Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 6 In the end, Turan managed to extract the information he needed for the price of a single beer.
If he wanted to find magical beasts with bounties on their heads, he simply had to go to City Hall and inquire with the civil servant in charge.
When he asked what "City Hall" and a "civil servant" were, the waitress burst into a fit of giggles.
"You really don't know? Mister, you must be from the back of beyond!"
After her laughter subsided, she explained that City Hall was a building in the center of town where public affairs were handled, and civil servants were people employed by the city's lord.
Since the sun had already set, Turan decided it was best to head there the following morning.
"But why are you looking for magical beasts? Don't tell me you're a monster hunter too, mister?"
"What is a monster hunter?"
"You know, people who believe they can become mages if they hunt magical beasts."
She explained that a superstition had spread among commoners claiming one could obtain magical powers by slaying these creatures. Consequently, there were those who risked their lives to hunt them down.
Most people treated them like lunatics, but a surprising number of people sought this path as a way to elevate their social status.
As Turan listened to her explanation, a heavy hand suddenly dropped onto his shoulder.
"Hey, Lena. The idea that you can become a mage by catching magical beasts isn't a superstition; it's a fact. I've seen it with my own eyes."
The speaker was a middle-aged man who looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. His hair and beard were overgrown and unkempt, giving him a disheveled appearance, but his eyes were strangely clear.
"Uncle Midan! You're still alive?"
"Did you think I'd kicked the bucket? I told you, I'm not dying until I become a mage."
"Sorry about that, Miss Lena. Our captain is always a handful."
Three more men approached from behind the man called Midan. Armed with long spears, bows, and a hammer fit for demolishing buildings, they were all large and powerfully built.
When Turan subtly shrugged the hand off his shoulder, Midan flinched and stepped back.
"Whoops, my apologies."
"It's fine," Turan replied. "More importantly, could I hear more about what you just said?"
"Hmm? About what?"
"About becoming a mage by catching magical beasts."
"Oh? So a young fellow like you is interested in that too?"
Midan grinned, seemingly pleased by Turan's interest, and began to explain.
Mages grew stronger by killing magical beasts and absorbing their power. By that same logic, if a normal person killed a magical beast, they could obtain its power and become a mage. He claimed to have already seen several mages who had gained their power this way.
"That's why the four of us are hunting magical beasts—to become mages."
"We've already caught three!"
"We don't have much further to go."
Midan's subordinates—who called themselves sworn brothers—each chimed in. Turan was genuinely surprised to hear they had caught three magical beasts. The only magical beast he had ever seen possessed enough power to easily tear apart dozens of ordinary humans.
"Three of them? Does that mean one of you is already a mage?"
As soon as Turan finished his sentence, the people on the first floor of the inn erupted in laughter.
"As if! The only mages in this city are the Lord and the three knights under his command."
"If even one of us becomes a mage, it'll be much easier to help the other brothers."
"To be honest, we almost died several times while catching those things."
In a city that looked like it could house at least a thousand people, there were only four mages? Turan began to understand why Keorn was always lamenting the world's lack of mages.
Just then, Midan glanced at Turan's bag. "By the way, you said you were hunting magical beasts, right? Your gear looks a bit lacking for that. Don't you have a weapon?"
"A weapon?"
Turan pulled the sheepskin sling from his pocket, half-expecting them to mock it. Compared to their heavy metal armaments, it looked utterly pathetic.
However, contrary to his expectations, the monster hunters reacted quite positively.
"Oh, you use this to hurl stones?"
"Looking at how worn it is, you must have used it a lot."
"What size stones do you use?"
"About the size of a hen's egg," Turan replied.
"At that size, you could easily crack the skulls of those that mutated from rabbits or foxes."
From their conversation, it seemed they weren't targeting beasts that originated from predators, like the leopard Turan had encountered. They were hunting magical beasts that had evolved from herbivores or relatively small animals—creatures that a human might be able to overpower with their bare hands if they were normal animals.
