Chapter 42

Translator: Pai_

After a massive flame burst into the sky, the once gloomy atmosphere of Kalamaf City had distinctly changed.

Whenever the citizens gathered, they joyfully spoke about the flames that adorned the city sky, marveling at the majestic spectacle.

It was the belief that a powerful being stood firmly in the middle of the city, ensuring that they would not be one-sidedly massacred by sudden foreign invaders.

That belief alone gave people the sense that they were within a protective fence, allowing them to feel reassured.

However, the mood of Great Wizard Turan, who had become the object of worship by all Kalamaf citizens, wasn't particularly good.

This was because he had to listen to discussions led by Daruk, a few other government officials, and merchants and guild leaders who had too much invested in the city to leave, all gathered in the meeting room at City Hall.

“First, we need to secure firewood or materials to repair houses. Already, dozens of people have frozen to death this winter.”

“Isn’t food more important than that? What’s the point of firewood when the citizens are on the verge of eating one another?”

Turan, who was only nineteen, wondered what he could possibly know to be participating in such matters. Yet, in this city, any policy Turan did not personally involve himself in was worth no more than the orders of beggars.

Only when he participated, listened, and gave approval could the government officials gain the authority to carry out any policy.

The reason officials had been idly shuffling papers all this time was not because they had nothing to do, but because they had lost the authority granted by the aura of nobility and thus were incapable of doing anything.

“But even if we try to import from villages or other cities, we don’t have any money.”

“Well, that’s true…”

Even listening to the meeting for just a short while, it was not hard to grasp how dire the city’s situation was.

Not only was the city lacking all sorts of materials needed for its maintenance, but it also lacked the finances and workforce to resolve this.

This was because most of those who had held these two things had left for other cities.

With such circumstances, it was clear why the neighboring noble houses had not bothered to take over Kalamaf.

They must have thought it would be better to wait for the city to completely collapse and then send new settlers to rebuild it.

While listening silently to their discussion, a thought suddenly occurred to Turan, and he voiced it.

“I’ll take care of the food problem.”

At that single statement, the once noisy meeting room instantly fell silent.

An older merchant cautiously asked.

“Protector of the city, may I dare ask how you plan to solve the food problem?”

“I’ll gather the animals visible around this area and drive them into Kalamaf. At first, we’ll increase the quantity by making something like meat stew. The leftovers can be salted or smoked to preserve them for the winter.”

For Turan at the moment, this was not a particularly difficult task.

Flying on a golden eagle, he could command all the animals that entered the Sacred Relic’s senses to move to Kalamaf.

No matter how he thought about it, there was no other way to secure enough food for thousands of people to survive the winter.

The void left by the migrating animals would naturally be filled over time as animals from farther away moved in.

Everyone who heard his words widened their eyes in astonishment.

“C-could such a thing even be possible…? No, I would never dare to doubt you, Protector!”

“But to use the power granted by the gods to sustain lowly people… Is it even right to do so?”

To commoners, a wizard was a being of immense power that could subdue magical beasts, not a convenient worker who would do tasks that commoners could handle.

It even felt somewhat irreverent to assign such a transcendent being the task of herding animals.

Turan dismissed their concerns with ease.

“In the northern Takein Plains, nobles strike the ground with lightning after the harvest. That’s because the soil becomes more fertile the following year. What I’m doing is no different from that.”

A few dozen minutes later, as soon as the meeting ended, Turan took flight around the area surrounding Kalamaf City, just as he had said.

As Turan expanded the sensory range of the Sacred Relic to its maximum, he could feel the presence of animals hidden throughout the ashen gray rocky mountains.

“All of you, move toward that place. Once you arrive in front of the wall, stay still and do not move.”

At his quiet command, the animals began to move one by one, herds of mountain goats, rabbits, and even wolves and leopards.

Even those hiding in the bushes, invisible from the sky, became targets of magic the moment they were caught within the Sacred Relic’s senses.

This kind of task didn’t consume an overwhelming amount of magic power.

For Turan, who had been controlling flocks of sheep as naturally as breathing since childhood, animal control magic was one of the skills he was most proficient in, akin to throwing stones.

As a result, it wasn’t long before the citizens of the city witnessed animals flocking to the city and lining up in front of the wall, waiting to be slaughtered.

“Quick, slaughter them all…! No, deal with the predators first and kill them quickly. As for the rabbits, don’t kill them all. Put them in a pen instead. We can feed them grass and raise them.”

