Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 32 Back when Turan lived on Hisaril Hill, golden eagles used to prey on sheep, just like wolves or leopards did. It was a truly remarkable feat of strength, considering they weighed less than a fifth of an average sheep.
The creature before him wasn't particularly large for a magical beast—it was about the same size as its mundane kin—but being a magical beast, its strength was bound to be far greater. Unlike the other creatures, this golden eagle was confined to a narrow cage. For some reason, it was staring at him, blinking its golden eyes.
"How much for this one?"
"One thousand five hundred coins."
The price was much lower than he had expected. Of course, even that amount was close to Turan's entire fortune.
"What are its abilities?"
"It's smart, and it flies well."
Hearing that, he understood why the price was set so low. Magical beasts without special abilities were generally valued lower than others of their rank. Furthermore, given its small stature, its physical strength was likely lacking as well. Even considering those factors, the price seemed excessively cheap given the amount of mana it possessed.
When he voiced this doubt, the daughter of the house head shook her head.
"Normally, golden eagles are very popular. They're strong enough to carry a person and fly. But this one is too smart; even though it's been tamed, it won't listen to orders. It's as if it's asking why it should have to listen to things stupider than itself."
At that moment, to Turan's shock, the golden eagle nodded its head as if answering the question itself.
Turan hesitated for a moment before asking, "Did you just answer me?"
Nod.
"You're not just nodding at everything I say, are you?"
Shake, shake.
"You're quite handsome."
Nod.
"Actually, I think hawks look cooler than eagles."
At that last remark, the golden eagle snapped its beak shut and glared at him with an angry expression. It didn't just understand the nuance of Turan's words; it clearly comprehended the meaning. Tilly was smart, but not to this extent. This creature was essentially a human who simply couldn't speak.
Turan spoke in a half-dazed voice. "It really does understand, doesn't it?"
"Yes. I even tried to teach it how to read, but it wouldn't do it—either it didn't want to learn or it couldn't. The result was the same either way."
Apparently, it was so willful that it had once been sold, only to escape, forcing them to ask the Zahar family to help recapture it.
"It's a waste. It has great strength for its size, and we fed it quite a few magical beast cores. If it only listened, we could have sold it for a much higher price."
Her words sounded like a complaint on the surface, but there was a subtle hint of encouragement mixed in. She was implying that he might be the one to finally dominate it and become its master—and if so, he would be getting a high-quality magical beast for an absurdly low price.
He had felt this while talking to the house head as well, but it seemed this family was intent on raising their nobles to be merchants. Turan listened to the explanation quietly, then, struck by a sudden thought, he looked at the golden eagle and spoke.
"Since you understand me, I might as well ask you directly. Hey, is there something you want?"
The daughter of the house head let out a short laugh and shook her head.
"We've asked several times, but it never gives a proper answer to questions like that. It's such a willful creature..."
But before she could even finish her sentence, the golden eagle tilted its head once and then pointed a talon at Turan. The daughter's jaw dropped in shock.
"Wait, why all of a sudden...?"
"You want me?"
At Turan's question, the golden eagle nodded.
"I'm not that special of a person. Is there a reason?"
In response to the follow-up, the eagle merely tilted its head from side to side, as if it either didn't want to answer or had no way to do so. Turan agreed that it was an inappropriate question to answer with mere gestures.
"If I buy you, would you be willing to learn how to read and write? I'll teach you myself."
After seeing it nod to that proposal, Turan looked at the daughter of the house head.
"I'll buy it."
"Pardon? Oh, well, I think we might need to re-evaluate the price—"
Seeing the golden eagle suddenly becoming cooperative seemed to make her regret the low price. Of course, Turan had no trouble teaching her a lesson in reality.
"I don't think our friend here plans on being this cooperative with anyone else but me. Hey, isn't that right?"
At Turan's words, the golden eagle nodded vigorously twice, then tapped the iron bars with its talons while looking at the daughter. It looked for all the world like it was threatening her to sell it to Turan immediately.
Seeing how perfectly in sync they were, the daughter looked back and forth between the two and let out a sigh.
"Well, I suppose there's no helping it."
*
"Be joined as one. You are me, and I am you..."
Turan retrieved gold coins from the chest he had left in his quarters and completed the payment. Then, under the supervision of the house head himself, he performed the ritual to bind with the golden eagle.
As he spoke the incantation, he felt a portion of his soul connect with the eagle. This was the Taming Magic, the ability of the Tamer bloodline. It wasn't just a temporary control over an animal like other mages might use; it was an ability that bound two living beings together spiritually. To undo such a bond or change the target of the connection, another noble of the Tamer bloodline would be required.
Once the connection was established, Turan felt fragments of the golden eagle's thoughts flowing into him. It was a sense of fulfillment and pride at finally having found something, and a feeling of liberation at finally being able to leave the cage.
What exactly had this magical beast seen in him? A special bloodline? Talent? Or something else entirely?
"It is finished."
Hearing the house head's words, Turan opened the cage and freed the golden eagle. Instead of fleeing upon its release, the creature hopped out and perched on Turan's arm, beginning to preen its feathers. It acted with a naturalness that suggested it had always belonged there.
"What would be a good name for you?"
At Turan's question, the golden eagle let out a cute peep that didn't match its fierce appearance at all. Along with it, its thoughts traveled through the soul tether. It was something between a verbalized thought and an abstract emotion, making it difficult to decode clearly, but he could guess the gist of it.
"You want to name yourself? After you learn to write?"
The golden eagle nodded.
"Fine, have it your way."
Since Turan wasn't particularly gifted at naming things anyway, it wasn't a bad deal for him. He wondered if it was a bit too independent... but since it listened well, he figured it wouldn't be a problem.
