Chapter 70

As soon as Asiz finished explaining, Turan put the mask to his face. It felt cold and hard at first, but the moment he fed mana into it, it turned into something warm and pliant that clung snugly to his skin. As promised, he could feel it steadily drawing mana from him, though his natural recovery could easily keep pace.

"How do I look?"

"You've aged terribly in an instant. It's seamless."

When Turan spoke to Asiz, what emerged was a low voice far rougher than his own, like metal scraping against metal. In the mirror beside him, he saw a middle-aged man with sun-darkened brown skin and a thick black beard. On closer inspection, though, everything below the neck remained Turan's comparatively pale skin, making the effect somewhat awkward.

'Come to think of it, he did say the scar was still there...'

Of course, if it could change the shape of the body as well, Solif would never have noticed anything amiss. Nor would anyone have let a tool that powerful out of their hands merely to impersonate a pirate.

Asiz, who had been watching quietly, asked him a question.

"I didn't expect it to give you a beard, though. That's not real, is it?"

"Surely not."

To make sure, Turan plucked out a hair. It came free painlessly, then crumbled away. Apart from that, even stroking it revealed nothing unnatural about its texture. It was a remarkably convincing disguise.

"Whatever its matching piece is, this is useful enough on its own."

As he spoke, Turan felt an odd vibration against his chest. It came from the object he always wore as a necklace: the Mimic Holy Relic.

"Why is this... ?"

"Could that be its matching piece?"

Now that he thought about it, the two did have similarities. The relic's owner had possessed a bloodline called Mimic, and its function was to absorb others' mana and reproduce their bloodline abilities. Wasn't the mask likewise an object that mimicked other people's faces?

But if it belonged to a pair with something left by a god who had come to rest in the sea thousands of years ago, that would make the mask a Holy Relic too. Both its mana and its abilities seemed far too meager for that. Besides, House Baraha would have had to be mad to let such a thing circulate outside the house.

"Aren't they too different in quality?"

"Completely. It's like comparing your guardian magic tool to the magic lamps hanging here."

Before having the magic tools appraised, Turan had first asked Asiz to examine the Mimic Holy Relic. Until now, rather than properly understanding its functions, he had been using it by trial and error, experimenting with one thing after another.

After trying, however, Asiz had said it was utterly beyond his ability to appraise. Apparently, it was unquestionably among the finest Holy Relics in existence. To examine it properly, they would probably have to ask Asiz's mother or older brother.

"That aside, if they are a pair, what do we do? Just put them together?"

Turan removed the mask and touched it to the relic to test the idea. Not only did nothing new happen, even the vibration stopped. Apparently, that was because he was no longer using them together.

"Nothing's happening."

"Why not try feeding them mana while they're touching?"

The moment Turan followed Asiz's suggestion and fed mana into both objects while holding them together, the mask and relic began vibrating with a deep hum.

HUMMM

It was a signal so clear that even a fool would have recognized a connection between the two.

Feeling an enormous quantity of mana draining through his fingertips, Turan exclaimed,

"You're right. I think this is how it's done."

The two vibrating objects devoured his mana with astonishing greed. At first he assumed they would stop before long, but as one minute became five, then ten, then more than twenty, his reserves began to run low. Still, it would be a terrible waste if cutting off the supply now damaged them.

In the end, they even summoned Solif from his room, where he had been amusing himself, and the three nobles poured their mana into the resonating objects together.

* * *

The sudden absorption finally ended only after all three had exhausted their mana almost to the limit. Turan, Solif, and Asiz flopped onto the large bed practically in unison.

"I'm so dizzy I could die."

"Hey, if you were going to do this, you should have called me earlier. I'd been practicing levitation for ages..."

"How was I supposed to know this would happen?"

Nearly an hour passed before the three recovered from the weakness and dizziness that had left them sprawled on the bed. Asiz, who had joined in last and thus lost comparatively less mana, touched a finger to the mask and spoke to Turan.

"This mask... I can't appraise it anymore. Just like your necklace."

In other words, its quality as a magic tool had risen tremendously. Turan struggled upright, picked up the two transformed objects, and examined them closely.

The first thing he noticed was their changed appearance. The formerly translucent mask now bore a wave pattern, while the relic was engraved with the face of someone wearing a cap hung with bells.

