Chapter 66

While bombarding the previous two islands, Turan had explored the power of the black powder called the Spirit of Fire from several angles. Fortunately, the Three Brothers Islands had no shortage of pirates to serve as test subjects, allowing him to conduct a wide variety of experiments. He had detonated it over their heads, beneath their feet, on the other side of a wall, after cornering them...

As a result, he had discovered that explosions struck hardest in enclosed spaces rather than open ones. From what he could discern with his ability to read air currents, it seemed the force that would otherwise scatter in all directions struck the walls and rebounded.

He could probably create all sorts of interesting things by exploiting that principle, but with battle imminent, he had to settle for a relatively simple application: creating walls of wind, as he did for his wind channels, to enclose the blast area.

* * *

'That's horrific.'

Flying through the air, Turan looked down at the corridor devastated by the explosion. He had poured out enough Spirit of Fire to turn the floor black, then detonated it all at once while sealing the windows with walls of wind.

As a result, the explosion that began in the corridor had directed its full force inward instead of allowing it to escape outside. Some had dispersed through the doors to the bedrooms and stairs, of course.

According to the Holy Relic's senses, two of the nine nobles had died instantly, while the mana flows of two others wavered as though they, too, had suffered considerable damage. That exceeded his expectations. He had only hoped to inflict moderate physical damage on all nine and deplete their mana, perhaps putting one out of action if he was exceptionally lucky.

The fortress being sturdy enough to withstand the blast seemed to have made a difference.

"Orin, Amia... Damn it! A Barrier-user's trap?!"

"N-no! If there had been a barrier ahead, my magic tool would have detected it—"

"Get out of here first! Jump out the windows!"

"What about those two?"

"Carry them!"

All the Spirit of Fire inside had already been consumed, but without knowing what had caused the explosion, they would fear another such attack. On that assumption, it was a fairly sound decision.

As the seven nobles jumped out the windows carrying two corpses on their backs, Turan watched from above, hovering with his sling whirling. Moving targets ruled out using a wind channel, but even without one, his stones were powerful enough to kill most nobles with a single hit.

'Shall I take that one out first?'

One man among the seven was particularly slight of build. Not only were both his hands occupied with carrying a corpse, he was also among the most badly hurt.

Turan launched a stone at him, and his target's head burst with a sound of tearing air. The man must have possessed some sort of defensive magic tool, for a multicolored radiance rose to intercept it, but it was no match for a stone whose power Turan had taken time to build.

"What..."

"A sniper! Above us!"

"I can't see anything!"

"Then light it up!"

Everyone's first response to an unseen attacker was to summon light, thanks to House Zahar's long history of relying on stealth magic to commit atrocities. Had their power not made them so troublesome to eradicate, the Enril Desert would probably have changed hands by now.

But Turan had anticipated that response. Immediately after throwing his stone, he had entered the blasted corridor and dropped through a hole in the floor. However specialized their bloodline was in light, they could not illuminate the interior through stone and wood from outside.

"Where's the enemy...?"

"I can't see anyone!"

Unable to locate their enemy even with their surroundings lit as brightly as day, the Baraha nobles fell into confusion. After looking around for a while, they charged toward Solif, who stood in the garden some distance away. Whatever that ambush had been, securing Solif took priority.

"Damn it, subdue him first!"

The Baraha nobles each conjured weapons of light and fire and launched them. In response, Solif created a halo and drew out whips of light as he had when fighting Turan, but now he wielded them with incomparably greater force. Clearly, he had held back considerably then, not knowing how skilled his opponent was.

"Ghk—"

Yet even with that power, Solif could not gain the upper hand. Fighting six against one was difficult enough, and he was injured and had been stripped of every magic tool he owned. Meanwhile, the three nobles stronger than Turan stood at the front, weathering Solif's attacks with a different magic tool each.

'One seems to have taken the tool Solif used. Another feels similar to my guardian magic tool... Does the last one move around to block attacks?'

