Translator: Pai_

That day, Turan patrolled around the city and managed to capture a total of seven Magical Beasts.

Each time he absorbed Magic Power from the corpses of the slain beasts, he felt an addictive thrill, a spine-chilling ecstasy that seemed like it could consume him.

It was almost disappointing to think that once he reached his absorption limit, he would no longer feel this kind of pleasure.

Of course, devouring the beasts didn’t only provide him with such a primal kind of satisfaction.

By the time he had absorbed the power of the fifth beast, Turan’s Magic Power had grown to about 1.5 times stronger than it had been before he met Keorn.

At this rate, in theory, just hunting for a few months would allow him to become dozens of times stronger than he was before, but......

‘It won’t be that easy.’

The growth in Magic Power through absorption decreased with repeated attempts, and it became increasingly difficult to grow stronger by relying on the Magic Power of weaker beasts.

Moreover, staying in one place to hunt for too long would naturally lead to the extinction of the beasts in the area.

That’s why powerful Nobles sometimes embarked on pilgrimages to find beasts worthy of their strength.

Because of this, Turan decided to capture two of the weakest beasts he found alive instead of killing them, as their power was too insignificant to absorb.

One was a squirrel with a tail about five times thicker than that of its kind, which it used as a weapon. The other was a badger with a large body whose fur could change color to match its surroundings.

After tying them up tightly with ropes, he took them to City Hall, where the official in charge widened his eyes in surprise.

“Two of them?”

“Yes. Other than getting hit on the head with a rock, they were captured unharmed. Together, the bounty should be 25 Rum, correct?”

“Hmm, well…”

The official, seemingly trying to pull something shady, trailed off. However, when Turan glared at him with sharp eyes, the man quickly handed over the money.

“Here you go.”

The fun of earning money like this was also something he learned after coming down from the hill.

After pocketing 25 Silver Coins, he returned to the inn, where the waitress greeted him with a smile.

“Handsome oppa! You came back alive and well, huh? You’ll be having dinner here too, right? Bread and soup again this time?”

Turan was about to order the cheapest menu option, just like he did in the morning, but then changed his mind.

Since he could earn as much money as he wanted, he figured it was a good chance to find out why expensive food was considered expensive.

“I’ll have the most expensive thing you’ve got.”

At his words, the waitress’s eyes widened.

“Wow, you must’ve made some good money! I’ll let the chef know right away!”

What Turan didn’t realize at first was that the inn’s most luxurious menu item took nearly an hour to prepare.

But when the food was finally laid on the table, he felt it was worth the wait.

Freshly made, soft, and savory bread with tangy fruit jam, roasted chicken glazed with seasoning, pork ribs topped with sizzling melted cheese…

For someone like Turan, who had spent his life on barren hills eating nothing but smelly lamb meat and grain porridge, the meal was a feast fit to blow his mind.

He devoured the meal, biting and chewing furiously, and before he knew it, everything on the table had disappeared without a trace.

“…No one stole this while I wasn’t looking, right?”

“Of course not! But oppa, for someone so skinny, you really eat a lot!”

“It’s rare to see someone enjoy it this much, so I’m glad I prepared it!”

Even the chef, who usually stayed in the kitchen, came out to comment, indicating how infrequently this menu was ordered.

Regardless, Turan had come to understand the joy of fine dining thanks to this experience.

* * *

By the time three days had passed, Turan had successfully hunted more than thirty Magical Beasts.

Of these, only five earned him bounties, but even that was enough to pocket over a hundred Silver Coins, part of which he converted into Gold Coins for easier storage.

The remarkable results were largely thanks to his improved proficiency with Detection Magic.

After several experiments, he discovered that when the target was outside the magic’s range, he could still track it by searching for its traces.

To use the first blade craw he caught as an example, Turan would set his Detection Magic target to 'droppings of a raven larger than a child', then follow the trail of droppings to locate the beast.

While Turan was achieving remarkable results, Midan’s group seemed to be struggling. They wore dark expressions and complained endlessly about how, at this rate, they’d have trouble even paying for their room.

One day, two of Midan’s sworn brothers followed Turan up to his room as he went to rest. Raising their fists, they tried to intimidate him.

“Hey, skinny!”

“We heard you’ve been making some money lately. Share some with your fellow hunters."

Naturally, it took less than a minute for both of them to get beaten senseless by Turan and tumble down the stairs.