“This is unbelievable, even seeing it with my own eyes. Are nobles really capable of something like this? Then why didn’t the high and mighty lords of past…?”

“It must be because the current Protector is a far more powerful wizard! Didn’t you see the flames back then?”

“Well, you’re right. I said something foolish.”

The process of slaughtering over hundreds of animals, cooking the meat, and distributing it was not an easy task, but with the combined efforts of the government officials, the police, and the citizens who had regained their enthusiasm, things managed to progress somehow.

After filling their stomachs with rich food for the first time in a while, everyone’s faces lit up with vitality.

With the food problem resolved, the issue of insufficient buildings to survive the winter was also addressed without much difficulty.

The solution was to open up the residence of the family that had once ruled the city, located in its center, and use it to house those without homes or whose homes had been destroyed.

The residence, which had comfortably housed over a hundred people in the past, could accommodate around a thousand people if they lived in closer quarters.

“But then, where will the city’s Protector stay…?”

“I can stay at the City Hall accommodations. There’s a bed there, and it’s not bad at all.”

Turan replied calmly to the astonished officials.

Having lived his entire life as a shepherd and later as a wanderer accustomed to sleeping outdoors, Turan had no attachment to a grand mansion.

Besides, the valuables in the residence had already been taken by the few remaining family members who fled during the city’s decline, leaving the place half-ruined.

In any case, Turan’s authority, which carried the weight of divine command, ensured that this too was immediately put into action.

“Now, now! Everyone, move slowly! The city’s Protector doesn’t want any citizens to get hurt!”

“Children, line up over here!”

"Can we really live here?"

“Yes, it’s true. Be sure to thank the Protector.”

“My goodness, instead of a shepherd tending to and slaughtering his sheep, he’s giving us his own flesh to eat. How can we ever repay this?”

Thus, through the mouths of citizens who now lived in the grand mansion of a lord they could never have even dreamed of seeing in their lives, Turan became further deified. However, he paid no attention to such a reputation.

At the moment, he only had one wish.

For the city to return to normal as quickly as possible, so he could find clues about his mother.

*

A few days later, the cities surrounding Kalamaf began to notice changes in this once-dying city.

The flow of refugees wandering around the area had completely stopped, and instead, merchant caravans were going around nearby villages, selling furs and buying grains or fabric to bring back to Kalamaf. It was impossible not to notice this.

Moreover, since Turan had not explicitly ordered them to keep his presence a secret, the merchants spoke openly about it.

“Turan of Kalamaf?”

“Yes, someone calling himself that has become the master of Kalamaf City. To be precise, he refers to himself not as a lord, but as the Protector of the city.”

The lord of Vigen, a city located three days from Kalamaf, exclaimed in fascination upon hearing the intriguing news.

“A Protector of the city, you say? That’s quite an amusing title. How old is he?”

“I’ve heard he appears to be around twenty years old.”

“That’s far too young.”

“Yes, but it’s said that he displayed magic capable of filling the sky with flames, visible from anywhere in the city. Even considering this comes from commoners’ accounts, he must undoubtedly be skilled.”

The lord of Vigen stroked his beard, deep in thought at the words of his knight, who served as his advisor.

Though nobles were known to age more slowly, it was still rare to find one among the powerful nobility with such a youthful appearance.

The opportunity to accumulate magic power was limited, and building such strength often required a long span of years.

There were only two major exceptions to this rule.

The first was a lucky prodigy who had traveled on a pilgrimage from a young age, continually encountering magical beasts suited to their abilities, thereby rapidly growing stronger.

The second was… a talent deliberately nurtured by a great noble family, pushed to their limits under the family’s full support.

“And this type of person, of all times, shows up now and takes over a hollowed-out city right next to the Arabion army? Something smells fishy here.”

The war between two great noble families that had erupted twenty years ago in the Gray Zone had left a profound impact on the local population.

The number of commoners executed on suspicions of being spies was beyond counting, and some masterless wandering knights were forcibly conscripted to the front lines to die.

Even the nobles themselves had divided into factions and fought against each other. In fact, the lord of Vigen himself had taken advantage of the Zahar family’s support to kill his Arabion-supporting older brother and usurp the position of family head.

Given such history, it was only natural to be sensitive to the movements of the great families.

“Now, which family could it be? Turan Arabion? Turan Carmine? Turan Lavitas? Or perhaps Turan Zahar… That one feels like it fits. The name has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“Should we contact the Zahar family?”

