Wizard: I am a goblin

Chapter 11 The Witch Hunter's Perspective: Vulture

The sound of metal rubbing against leather.

The torches crackled and popped.

The sound of dragging an object, a muffled thud, flesh colliding with flesh.

Six charred goblin corpses were piled up in a heap.

boom.

The witch hunter tossed the seventh corpse alongside the small hill of goblins. He touched his nose, put his hands on his hips, and sighed.

"This is the seventh one, Father. What do you think?"

The witch hunters, holding torches, looked at the man they called Father.

This is a middle-aged or elderly human male, lean and upright, with no fat between his muscles and skin, and wrinkles creeping around his sunken eye sockets. His hooked nose protrudes from his deeply lined face, and from a distance, his silhouette resembles a weathered vulture.

He wore black leather armor and carried a long, thin sword on his back, the hilt of which was engraved with the pyramid emblem representing the Holy Church of Oebak.

"Vulture" glanced at the witch hunter who had spoken and said coldly, "How do I see it? You took five days to find this little clue?"

"...I'm very sorry, our search has been disrupted," the witch hunter replied. "The etheric fluctuations in this area are strange; we've been led by the nose by incorrect signals for the past few days."

"Do you think Anting is deliberately misleading you?"

Antin, a traitor to the church, a wild wizard, a spy for the Golden Sun Red Earth Empire, and the thief of the Book of Sand.

"...I don't know, Father. Those signals were strong and weak, very unstable. It was very much like..." The witch hunter wanted to say something, but hesitated and swallowed his words.

"Speak, don't beat around the bush."

"Like a beginner in magic, for example, a wizard's apprentice."

The vulture snorted through its nostrils, a hint of disdain on its lips.

"What, you mean, Antin still has time to take on apprentices in this forest? Who did she take on, a goblin?"

The witch hunter sensed the sarcasm in the vulture's words and dared not refute them, but simply lowered his head and remained silent.

Father Vulture walked to the middle of the forest path, and by the light of his torch, he crouched down to examine the burn marks on the ground.

He touched the ground, picked up some charred dirt with his fingers, and smelled it.

Judging from the range and effect of this explosion, is it a fireball spell?

The Third Ring Road.

The vulture wrinkled its nose. If it had tracked them here a few days earlier, it might have already brought that blasphemous half-elf wizard to justice. These young witch hunters were still too green and lacked experience.

These past few days, he was forced to stay in the Holy Capital to deal with the aftermath of the Book of Sand theft, and did not participate in the pursuit operation immediately. Now it seems that this was a mistake.

According to eyewitness accounts, Antin used considerable magic during the theft. This guy has been lurking in the church for so many years without giving himself away… God help me, this sacred church has become such a den of iniquity; it's truly despicable.

According to the vulture's calculations, Antin had already exhausted his spell slots when he escaped to this place.

Using a third-circle spell against a group of goblins, this guy is at his wit's end. The vulture thought.

From the moment he encountered the Book of Sand to his escape from the Holy Capital and his arrival at this place, the curse on that book had seeped into his very bones.

This wizard won't go far.

The vulture looked at the dark treeline in the distance.

The night was dark and the wind was high, with dense forest shadows.

In the forest, some terrible secret is whispering.

Perhaps the half-elf Antin is eking out a living in some hidden corner of this forest.

No, more likely, he is already dead. His unclosed eyes stared at the golden book cover, his frozen pupils filled with an unwilling longing.

The vulture's beak twitched. The church's most prized treasure, abandoned in this desolate wilderness…

The Book of Nasha was the most prized possession of the Holy Library of the Church of Obak. Its theft shook the entire Holy Capital... especially at this crucial moment when the Holy Kingdom of Kane and the Golden Sun Red Earth Empire were preparing to enter into peace talks.

An imperial spy, long plotting to steal the kingdom's church treasures, will surely kill any peace talks if the truth is revealed.

Yes, neither the Patriarch nor the Kane royal family would tolerate this blatant provocation from the Empire.

This war, which has lasted for thirty years, may continue...

The vulture wrinkled its nose and a cold smile appeared on its lips.

That suits me perfectly.

Should I allow the empire's evil witchcraft to continue poisoning the people of this continent? Should I tolerate heretics engaging in petty theft under the Lord's glory?

Twelve hundred years ago, the incarnation of the Lord O'Bak wiped the evil seeds of witchcraft from this land, leaving a clean kingdom for posterity... It is our negligence that has allowed the flower of evil to sprout again in this soil blessed by the Lord.

No, there can be no mercy, no leniency. This holy war cannot end like this!

Evil must be eradicated completely.

"Witch hunter, map!" The vulture stretched out his hand, and the witch hunter quickly handed him a rolled-up parchment.

"Where are the magical beacons you use to detect etheric fluctuations located? Mark them on the map."

The witch hunter stepped forward and pointed out several locations on the map with his hand.

The vulture used its fingers as a pen and the charcoal on the ground as ink to mark the location of the magic beacon on the map.

"What was the direction and strength of the signals detected by each beacon over these five days?" the vulture asked. "Don't rush, take it one at a time, and make sure you tell me all the details."

The witch hunter pondered for a moment, then called over his companions. The dozen or so people systematically reported the direction and intensity of the magical signal they had detected.

The vultures methodically recorded this information on the beacon using arrows and circles. Half an hour later, the entire map was densely covered with symbols and markings, almost indistinguishable.

"Father, as you can see, we are facing a lot of interference, making it difficult to conduct any effective tracking..."

The vulture ignored the person in front of it, instead focusing intently on the maze-like map before it, its eyes practically bleeding, and the prominent veins on its forehead throbbing slightly.

The witch hunter obediently shut his mouth; the priest didn't like being disturbed when he was concentrating.

A moment later, the priest suddenly revealed a barely perceptible smile.

“Decisive action is commendable,” Vulture said, “but when faced with too much uncertainty, what we need to do is think. If there are too many distractions, then the first thing to do is to eliminate false signals.”

"...Rule out false signals?"

"If the magical signal truly originates from the aetheric anomaly, given the density of the marked magical beacons in this area, there shouldn't be just one beacon affected at any given time."

The vulture used its finger to erase part of the markings on the map.

"Isolated beacon alarms are mostly error messages, so we'll delete them for now."

"Even so, the signals on this map are contradictory... You see, the signals received by these two beacons are relatively stable and come from the same direction, but these other beacons are moving around randomly, alarming in all directions."

"Ether is fluid, so don't wizards have legs?" the vulture said sternly. "These reliable alarm beacons are mostly placed at the edge of the forest, while the directional beacons are all in the middle—what does that mean?"

The witch hunters looked at each other, but no one answered.

"This indicates that the source of the signal is constantly moving in the middle of the forest. Its direction remains largely unchanged relative to the beacons at the forest edge, but beacons closer to it will rotate in direction as it moves."

The vulture connected the marks on the map, then drew a twisted line in the center of the forest with its finger.

"Over the past five days, the source of this signal and its general trajectory have been within this area... This is not interference, this is irrefutable evidence! Anting is in this forest."

The witch hunters stared at Father Vulture in disbelief, finding it hard to believe that this man had sorted out such a vast amount of information so quickly.

"Witch hunters!"

"Yes!" The witch hunters stood at attention and saluted.

"Turn this area upside down, don't miss a single blade of grass!" He pointed to the curve on the map.

The witch hunters immediately split into two-person teams, dispersed, and disappeared into the forest. Before long, only scattered torches could be seen moving through the night woods.

The vulture's eyes were fixed on the endless night sky.

You're still alive, Anting, that's good.

Your head will become the fuel to continue this sacred war.