Chapter 60

Bloodline abilities were powerful even on their own, but combined properly, they became more fearsome still. The Arabion House Head's magic was one such example: gathering clouds with wind to unleash an even mightier rain of lightning.

The magic unfolding before Turan now was much the same. Golden radiance began as flames, then was refined again and again until it took the form of rays of light. As it gathered in a circle behind the silver-haired man, forming a vast halo, the sailors recoiled in terror and shouted.

"A-a wizard! Captain! First mate!"

"Help us!"

The two knights among the gang reacted in precisely opposite ways to their subordinates' cries. One bravely drew his sword to fight, while the other promptly turned and fled.

Neither choice made any real difference. A whip of light sprang from the halo, slicing through the charging knight's sword and body, then severing even the head of the one fleeing in the distance. No blood or brain matter flowed from the cuts, a testament to the terrifying heat contained in that whip.

"H-huh?"

"They're both... dead?"

"That's impossible."

Had watching the men they depended on be slaughtered so helplessly robbed them of their sense of reality? As the sailors stood dumbstruck, not even daring to flee, the golden whip split into dozens of strands and lashed toward them.

Turan quietly watched the almost dreamlike sight.

'Light and fire...'

He had certainly heard of a house that wielded those two bloodline abilities before. Baraha, the great house said to lie east of the Enril Desert. This man had to be a noble from that distant eastern land.

Before he could consider what a noble based so far away was doing here, Turan realized that hardly anyone remained alive and hastily stretched out a hand. A mass of water rose from the sea beside them and enveloped the three surviving sailors.

"Gah... Huh?"

"We're saved!"

The seawater infused with Turan's mana collided with the descending golden whips, sending up great clouds of steam. In the brief silence that followed, Turan addressed the man politely.

"Excuse me. I understand you're angry, but could we talk for a—"

Rather than listen, however, the Baraha noble immediately formed golden whips from his halo and sent them flying at Turan. Not only were they chillingly fast, each curved independently, as though alive.

Turan grimaced and accelerated his thoughts, scooping up more seawater to intercept the incoming whips one by one. Whether by some manipulation of scattered light or otherwise, their actual trajectories differed subtly from what his eyes perceived. Without the Mimic Holy Relic's mana detection, he would have been utterly deceived.

By the time he had barely managed to deflect every attack, an enormous cloud of steam blanketed the shore.

'Whew...'

The exchange had been brief, but the intense concentration left his head throbbing. Without thought acceleration, he would probably have taken a few hits. At least the man seemed to have no intention of killing him, judging by how every strike targeted nonvital areas such as his hands and feet.

Then a powerful wind blew in from somewhere, sweeping away the steam that covered the shore. The Baraha noble was grinning triumphantly, holding a magic tool of a kind Turan had never seen before.

'What's that?'

How would he describe its shape? A stick with paper attached to the end of a piece of wood, perhaps. What had been straight unfolded into something almost semicircular, and when the man waved it, a fierce wind arose, driving flames forward.

"Tch."

Turan clicked his tongue and used wind magic in turn, scattering the flames pouring toward him to either side. Flames refined into a sphere or spear would have been another matter, but fire conjured loosely so that wind could feed its strength could be dispersed like this.

The Baraha noble asked in surprise,

"What? You're good with wind too? Are those your two bloodline abilities? There shouldn't be a house like that."

Just as his opponent had done, Turan attacked instead of answering, raising a massive wave. Its force alone would have crushed an ordinary person to death, but it was merely a diversion.

The instant his opponent raised a wall of flame to evaporate the wave, the stone Turan had loaded into his sling shot through the steam toward the man's abdomen. With his vision blocked, it was a perfect attack that he could not even prepare for.

Yet as the stone drew close, it vanished in a mysterious shimmer, as though an invisible monster had devoured the space around it.

'What was that? A defensive magic tool?'

Turan narrowed his eyes, analyzing how that defense worked and how he might break through it. Did it only affect physical projectiles? Yet if that were the case, it had not stopped the equally physical seawater...

His deliberation proved pointless when the man suddenly raised both hands and dismissed the halo behind him. The brightly illuminated shore plunged into darkness.

"I surrender, I surrender! I lose. Let's call it here."

His flippant manner made it seem as though the fight had been a game. Turan stared at him in silence before slowly putting his sling into his pouch.

