Chapter 29

A few dozen minutes after landing on Miguel Island, Captain Pires quietly sent several sailors to procure a small boat. As requested, it was just large enough for two people to fill.

Turan boarded it with Armani, whose entire body was wrapped in cloth to conceal his merfolk features.

"The moon! How long has it been since I last saw it!"

Armani murmured as he gazed at the full moon overhead. Even the merboy himself had no idea how long he had been confined belowdecks on the pirate ship. Neither sunlight nor moonlight reached its hold. From the amount he had eaten and the time he had spent asleep, he could only guess that it had been a month or two.

"Huh? Looks like the knight's going somewhere...?"

"He said he had a little business to attend to. He'll be back soon, so pay him no mind!"

A few sailors were surprised to see Turan boarding the little boat with Armani, but Pires's firm response soon put an end to their interest. It wasn't as though he were boarding another large sailing ship. Surely he wouldn't strike out on his own in such a tiny craft.

"More importantly, are you ready to go ashore?"

"Of course!"

"Good. Spend tonight drinking or having whatever fun you like! But any man who fails to muster tomorrow had better be ready for a flogging!"

"Whoo!"

Leaving the captain's orders and the crew's answering cheers behind, Turan fastened Armani's arms and legs to the boat with the chains he had brought. The merboy submitted meekly, then asked for confirmation.

"You really will release me if there's treasure there?"

"Yes."

"Even if it turns out to be useless, that's not my fault."

"All right. Just make sure you guide us properly."

Soon, their small boat began cutting through the darkness over the sea. At first, Turan used magic simply to propel the boat by force, but he changed his approach along the way. The trick was to direct the force at the seawater around the boat rather than the boat itself. When he pushed the water ahead aside while using the water behind and beside them to propel the boat, it moved much more smoothly and took far less effort.

Now that he had tried it, traveling in a small boat propelled by magic wasn't as bad as he had expected. Of course, all sorts of problems made it unsuitable for long voyages.

"Getting there is one thing, but how do you intend to return? You won't be able to find your way without me."

"Are you worried about me?"

"No. I'm worried you won't release me because of it."

"I have a rough plan, so don't worry."

Turan took a small compass from inside his clothes. He had obtained it from Captain Pires beforehand, and according to its needle, they were traveling just slightly south of west.

On the way back, he would simply head just slightly north of east. There would be some margin of error, of course, but his Search spell could cover a radius of a dozen or so kilometers. Well, if he still got lost... he could keep heading southwest and reach land eventually.

Probably.

"I want to jump in..."

"Resist the urge."

Turan lightly chided Armani, who was peering down at the sea and complaining, then focused on moving the boat.

After what felt like an hour to an hour and a half of traveling, something began to appear ahead. It was an island, probably uninhabited, and incomparably smaller than the Miguel Island they had just left.

"Is that it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Give me a moment, then."

Before landing, Turan stopped the boat and scooped up a handful of seawater as he cast Search. The sense he used was smell; his target, merfolk.

He closed his eyes and scooped up water three or four times, sniffing it, but detected nothing. At least that meant Armani hadn't tricked him into coming to a merfolk stronghold. Watching him, Armani tilted his head.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking."

The first time Turan had tried using Search underwater, he had been disconcerted to discover that none of his senses were suitable. Smell was useless, since getting water up his nose would only make his eyes stream. And perhaps because the water interfered with sight and hearing, their search range was much smaller than on land.

By contrast, scooping water out and smelling it made it easy to establish whether a target was present, though pinpointing its location was difficult. Even now, changing his target to something like whales or sharks immediately produced a peculiar scent.

In any case, with their safety confirmed, there was no reason to hesitate. They beached the boat on a suitable stretch of shore, disembarked, and headed inland. The merboy spoke as he looked around, searching here and there.

"I think it was somewhere around here..."

From what Turan had learned in their conversations over the past few days, this island served as something of a secret retreat for Armani. Apparently, whenever life in the merfolk community—or kingdom, as they called it—became too stifling, he would come up here for a walk.