Turan thought back to the sheepdog he had raised as a child. When his mother had first come to Hisaril Hill, the dog had come along with the flock and the house she bought from an old shepherd. After losing his mother to illness and seeing that dog die of old age, Turan had never raised another dog.
With the power of magic, he could perform his duties as a shepherd well enough without a dog's help, and more than anything, he didn't want to experience the death of something precious again. He likely wouldn't have to worry about that with this golden eagle. Generally, while magical beasts were less skilled in magic, they were physically superior to mages of the same rank, and their lifespans were incredibly long. It was possible this creature might even outlive him.
"How strange," Lord Kal muttered as he watched the two of them. "Even when a successor of the Baraha family visited before, this fellow wouldn't even give them a second glance. I wonder what it is about you that attracted it, Mr. Brahms."
The Baraha family—that was the name of a great house located to the east of the Enril Desert. He recalled hearing that they possessed the Sun bloodline and could manipulate fire and light. Turan didn't know why the creature was drawn to him either, so he planned to ask it later after he taught it how to write. He wasn't sure if he would get a satisfying answer, though.
"I'll take good care of it."
"Do as you wish. Now that it's gone, it's no longer our concern."
Lord Kal added a comment that was either a curse or a piece of advice, saying that if it ran away, Turan would have to catch it himself.
"Well then..."
"Ah, one moment."
As Turan was about to leave, the house head stopped him. For some reason, a vague hesitation had appeared on the merchant-like face that was usually so calculating.
"You can just ignore this if you like, but... do you happen to have any connection to Lord Talis?"
"Lord Talis, you say...?"
"No, never mind. Just a thought. Please forget I asked."
At Turan's reaction, which suggested he had never heard the name before, Kal quickly shook his head. It was an attitude that seemed to want to erase the question he had just asked. Turan instinctively realized that Lord Kal had seen someone named Talis in his face, and he etched that name into his memory.
Then, he decided to ask a question he hadn't been able to bring up earlier. Since the other party had been the first to ask a random question, he felt he could do the same.
"Then, Lord Kal, may I ask you one thing as well?"
"Go ahead."
"Do you happen to know a woman named Bije?"
"Bije?"
"She looks like this."
Turan pulled out a piece of paper he had buried deep in his bag. Ash scattered across the high-quality paper formed the likeness of a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties.
"Drawn with magic, I see. You have quite the knack for someone of the Guardian bloodline."
"I have a friend who's skilled in this area, so I asked her to draw it for me."
The technique of scattering ash on paper to create a portrait was something he had learned while practicing magic with Meisa. By visualizing an image in one's mind and then arranging ash in that exact shape on the paper, even someone without artistic talent could project what they were thinking.
Since it had been five or six years since his mother passed away, he couldn't be sure he had recreated her perfectly, but it was close enough that anyone who knew her would recognize the resemblance. Turan focused all his senses on the house head's every movement and the scent emanating from his body as he studied the drawing.
I wonder.
The reason he felt comfortable showing his mother's portrait was that she had been an ordinary person. Even if the Zahar bloodline Turan possessed had come from his mother, as long as she wasn't a mage, it was unlikely she was a figure significant enough to have committed some great crime. Of course, he had to consider the possibility that identifying his mother might lead directly to his father...
However, contrary to his hopes, Kal looked at the drawing for a long time before shaking his head.
"I don't recognize her at all. If I had seen such a beauty, I don't think I would have forgotten easily. Is she your mother or sister?"
"Something like that."
Even with his sense of smell focused to the extreme, he didn't detect the scent of flustered surprise or shock from the man. Turan felt both relief and disappointment at that fact.
"It seems you have your own circumstances as well."
"Who in this world doesn't?"
"True enough."
Judging by his heavy tone, it seemed the house head had his own share of troubles. What those were was not something an outsider like Turan could know.
After finishing the contract, Turan left the palace and headed south through Komad City to test his new friend's abilities in earnest. The sight of him with a large golden eagle on his arm and a knight following behind drew many stares.
After walking for several dozen minutes, the scent of dry, sandy wind gradually began to drift toward him. Before long, the desert stretched out before his eyes—nothing but sand as far as the horizon. He had caught a glimpse of it while arriving by ship, but stepping onto it himself felt different.
Turan lightly reached out and stirred the dry air.
It's winter and nighttime, so it's not hot. If anything, it's on the colder side.
That was likely because this was the northernmost edge of the desert. The Enril Desert was famous for being terrifyingly vast, to the point where the climate varied by region even within the same desert. Based on the maps, the territory ruled by the Zahar family was three to five times the size of Arabion. Of course, given the nature of the desert, the population might actually be smaller.
"Well then, shall we take a light flight?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the golden eagle took flight, and Turan grabbed one of its sturdy legs with one hand. A powerful force yanked his body upward, and in an instant, the world below began to sink away.
"Oh..."
As a headwind strong enough to make his eyes sting blew against him, Turan quickly blocked the wind in front of him. The sense of speed was on a completely different level from Levitation magic, which merely allowed him to float. It felt much faster than if he were running himself.
He didn't know how the Zahar noble had caught this creature, but it certainly hadn't been by outrunning it. Unless they had captured it while hidden by stealth.
Turan glanced back and laughed as he realized Komad City had already shrunk enough to be seen in its entirety. On the other side, the desert still stretched out endlessly, but perhaps because he was looking down from a height, it didn't seem as daunting as it did from the ground. It felt as though the sense of distance had diminished significantly.
When Turan cast Levitation magic on himself to reduce his weight, the golden eagle seemed excited by how light he had become and flapped its wings even faster.
"At this rate, I could cross the Dakein Plains in a single day..."
Truly, the speed was such that his previous travels on foot felt foolish. The man and the golden eagle enjoyed their flight together until the creature finally grew tired and descended.
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