* * *

"You're good, friend. I'm Solif. You?"

"Turan."

Having already traded blows, there was no need to stand on ceremony. Showing no offense at the curt reply, Solif pointed at the steam still lingering overhead.

"I've honestly never seen a wizard handle water that well. You're not from House Karmine, are you?"

"No."

Invoking a bloodline ability a wizard did not possess was among the highest compliments one could offer. But as his persistently clipped replies indicated, Turan was in no mood to enjoy the praise. His eyes were on three charred corpses—the sailors he had failed to protect as the battle grew fiercer.

"Hmm? Oh, right, you were trying to protect them, weren't you? They're not your brothers or friends or anything... are they?"

"There was something I needed to hear from them. Dead men can't talk."

"Oh."

Apparently catching the implication that he had ruined everything, Solif rubbed his ear in embarrassment.

"Look, those bastards pissed me off. I couldn't help it. I was showing them goodwill, even letting them smack me over the head."

Even as a bystander, Turan could see why he was angry, but surely he should have kept a few alive if there was something he wanted. Especially since he himself had been looking for Freyan ruins or something of the sort.

Then Solif's gaze turned to Vije, who had clung quietly to Turan's side throughout the battle. Turan had the impression he was changing the subject to escape the awkwardness.

"Oh, right! That black eagle's a monster, isn't she? The one they were selling in Komad."

Vije was only slightly mutated for a monster and often passed for an ordinary black eagle, but she did have small differences from others of her kind: unusually sharp, intelligent eyes, for instance, or wings a little long for her frame. They were differences only someone who spent a great deal of time around her, like Turan, would notice, yet Solif seemed to have been certain from the moment he saw her.

"That's right."

"I knew my eyes wouldn't deceive me. I spent a whole month trying to win her over. How did you manage it?"

"Well, I suppose you could say we were meant to meet..."

Only then was Turan certain of the man's identity. The future heir of House Baraha whom Vije had refused to choose. Given the circumstances, it could only be him.

Of course, he gave no sign that he had realized this. The next House Head of a great house surely had a reason for wandering alone that he would prefer to keep private.

Then Solif held up all ten fingers.

"Ten times."

"What?"

"I'll buy her for exactly ten times what you paid. How about it?"

"Not even for a hundred times that. Vije wouldn't want it anyway."

Watching Vije nod vehemently from where she leaned against Turan's side, Solif sighed.

"I figured as much. Damn it, what am I missing?"

Turan was deeply curious about that himself. Since Maysa had qualified too, it clearly was not a condition unique to him, yet Vije herself could explain it as nothing more than a 'feeling.'

In any event, though Solif gazed at Vije with undisguised longing and regret, he did not press the matter. That was fortunate indeed. If he had tried to take her by force, Turan might have had to kill Baraha's heir.

'Still, I don't understand why he's so fixated on Vije.'

To Turan, she was his most precious family, but objectively, useful as she was, Vije could hardly be called a particularly powerful monster. Clever though she might be, she had no ability to breathe fire or lightning, or to create invisible blades. Surely Baraha's heir had the power and wealth to obtain any number of stronger monsters.

While he was pondering this, Solif suddenly pointed toward the burned sailors' corpses.

"So, what were you going to ask them? If it's something I know, I'll answer instead. I've been roaming this area for quite a while."

"I'm looking for a source of saltpeter."

"Saltpeter? That white stone?"

"That's right."

"It occurs near my hometown too, but if you believe the rumors about it being an elixir of eternal youth and life, they're nonsense. It's only good for coloring cured meat."

"I know. I just have a personal use for it."

Turan had no intention of telling Solif about the Spirit of Fire. He could scarcely imagine the scale of destruction a noble with the Sun bloodline could wreak with it.

Solif stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment after hearing this, then spoke.

"You want a source around here, right? In that case... Parayan Island should probably do. Head northeast for a few days and you should reach it."

Turan looked at him in surprise.

"How do you know that?"

"I've spent quite a while scouring this area for something. I was on a ship until recently, and as we passed it, I heard someone mention that saltpeter came from there. I haven't been there myself, though."

"Come to think of it, you said you were looking for Freyan ruins?"

Turan left it at that, as though he had no further interest. If the man was searching for some precious treasure, too much curiosity might make him uncomfortable.

