The Shepherd Alone on the Hill is a Genius Wizard-Chapter 113: The Head’s Three Symbols (1)

Turan thought of Keorn, the old knight who had lost all his family and friends to war.

Learning that the house he had taken such pride in had betrayed him in such a horrible way left a bitter taste in his mouth.

In fact, considering it further, the thousands or tens of thousands of people who met their deaths directly or indirectly due to the war between the two houses were all victims.

While the young shepherd dogs and shepherds fought and bit each other unknowingly, the old shepherds shook hands and whispered behind their backs...

Though he wanted to sweep away the upper echelons of both houses, that wasn’t possible.

No matter how powerful a mage Turan had become, he was at best a wildcat compared to the heads of the great houses, assuming they were human.

Even this was an immense improvement compared to the past when he had been merely an insect or something even less.

Suppressing the indignation boiling inside him, Turan spoke softly to Leto who was sitting down.

"Alright, if you answer my questions honestly, I’ll let you meet Lord Tallis. Who gave you orders and how? Whose instructions did you follow in Arabion?"

Leto looked at Turan with a bewildered expression.

"No, wait... didn’t you understand? This is the will of those above! You dare to interrogate me?"

"Answer the question."

Seeing Turan ignore her warning, Leto looked around before gritting her teeth.

Her eyes held the same venom as before.

"...Let me see Lord Tallis! In front of him, I can tell everything—"

Turan reached out to cover Leto’s mouth while lightly pinching her forearm with his other hand.

A piece of flesh was torn off as a horrible scream rang out from behind his hand covering her mouth.

"I’ll ask again. In House Zahar—"

"You crazy bastard!"

Instead of responding to her curse, Turan covered her mouth again and tore off another piece of flesh from her forearm.

At this sight, not only Solif but even Meisa, who had been glaring with hatred until just now, turned pale.

Though both had killed people as heirs of great houses with combat experience, it was their first time seeing someone being so thoroughly tormented while unable to resist.

But unlike the two of them, Turan experienced no emotional turmoil despite performing torture for the first time in his life.

Because to him now, Leto was a villain who had become the puppet of those old shepherds and toyed with innocent people.

Once he defined someone as an enemy, as a wolf outside the fence, he could do anything without hesitation.

Of course, while it might be different for a mage, Leto who was now no different from an ordinary human couldn’t endure such harsh torture for long.

She was about to pass out from pain and blood loss, but Turan wouldn’t even allow that escape.

Baraha’s healing potion device.

Though inefficient on upper noble bodies, when three top-level nobles poured in their mana, it could make up for the poor efficiency.

How many times did he repeat the cycle of forcibly feeding medicine to the resisting Leto to heal her before breaking her again?

Unable to bear this sight, Solif first said he would "keep watch outside" before leaving the valley.

It meant that even he, who had calmly massacred hundreds of pirates, found it difficult to watch due to nausea.

With Bize hopping around on the dirt ground making playful sounds as background noise, Turan gradually built up his torture skills through Leto.

Using his excellent sense of smell and learning ability, he analyzed the scent of pain his target gave off, learning which areas to stimulate and how to cause more suffering.

Finally, when even Meisa who had been watching from behind showed clear signs of fatigue on her face, Leto muttered with empty eyes.

"I’ll talk, no, I’ll tell you. Please, please stop... just kill me instead..."

A completely quiet demeanor compared to her initial act of crying and shouting when she first regained consciousness.

Turan brought his nose close to her neck and deeply inhaled her scent.

Among the thick smell of blood wafted the scents of fear, despair, and resignation.

==

According to the confession of the half-broken Leto, the one who directly dispatched her to Arabion was Rahman, one of Zahar’s heir candidates and the head’s cousin brother.

Her orders were to faithfully carry out whatever six Arabion executives including Kadram Arabion instructed.

Since it was a secret order, she didn’t know who else in Zahar knew about this besides Rahman, and on the Arabion side, only those six and their direct subordinates knew her identity.

