Chapter 110
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 110
Two days had passed since he left Bigen City.
Turan flew south with Bije, returning to the reclamation site where land development was in full swing. In the short time he had been away, the site had undergone a total transformation. New buildings had cropped up everywhere, and the population had grown considerably.
After landing in a suitable spot and letting Bije perch on the rod at his hip, Turan walked into the settlement. The settlers who spotted him immediately prostrated themselves.
"Oh, Great God..."
"He has returned!"
Watching the people worship him, Turan was reminded of the citizens of Kalamaf who, not long ago, had been praising his double. It was a sight that left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The Zahar nobles had likely hoped Turan would be unable to stomach such a provocation and launch a reckless assault. They simply hadn't imagined that their target would use an unorthodox method to see through their identities and plans, only to turn the tables on them.
After reporting his return to Yoznil, who was overseeing the settlement, Turan headed east to find Solif and Meisa. They were busy with the reclamation work, just finishing up a task and taking a break.
"You're back?" Solif asked.
"Yeah. Though it looks like you haven't made as much progress as I expected."
"Well, we need you for that. How much do you think the two of us can get done on our own?"
Despite being apart for nearly two months, Turan and Solif spoke with the casual nonchalance of friends who had only been gone for a few days. Meisa, sitting nearby, watched them with a warm smile before reaching out to brush some dust off Turan’s shoulder.
"I'm glad you're safe," she said.
"I promised I would be."
Their exchange was brief, almost dry, but faint smiles played on both their faces.
A short while later, Turan sat down and explained what had happened in the Gray Zone over the past few days. Since the last time he had communicated via the hand mirror was just before arriving in Kalamaf, they had been completely in the dark.
"Wait, so you actually threatened the Zahars?" Solif asked, eyes wide.
"I did."
"You crazy bastard!" Solif let out a string of curses before clutching his stomach, unable to hold back his laughter. "Ah, man! This is exactly why I have to stay by your side. I can't believe you did something that fun all by yourself. That's just cruel."
"I don't think 'fun' is the right word for it..." Meisa, unlike Solif, wore an expression mixed with worry and reproach. She looked at Turan as if he were a child playing too close to a dangerous river. "What if they get offended and decide to come after us with everything they've got? Don't you think you were being a bit reckless?"
Turan couldn't help but smile, subconsciously reminded of being scolded by his mother as a child.
Meisa let out a deep sigh. "I'm being serious."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh... But look, I don't say or do things I can't take responsibility for."
"Do you really intend to retaliate?"
"Yes. If I have to."
Perhaps sensing the weight behind his answer, Solif stopped laughing and wiped the tears from his eyes. Turan then explained his reasoning to his two companions.
"Even the Zahar family doesn't have an infinite supply of powerful nobles. It would have been incredibly inefficient for them to keep a capture team stationed in Kalamaf for long."
To recruit one high-ranking noble, it would be a waste to keep another high-ranking noble and two mid-ranking nobles idle for years. Therefore, if Turan had continued to stay hidden, they likely would have resorted to more provocative methods, such as squeezing Kalamaf even harder.
In that situation, Turan had presented the Zahar family with a much clearer boundary. He told them that if they behaved and governed the city well, he would come to them in ten years at the earliest, or fifty years at the latest.
By an ordinary person's standards, it was an absurd statement—practically saying he wouldn't show up for a lifetime. But to high-ranking nobles, it was a fairly realistic timeframe.
"Unless their goal is specifically to capture me, there's no need for them to maintain such excessive force there. From their perspective, dispatching a single mid-ranking noble to rule a city the size of Kalamaf isn't a bad deal. It's like planting an eye in the Gray Zone."
"And as time passes, they think they might still be able to recruit you, since they assume you're a high-ranking noble?" Solif guessed.
"Exactly. On the other hand, if they let their pride get the better of them, their potential recruit becomes an enemy and they lose the city. If the leaders of a Great House have any sense, they'll judge which is the more rational choice."
Wait and reap the benefits while keeping the promise, or let pride lead them into a fight where winning gains them nothing. Unless they were fools, the choice was obvious.
Solif and Meisa nodded as they listened. Now that they heard the details, they realized his threat wasn't just an emotional outburst, but a calculated move considering many variables.
"Anyway, let's leave that aside for now... Has anything happened here?"
"Just the usual trivial stuff," Solif replied. "A dangerous magical beast or two jumping over the fence, finding a few strange rocks... that kind of thing."
"So, really just the same as before."