The only reason Solif was holding out instead of being subdued at once was that he, too, was using a defensive magic tool: the guardian magic tool Turan relied on. With it fully activated, Solif was theoretically on par with a great house's heir possessing the guardian bloodline. Even several high-ranking nobles working together would have difficulty bringing him down quickly.

That gave Turan ample time to emerge from the building, form a wind channel, and prepare his second shot. His target was the one moving least among the six. Absorbed in their battle, the Baraha nobles naturally never even noticed his movements.

"Gah!"

When a silently approaching stone pierced one man's heart, the Baraha nobles who had been overwhelming Solif hastily shifted into a defensive formation. One of them deduced the direction of the shot from the condition of the corpse, but Turan had already concealed himself inside the fortress again.

"No, it really is Zahar...? Why?"

The leader of the group sent to capture Solif, said to be the House Head's younger cousin, muttered in disbelief, as though a Zahar noble's intervention were enough to bring the sky crashing down.

His utterly stunned expression lasted only a moment. Proving he had not been made leader for nothing, he quickly recovered his composure and issued orders.

"Soru and I will keep fighting him! Rei, get the Zahar bastard hiding inside!"

Two of the three nobles stronger than Turan and three weaker nobles surrounded Solif again, while the remaining one charged toward the building. A bird of flame blossomed over his hand, swelled to an enormous size, and flew into the fortress.

'Damn...'

The fiery bird burrowed into the fortress and swept through every corridor and room, burning the hundred-odd pirates hiding inside to watch the battle between the mighty wizards. Was this what a sufficiently powerful Pyromaniac bloodline could accomplish?

Turan drew water from his canteen, covered his face with it, and hurled himself toward the rear of the residence. He felt scorching heat lick his back and the back of his head.

"Ngh..."

Despite his quick escape, the burning pain in his back suggested he had suffered fairly serious burns. Even just activating his guardian magic tool would have spared him this much damage, but he had lent it to Solif. There was nothing to be done about that.

As he retreated, he absorbed mana from the Mimic Holy Relic and turned to see the Baraha noble called Rei approaching. The burning fortress shone behind the man, casting his face in shadow.

"I thought everything had been settled with your people. Is it your house's will that you interfere with our business, Zahar?"

"Think what you like."

Judging by his words, there seemed to be some understanding between Baraha and Zahar. Perhaps it was something as mundane as handing over tangible or intangible assets in exchange for permission to pursue their quarry into Zahar territory without interference.

Or it might be something darker. The same god's shadow might loom behind Zahar as well, for instance. Or perhaps different gods stood behind the two houses and had reached some agreement between themselves...

Despite the many thoughts running through his mind, Turan showed no sign of unease as he tossed out his response. Rei, by contrast, grimaced at the provocation from a noble plainly much younger than himself.

"What makes you so cocky? Surely you know we Baraha are your natural enemies. Or are you their heir, perhaps?"

Light and fire were both natural counters to Zahar's stealth. Besides, the Zahar bloodline itself was not particularly suited to direct confrontations like this.

Gifted though Turan was, fighting a stronger wizard specialized in combat head-on was difficult. All the more so without even a nearby source of water, as he had enjoyed when fighting Solif.

Yet there was no trace of fear in Turan's eyes as he regarded his opponent.

"I'm not the heir, but I can still beat the likes of you."

Stung by those words, Rei launched a sphere of flame packed with immense mana. At that instant, Turan stamped hard on the ground, raising a massive wall in front of himself. Despite his inferior mana, his stone wall withstood the fireball's explosion with ease.

"The things Pyromaniacs hate most are Earthkeepers and encountering the Rapids bloodline near water, aren't they?"

And what Turan had just absorbed was precisely the mana of the Earthkeeper bloodline—the power possessed by the army commander he had killed in the western wilderness.

Immense heat could melt even earth and stone, but it was a different matter when that earth bore the power of a house that ruled the land.

When Turan launched a stone from his sling to counterattack, amusingly enough, it too benefited from the Earthkeeper bloodline, flying faster and harder than usual.

"Ghk!"