When he hung the relic around his neck, donned the mask, and activated them, he found that more than their appearance had changed. Within the flows of mana surrounding the two nobles before him, small symbols were taking shape.

'Asiz has a white anvil and a black hammer. Solif has... two shining white hands holding a ball of fire?'

Weren't those perfect symbols of their bloodlines? Turan immediately looked within himself and confirmed his guess.

A white cloud laden with lightning, darkness surrounding it, and a single eye staring wide within that darkness. These were unmistakably the symbols of Arabion and Zahar.

Then Asiz pointed at Turan's face.

"Huh? Aren't you wearing the mask? Your face hasn't changed."

Turan looked in the mirror again and saw that his face was indeed unchanged despite the mask. Had it gained the ability to detect bloodlines at the expense of its transformation ability?

His alarm lasted only a moment. With a sudden flash of understanding, he faced the mirror and imagined his features changing. Before long, his face shifted freely from the Covinus he had just seen to Asiz and Solif, and even to women's faces—Maysa's and Lida's. Beside him, Asiz and Solif stared wide-eyed in astonishment.

"Don't tell me..."

"You can change it however you want?"

Turan continued testing just how much more it could do. He could adjust his height by five to ten centimeters and alter his bone structure and the proportions of his fingers a little, while his skin color and voice could become almost anything he imagined.

Each change consumed mana, but this was unquestionably a supreme Holy Relic worthy of legend.

"It looks like this really was a Holy Relic too. Our mana must have acted as a catalyst for its growth, or for unlocking its power..."

He tried removing the mask and, as expected, lost the ability to detect others' bloodlines. Conversely, when he put on the mask without the Mimic Holy Relic, he could only assume Covinus's face. The additional functions required him to use both objects together.

When he shared his findings, Asiz and Solif looked between the two objects several times and tilted their heads.

"That's strange."

"Isn't it?"

"Certainly is."

How could a supreme Holy Relic left by a nameless Freyan be part of a set with a magic tool House Baraha had been using so casually? Then Turan offered a theory.

"What if this relic wasn't originally all that remarkable either?"

"What do you mean?"

"One thing I wondered when I first went there was why neither the god nor the great sea serpent had become a wraith. Even if their divine nature prevented that, their mana should at least have remained."

If someone had arrived first and absorbed their mana, there was no reason not to take the Mimic Holy Relic. Even if they couldn't take it because it hadn't chosen them, as had happened to the merfolk prince Armani, they could at least have hauled away the entire corpse. A wizard who had absorbed both beings' mana would hardly have been as powerless as that little shark.

"Are you saying this relic absorbed both beings' mana?"

"It's only a guess. Originally, they were a reasonably powerful pair of magic tools meant to be used together. One absorbed the power of a dead god and a mythical monster and became a Holy Relic, while its counterpart spent thousands of years passing from hand to hand as an ordinary magic tool."

He had considered something similar before, but had never been convinced because the Mimic Holy Relic seemed rather unimpressive for something that had absorbed two divine beings' power. Useful as it was in many ways, surely it fell short of a potion that could resurrect the dead or immortal armor.

But if that power had been stored rather than fully used, and the three nobles' mana had now primed it to strengthen the mask, that made a certain amount of sense. Turan's reasoning involved quite a few leaps, but neither of the others could think of a more plausible explanation, so they accepted it.

Then Asiz pointed at the Mimic Holy Relic.

"But isn't identifying bloodlines actually not that useful?"

Unless they were an oddity like Turan, most nobles made no particular effort to hide their bloodlines. Bloodline abilities played such an enormous role in combat that concealing them was difficult in the first place.

Turan answered the puzzled Asiz.

"Now we can find out whether there really are Zahar assassins inside Arabion."

"Oh."

Only then did Asiz seem to grasp its true value: no spy could escape detection before the combined powers of the two newly transformed Holy Relics.

* * *

After finishing the appraisals, Turan strolled around House Berg's guest villa, observing the people who passed by—servants, knights, and occasionally even nobles.

Every noble and knight displayed the hammer and anvil of the Enchanter bloodline, while some knights also had a dormant lightning-cloud symbol. Even among the ordinary people who were not knights at all, quite a few had been born with such symbols.

'Of course, my own mother wasn't a knight, but she had the Arabion bloodline lying dormant within her...'

Watching the passersby as he went, Turan made his way to House Berg's stables. There, a gigantic horse and a black eagle were playing together.