After chatting for a while longer, Turan joined the two of them—who had recovered enough mana and stamina—to resume the reclamation work. Seeing the massive columns of water rising into the sky for the first time in a while, the settlers' eyes sparkled with awe once again.
*
With Turan’s strength added back into the mix, the reclamation project proceeded smoothly, as if it had caught a second wind.
The reclaimed land, which had already covered more than half of the projected area, now spanned over eighty percent. They had reached a point where they were short on labor, even after rounding up every idle drifter in the vicinity.
At some point, magical beasts stopped appearing even when they burned down the forest. It seemed that those capable of moving on their own had long since fled the woods to escape the fires spreading from the south.
While expanding the vast reclamation site, Turan did not forget to hone the new technique he had acquired during his battle with the Great Sea Serpent: using the Soul of Fire to increase the power of his sling.
His first goal was to be able to use it stably with the smaller sling he used daily, not just the large one. His second goal was to control the power so that the sling itself wouldn't be damaged.
Unlike that miraculous success in the past, if he didn't time the explosion perfectly, the projectile would often fail to fly straight. It took a considerable amount of time to master.
CRACK—BOOM!
"Ugh. I'll never get used to that sound."
At the sound of the sharp explosion, Solif, who was resting, let out a low groan and turned his head. There, he saw a projectile tear through dozens of trees as it soared deep into the unreclaimed wilderness.
"How much mana did you put into that just now?"
"Less than a hundredth?"
"That's insane," Solif muttered. "If you put your full strength into it, you'd punch straight through most high-rank magic tools."
Turan laughed sheepishly at their admiration and went to retrieve the object he had fired. It wasn't a finely carved egg-shaped stone, but a round piece of metal. The leading side was carved into an oval, while the opposite side had a deep groove designed to hold a large amount of the Soul of Fire.
"It's going to be a pain to go pick those up every time," Turan noted.
"I can't exactly throw away magic tools. Besides, I can use tracking magic, so it's not that hard. I can sense them with my mana perception, too."
As he said, these metal projectiles were magic tools that Meisa had personally enchanted. Their functions were simple: to become incredibly hard and to increase the impact force upon collision.
If Turan were to fire one of these at full power using the Soul of Fire, it would likely be a blow capable of punching holes even through the massive body of the Great Sea Serpent. Of course, since his supply was limited, he had to use them more sparingly than common stones.
"Don't worry. I'll make you more whenever you need them," the reliable Enchanter said with a smile.
Turan smiled back. Having a powerful Enchanter in the party was incredibly useful. The only downside was that because they weren't in a perfectly safe environment and had to be ready for combat, she couldn't spend long periods of time creating truly massive magic tools.
While they spent their time on reclamation, researching new tactics, and reinforcing their equipment, new information arrived from the Librarian. He had finally extracted the necessary information from the soul fragment of the Mimic God.
"I will tell you now, I do not know if this information is true," the Librarian warned. "It is simply what was left in this soul fragment."
"That's fine. I'll take it with a grain of salt."
"Hmm, saying you'll 'take it with a grain of salt' is somehow offensive in its own way... Regardless, fine. Listen well."
The knowledge the Librarian shared consisted of three main parts.
The first was how to obtain the bloodline ability of what was presumed to be a Wave Walker. Two conditions were required. First, one had to travel 10,000 kilometers while standing on something and riding natural waves. Second, one had to kill ten Leviathans and drink their blood.
"...That's surprisingly normal?" Turan remarked.
"Right?" Solif added. "Last time, he said you had to burn someone to death and cover yourself in their ashes, so I thought this time you'd have to drown someone."
Turan’s impression was similar. The only catch was figuring out what a 'Leviathan' was.
"It seems to be a type of marine magical beast, but I do not know for certain," the Librarian admitted. "This method isn't exactly detailed."
In any case, it was something difficult to attempt around the current reclamation site. They decided to try the first condition together if they ever went to the coast and to ask around about what a Leviathan might be.
Next was the secret to acquiring the bloodline presumed to belong to the Mimic.
"Take the corresponding type of equipment to each of the four promotion managers and perform the promotion missions."
Turan didn't bother asking the Librarian what 'promotion managers' or 'promotion missions' were. The Librarian's face already said he didn't know. Both terms felt similar yet different from the terminology often used by the fallen gods. Unfortunately, neither Meisa nor Solif had any useful information either.
Just as they were feeling disappointed that the first two pieces of information were useless, the third and final piece turned out to be quite practical.
"Water of Death...?"
"Yes. It appears to be a recipe. Much like that Soul of Fire you mentioned."
