Chapter 53

After leaving Kalamap, Turan flew west, using the old imperial road below as his guide. Before long, he spotted the buildings where Arabion's army had been stationed during the battle against the Dark Elves.

'They left those standing.'

With so many wizards, demolishing them could hardly have been difficult, but they must have decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Perhaps they would serve as shelters for travelers passing between the Gray Zone and the central-western region. Of course, given how hastily they had been thrown together with magic, they were more likely to collapse before that happened.

As he flew farther west, the gray, rocky mountains gave way to a harmonious stretch of forests and plains. The largest and finest trees in the west grew here in abundance, earning it the common name of the central-western forest region. It was near a city on the western edge of this region that Turan had first met Asiz.

'There really is practically no one left alive.'

Even with his Search magic set to humans and extended more than ten kilometers in every direction, he detected nothing. The towns and villages scattered across the ground below all lay in ruins. It was hardly an exaggeration to say that death had settled over this entire land.

'Are Dark Elves truly wolves who can never coexist with humans?'

Interrogation of the captured Dark Elves had revealed that this great invasion was retaliation for the deaths of the Wraith King's beloved youngest daughter and her husband, who had been killed while visiting the surface. Since humans ruled this land, he had deemed humans the obvious culprits and sought to appease his grudge by killing their fellow people.

It was an absurd reason for countless humans and Dark Elves to die, but the prisoners said they had had no choice: in their society, the orders of wraith-wielding royalty were as good as law. In that respect, they bore an unpleasant resemblance to human society, where a wizard's orders were absolute.

'His daughter and her husband were probably those two who tried to kill Asiz.'

Did anyone in Arabion know that? Turan put the odds at about half. It would depend on how well House Berg had kept everyone's mouths shut.

Not that he felt ashamed or guilty about it. Letting Asiz die and leaving those two Dark Elves free to hunt people for sport would not have been right. Though the people who had perished here might have thought differently...

'May you rest peacefully in the palace in the heavens.'

Turan prayed for the people below. He could no longer be certain whether the gods truly dwelled in that heavenly palace, or whether they would welcome human souls... But if they did not, if the dead had nowhere at all to rest, that would be too pitiful.

* * *

Unlike his flight across the Enril Desert, there was no need to hurry, so Turan traveled at an easy pace, allowing Vije plenty of rest. They flew only by day, when visibility was good and the sun kept them warm. When she tired, he tucked her under his arm and walked, and at night they found a suitable deserted village to rest in.

One major difference from his earlier travels was the food. With various dried provisions, cooking utensils, and spices stored in the High-Capacity Pouch Maysa had given him, he could now prepare fairly decent meals even on the road.

"Is it good, Vije?"

[Too salty!]

"Stop complaining and eat. It's not as if you're going to cook."

[I could do better with my feet!]

Apart from the occasional argument with Vije, who insisted she could cook better with her feet than Turan could, their journey proceeded smoothly and without incident.

On their fourth day of travel, Turan realized they were near the forest where he had met Asiz.

A little farther on, he spotted Maderi, the city he had warned about the hidden Dark Elf city. Naturally, it too had been invaded and reduced to ruins.

"Would anything have changed if I'd pressed harder...?"

Beside him, Vije tilted her head as if asking what he meant, but Turan smiled and brushed it off as nothing.

No, insisting more forcefully would not have changed anything. The Dark Elves' offensive had been swifter and fiercer than anyone could have anticipated. Things might have turned out differently had the local nobles banded together, but who could have known what was coming before it struck?

Another day of flight took them beyond Maderi. As the western forests gradually gave way to uneven rolling hills, people began to appear once more.

They had reached the western wilderness, which Turan had once considered wonderfully prosperous, though in the wider world it was merely a backwater. After sweeping past several cities he had also avoided on his previous journey to spare himself the trouble, Orem soon came into view.

'... Was it always this small?'

The first time he had seen it, it had seemed to hold more people than anywhere else in the world. Then again, all Turan had known at the time was a little village of a few dozen people and a small town of a thousand. How enormous a city of tens of thousands must have looked after that.

But now, Orem seemed little larger than Kalamap, if larger at all. Having served as the savior and ruler of a city that size, Turan found it impossibly small.

"Good work, Vije. Would you rest here while I go in for a bit?"

