Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 59 Heading east, Turan's first order of business was to synthesize the Soul of Fire using his newly acquired sulfur and the bulk of his remaining saltpeter.
He kept a small reserve of the raw materials back, primarily to use as samples when the time came to procure more.
The resulting Soul of Fire was a mass slightly larger than three clenched fists—only marginally more than the volume of saltpeter he'd started with. This was because saltpeter made up the largest portion of the synthesis ratio. It was a pity that while charcoal powder and sulfur were easy to come by, the required amounts for those were relatively small.
As he continued his journey eastward, Turan experimented with the Soul of Fire in various ways.
He discovered that the most practical applications were scattering the powder with the power of wind before triggering a wide-area explosion, or detonating it close to his body to gain a sudden burst of propulsion.
'Gaining propulsion hurts a bit, though...'
In essence, he was being struck by an invisible force that jerked his body against its will, so pain was inevitable. Detonating it under the soles of his feet was slightly more manageable, but during one experiment, he forgot that his boots were coated in flammable mucus and accidentally blew them to pieces.
After spending a few days traveling and experimenting, Turan once again gripped Bije's legs and took to the skies.
Part of the reason was that Bije, having shaken off her lingering fatigue thanks to the hot springs, was itching to fly. More than that, however, traveling through the wetlands on foot had proven to be more of an ordeal than expected.
The first issue was the incessant rain.
Once the rain stopped, he could simply blow the water off his body with magic, but while it was falling, he had to endure it. He couldn't cast psychokinesis on every single raindrop to block them, so he had to maintain a constant barrier. Moving while doing so meant projecting the barrier forward with every step. To make matters worse, losing his waterproof boots during his experiment meant his feet were constantly sloshing in water, which was incredibly uncomfortable.
Secondly, the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects at night were an unbearable nuisance.
While other regions had bugs, the wetlands were on another level. Whether he camped out or stayed in a village, the moment he lay down and closed his eyes, insects would crawl over him until his whole body itched. Their stingers and mandibles couldn't actually pierce his skin, but the sensation of them swarming over him was profoundly unpleasant.
If Turan, a former shepherd accustomed to traveling and sleeping rough, felt this way, someone like Asiz would likely have woken up in a panic after a single night and gone searching for a Barrier Master.
He might have endured the discomfort if there had been any significant gains, but visiting several nearby villages and towns yielded no leads on saltpeter. As for information on the White Elves, if there were any clues in this land, Lida would have secured them long ago, so there was no point in looking.
And so, to escape these inconveniences, he spent a day soaring high and shooting toward the east.
In an instant, he covered several times the distance he had walked over the previous few days, and soon, a deep blue horizon stretched out before him.
It was the South Sea.
*
The South Sea smelled different from the North Sea Turan had visited in the past.
While the North Sea had a chilly, predominantly briny scent, the South Sea felt like a mixture of various living creatures' scents carried on a warm breeze.
After taking a moment to enjoy the sight of the ocean for the first time in a while, Turan headed straight south, passing several fishing villages before arriving at a port city.
It was a modest place, perhaps with a population of a few thousand. It wasn't a major trade hub like Abacha or Komad; instead, it seemed to be a place that barely scraped by by catching and selling local fish.
Upon entering the city, he first sought out a fishmonger, bought dozens of horse mackerel, and headed to a secluded spot on the shore.
He fed them all to Bije.
He was following the advice of that lady from the Dirmin family—whose name he could barely remember—and it worked better than expected. Bije enjoyed the horse mackerel far more than any of the land animals she had eaten during their journey.
"You said you liked this. Is the southern horse mackerel good too?"
[Yes! Delicious!]
After treating the hardworking Bije to a special meal, he visited the market again to look for saltpeter. As expected, it was available for sale.
However, as always, money was the issue.
"...Five gold coins for this?"
"I told you, it's an elixir of eternal youth! Your life is on the line, is that too expensive? Do you want to watch your father and mother grow old and die!?"
"They've both already passed away."
"Uh, no... I mean. It's just a figure of speech."
Come to think of it, the merchant in Banipel had said the exact same thing. It seemed to be a common sales tactic among saltpeter merchants. Of course, if this truly were an elixir of eternal youth, Lida and the other Lavitas nobles wouldn't be wandering around searching for White Elves.