After a brief commotion, once everything had been explained, Midan bowed his head to Turan on their behalf.

“I sincerely apologize. I’ll scold the two of them thoroughly. This kind of thing won’t happen again…”

“Are you having a hard time?”

At Turan's question, Midan hesitated before answering honestly.

“Yeah, we’re a bit tight on money.”

Midan and his sworn brothers used to be thugs in a large city with a population of over 100,000. Two years ago, they met someone who claimed to have become a wizard after hunting Magical Beasts, and they gave up their thug lifestyle to become Beast Hunters.

However, it wasn’t easy for regular people to hunt Magical Beasts. To make things worse, unless a beast was strong enough for its corpse alone to prove it was a Magical Beast, no bounty would be awarded for the body.

As a result, they wandered from city to city, barely scraping by with odd jobs while continuing to hunt beasts.

‘To think it took them two years to catch just three beasts.’

Well, what could you expect from people who were neither wizards nor professional hunters, but mere former thugs trying their hand at hunting?

On top of that, if they had to take on side jobs just to survive, it would be impossible to dedicate their full time to hunting.

Hearing their story, Turan started to understand why government officials often treated Beast Hunters as nothing more than thugs.

People who gambled their lives chasing something that might or might not succeed while others were diligently working, it wasn’t hard to see why they weren’t looked upon kindly.

“Honestly, after about three more days, we probably won’t be able to afford our rent. This city is too small, so there’s not much work we can do. But don’t worry, we’re not planning to ask a young friend for money. After putting you through this trouble, it’d be shameless to ask…”

“Here.”

Turan rummaged through his belongings and handed Midan ten Silver Coins.

It was enough for the four of them to stay at the inn for about three days if they negotiated a bit.

Midan stared at him with a dumbfounded expression.

“Wait, why?”

“You were kind enough to invite me into your group, thinking it’d be dangerous for me to travel alone. Consider this repayment for that kindness.”

The moral code Turan had learned from his mother was simple: treat others the way you wanted to be treated, and repay kindness or enmity in kind.

From that perspective, the goodwill Midan had shown in the past was worth at least a few Silver Coins.

As for the trouble caused by his subordinates, Turan had already paid them back with his fists.

“Still, I’d feel bad just taking this…”

“If you feel that way, then share some information with me instead. Tell me about the cities you’ve visited during your hunts or anything else that might be useful.”

One of the lessons Turan had learned since leaving the hills was that information was something you had to pay for.

While Keorn had given him a general understanding of the world’s geography and the locations of the major noble families, Turan didn’t know the finer details about individual regions.

Hearing Turan’s proposal, Midan’s face lit up.

“That’s no problem at all!”

Having spent two years traveling to various cities in search of Magical Beasts, Midan knew quite a lot.

He not only sketched out a simple map showing nearby cities but also recommended beasts that could be hunted there, or, in Midan’s case, beasts he advised Turan to avoid.

Given that Magical Beasts were becoming increasingly scarce around Murei City, this kind of information was highly valuable.

Wandering aimlessly from one city to another, like last time, was not something Turan wanted to repeat. Once was more than enough.

In addition, stories like how certain cities contain ruins left behind by ancient empires or how certain Wizard families don’t allow wanderers to pass through their territories without permission proved extremely useful.

What especially caught Turan’s attention was the existence of a library located in a relatively nearby major city.

“Are you saying it holds thousands of books?”

“That’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never been inside myself, though.”

Turan had learned to read and write from his mother, but he had never actually read a book.

Naturally, Hisaril Hill and the surrounding villages were too impoverished to afford luxuries like books.

Occasionally, Turan’s mother would lament, saying there were books she wanted to read to him, but she could no longer remember their contents.

As a result, Turan had always imagined books as something mystical, glorified as repositories of the wisdom of the world.

But according to Midan, the library in Orem, a city located relatively close to the northeast, contained over a thousand such books!

Moreover, the entry requirements were absurdly simple,

“A wizard can enter…”

“Well, maybe one day, when we become wizards, we’ll get to visit it too!”

Turan suddenly discovered a new desire he hadn’t realized he had, beyond his desire for money or appetite for food.

It was the desire for knowledge.

Living his whole life on the hill, he hadn't known.....

He wanted to know more about what kind of place this world was.

"Is this worth enough?"

"More than enough."

Turan had already planned to hunt until the next day and then leave the city. Thanks to Midan’s information, he now knew where to go next.