“Ha, absolutely not. Taking the initiative to bring it up before they do… That’s something superiors find very unpleasant. It makes them feel as though their thoughts are being read. Besides, what if we guess wrong? Then what?”

“Then what stance should we take regarding the occupation of Kalamaf?”

“For now, we’ll take an approach of subtle acceptance. Protesting could make us enemies of whoever is behind this, and that would be troublesome. After all, the city might still end up being razed by the Dark Elves, regardless of who’s taken it over.”

What the lord of Vigen didn’t realize was that at that very moment, all the lords around Kalamaf were reaching a similar conclusion.

They speculated that Turan was not from Zahar but from Arabion, Carmine, or some other distant great noble family.

And so, without much ado, Turan was tacitly acknowledged as the Protector of Kalamaf by the lords of the Gray Zone.

***

Once Kalamaf City had somewhat stabilized, Turan had several portraits of his mother’s face copied and distributed throughout the city via Daruk.

In truth, Turan didn’t have high expectations for this approach.

The population density in the Gray Zone was not particularly high, but there were still eight cities and over a hundred small villages in the region.

What were the chances that Turan’s mother had lived in or stayed in Kalamaf?

Moreover, since Turan had lived on Hisaril Hill ever since he was born, it had been nearly twenty years since his mother might have been in Kalamaf. By now, anyone who had known her back then might have forgotten her face, passed away, or fled.

What Turan had not anticipated, however, was just how much popularity he had garnered in this city.

When word spread that the Protector of the city was searching for a woman, the citizens racked their brains, trying to recall even the faintest memories. In the process, Turan ended up hearing all sorts of information, some possibly true, others undoubtedly false.

“Protector of the city…”

“Another report?”

“Yes…”

The official who had come to report to Turan wore a dejected expression, aware of the frustration Turan had endured over the past week after receiving over a dozen useless reports.

“Well, I should hear it. Who’s the informant?”

“A man named Egon. He used to run an inn but lost everything to gambling and is now a vagrant. He claims that around eighteen or nineteen years ago, a woman who looked exactly like the person in the portrait visited the inn he was running at the time.”

“"Let's go see."

Turan had already encountered similar claims multiple times, but for some reason, this one didn’t feel bad.

What stood out, in particular, was that Egon hadn’t given an exact time frame of twenty years but had instead said eighteen to nineteen years ago, an ambiguous yet precise window.

Not long after, a shabby-looking man entered the meeting room at City Hall, bowing deeply as he addressed Turan.

“Protector of the city, it’s an honor to meet you! If it weren’t for the food and shelter you’ve provided, I would’ve died like a dog on the streets!”

“That’s fortunate. But more importantly, I want to hear the details. About the person in the portrait you said you’ve seen.”

“Of course, I’ll tell you! It happened back when I was still running an inn and hadn’t fallen into ruin…”

It was during a vague time frame, somewhere between eighteen and nineteen years ago. At the time, Kalamaf was in a state of unrest due to the war between Arabion and Zahar.

Though not as desperate as things were now, everyone lived in fear that aligning with one side might prompt the opposing noble family’s army to sweep through the city.

In such a tense period, a young woman arrived at Egon’s inn one day and stayed for a night.

“She looked about twenty years old, and her belly was slightly swollen, as if she were pregnant. I’m not sure if her name was Bije or not.”

Even from just that much, Turan’s heart felt like it was going to burst with excitement.

He had never mentioned to anyone that his mother might have been pregnant with him at that time.

No- he couldn’t be certain yet.

It was still possible that the vagrant was making it all up or that he was simply mistaken.

Turan subtly pressed him for more details.

“You seem to have a good memory. Wouldn’t most people forget about a guest who stayed for just one night almost twenty years ago?”

“Hehe, I may look a bit dull, but I still remember the name and face of the girl I liked when I was ten years old. That’s how good my memory is. I thought it’d help me with gambling since I could remember the cards so well, but, well…”

When Egon trailed off, muttering to himself about how that skill hadn’t served him well in the gambling world, Turan prodded him gently to bring him back to the main topic.

“A woman traveling alone is unusual enough. She also had a rather large and fine horse with her, which made her stand out in my memory. On top of that, she looked anxious and restless, almost as if she were on the run. I couldn’t help but wonder which scoundrel had gotten such a beautiful woman pregnant and abandoned her.”

“Why did you assume she’d been abandoned?”

“Well, while she was eating, she stroked her belly and muttered to herself, saying, ‘Baby, please, don’t grow up to be like your father.’”