On one such visit, he had happened to discover it in an underwater cave within the island. The fact that he had been hooked by the pirates shortly after setting off, astonished, to report it to his father the king was almost too absurd to laugh at.

"Found it! Here!"

Armani cried out and pointed to a small pond.

"There?"

"Yes. You go in through there... Can you breathe underwater, by any chance?"

"No."

A noble of the Karmine bloodline might have been able to breathe underwater, but that ability was beyond Turan.

"It isn't that deep, is it?"

"About a hundred meters."

"All right. I can give that a try. Wait here."

Turan bound Armani tightly to a nearby tree with the chains he had brought from the boat. The merboy waited quietly until he suddenly cried out in alarm.

"W-wait!"

"What?"

"If you suffocate down there, won't I starve to death here?"

"Then we'd both better hope that doesn't happen."

After making sure Armani was securely bound, Turan stripped off everything except his guardian bracelet and a single undergarment, then buckled on his belt with the dagger. He drew in enough air to swell his lean belly and plunged into the pond.

First, he created a thin barrier to keep the water out of his eyes and preserve his vision. Then he pulled himself underwater using the same technique he had used to propel the boat. He felt he could easily remain like this for twenty or thirty minutes.

'Let's see...'

Before long, his survey of the pond's bottom revealed a hole leading down. That was probably the cave connected to the sea. He descended farther and farther with the water's help. His ears ached a little, but otherwise it was quite bearable.

'Swimming isn't so bad.'

He decided that when he had some time, he should properly learn how to move underwater. Simply mastering that skill would greatly reduce the mana he spent moving through water. Though he wasn't sure whether he would ever need to go underwater again.

Once he reached the bottom and looked around, something caught his eye.

'Found it.'

This deep beneath the already dark nighttime sea, there wasn't a speck of light. But darkness was no obstacle to Turan's Zahar bloodline. An enormous creature lay in the distance... A monstrous shape that made his knees tremble even knowing it was dead.

'So this is a great sea serpent?'

A serpent several meters thick and seemingly close to a hundred meters long lay dead, its body coiled this way and that. So much time had passed that layers of green moss covered it, making it look like part of the terrain unless he examined it closely.

Moving slowly upward along its body, he finally found its head. With four horns jutting from the top and teeth packed densely inside its gaping mouth, it looked more like a lizard. And there was a figure with one hand plunged deep into the center of its skull.

"Ah..."

Forgetting he was underwater, Turan gasped, releasing a stream of bubbles. The figure, outwardly an ordinary human man, was covered in moss just like the great sea serpent.

Yet astonishingly, apart from the chest impaled on a broken fang, his body appeared perfectly intact, without the slightest sign of decay or damage. This despite most of the armor he must once have worn having crumbled under the weight of time.

He looked about thirty and had blue hair, just as Armani had said. Except for their lack of focus, his wide-open eyes looked as though they might come alive at any moment. And... as Armani had told him, in every other respect he looked remarkably like an ordinary human.

'Is this being truly one of the Freyans?'

He considered trying an attack infused with mana, but quickly abandoned the idea as far too disrespectful. Even if this wasn't a god, but merely a powerful wizard, he was still someone who had died fighting a great sea serpent, an enemy of humanity. As a descendant, Turan didn't want to abandon even the most basic respect for his forebears.

'Come to think of it, why hasn't this man—no, this being—become a wraith?'

It was common knowledge that those with mana became wraiths upon death. Yet neither of these two, who had killed each other beneath the sea, had become one. That was strange. If someone had come before him and absorbed their mana, surely they would have taken the mysterious object as well.

Was it because this truly was a divine being? Or was there some other reason? He tried absorbing their mana just in case, but received nothing. Had he gained the power of beings like these, it would surely have made him several times, perhaps even dozens of times, stronger in an instant.