He could have spent all his money to buy up the saltpeter here, but that would be a literal waste of funds. More importantly, even if he bought it all, it wouldn't balance out with his supply of sulfur. After all, the amount of saltpeter required to make the Soul of Fire was more than seven times the amount of sulfur.
Therefore, Turan purchased only a small amount of saltpeter, just as he had with the sulfur, and asked where it came from.
This time, however, he didn't get a straight answer.
"Now, why would you be asking that?"
"It's a secret, a secret!"
"Listen, outsider. It won't be fun for you if you keep poking around like that."
Every merchant he asked gave a similar response, and eventually, they even began to threaten him. It seemed there was some sort of power keeping the source of the saltpeter a secret.
'The fact that it's a secret means it's not easily obtainable.'
If it were something he could just walk a few days to find, like the sulfur, no amount of secrecy would work. It wouldn't be rare, either. Combining this with the information that it came from the South Sea, he suspected there might be an island somewhere out there where saltpeter was harvested.
While he was deep in deduction, he felt someone approaching stealthily from behind.
The moment the person's hand moved toward his pocket, Turan prepared to crush their wrist, but surprisingly, the hand went for his shoulder instead.
"Hey there, young man."
Turan turned around to see a middle-aged man with his hand on his shoulder. He wore shabby clothes and was missing several teeth—the quintessential look of a vagrant.
He gave Turan a sly grin and got straight to the point.
"Looking for the place where saltpeter comes from?"
"Yes."
"Seeing as you've already bought some but are looking for more, I take it you're planning to go into business?"
The fact that he knew Turan had already bought some meant he had been watching him. It wasn't particularly surprising that Turan hadn't noticed. He didn't pay attention to the individual presence of every single person among the hundreds drifting through the market.
Turan thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Something like that."
"Well then, I can guide you to where the saltpeter is found."
"And what do I have to give you?"
Only a fool would believe a stranger would guide them to a saltpeter source for free. The man had clearly anticipated the question, as his answer came immediately.
"Nothing major. Just money will do. The saltpeter is on an island, you see. You have to pay a fare to board a ship, don't you?"
This fit perfectly with the conclusion Turan had just reached.
Turan glanced around and then asked the man, "How much?"
"Fifteen gold coins. Not expensive, right? You can make several times that by mining the saltpeter and selling it elsewhere."
"Fine. But I'd like to pay once I've confirmed the location of the saltpeter source."
"Aha, of course. Why would you trust me and give me that much money now? Tomorrow, about an hour after sunset... see that mountain over there?"
"Yes."
The man pointed to a mountain that rose up as if to embrace one side of the city. It wasn't very high, about the height of a large hill.
"If you go past that mountain, there's a small village. A boat will come there. You can pay when you get on."
"Thank you for letting me know."
The man chuckled at Turan's thanks.
"No, thank you."
After the man left, Turan picked a random inn nearby and rented a room.
As soon as they were inside, Bije began to fidget and wave her claws. Turan immediately pulled the sand-filled slate from his high-capacity pouch.
[That man is a liar!]
Since the slate had limited space, the sentences were always short and concise. Having had many such conversations, Turan had no trouble interpreting it.
"The man who said he'd show me where the saltpeter is?"
[Yes!]
"Why do you think that?"
Bije looked thoughtful for a moment before writing again.
[Saltpeter is expensive. If he knew, he'd mine it himself!]
"Exactly. Wow, you really are smart. Even humans often get fooled because they don't think of that."
Turan laughed and stroked her head, impressed by an analysis so sharp it was hard to believe it came from a golden eagle.
[Did Turan know too?]
"More or less."
Beneath the stale stench of a man who hadn't washed in days, there was the scent of excitement—the kind a predator gives off just before hunting its prey.
In his experience, there was only one type of person who gave off that scent.
Bandits right before a robbery.
"It's probably a smuggling ship or a pirate ship. They likely plan to take my money and then use me as a galley slave."
Having heard various stories about how the sea worked from the sailors while he was on the Blue Marlin, he wasn't ignorant of such matters.
[Then why?]
"If a group of 'friends' who can give me information are gathering of their own accord, there's no reason not to go."