[You won't take long, will you?]

"I won't. Well, probably. Unless something happens."

Perhaps remembering how long he had taken before after saying the same thing, Vije tilted her head skeptically, then wrote that he had better make her a good meal later and flew off. Turan gave her a little wave before entering Orem.

'Oh, it's that policeman from before.'

The man who had told Turan he was filthy and ought to wash was guarding the eastern gate. Well, it wasn't as though years had passed since his last visit. How much could the personnel have changed? With his stealth magic active, the man failed to notice Turan even as he walked right past him.

Having entered the gate unseen, Turan headed straight for the library visible in the distance. Making active use of stealth brought home just how unfair a power it was. He could probably march into the central mansion like this and slaughter the Valtas family without giving them so much as a chance to resist.

Yet as he wandered invisibly through the city, something about the atmosphere felt unsettled.

'Has another monster appeared?'

Turan briefly considered dropping his stealth to ask someone, then simply continued toward the library. It would be a nuisance if anyone recognized him.

Passing the knight who stood guard outside as usual, Turan took hold of the lock securing the library door. He blew air into the keyhole a few times to map out its internal structure, then used telekinesis to align the cylinder precisely and unlock it.

'Success.'

Normally, without knowing a lock's internal structure, telekinesis could crush its mechanism but could not delicately unlock it. With the Storm Bloodline's power, however, he could blow air inside and sense its flow to pick the lock. It was one of the simple tricks he had learned during his time in Kalamap.

A glance behind him showed the knight still watching ahead, none the wiser. Though his senses were not as sharp as a noble's, he should still have heard that sound.

The ability prevented others from recognizing the natural consequences of the caster's actions. That was what made Zahar's stealth so special. Just as people unconsciously overlooked footprints appearing clearly in the desert sand, the knight had heard the lock without connecting it to someone's presence.

He probably would not notice until direct contact was made, or until he perceived an attack coming toward him. Turan entered the library, closed the door, and turned around.

The first things he saw were the curved walls and spiral staircase, now quite familiar after his several previous visits. Before them sat a middle-aged man at a desk: the librarian.

"Sir?"

He tried calling out just in case, but the librarian did not seem to detect him. Did even a spirit made by a god lack the power to see through Zahar's stealth?

The bright magic lamps on the ceiling were draining his mana rapidly, so Turan released his stealth and approached.

"It's been a while, sir."

For some reason, however, the librarian did not respond. He merely sat blankly at his desk, not even blinking, like a finely crafted doll.

"... Sir?"

Turan poked the librarian's shoulder, but his finger passed through as though nothing were there. Come to think of it, hadn't he already learned on his last visit that he could not touch him? His surprise had driven it from his mind.

'Could it be because I didn't bring an official entry pass?'

The head of House Valtas owned both the city and the library, after all. Perhaps the librarian could only recognize visitors who entered with his permission. Just as Turan's expression grew grave, the librarian abruptly turned his head and spoke.

"Well? Was that convincing?"

"... Yes."

Turan let out a disbelieving laugh, and the librarian grinned mischievously. He had known since their first meeting that this was the sort of man—no, spirit—he was, but to think he had played another trick on him.

"You really startled me."

"The look on your face alone made it worthwhile. So, you're back rather soon. You set out so boldly that I thought you'd be gone at least ten years."

"Honestly, so did I. But I've seen and heard far too much for such a short trip."

From the secrets of his birth to those surrounding the gods and bloodlines, and even a mysterious conspiracy, there was so much he wanted to ask. Turan decided to begin with what would be easiest to check.

"Would you mind examining my bloodlines again?"

"Not difficult at all."

As before, the librarian immediately plunged a finger into Turan's body.

"Pursuer, Hunter, and Aeromancer."

Aeromancer probably referred only to the wind-wielding aspect of the Storm Bloodline. The name must have been forgotten after it was absorbed into the Arabion Bloodline long ago and grouped under the name Storm Bloodline.

"And one still hasn't opened. Two types inherited from each side—you really are outrageously lucky."

He had more or less expected it, but the bloodline ability to command lightning was indeed lying dormant. Satisfied to have confirmed that, Turan posed another question that had been on his mind.

"Did all the Freyans have four bloodlines—or types, as you call them?"