Setting his questions aside, Turan firmly committed the man's face and appearance to memory. His hair and eye color, the shape of his features, the color and form of armor fragments that had all but crumbled away... Later, he could search the myths passed down in other regions for gods described with similar features. That might give him a clue.

After spending several minutes memorizing every detail, he finally turned his attention to the reason he had come.

'Forgive me, honored ancestor, but I'd like to borrow this.'

Of course, whether this man was a god or a wizard, the chances of his being Turan's direct ancestor were slim. Still, having paid his respects, Turan examined the man's waist. The unidentified round metal object barely clung to a half-rotted belt, gleaming as though it alone had escaped the passage of time.

The question was whether he could take it with him. Hadn't Armani said an unknown force pushed him away when he touched it? Contrary to that account, however, the round metal object readily allowed Turan's touch.

'Hmm?'

An alien sensation passed through his fingers. It was as though something extending from the metal was searching for something inside his body. A few seconds later, he suddenly heard a sound inside his head, like something clicking into place.

The instant he heard it, he knew intuitively. Though he couldn't fathom the circumstances, the process that had just taken place had made this object his.

'It judges who's worthy to own it? An object does that?'

Until a moment ago, he had remained skeptical, but he was beginning to think this truly might be a Holy Relic. There were plenty of legends about great treasures choosing their masters.

With the object secured, Turan felt his air beginning to run out and headed back the way he had come. After about a minute of vigorous swimming, just as the moonlight came into view, he sensed something strangely unfamiliar.

'What's this...?'

Though all he could see was faint moonlight above the surface, he could intuitively tell that something was up there, near the edge of the pond. It was a peculiar sensation that couldn't quite be classified as any of his five senses...

"Phew..."

"Did you find it? Did you?"

"For now, yes."

As Turan answered and took a moment to catch his breath, he looked at Armani and realized that the merboy was the source of the sensation he had just felt. Not only that, but now that he could see Armani directly, there was something unidentified inside his body: a pale blue glow, so faint and weak that it seemed it might go out at any moment. It spread dimly through Armani's webbed ears, the gills on his neck, and what appeared to be his heart.

'What on earth is that?'

It wasn't difficult to guess why this phenomenon had suddenly appeared. The round metal object still clutched tightly in his left hand... Whatever it was—a Holy Relic or a magic tool—it was clearly responsible.

"What is it?"

"No, nothing."

Turan climbed out onto dry land, dispersed all the moisture on his body, and dressed. Then he immediately set the round metal object on the ground.

'So it was this, just as I thought.'

The instant he let go of the object, the light inside Armani vanished, along with the sense that had detected his presence. For now, it seemed the object had two functions: first, sensing the presence of living creatures nearby, and second, detecting something within their bodies. He would have to learn a little more to discover what that something was.

"Th-then, now...?"

"Yes. I'll release you. Go."

With a light gesture, Turan made the chains binding Armani fall away.

CLANK!

Despite being free, the merfolk prince hesitated instead of immediately diving into the water.

"What?"

"N-nothing... I didn't think you'd let me go so easily."

"You thought I'd take this, then capture you again and try to sell you?"

"Honestly, yes."

"I gave my word."

Members of other races who ate humans deserved to die, but he had no particular wish to kill someone who claimed never to have eaten a human. Besides, Armani had led him straight to the object without deception. Repaying him in kind was part of the morality Turan had learned from his mother: treat others as you wish to be treated.

"Th-thank you, kind demon. If we ever fight the humans, I'll ask my royal father to leave you alone."

"Enough of that nonsense."

Armani looked back several times before throwing himself into the pond where Turan had just dived.

SPLASH!

Bubbles rose, and Turan saw a small baby shark diving deep into the water.

It seemed the claim of merfolk royalty hadn't been a lie. Looking back, the boy had been honest from beginning to end.

'Well, then... shall I head back?'

Turan stroked the round metal object in his hand as he walked toward the spot where he had left the boat. Finding out what it was promised to be rather entertaining.