If he had captured the local merchants and threatened them with magic or tortured them, it wouldn't have been hard to find out where the saltpeter came from. The reason Turan hadn't done so was that the merchants were within their rights to refuse. They had no obligation to reveal the source of their livelihood.
But in the meantime, a group of people who wanted to steal his property and freedom—people he could unleash his darker side on without any guilt—had come to him?
It was a welcome development indeed.
When he had told the man he was thankful, he hadn't been lying at all.
*
The next day, Turan stayed holed up in the inn practicing magic until the appointed time drew near.
He politely thanked the gate police, who explained that it was almost curfew and he wouldn't be allowed back inside the walls if he left now. He then walked to the place the vagrant had described, where he found a small village.
A young man with a particularly nasty expression was leaning against the village fence. He asked in a surly tone, "Are you the guest here for the boat?"
"Yes."
"Go on in."
As he entered the village, he heard a snicker and the word "idiot" from behind him.
Just as he was thinking that the trap was being laid a bit too obviously, Turan frowned at a presence he felt up ahead.
'What is this?'
He felt a powerful surge of mana, similar to what he had sensed at the sulfur hot springs. This power was stronger than Lida's or even Icool's, and only slightly inferior to Meisa's. There were surely fewer than a hundred top-tier mages from the Great Families in the entire world—so why was he running into them so frequently?
It was as if he possessed some gravitational pull that attracted mages as powerful as planets.
'A high-ranking noble of Lavitas... could it be the successor? But why in a place like this?'
Turan moved forward slowly, feeling puzzled. If someone had set a trap to catch him, they wouldn't have told him to come at night. In this level of darkness, he was confident he could escape even if Meisa herself were chasing him.
Were the smaller presences nearby the knights who had come to escort the mage?
Analyzing the situation, he walked toward the ship on the shore. Before long, he heard boisterous voices.
"Whoa, is that true?"
"Would I make it up? I begged for my life, and those bastards said, 'Crawl between my legs and I'll let you live!' So I immediately rolled over and kicked him right in the—"
Around a bonfire lit in front of a sailing ship sat a group of rough-looking men who were clearly sailors.
The two knights Turan had sensed were among them, likely the ones in charge. And sitting among those sailors, chatting away with a jovial attitude, was a young man.
Judging by his appearance, he looked to be five or six years older than Turan. He had short-cropped silver hair, and while he was a bit short, his broad shoulders and well-trained physique were impressive.
He was the mysterious archmage Turan had sensed.
"Aw, quit your bullshitting, kid!"
One of the sailors slapped the back of the mage's head, but surprisingly, instead of getting angry, the mage just chuckled.
For someone with the skill of a top-tier noble or successor of a Great Family to act like that around commoners? Turan himself often disguised himself as a commoner, but seeing such a scene from a third-party perspective was absurd. It was like watching a lion casually mingling with a pack of wolves.
Just then, the silver-haired mage's gaze shifted toward Turan, then landed on Bije at his side.
"Wait...?"
The mage looked startled as he pointed at Bije. It was the kind of reaction one has when spotting an acquaintance in an unexpected place.
Why would a noble of Lavitas have ever met Bije?
In that moment of confusion, one of the sailors suddenly clapped his hands.
"Alright, all the guests are here! Shall we get going?"
"Oops, is it that time already?"
As the silver-haired mage blinked as if confused, the sailor who had slapped him earlier gave a wicked grin.
"Your stories were fun, but it's time to get on the boat. First, put down all your luggage. We'll load it for you."
"Uh... thank you, but I can carry it myself. I have a lot of precious things in here."
The sailor responded to the silver-haired mage's answer by delivering a hard kick to his shin.
"Don't be dense. Your job from now on is scrubbing the deck, you brat."
"What about the Frea Divine Clan ruins you said you'd take me to?"
"How the hell would we know about something like that?"
At the sailor's words, the silver-haired mage burst out laughing. It was a laugh that might have seemed cheerful at a glance, but Turan could sense the thick murderous intent within it.
"Dammit, I got tricked again. You sons of bitches. How many times am I going to get fooled just in this area?"
Whoosh!
Flames erupted from the silver-haired mage's entire body. They weren't the usual yellow-orange flames other mages used, but platinum flames as brilliant as the sun.
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