Chapter 67

The beam magic Solif had demonstrated, created by combining light and fire, was a secret art passed down to Baraha’s House Head and heir. It was much like Arabion’s thought acceleration magic, which Maysa had secretly taught Turan.

The difference was that the former required the Sun bloodline, while the latter could be used without the Storm Bloodline. That was why Solif had been puzzled when Turan asked him to teach the technique in the dungeon.

["Even if you understand the principles, you can’t use it without the Sun bloodline."]

["I have a way. Just teach me."]

["... Well, if you say so. First, you know fire comes in different colors, right?"]

A flame’s color depended on what it burned as fuel, and wizards could adjust it to some extent by manipulating the properties of their mana when using ignition magic. Those colors varied with the wavelength of the light emitted. By precisely adjusting the colors of fire and light until they matched, one could blend the two together. The ideal color for this was the gold Solif had produced.

Turan did not understand exactly what a wavelength was, or why matching the wavelengths of light and fire made them blend. But Solif did not understand that much either when he used the magic, so this was enough theory.

'Let’s see.'

Turan drew a single whip of light from the halo spread behind his back and gave it a gentle swing. Perhaps his lack of practice was to blame. Its movement felt terribly clumsy and crude compared to Solif’s.

Of course, to ordinary wizards, being able to use it this well after only a few brief attempts in the dungeon would have seemed an outrageously unfair display of talent.

"Wh-what? How can you possibly use the Light of Judgment?"

Countless thoughts raced through the Baraha noble Rei’s mind at the sight. Had the heir somehow fathered a child that age in the few years since fleeing the house? Of course, that was absurd.

Then was his enemy not a Zahar at all, but a bastard of Baraha blood who had merely used a stealth magic tool? It was difficult enough to imagine whose child he could be, but even then, how could that explain the Earthkeeper bloodline ability he had just displayed?

His thoughts tangled in all those questions, Rei only came to his senses and hurried to respond when Turan’s whip hurtled toward him.

"Ghk!"

The sword of light extending from his hand seemed about to knock the whip aside, only to be cleanly severed, unable to withstand its heat. Things might have been different at full strength, but Turan now had more mana remaining than Rei.

The green shield blocked the attack once again, keeping him alive, but doing so cut a substantial chunk from his scant remaining mana.

His one consolation was that his opponent was not particularly skilled with Baraha’s secret art, the Light of Judgment. At that speed, he thought he might still be able to dodge it as long as he stayed alert. Had his feet and legs not been injured, he could even have evaded it with ease.

The instant that thought crossed his mind, the number of light whips Turan produced increased to four.

"I’m not used to this yet, so I can only manage about four."

Accompanied by words enough to make Rei faint, the newly multiplied whips flew toward him. They moved almost exactly twice as fast as the last attack.

* * *

When Turan returned straight to the garden after finishing Rei off, Solif was running out of strength and on the verge of being subdued.

The Baraha wizards pressing him were scarcely better off for mana themselves. Unsure when the Zahar noble might reappear, they had wasted it keeping their surroundings brightly lit.

"Y-you..."

"How can you use that?!"

Just as Rei had been moments earlier, the Baraha nobles were aghast at the sight of Turan appearing with a halo behind him. When he instantly drew more than ten whips from it and wielded them with skill, they were left half stupefied.

They put up a respectable fight despite the sudden reversal, but the outcome was already decided. Even after subduing Rei, Turan retained a little under half his mana, while the Baraha nobles had wrung out almost all their strength trying to subdue Solif.

Then the exhausted Solif mustered everything he had left to take down one of the high-ranking nobles along with himself. Turan leisurely flew above the garden with flight magic, dealing with his enemies one by one.

First, he scattered Spirit of Fire and detonated it, overwhelming the eyes and ears of the three weaker nobles. While they were helpless, he cut two down, then killed the remaining one with a sling shot as the panicked noble tried to flee.

Concerned that it might be turned against him as before, he used Spirit of Fire only that once. He methodically subdued the last remaining Baraha noble, their captain, with light whips, just as he had fought Rei. The man put up a good fight, wielding a cloth-shaped magic tool that swallowed light, but his mana was already nearly spent. Before long, his arms and legs were severed, and he lay helpless on the ground.

Was it fortunate or unfortunate that the searing heat kept him from bleeding, leaving no danger of fatal blood loss?

"What... what the hell are you? Stealth, the Light of Judgment, flight, even explosive magic... You wield them all at will."

The Baraha captain’s eyes held the fear of a man confronted with an incomprehensible creature. None of this made sense unless the god of magic himself had descended. Even an attack by the head of a great house would have been less bewildering.

Turan understood the feeling, but he needed to ask questions, not answer them. He took the chain magic tool from his High-Capacity Pouch. He intended to restrain the man so he could not resist even after his mana recovered, then extract information at his leisure.

But the captain’s expression changed at the sight of the chains, and his head burst into flames. The fire was tremendous, as though he had concentrated every last scrap of his mana into it.

"Ah."

Normally, casting magic on a wizard’s body without a proper causal link provoked powerful resistance. The sole exception to that restriction was casting magic directly on one’s own body. Just as the noble before him had done by unleashing ignition magic on his own head.