As Rei recoiled in shock at the sudden attack and covered his face with his hands, something green flew from inside his clothes and knocked the stone aside. It was the small, palm-sized shield Turan had seen earlier. Presumably a defensive magic tool, it circled Rei confidently, as though certain it could deflect any attack.

"Damn it...!"

Apparently the block had not been deliberate. Rei cursed and rubbed his face where the stone had nearly struck. Judging by his flushed face, he seemed ashamed and enraged that he had been frightened.

He thrust a hand toward Turan, sending dozens of arrows of light flying. Giving light physical form was normally simple enough to be among knights' favorite spells, but in the hands of a noble whose bloodline controlled light, it became a vicious weapon.

Turan stamped again, raising spikes to shoot down each incoming arrow. Both forms of magic dealt in physical force, but where earth magic was slower and more defensive, light was fast and offensive.

As they traded blows, Turan used some of the attention he had to spare compared with his opponent to draw out Spirit of Fire and send it flying with wind magic. It slipped smoothly past the shield and erupted in a violent explosion around Rei.

"Urgh!"

An attack like this could scarcely injure a high-ranking noble's body, but it could temporarily impair his sight and hearing. There was no need to explain how significant that was in such an exchange.

Turan seized the moment when Rei covered his face, driving earthen spikes through his feet and legs. The green shield could stop an attack or two, but it could not block everything while its owner stood completely still.

"Aaaaagh!"

Rei screamed in pain. Yet, as befitted a high-ranking noble who had lived for centuries, he continued firing arrows of light even then, forcing Turan to defend.

Turan tried sending Spirit of Fire on the wind again, but to his surprise, this time the powder exploded the moment it left his hand. He groaned softly at the minor burns on his hand.

"Urgh..."

"I don't know what dirty trick that is, but it won't work twice!"

Focused on the battle, Rei seemed to have noticed that Turan was sending black powder to explode around him and immediately devised a countermeasure. Perhaps because his bloodline was half Pyromaniac, he was also far quicker than Turan at conjuring fire.

Turan abandoned further use of the Spirit of Fire and settled into a straightforward contest of magic. He reshaped the earth to create more spikes, forcing his opponent to move while simultaneously shooting down the incoming arrows.

The green shield blocked the stones he slung between exchanges, but in the larger scheme of things, that was a liability as well. All magic tools ran on their owners' mana. Considering that an automatically blocking tool like that would consume even more, it was obvious who was getting the worse of the exchange.

"Hah, hah..."

Rei's increasingly labored breathing and cold sweat were clear signs that he was burning through mana too quickly. The problem was that Turan was also nearly out of Earthkeeper mana.

When Turan exhausted that mana and pulled back first, Rei brightened, recognizing his advantage.

"Haha... A fine effort, but it's getting difficult, isn't it?"

"Not particularly."

Despite his words, the constant exchange had drained a considerable amount of Turan's strength as well. He still had more to spare than his opponent, but with Solif's fight to help with afterward, he could not afford to waste too much.

In truth, his opponent's immediate discovery of a counter to the Spirit of Fire had been somewhat unexpected. Otherwise, he would have finished this sooner. That was a great house's wizard for you.

Taking advantage of the brief lull, Turan drew the Mimic Holy Relic from his clothes and swallowed a second kind of mana.

"What's that? A magic tool?"

"Something like that."

Rei was blatantly stalling to recover his stamina and mana, but Turan played along. He, too, needed time for the foreign mana to flow into his body.

A moment later, after confirming that the mana had fully settled within him, Turan conjured light and fire in his hands.

"What...?"

Rei looked bewildered by the incomprehensible action. Light and fire? Those were the two powers most abhorrent to a Zahar noble who relied on stealth.

Of course, his opponent had just unexpectedly demonstrated the power of a skilled Earthkeeper noble, but even so, these were hardly weapons to bring against someone with the Sun bloodline.

As though answering his unspoken question, Turan brought together the light and fire in his hands. The two powers refused to mingle, as if they existed on different planes. Before long, they warped and merged into one, taking the shape of a shining ring behind Turan's back.