The Shepherd Alone on the Hill is a Genius Wizard-Chapter 103: Murderer (1)

Instead of leaving the mansion, the Zahar noble who left Meisa’s room headed to the reception room on the first floor.

The elderly maids greeted her with more energy than before.

"Oh my, why did you come out already? Without talking more?"

"She was sleeping soundly. So I just left the books she was looking for and came out."

"The sun hasn’t even set yet..."

"Somehow she seems to just keep sleeping lately."

"That’s because she’s not feeling well. If only she’d eat something to recover her health."

"We can’t force her to eat if she doesn’t want to."

The women chattered away, not knowing Turan was standing right behind them while hidden.

Thanks to this, he could learn without much effort that this noble’s alias was ’Leto’ and she was amazingly a direct maid to Arabion’s head.

It was shocking enough that a noble with Zahar bloodline had entered Arabion’s main house, but to even be the head’s direct maid?

’How on earth?’

While servants of the main house seemed to be thoroughly raised from childhood as knights’ family members, given nobles’ characteristic of aging slowly, there should be limits to disguising as a commoner long-term.

He wondered if she used a disguise magic device similar to his, but nothing could be sensed even with the holy relic’s senses.

’Either she’s disguised through some ingenious method, or... Arabion maintains their own nobles with Zahar bloodline?’

For nobles, bloodline abilities were like a fence.

Defining things like: you have the same ability as me so you’re kin, you have a different ability so you’re a foreigner.

Religious and political elements were involved in this too.

Originally nobles’ bloodline abilities came from gods, so their power itself symbolized the right to rule as descendants of gods.

For these reasons, nobles strictly gathered with those having the same bloodline abilities to form houses.

Of course, while there were quite a few cases of accepting outside bloodlines since inbreeding within cousins was rejected, even then children couldn’t stay in the house if their bloodline differed from the house’s.

For example, if the head of an Artificer house married a noble with Healer bloodline, if their child had the Healer bloodline they had to be sent for adoption to a Healer house regardless of being the head’s child.

Breaking this rule and subjugating nobles of different bloodlines to one’s house was called bloodline theft, which was treated similarly to robbery and murder for magic power.

But aren’t taboos and rules originally created because there are people who break them?

Perhaps Arabion had been raising nobles with Zahar bloodline for quite some time.

Though it wasn’t yet certain which of these possibilities was true.

While lost in thought, the women’s chat had ended and Leto left the mansion.

Turan tried to follow while hidden but had to stop after not long.

This was because she headed to the head’s residence right next door.

’Following inside... that’s probably not good.’

While Meisa’s residence was strangely lax in security, the head’s residence likely had its own separate defenses.

Though he was confident in escaping from anyone else, he had to avoid encountering the head.

The moment they decided to attack seriously, there was a high chance of instant death before he could try anything.

Turan gave up following further and instead stole a hair that was attached to Leto’s maid uniform.

He even used tracking magic to confirm it was her own hair since it could be a wig or someone else’s.

’Good, with this I can follow wherever she runs.’

Originally the principle of tracking magic was capturing targets matching specified conditions with enhanced senses.

The more precise the conditions, the less magic power needed to search a wide area, and using a body part to find its owner was one of the most efficient tracking conditions.

Meaning the current Turan could use this single hair to find and follow the target even if they were thousands of kilometers away.

It wasn’t for nothing that people feared Zahar’s tracking abilities.

After securing a way to track Leto and letting her go, Turan returned to Meisa’s room and opened the books.

Unlike his expectation that they would contain important house internal content, they were just ordinary fairy tales.

The Woodcutter Who Dropped His Axe, The Frog Prince, The Star Child -

’All familiar fairy tales.’

They were all stories his mother Bizela had told him at bedtime in childhood.

Come to think of it, it was natural since fairy tales known by a daughter of an Arabion knight would originate from this region.

He looked through them several times wondering if there might be hidden codes but there didn’t seem to be anything special.

Well, even if there were such things, they wouldn’t be codes if an outsider like Turan could easily spot them.

After being lost in old memories reading fairy tales after a long time, Turan came to his senses, closed the book and looked back at Meisa.

’Did she just want to read fairy tales?’

Unfortunately he couldn’t get an answer from her sleeping, so Turan left the room and started patrolling the mansion again.

This was to find a place suitable to stay as a base, but before long he confirmed that all rooms up to the fifth floor were wide open and empty like the first floor.

The attic commonly found in such mansions even had rotten floorboards all exposed.

Turan realized it was impossible to stay in this mansion as a base.

’If they made the mansion like this to prepare for Zahar nobles infiltrating, it was unexpectedly effective...’

Since stealth magic couldn’t be maintained forever and needed to be released to rest sometimes, that was impossible here.

Just turning over once would make the half-rotten wooden boards creak, and all walls and floors had holes making it impossible to mask such noise.

Even a snore would clearly be audible to noble ears from the first floor.

The only way to rest would be revealing himself to Meisa and using her room together, but the information found here was too scarce for that yet.

He needed to find at least evidence of them doing something to the main house like with Solif to convince Meisa.

==

After leaving the mansion, Turan wandered looking for a place to use as temporary lodging while using stealth and flight magic together.

Though magic lamps on the streets emitted light, it was just enough brightness to drive away darkness so maintaining stealth from above wasn’t difficult.

After moving around for a few minutes checking passing people with heightened holy relic senses, he saw a family of four walking in the distance.

One of them had high-tier noble level magic power.

"Today’s performance was really fun, Father!"

"I didn’t like it..."

"Oh my, Dora, you were crying earlier."

"I wasn’t crying!"

"Don’t be too embarrassed. It’s okay to cry if it’s moving."

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The middle-aged noble’s face looked familiar as he walked chatting warmly with those who seemed to be his wife and children.

Was his name Kadram?

He remembered him as someone who had been deputy commander of Arabion’s Black Spirit subjugation force.

Having briefly heard from Keorn that he was the head’s half-brother and one of his confidants, it seemed likely some good information could be obtained from this person’s house.

Looking at the opponent’s power level, he was confident in either escaping or subduing them even if alarms activated.

After confirming Kadram’s family entering their mansion, Turan maintained stealth magic and picked the lock of a window near the roof using telekinesis magic to enter.

It seemed to be an unused attic, but was still neater than Meisa’s residence.

Apparently maintaining the interior like ruins wasn’t Arabion nobles’ taste but Meisa’s personal preference.

Turan released stealth magic and took off the mask while letting out a deep sigh.

"Phew..."

Fatigue swept over him along with recovery of magic power that had been gradually consumed.

Though he was confident in escaping unless caught right in front of the head, he couldn’t help feeling pressure while infiltrating a great house’s stronghold.

Turan took out the Mimic holy relic, absorbed a small amount of Barrier Maker bloodline magic power, and installed barriers on the attic’s door and windows.

Based on the state of dust accumulated here, it seemed unlikely anyone would come for a while, but this was to prepare for unexpected situations.