"Hmm? Yes, that's right. You certainly haven't been idle. Where did you hear that? Are there other spirits left besides me?"

"I don't know whether it was a spirit, but I did see something that might be similar."

Turan described everything he had seen: the ruins called the Tomb of the Gods far away in the Enril Desert, the labyrinth sleeping beneath them, the monsters the gods had fashioned from giants, and even the process of turning a wizard into a god.

Finally, he showed the librarian the experimental journal left behind by the labyrinth's unknown creator. The librarian gave a low groan and twisted his beard.

"Hmm, an underground labyrinth and an experiment to create a god... Who on earth did this?"

"Was it the limping goddess after all?"

"Probably not. Give me a moment to search through the books that used to be here."

The librarian raised his eyes slightly, as though considering something, then began rolling them round and round. Not up, down, left, and right as people normally did, but literally in continuous circles in a single direction.

After several minutes of this bizarre eye-rolling, he suddenly snapped his fingers, and a translucent book appeared before Turan.

"Read this. It's one of the documents lost after the fall of what you call the old empire. The handwriting is identical."

The ability to manifest lost books—he had never shown that before. Turan tried to turn a page, but, like the librarian's body, the book could not be touched. Instead, pressing the peculiar symbols on either side turned its pages one at a time.

'This handwriting...'

Just as the librarian had said, the handwriting matched that of the labyrinth's master, who had written about the Night Hunter. It appeared to be a diary, though its owner must not have been particularly enthusiastic about keeping it, as there was little written on each page.

[Otas, that pig bastard, is a fucking idiot.

I tell him that leaving a race capable of scientific thought alone will undoubtedly threaten our descendants someday, that we need to exterminate them now, but he can't be bothered to listen.

If I didn't need his tracking ability, I would never have asked that bastard for anything.

Let him spend the rest of his life there whoring around...]

Turan did not know who this Otas was—a man, or perhaps a god—but the words brimmed with animosity toward him. The next page contained a solution to the complaint.

[I've thought of a way to exterminate those steampunk rat-bastards without Otas's help.

Modify the prisoners.

Make sure that low intelligence, exceptional physical abilities, and excessive aggression invariably manifest in their offspring.

Keeping them permanently in heat and improving their ability to track pheromones would be good too.

With things already practically apocalyptic, releasing large numbers of these specimens to breed should turn the entire race into idiots within a few dozen generations.

Even their vaunted defense systems won't activate against members of their own species capable of interbreeding.

At least our descendants won't end up hunted by rat-bastards in steam-powered airships in the distant future.]

The way the writer treated an entire race like a personal plaything was chilling, even if the subjects were not human. Turan asked the librarian beside him about a word he did not understand.

"Do you know what 'steampunk' means?"

"Who knows?"

That was all the librarian said, his manner too ambiguous to tell whether he knew or not.

After quietly reviewing the two diary pages, Turan realized that the 'steampunk rat-bastards' referred to the dwarves. Degenerating their intelligence and maximizing their physical abilities—didn't that describe them perfectly? Moreover, the ancient dwarven relics used steam, which also fit the reference to steam-powered airships.

'... I suspected as much, but this god really did have the power to manipulate life.'

Yet none of the Freyans Turan knew of possessed such a power, nor was it among the bloodline abilities passed down to their descendants. Perhaps this was a god from the south or east, where he had never been, or a forgotten god who had left no descendants and thus gone unrecorded in scripture.

The next page concerned something entirely different.

[There is something fundamentally wrong with the humans here.

It isn't simply that they've spent so long living as slaves to other races. They lack the capacity to investigate new phenomena altogether.

That is why they haven't advanced a single step in centuries and merely use what we provide them.

Should I consider this a problem with the structure of their brains?

Is it possible to artificially instill 'creativity' in humans?

And can we continue to control them in the process?]

The writer had clearly seemed concerned for his descendants before, yet on this page he appeared intent on modifying and controlling humans as he pleased. Had a long stretch of time passed between these pages, during which something had changed his mind?

Feeling a peculiar chill, Turan turned to the next page and realized it was the last.

[A finite lifespan, that's impossible

There has to be a way

What is there???

The Job Advancement experiment I made last time

If I use that as a vessel and transfer myself into another body first]