"Having fun, Vije?"

[Turan! That horse is so stupid!]

Vije fluttered over, stamping her feet as she wrote in the dirt. From his past experience, tilly was a fairly clever horse, but apparently not clever enough for someone who could freely write and form sentences.

"Don't be like that. Have fun together, and don't bully the horse."

[I'm not bullying!]

Vije launched into a lengthy account of all the games she had tried with tilly, and how frustrating it was that the stupid horse couldn't understand any of them. Judging by that placid expression, though, Turan suspected the horse simply couldn't be bothered rather than didn't understand.

As he comforted Vije, Turan peered within her using the enhanced relic's senses.

'Arabion's symbol... but it's translucent.'

"Could you make some wind? Not too strong, just a gentle breeze."

Good girl that she was, Vije immediately sent a breeze sweeping around the stables without protest. The translucent symbol activated, and he saw something like yellow light passing from his body into hers.

'So Vije has an aptitude for the Storm Bloodline, but needs a soul-bonded partner to use its power...'

Since he saw no such symbol in tilly beside her, apparently not all monsters possessed this potential. Surely Vije couldn't have a human with Arabion blood among her ancestors, so how had she gained it? That, too, was worth considering.

Afterward, Turan returned to his room to further explore the mask's uses. This time, he tried shaping a face that belonged to someone who did not exist, rather than someone living—or formerly living.

At first he created a completely new face, but the result was unbearably awkward and unsettling. He changed his approach, using real faces as a basis and altering their features little by little. There was no shortage of faces to use, both within the palace and outside it.

Every day, Turan went out to observe and memorize the faces of passersby. At night, he altered or combined them to create people who did not exist: a bold-featured, hearty young farmer, a frail-looking scholar with a long face, an elderly merchant with a hooked nose...

He also gave the two Holy Relics to Solif and Asiz to practice with in case they ever needed them, but unexpectedly, neither could use them. The Mimic Holy Relic would not grant even its basic effects to anyone other than Turan.

After roughly a week spent practicing with the mask alone, Haram returned from his wolf hunt.

"It's been a while."

"It has, Master!"

"Don't call me that."

Haram masked his embarrassment with brusqueness, but a moment later, his eyes lit with interest as he noticed Solif beside Turan.

"You're exceptionally well trained. Do you belong to a great house, by any chance?"

"Hm? Oh, n-no. Of course not..."

When Turan first saw Solif, he had merely thought the man had a sturdy build. Apparently, an expert who had devoted his entire life to the field saw something different.

Haram felt various parts of Solif's body, exclaiming in admiration and repeatedly pressing him about his training methods. Unable to admit he had received that education within House Baraha, Solif fobbed him off with a vague claim that a wandering noble had taught him.

After an interlude that was awkward for Solif alone and entertaining for everyone else, Turan tried training with Haram as he had before, but soon had to stop. None of the equipment could withstand his physical strength anymore.

"You've grown stronger."

"I've been lucky."

Haram did not know Turan's bloodline, but he knew it was not specialized in physical prowess. To possess such strength nonetheless meant he had amassed mana approaching that of a top-ranking noble.

"Hmm."

Haram looked puzzled as to how he had acquired so much power in such a short time, but did not press for details. Perhaps he assumed Turan had done something less than honorable. In any case, having excessively powerful mana was not an unqualified blessing.

* * *

About three weeks into his stay, Turan realized that a reply to his letter to Maysa should have arrived long ago.

"Asiz, how long does it usually take for letters to travel between here and Morgen City?"

"A week at most. Even less for correspondence between noble houses..."

He had asked Asiz just to be sure, but Arabion's communication system was not particularly slow. In other words, if Maysa had read the letter and replied, her answer should already have been here.

There were three main possibilities for the lack of a reply. First, Maysa had read the letter and ignored it. Second, she was not in a position to read it and reply. Third, it had not been properly delivered.

Whichever of the three it was, sitting around would clearly solve nothing.

"I think I'd better go to Morgen City myself."

"Wouldn't it be better to wait until Solif's arm is healed and all go together?"

Turan shook his head and laid a finger against his face.

"Normally, going together would be safer, but now I have this. If I'm just slipping in to check things out and leaving, it'll actually be easier alone."

At last, it was time to put the past few weeks of practice to the test.