Of course, even those could kill an ordinary person in an instant depending on their innate abilities.
"Say, would you like to join us on a hunt? We were actually looking for one more marksman."
"No, thank you."
Turan rejected the offer without hesitation. He had no intention of revealing he was a mage, and his targets weren't the mediocre magical beasts they were after.
Fortunately, Midan didn't persist, merely expressing his disappointment as he backed off.
"Tsk, that's a shame. Let us know if you change your mind."
Turan chatted a bit longer before receiving his room key from the waitress and heading up to the second floor. As he lay on the bed trying to sleep, the voices of the monster hunters drifted up through the floorboards.
[Brother Midan, why did you try to recruit that greenhorn earlier? Honestly, I don't think he'd be much help.]
[Exactly. He looks so scrawny, I bet he'd start bawling if you gave him one good smack.]
Midan's subordinates were mocking Turan with derisive tones. And to think they had acted so friendly downstairs.
Having experienced plenty of two-faced behavior from the people in his village, Turan wasn't particularly hurt. He simply sighed, thinking so this is just how people are, and let it go.
A moment later, he heard Midan's voice responding.
[Quiet, now. Seeing him just reminded me of my younger days. Wandering around outside alone with nothing but a toy like that... he won't last long.]
[Man, Big Brother, you're way too nice for your own good.]
[You can say that again.]
Turan listened to the conversation for a moment before finally closing his eyes. Indeed, the world was filled with both good and bad people.
*
The next morning, Turan ate a meal of dark bread and soup provided by the inn before heading to City Hall.
Located in the center of the city, City Hall was a grand four-story building, bustling with citizens attending to various matters. After pushing through a crowd where an old man and a middle-aged woman were arguing over a building lease, he finally found the civil servant in charge of bounties.
"What do you want?"
The middle-aged official looked at Turan as if he were a pathetic loafer when he mentioned he was looking for magical beasts with bounties.
If Turan revealed he was a mage, the man would likely prostrate himself on the spot, but he chose not to. If he pretended to be a knight, the local lord might try to conscript him for work. If he revealed he was a noble-rank mage, he would waste endless time being treated as an honored guest. He had heard that mutual hospitality among nobles was vital etiquette, and refusing it was considered a grave insult.
In conclusion, it was best to simply hunt the magical beasts in the vicinity and leave quickly.
"You can't take these out, so look them over and give them back."
A moment later, the official handed him a stack of papers detailing the appearance, size, characteristics, sighting locations, and bounties of various magical beasts.
For weak and harmless magical beasts, bounties were only paid if they were captured alive. Only those that were hostile and aggressive toward humans could be brought in as corpses. The reason was that weak magical beasts were less mutated, making it difficult to distinguish their corpses from ordinary animals. Many people tried to claim bounties by killing regular animals.
"One thing to keep in mind: even if you kill a magical beast by mistake, don't just leave it. Bring it back to the city. If the knights don't disperse the mana, they can turn into dangerous spirits. Abandoning a magical beast corpse is punishable by death under city law, so keep that in mind."
"I understand."
Turan had already experienced the horrors of leaving a magical beast's corpse behind, so he took the official's warning to heart.
"But some of these look a bit too dangerous for ordinary people to handle. Don't the knights come to hunt these?"
The official looked at him as if he were an oddity.
"Do those gentlemen look like they have that much free time? A knight's role is to maintain city order and prevent enemy invasions. Hunting magical beasts is a job for thugs like you."
At those words, Turan looked down at the paper in his hand.
Blade Crow.
A crow with feathers as hard and sharp as blades. It can deflect arrows by flapping its wings and attacks people by dropping feathers from high altitudes. Known to snatch and eat dogs or small children from the outskirts of the city, scattering the remains...
If mages were supposed to be the guardians of humanity, it should have been their duty to hunt such creatures immediately. It seemed, however, that not many found pride in actually protecting people.