Turan didn't miss the way Meisa grimaced at the mention of 'Water of Death.' To her, who had lost her family to a mysterious poison, a substance that sounded like a toxin was bound to be unpleasant.
However, he couldn't simply ignore the method for creating it. Considering how useful the Soul of Fire had been, obtaining another similar substance would be a significant boost to their strength. Knowing this, Meisa realized Turan was checking her reaction and forced a smile. Turan gave her a slight nod of gratitude and then wrote down the recipe as it was dictated.
The ingredients were saltwater, graphite, lightning, and the sun. The method was to fashion the graphite into two rods, place them in the saltwater, strike them with lightning, and then 'combine' them while exposing them to sunlight.
"Graphite is a type of rock," the Librarian explained. "It is black, brittle, and leaves marks easily, making it useful for marking things."
"Ah, I know what that is. In my village, we called it marking stone," Solif said, snapping his fingers.
"Where can we get it?"
"It's a rock, so it just comes out of the ground. It's not useful for anything other than marking, so people don't usually build mines to dig it up."
In short, it was in a similar position to sulfur and saltpeter, the ingredients for the Soul of Fire. Why were these combination recipes always made of such obscure materials?
At least the other ingredients—saltwater, lightning, and the sun—were easy to obtain, making the difficulty much lower than that of the Soul of Fire.
While Turan was clicking his tongue in disappointment over the difficulty of finding graphite, he went to ask Yoznil just in case and received an immediate answer.
"I have seen such rocks produced in a coastal city. It was when I went to reclaim a swamp near the coast in my youth."
"Is it far from here?"
"Not very far. Perhaps ten to fifteen days on foot for an ordinary person... Should I assume you are going out again?"
"I'll be back soon."
After getting the exact location, Turan flew straight east with Bije. The city near the Southern Sea was over two hundred kilometers away, but with Bije’s wings, it took only an hour even with Turan on her back.
I feel like the south produces a lot of these things... No, maybe they'd turn up in the north too if I looked hard enough.
A short while later, farmers near Boronum City, located east of Lavitas, received a strange request from a young man who had suddenly appeared. He offered to pay them if they gathered the black, brittle stones they occasionally used to mark boundaries.
"Huh? You'll pay us to collect those?"
"Is it possible?"
"Well, we're not busy right now, so it doesn't matter... but are you really going to pay?"
"Here is the down payment. I'll give you double this once you've gathered them."
Since searching for the graphite himself would be a waste of labor, Turan was able to mobilize all the idle commoners in the area by offering forty gold coins in total. It took barely half a day to gather over a hundred kilograms of the graphite scattered around the vicinity.
Having secured the graphite, Turan immediately immersed himself in creating the new substance.
The first hurdle was striking the two graphite rods placed in saltwater with lightning. For someone with the Storm bloodline, summoning lightning was as easy as breathing, but the problem was the intensity. If he used even a little too much power, not only the saltwater but also the container and the graphite rods would evaporate.
Fortunately, after several trials and errors, he figured out the knack for channeling the right amount of electricity.
The next problem he faced was the 'sun' ingredient. Simply exposing it to sunlight didn't work, and while he wondered why, he realized that Judgment Light—the secret technique of the Sun bloodline—was required. Turan could have produced it himself, but since Solif was there, he enlisted his help.
Solif, glowing with a halo, asked in confusion, "But why does a recipe from this god require the Sun bloodline?"
"Who knows... maybe the other two bloodlines he had were Pyromaniac and Illusion."
Since the only bloodlines they knew the Mimic God possessed were Wave Walker and Mimic, it wasn't impossible. Or perhaps it was an item that was meant to be crafted with the help of others from the start.
After all sorts of trial and error, they finally succeeded in creating a perfect manufacturing process.
As they channeled lightning into the graphite while exposing it to Judgment Light and imagining everything merging together, a brilliant flash of light erupted, just as it had when creating the Soul of Fire.
And what remained where the saltwater and graphite rods had been was—
"...It's just water?"
"It's water."
It looked like perfectly clear, transparent water to anyone's eyes.
"Did something go wrong?"
"I felt the transformation... Wait a second."
Sizzle.
A sound like something burning reached their ears, and before they knew it, a hole had been eaten through the wooden bowl holding the liquid, causing the contents to leak out. The substance that looked like transparent water was actually a deadly poison that dissolved everything it touched.
Watching the liquid hit the ground and melt even the soil to create a deep hole, Solif muttered softly.
"Water of Death... Well, that's a damn intuitive name. Pour this on a person, and there won't even be a skeleton left."
Turan and Meisa responded with silent, grim nods.