Contrary to his expectations, Solif seemed delighted by his interest and eagerly launched into an explanation.

"That's right. There's a story passed down on islands all over the South Sea about a god who sank into the sea while fighting great sea serpents in ancient times and never returned. A forgotten god of old, quite literally, who isn't recorded in any scripture. Doesn't that intrigue you?"

The story was so familiar that Turan almost reached for the Mimic Holy Relic hanging around his neck. But its owner had certainly died in the North Sea, thousands of kilometers north of here...

'Ah.'

Come to think of it, there was another such legend in the North Sea. An ancient magic mirror connecting the North Sea and the South Sea. What if the Mimic Holy Relic's original owner had fought in the South Sea, passed through that mirror to the North Sea, and died there? For something he had just thought up, it sounded remarkably plausible.

"Are you looking for that god's remains, or a Holy Relic he left behind?"

"That would be a bit much. I'm not one of the merfolk. For now, my goal is to find where he stayed just before leaving for battle. It's been so long that any writings the god himself left will be gone, but there should at least be stories passed down. What sort of personality he had, which gods he got along with and which he didn't—that sort of thing."

Insisting that his aim was purely scholarly, Solif chattered away with the same enthusiasm he had shown while boasting to the sailors earlier.

It had all begun when he happened to hear the story of a drowned god at a port south of the Enril Desert. He had spent the entire year since traveling among ports bordering the South Sea and its many large and small islands, gathering information.

Along the way, he had sometimes met good sailors and become their friend, and sometimes fallen into traps like this one and fought his way out. He had eaten local dishes unlike anything he had ever seen and battled powerful marlin monsters and merfolk armies.

As Turan had just witnessed, he usually posed as a commoner. He said he enjoyed it because it exposed him to sides of people he would never have known while living as a powerful noble.

Those tales were quite similar to Turan's own adventures, and he found himself thoroughly absorbed. Still, one thought occurred to him as he listened...

'It sounds like traveling is the real goal, and looking for clues about the god is just his excuse.'

While Turan was privately thinking this, Solif began to grumble.

"But things have been awful lately. Hardly any decent sailors, just scum like those bastards earlier. I've probably killed hundreds of pirates or thugs or whatever they are in the past few months alone."

"Then you must have done a great deal for public safety in the South Sea."

However pirate-infested the sea might be, surely there were not hundreds of thousands or millions of them. Even assuming ten thousand, that meant Solif had killed one out of every few dozen.

"Well, I'm doing a little vigilante work on the side. Ravista and the other houses probably wouldn't like it... but that's fine as long as they don't find out, right?"

"Doesn't your house object to you wandering around like this?"

"Of course I ran away from home. You've probably figured out where I'm from, but don't tell the main house I'm here. I'll get you back later if you do. You've been warned."

Running away from home sounded remarkably childish coming from a man who must have been twenty to forty years older than Turan. Perhaps sensing his stare, Solif gave a slightly embarrassed smile.

"Don't look at me like that. I didn't just leave because I felt stifled. This is a journey to find myself."

"As far as I can see, you're right in front of me."

"No, not like that... Look at me. A perfect face, extraordinary talent, even the house I was born into—I'm living a blessed life, aren't I?"

"Uh..."

Wizards tended to be better-looking than commoners thanks to the benefits of mana, such as straight frames and clear skin, but Solif was plainly not particularly handsome. Unsure how to respond, Turan mumbled something noncommittal. Solif apparently took that for agreement and continued as he pleased.

"But somewhere along the way, a thought suddenly struck me. That I wasn't wholly myself, but something manufactured."

"Manufactured?"

"Yes. I was educated strictly from childhood. You must behave this way, you mustn't do that... Everything, from my personality and abilities to tiny habits and turns of phrase."

"That's—"

It sounded a little excessive, but hardly unusual. Weren't the flowers raised to become nobles' concubines brought up that way? Even wealthy merchants raised their children like that.

As though guessing what Turan had left unsaid, Solif shook his head.

"Yes, any child of a well-off family might think that much. But my house took it far beyond that."

"How so?"

"My interactions with others, my challenges and accomplishments, even the things that caught my interest and absorbed me—it was all manufactured, all fake. I suppose you could say it felt as though someone looking down from above was painstakingly sculpting me..."