Feeling somewhat bitter, Turan left City Hall and headed toward the edge of the city. As the buildings thinned out and he finally left the city limits, the familiar wilderness welcomed him.
Shall I begin?
After confirming no one was around, Turan recalled the magical beast he had seen at City Hall. The Blade Crow, the man-eater that preyed on children...
"Crow Search."
The moment he chanted the spell, hundreds of sounds flooded his ears. The rustling of feathers, the sound of wings, the sound of pecking.
"Ugh."
Because the sounds coming from all directions were so diverse, Turan frowned and canceled the magic. There were far too many crows around the city, causing the search spell to lose its effectiveness.
This method won't work.
How should he search for a specific magical beast? A crow with mana? He tried it once, but the spell didn't even activate. It seemed that the possession of mana couldn't be used as a condition for the search spell.
Next, he tried the condition of "a crow that eats humans," but this time, too many targets were caught. It was likely because crows that scavenged on corpses were included.
"This is difficult..."
On Hisaril Hill, where animals were scarce, he rarely encountered such problems. To find a lost sheep, he just searched for sheep and found the one that was alone. To find wolves, he only had to deal with one or two packs at most.
After pondering for a long time, Turan had a sudden realization and used his magic again.
A crow larger than a child.
Even if a magical beast was stronger than a normal animal, it would need a certain physical size to carry off a child. As expected, he heard the sound of a single creature rustling its feathers, along with the faint, metallic scent of human blood.
"Found you."
Due to the obstacles in his way, he couldn't see anything even when he looked in the direction of the sound, but once he had a lock on it, he wouldn't lose it. It was a distance that would take an ordinary person at least ten minutes to run. But for a noble-rank mage at a full sprint, three to four minutes was plenty.
As the forest where the target resided came into view, Turan cast another spell. Not the absolute concealment unique to the Zahar bloodline, but a standard invisibility spell that simply made him unseen. The absolute concealment spell consumed too much mana to use casually, and from experience, he knew that a bird's hearing wasn't particularly sharp.
Arriving at the massive tree where the Blade Crow nested—a tree so thick it would take three men to encircle it—Turan immediately used flight magic to ascend.
It's huge...
The Blade Crow stood over a meter tall even while perched. Its folded wings were as sharp as its name suggested, and its hooked beak still bore traces of fresh blood. The nest it sat upon was littered with the bones of various animals, and occasionally, what looked like human remains.
As expected, the creature was busy preening its feathers, completely unaware of Turan's presence.
Now, how should I take this thing down?
The simplest way would be to blow its head off with a stone, but he intended to test a wider variety of magic. If he only relied on his sling because it was easy, he would be helpless against an enemy immune to physical projectiles. Keorn had always taught him to prepare as many different responses as possible.
Glancing up at the sky, he saw that it was quite cloudy—perfect for a certain spell. It was a technique he had only learned in theory but never used because the conditions on Hisaril Hill were never right.
Turan hovered a short distance from the nest and pointed his finger toward the sky, searching his memories. Years ago, on a rare day when a storm hit the arid Hisaril Hill, he remembered the massive pillar of light that connected heaven and earth with a roar that seemed ready to shatter the world.
Come.
With a powerful wish, mana was sucked out of his body, and a moment later, a low rumble of thunder echoed through the clouds. The Blade Crow looked up at the sky as if sensing something was wrong, but the chance to escape had already passed.
Faster than sound, a bolt of lightning struck the bird's nest.
"Kaaaaaaak—!!!"
The crow shrieked in agony as the lightning fell directly onto its head. It attempted to flee, but its proud blade-feathers had all been scorched away, and the metallic parts had melted or fallen off, leaving it with no way to fly.
The crow fell helplessly to the ground, twitching a few times before falling still. After carefully watching for a minute to ensure it wouldn't move again, Turan descended to the ground and absorbed the creature's mana.
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