells that strike down from the sky, though this unintentionally caused several groups coming from the opposite direction to scatter in panic.

Turan's steps stopped when a world of blue water finally spread out before him.

The massive sea called this world's ceiling, the North Sea, had revealed itself.

"Oh..."

Though he had seen illustrations in books, seeing the sea directly made him realize those illustrations hadn't captured even half of the real thing.

What a spectacular sight of the sun's radiance high in the sky distorting over the seawater.

After standing in a daze watching the sea for a while, Turan soon came to his senses and walked along the coast.

Before long, he saw a huge peninsula jutting out to the east, and a harbor lined with dozens of sailing ships.

He had arrived at House Kamain's stronghold and the North Sea's largest port city, Abacha.

"Get down quickly!"

"Yes, coming right now!"

"You stupid bastard! I said get down quickly, not carelessly! If you drop and break that, I'll kill you!"

Abacha's harbor was truly a place that perfectly matched the expression "full of heat."

Despite the weather approaching early winter, sailors worked shirtless and dripping with sweat as they carried cargo, and for whatever urgent reasons, curses and shouts thundered from all directions.

Looking around a bit more, he saw an enormously huge fish hanging from one side of a sailing ship.

It had several poles stuck in its body as if hunted with harpoons, and it seemed to be a masu that had mutated from a fish.

Books said that sea masu were much larger than those that had mutated from land animals, and that was certainly true.

Leaving the harbor where sailors were working hard, he saw a relatively quiet fruit stand.

Perhaps because it was a place that traded with other regions, there were various fruits he had never seen before.

"Welcome, what can I get you?"

"Give me a handful of those."

Choosing small brown fruits while recalling memories from Murei City, the fruit vendor asked for a whole silver coin while scooping up the unknown items.

"That's too expensive."

"These are dates. They only grow in the far Enril Desert. Of course they're expensive when they come by ship."

Seemingly recognizing him as an outsider at a glance, the vendor packed the goods with a sly tone.

Since he wasn't in a position to haggle over one or two silver coins anyway, Turan paid one silver coin he had received for hunting masu in Murei—plus two copper coins since it was smaller than the local currency—bought the dates, then asked.

"Speaking of Enril, I'd like to go there, where should I look to get on a ship?"

"A ship to Enril? Only merchant ships usually go that way... you'll have to ask the merchant ship captains directly. But it'll be difficult unless you have good reasons."

Either because he was a good person, or because he was happy about selling the dates, the fruit vendor explained quite thoroughly.

He said that merchant ships usually pack goods to their limit so there's no room for passengers, and taking someone means that much less space for trade goods, so they'll ask for expensive fares.

"Where can I meet the merchant ship captains?"

"Well? I'm not sure about that, they'll probably all be busy during the day, so try looking through the sailors at places like taverns in the evening."

"Thank you for the advice."

Leaving the street vendor, Turan toured various parts of Abacha City for sightseeing.

After finding a decent theater and watching a play, the day had grown dark.

'Shall I go?'

When the sun set and other shops closed, the taverns around the harbor announced their presence with bright lanterns and boisterous noise as they received sailors as customers.

Turan entered one tavern that looked relatively proper and clean among them.

Though not as much as the noble mansions he had visited before, the fairly luxurious facilities and well-dressed employees and customers clearly indicated it was a tavern catering to high-class sailors.

"Welcome, customer."

Turan sat in an empty seat, ordered a glass of wine and some simple snacks, then quietly sat listening to the voices around him.

The employee who had been looking at him with a wondering expression about whether he was a suitable customer accepted him as one after he paid, bowing deeply.

After savoring a set of what must be fairly high-class cheese and wine by local standards for about thirty minutes, his desired topic came up.

"You're sailing tomorrow?"

"That's right. Have to go to that damn desert again... merfolk appearing along the route, and those cursed pirates are so aggressive..."

"Is it that bad?"

"Even last time we came, the ship got a hole in it, I tell you? Our shipowner is crazy. Even so, we keep saying we need at least one knight..."

Two men who appeared to be in their thirties were having a drunken conversation, with one lamenting that their shipowner was such a miser that he wouldn't hire even one knight for the ship, and several crew members had died on the way because of it.

After quietly listening to this, Turan got up from his seat and walked to their table.

"Excuse me for a moment."

"Hm?"

"We're not buying anything. Damn, now even some peddler is—"

Turan lightly reached out to stop the man who was trying to call an employee.

"I'm not a peddler. A passenger, perhaps."

"Passenger?"

"I'm looking for a ship heading to the Enril Desert, and I heard the gentleman next to you say you're heading there."

At Turan's words, the two men's eyes widened.

"We are sailing there tomorrow, but we don't take regular passengers. Have to unload that much cargo to take one person. We're already short on crew."

It matched amazingly well with what he had heard from the fruit vendor.

Turan nodded and placed his hand on their wine glasses.

"It sounded like you needed a wizard on the ship."

The two sailors gaped as they watched the dark red liquid freeze solid.