Before Turan could react, the captain’s head was charred black, and he was dead. Turan looked down at his corpse, then clicked his tongue and put the chains back in the pouch.

Someone of that standing surely would have known something about whoever had manipulated Solif’s life. Subduing a noble prepared to die was no easy task, even with a magic tool suited to the purpose.

'Nothing to be done, I suppose.'

There was no use dwelling on what was over. Leaving the captain’s corpse, Turan carefully lifted Solif from where he lay sprawled on the ground and sat him up. His entire body was in tatters: one arm was missing from the elbow down, and a fistful of flesh had been gouged from his side.

"You look terrible."

"Heh. Still, I held out pretty well... didn’t I?"

Solif’s eyes were unfocused as he answered. Left like this, he seemed likely to lose consciousness soon. Naturally, losing consciousness in this state meant death. The vitality of a top-ranking noble would keep him going for another few hours, but there was little hope of healing naturally.

Turan extended his senses toward the dead nobles, found a silhouette shaped like a glass bottle, and retrieved it. Having heard a rough explanation of their magic tools’ functions while planning with Solif, he knew this was a healing tool.

'He said it produces healing potions when you feed it mana.'

Presumably, it imitated the Holy Relic that produced an elixir of life capable of reviving even the dead. When he infused it with mana, liquid appeared, sloshing inside the empty bottle. Turan gave it to Solif to drink. Before long, color began returning to his pale face.

But the potion was too weak, and Solif far too powerful, for a single dose to heal him. Turan kept converting mana into potions and feeding them to him. Expending another large portion of the little mana left after the fight brought a dizzying wave of exhaustion.

'Tsk. Less efficient than the Healer Bloodline, I suppose...'

Then again, a magic tool that reproduced a bloodline ability with equal efficiency would qualify as a Holy Relic in its own right. Even Turan’s guardian magic tool reproduced the guardian bloodline’s power at the cost of poor mana efficiency.

After several breaks, during which Turan made another potion and fed it to him whenever his mana recovered, Solif shuddered all over and rose. His severed arm had not returned, but he seemed to have regained a fair amount of strength.

"Back from the dead!"

"Good. If you’re back, make me some of this..."

Solif, who had sprung to his feet, looked sheepish when Turan held out the glass bottle with a half-dead expression. He made a healing potion for him. Drinking it, Turan felt the persistent sting of the burns on his back ease a little.

Once they had passed the worst of it by making potions for each other, Solif used telekinesis to unfasten the guardian magic tool on his arm and handed it back.

"That really is an incredible thing. Without it, I’d have gone down ages ago."

"It’s my treasure."

In sheer functionality, the Mimic Holy Relic was overwhelmingly superior, but Turan was personally more attached to this tool. It was a gift from a friend, after all. Though what Asiz had made himself was actually the clothing, now tattered from battle.

"So... shall we get straight to collecting everything?"

"I’ll fetch Vije first."

"I should start gathering things, then."

"Leave it and rest. I’ll do it."

However vile their hidden intentions had been, these people had once been Solif’s family and comrades. Fighting them to the death would have been disturbing enough. Turan did not want to make him search and gather their corpses as well.

"I feel a bit bad resting by myself when we fought together."

"If you were in one piece, I’d put you to work whether you liked it or not. Don’t worry about it."

"Well, in that case."

After watching Solif sit against a tree with a sheepish expression, Turan headed straight for Vije’s hiding place. He encountered neither pirates nor islanders as he passed through the fortress and village. The pirates had presumably fled by ship in terror at the sight of the burning fortress, while the residents seemed to be staying shut inside their homes, waiting for the battle to end.

When he dug open the entrance to the little burrow, he found Vije crouched inside.

"Vije, I’m back."

[Turan, hurt?]

Vije wrote as soon as she saw his face. An ordinary person would have seen nothing inside the dark burrow, but Turan could read it clearly.

"I’m not hurting, just tired. It’s all over, so you can come out. I have a nice present for you, too."

[Present?]

"Something tasty."

Turan had left Vije out of this fight because she was far too weak compared to him. Strong as she was for a monster, a bad hit from a powerful House Head-caliber wizard could put her in danger. Someone like Rei, who had fought Turan head-on, could probably have killed her in a single blow.

But once she absorbed mana from the corpses lying in that fortress, it would be a different story.

* * *

'What a haul.'

Returning to the fortress with Vije, Turan gathered the dead Baraha nobles and claimed their magic tools. Thanks to the Mimic Holy Relic, he fortunately had no need to strip the corpses down to their underwear to search them.

He recovered no fewer than twenty-three magic tools. About ten were relatively ordinary, and seven could be called quite exceptional. The final five were treasures that even a great house would value highly, scarcely inferior to Turan’s guardian magic tool.

If word spread that a single individual possessed this many magic tools, dozens of noble houses might rise up to hunt him. First, Turan urged Solif to reclaim the tools that had originally belonged to him.

"Are you sure?"