* * *

As if to mock how well things had ended, the following afternoon, during his final hunt, Turan stumbled across one of Midan’s subordinates. The man was clutching his stomach, blood gushing out as he coughed violently.

It was clear from his half-lidded eyes that he wouldn’t survive.

“What happened?”

“A rabbit… magical beast… monster…”

"Where's Midan?"

"Over there......"

The man weakly pointed toward a spot where a familiar tuft of hairy scalp lay rolling on the ground.

Midan had died with such an indignant expression that his strangely clear, wide-open eyes seemed to burn with regret even in death.

Behind him lay two more corpses, bodies gruesomely torn in half.

And finally, a rabbit the size of a cat, chewing something thoroughly, turned its blood-red eyes toward Turan.

The creature, with incisors so long they nearly touched the ground and grotesquely muscular hind legs, immediately charged at Turan with the speed of an arrow.

“Ugh!”

Turan barely dodged by throwing himself to the side. The rabbit, unable to stop its momentum, shot past him and slammed into a tree.

With a loud crack, the tree collapsed, not from the impact, but because the rabbit’s front teeth had cleanly sliced through it.

'What the......"

Since it seemed too dangerous to test various approaches, Turan immediately brought out his secret weapon.

Stone throwing with his sheepskin slingshot that he always carried.

Though the stone flew toward the rabbit faster than the speed of sound powered by magic, amazingly, the creature deflected it by swinging its long front teeth.

One shot, two shots, and even three shots.

Turan clicked his tongue at the opponent's ridiculous reflexes.

It seemed he had encountered an enemy immune to physical projectiles, which Keorn had warned about, sooner than expected.

[Kii-kik!]

The rabbit let out a bizarre laugh as if mocking him. Then it crouched, preparing to leap again with its powerful hind legs.

At that moment,

[Kik?]

The rabbit suddenly froze. Turan had vanished from its sight.

A creature simply disappearing before its eyes was something the rabbit couldn’t comprehend.

Even as it had grown smarter by absorbing Magic Power, the situation was beyond its understanding.

Had he run away? How? And where could he be now? There wasn’t even a scent to track…

While the rabbit stood frozen in confusion, Turan, hidden using Concealment, crept up behind it and drove a dagger into its throat.

[Kiiiiiieeeeeek!!]

The rabbit let out an ear-piercing shriek.

Turan quickly twisted the dagger lodged in the rabbit’s throat, then let go of the handle and threw himself backward.

If he hadn’t, the rabbit, in its frenzied state, would have likely cleaved him in half with its massive front teeth.

The rabbit, desperate to attack the unseen enemy, darted around wildly, swinging its front teeth in all directions. However, its opponent was already airborne, having Concealed himself and flown into the sky.

For about a minute, the rabbit hacked at the surrounding trees, slicing through them one by one. But unable to locate its enemy, it finally collapsed, drained of all energy.

Only then did Turan deactivate Concealment, land softly on the ground, and exhale a long sigh.

“Huaaah….”

Just when he thought he had dealt with all the strong Magical Beasts in this area, he unexpectedly encountered such a formidable enemy.

Though small in size and seemingly lacking in defense, its speed, attack power, and reflexes had made it even more dangerous than the first Leopard Magical Beast he had faced.

Turan reflected that, if it had been the version of himself from before he met Keorn, with no real combat techniques other than slinging stones, he might very well have lost.

When he absorbed its Magic Power, he found it to be far greater than what he had gained from defeating the leopard.

‘What terrible luck.’

Since there was no record of such a creature among the Magical Beasts registered at City Hall, this one must have mutated recently.

Midan’s group had likely underestimated it, thinking a rabbit-shaped beast of relatively small size would be an easy target. Their carelessness had led to their annihilation.

If they’d known that this rabbit was strong enough to kill even an inattentive noble in an instant, how would they have felt?

After sorting out the situation like that, Turan approached the hunter with the torn belly.

The man was still conscious, though barely, and was staring at Turan with a shocked expression. It seemed he had witnessed Turan’s battle.

"You, no, you're... a wizard......"

"Yes."

"Why......"

Explaining why he had kept his identity hidden seemed unnecessary and tedious, so Turan simply shook his head and instead asked his own question.

“Do any of you have families who’d want keepsakes?”

“No….”

A short while later, Turan buried the deceased Beast Hunters in a sunny spot near the edge of the forest.

Four mounds of dirt became the final resting place for those who had once dreamed of becoming wizards.