Unexpectedly, the head of Arabion wasn’t among those six, and even Leto didn’t know whether he was aware of this collusion.

The six who knew her identity also treated Leto strictly as a maid in front of the head, and the head didn’t give her any special treatment either.

"Have you ever searched inside the head’s quarters? With your stealth ability, it shouldn’t have been difficult."

"I didn’t really look... It seemed dangerous to know unnecessary things..."

Leto confessed that she just mechanically carried out her given missions without trying to dig deeper into those giving her orders.

To Turan it seemed an absurdly passive attitude, but there were usually more such people in the world.

After confirming whether she was lying when she said she only performed given tasks in the head’s quarters, he shifted the topic to the head himself.

"What kind of person was the head?"

"Just... like an old man. Someone so tired that he had no interest in worldly affairs..."

Meisa, listening from the side, unconsciously nodded.

It seemed she had received a similar impression of her father.

Was the head indeed manipulating everything from behind while pretending not to know, or was he truly just an indifferent absolute being?

Considering Meisa’s background, the former seemed more likely but the latter possibility couldn’t be completely dismissed.

While laying out various hypotheses in his mind, Turan next asked how she had been able to act as a spy for so long without being discovered.

Surely they would suspect a maid who didn’t age to be a mage?

But the solution to this problem was surprisingly, ridiculously simple.

When she infiltrated fifteen years ago, she pretended to be twenty, and afterward gradually changed her makeup to appear as if she was aging.

"They believed that?"

"Yes..."

Turan splashed water on Leto’s face, which was a mess of tears and blood, to remove her makeup.

Indeed, unlike before when she appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties, her face now looked to be in her mid-twenties.

To change faces without a magic device, what truly magical technique.

Read 𝓁at𝙚st chapters at ƒrēenovelkiss.com Only.

After briefly marveling at this newly learned fact, Turan proceeded to dig into the details of the crimes Leto had carried out.

Though these things had already been hinted at in the middle-aged faction nobles’ documents, having the perpetrator explain the details was on a different level.

While pointing out the contents of the documents and adding annotations one by one, the topic came to Meisa’s family.

"Those two people, no... exactly three people, I used poison. When they went on a picnic near the city, I secretly sprinkled it in their food."

"Poison?"

Turan frowned at the unexpected words.

It was common knowledge among common knowledge that poison didn’t work on mages, especially nobles.

While knights might die if they consumed enough poison to kill hundreds of ordinary people, nobles would at most get diarrhea even if they drank poison until their stomachs burst.

Unless one had the abilities of the poison-handling bloodline originating from the Night Hunters who went extinct in ancient times.

"Yes. I don’t know where it came from, but it had an amazing effect. It was strong enough to kill even that woman who was a noble despite being weak, and even Lady Meisa who had already accumulated quite some power was in danger."

Turan narrowed his eyebrows at hearing that Meisa was also poisoned.

It seemed that was indeed the direct cause of her eating disorder.

What was incomprehensible was that they had poisoned even her, who should have become a divine being’s body.

It was deadly poison potent enough to kill Meisa’s mother who, though weak, was still a noble.

They must have either known she wouldn’t die exactly, or didn’t care if she died or was severely injured.

"You’re sure you don’t know the poison’s source?"

"Yes..."

Though he repeatedly asked questions to check for signs of wavering, she didn’t seem to be lying.

Only after confirming several more crime details did he finally run out of questions.

"Well then, it seems we’ve extracted everything we can... Meisa, if you want revenge, I’ll step aside."

"No, it’s fine."

Unexpectedly, Meisa’s face didn’t show much hatred towards Leto.

"That woman seems to be just an empty shell now. And pain... I’m not confident I can inflict it as effectively as you."

Perhaps watching Turan’s torture from the side had satisfied her desire for revenge.

Meisa raised her hand to charge a small amount of lightning, then struck it down to end Leto’s life.

Shortly after, when Solif returned, the three people and one black eagle absorbed the dead woman’s mana to send off her soul.