"The tools you already owned would be the ones best suited to you, wouldn’t they? Keeping a whole pile to myself would be pointless."

Owning two fire-spewing magic tools did not double a wizard’s firepower. Exercising that power still consumed the wizard’s own mana. If one had multiple tools, it was more efficient to distribute some among companions who could make good use of them.

Looking somewhat embarrassed, Solif gathered a dozen or so magic tools, including a backpack, wooden sticks with paper attached, and underwear.

Turan then carefully sorted the remaining tools, recalling their functions one by one or asking Solif beside him to confirm them. He had seen most during the recent battle, so he could roughly tell what they did.

'This is the one that Rei fellow used. Automatic defense... It works well, but the mana consumption looked excessive. I’ll keep it for now. This one probably overlaps with my guardian magic tool, so I’ll give it to Solif. Oh, isn’t this that cloth from earlier?'

Born with the offensive powers of light and fire, the Baraha nobles had not brought many offensive magic tools. The closest thing to one was the item Turan now held: the light-swallowing cloth.

The Baraha captain had used it earlier. Spread open, infused with mana, and waved about, it absorbed bright light in the surrounding area. They had probably brought a tool that was practically the Sun bloodline’s natural enemy in order to hunt Solif.

And a tool that removed light would be immensely useful to a Zahar wizard like Turan, too.

'This could really come in handy.'

Until now, whenever someone lit up his surroundings, he had been forced to flee helplessly or drop his stealth. With this cloth swallowing the light, he could fight while remaining concealed.

Perhaps Zahar nobles already made and used similar magic tools. The only time he had seen Zahar wizards fight was in the underground labyrinth, where stealth had been meaningless.

After folding the cloth away and resuming his sorting, Turan noticed a translucent mask.

"Is this the one? The mask that changes your appearance?"

"Hm? Oh, yes. Probably. Their appearance changed when they put it on."

"But you don’t know its exact functions or any side effects?"

"Right."

Turan examined the mask from various angles, then sent it into his High-Capacity Pouch as well. He would ask Asiz to appraise this one later, too.

Once the sorting was largely done, the long-awaited time to absorb mana arrived. Of the ten nobles killed this time, Turan had already absorbed one in the dungeon, leaving nine. Looking at the row of corpses, Solif spoke in a somewhat shaky voice.

"This feels really strange. It’s not my first time holding a ‘funeral,’ but..."

He could hardly have imagined a day would come when he killed members of his own house and held their funeral. When Turan brought Vije to stand beside them, Solif asked quietly.

"Are you going to let her eat the bodies?"

"No. Vije can absorb mana the same way wizards do. I taught her."

"Oh, I hear there aren’t many monsters that can learn that..."

Apparently, this was not a talent unique to Vije because of her exceptional intelligence. Perhaps relieved that the bodies would not be mutilated, Solif extended his hand with a slightly easier expression.

And so the absorption began. First came the six weaker nobles, whose mana was on the level of ordinary House Heads.

Naturally, neither Solif nor even Turan could expect meaningful growth from absorbing their power. At least Turan gained something by storing Sun bloodline mana in the Mimic Holy Relic. Watching him, Solif clicked his tongue in disbelief.

"I still can’t believe it, even seeing it again. A Holy Relic that absorbs mana and reproduces bloodline abilities..."

Turan had already explained it in the dungeon, and Solif had witnessed the results himself, so he was not surprised. Yet he still seemed to find it hard to accept. That was only natural: no magic tool, whether currently in existence or recorded in history, had ever possessed such a function.

Unlike the two top-ranking nobles beside her, Vije was growing noticeably stronger as she absorbed the six nobles’ mana. It was only to be expected when she had started out slightly stronger than an ordinary noble and absorbed no fewer than six House Head-caliber wizards.

After calming Vije, who was stamping her feet and flying about at her sudden increase in power, they carefully absorbed the mana of the final three high-ranking nobles.

Solif gained little from it, but as Turan absorbed, one after another, nobles whose mana was slightly stronger than his own, he experienced the joy of growth for the first time in a while. From the flesh of his bones and muscles to his mana, mind, and soul—or some essence deeper still—he felt himself being reborn as a more transcendent being.

He let out that almost dizzying pleasure in a few breaths and opened his eyes. Everything around him seemed clearer. His increased mana had enhanced his physical abilities and sharpened his senses.

'At this level... perhaps I’m about equal to Perga.'

He did not remember Perga’s strength precisely, so he could not be certain, but he thought he was roughly at that level. Compared to Solif beside him, he had about eighty percent of his power.

Considering that Perga had once been regarded as a candidate for Zahar’s heir, Turan was now powerful enough to stand alongside the heirs of great houses, if near the bottom of their ranks. With his magic tools and magical skill taken into account, he would be stronger still.

As he pressed a hand to his pounding heart and tried to calm himself, Vije gave a piercing chirp beside him and soared into the sky. Having grown even more rapidly than before, she seemed overexcited.

"Vije, I know you’re happy, but calm—"

Turan tried to rein her in, only for the sight before him to rob him of speech. Against the pitch-black night sky, whirlwinds raged with every beat of a black eagle’s wings.