For roughly two days after arriving at House Berg, Turan stayed in Asiz's room, gathering information about House Karmine from the books his friend brought him.

There was much to learn, from the house's history since its founding to information about its vassals. Of course, the library in Orem also held considerable knowledge about House Karmine, but the problem was that all of it was outdated.

"Hurry up and turn the page. How can a young fellow read so slowly?"

"You're simply too fast, sir. I've only just finished."

Turan answered the librarian's grumbling and turned a page. Having originally been a library spirit, the old man could never forget the contents of a book he had read even once. If Turan forgot anything later, he could simply ask him.

"A spirit... It's a shame I can't see him."

"Hmph. Does he think I'm some spectacle?"

To Asiz, sitting beside them, Turan merely seemed to be talking to thin air.

Turan spent the day diligently gathering information, then poured mana into the hand mirror around midnight to try to contact Maysa. They had agreed beforehand to try at this hour, and before long, mana flowed in from the other end, distorting the reflection.

["Ah, it worked! Turan, can you see me clearly?"]

"Yes. It works more clearly than I expected, even at this distance. The mana consumption is reasonably manageable, too."

On the other side of the mirror, Maysa's eyes shone, seemingly thrilled that the magic tool she had made worked properly. Then someone pushed her aside and thrust his face into view.

["Let me see, too. Oh... You're really in the Dakayn Plains right now? That's amazing."]

As Solif edged into view, Maysa frowned slightly behind him and smacked him on the back, telling him to move.

"Get that face out of the way. It's a bit much."

["A bit much? What a cruel thing to say about this handsome face."]

After a little banter with Solif, Turan had to spend some time soothing the still-sulking Vije through the mirror. In any case, it was a relief to confirm that she had returned safely.

Once things had settled down somewhat, Turan gave Asiz a chance to see Maysa, too.

"M-Maysa?"

["It's been a while, Asiz."]

"Is that really you? Your hair and eyes are the same color, but..."

Asiz, who remembered her only as a scrawny skeleton, gaped so widely at her changed appearance that his jaw might have fallen off. It was only natural. Anyone who had known her before would have asked who on earth she was.

After staring at her face in wonder for some time, Asiz spoke quietly.

"You don't look as much like Aunt as I expected."

["You think so?"]

"Yes. If anything, you might look a little more like my mother... Anyway, I'm really glad you stopped that ridiculous fasting. You wouldn't even listen when I told you to."

["Ahaha..."]

Asiz still believed she had refused to eat for the sake of flight magic. Maysa brushed his remark aside with an awkward laugh.

"You didn't stop because you wanted to look pretty for someone, did you?"

["Th-that's not it."]

Asiz had been teasing her gleefully, but when he saw her blue eyes darting about wildly, he glanced at Turan, tapped the mirror, and changed the subject.

"More importantly, I hear you made this magic tool?"

["That's right. I never knew it, but it turns out I have a talent for this, too. Could you give me some advice?"]

"I don't know how much help I can be with my skills... What were you having trouble with?"

Though still inexperienced, Asiz was a properly trained Enchanter and was able to pass on quite a few useful tips. Some twenty minutes later, the mana ran out and the connection broke. Asiz turned to Turan, looking deeply moved.

"Maysa's completely healthy now! And she looks so much happier than she used to... I'm glad she's doing well."

Turan gave a bemused laugh at the sight of him even shedding tears of joy. He had known from their first meeting that his friend was softhearted and quick to cry.

"The pleasure of eating is an important part of life."

"It is. Ah... I'm so happy. Seeing her face like this makes all the worries I've been carrying feel as though they've vanished."

Seeing Asiz's radiant smile, Turan smiled softly as well.

* * *

The day after that emotional family reunion, Turan left House Berg, having gathered all the information he needed. His High-Capacity Pouch now held another twenty-odd books that Asiz had purchased for him.

["You might get bored, so you can at least read these."]

Asiz had handed them over with that casual remark, but the books were not something to treat so lightly. The Dakayn Plains might be rich in goods and luxuries easy to obtain, but thick books with such neatly transcribed pages were not cheap. He must have spent several months' worth of allowance acquiring them.

To pay for the books, Turan had dumped a heap of roughly cast gold and silver lumps onto Asiz's bed before leaving the mansion. His friend would undoubtedly refuse if he tried to hand them over in person, so this was the better approach.

After leaving Zavillin, Turan changed his appearance to that of another traveler and strolled leisurely across the plains. The cooling breeze and rippling fields of golden, ripened wheat announced autumn's arrival.

'It would be nice if the reclaimed land became this fertile... Does the soil's composition matter? I should take some along and see whether we can change ours to match it later.'

Walking northeast, Turan picked up a handful of soil and rubbed it between his fingers, lost in thought. It was hardly a secret that Arabion's nobles showered the fields with lightning after every year's harvest. He did not know the principle behind it, but perhaps doing the same on their reclaimed land would have a similar effect. Of course, it would be difficult to sustain without an Arabion noble to call down lightning every year.

Turan traveled on foot around the city, then cast stealth magic and took flight as soon as he reached a suitably deserted place. That way, he would have nothing to worry about even if he encountered an Arabion noble out traveling.

He flew east toward House Karmine for several days, taking care to conserve his mana, until he reached the slash-and-burn farming settlement where they had once fought Bisen.

As he strolled into the village around sunset, a resident leveled a hunting spear at him.

"Who goes there?"

"I'm a traveler passing through, but I've lost my way... Could I stay for just one night?"

"There's nowhere in our village for guests to stay. There's a bigger village down the mountain. Go there!"

"How am I supposed to get down there when the sun's already set? Please, think of it as saving a man's life and let me stay the night. I don't mind sleeping outdoors."

"... Tch. Stay quietly and be on your way. Don't cause any trouble!"

Perhaps because of the lingering effects of Bisen's atrocity, the villagers were extremely wary of outsiders. Turan spent the night gathering information through brief, casual conversations with those watching him.

"Come to think of it, I've heard rumors that a noble who burns villagers alive has appeared again recently. Has this village been all right?"

"Haven't seen anyone like that. If we had, we wouldn't still be alive."

Judging by the village's undamaged state, Bisen's death seemed to remain well concealed.

Having checked the traces he had left behind, Turan departed the farming settlement at daybreak and headed for Abacha, Karmine's capital. Unlike before, when he had simply traveled roughly east toward the sea, this time he walked the old empire's main road, mingling with commoners and picking up snippets of conversation.

"I hear a whole swarm of monsters came rushing out of the sea not long ago."

"Did something like that happen?"

"It certainly did. The high and mighty stopped them quickly, but it seems they still did a fair bit of damage. Don't go wandering near the coast for a while. I saw one myself. It was truly dreadful. That enormous beast rampaging through the village..."

The old peddler chatting with Turan over a shared campfire in a clearing shuddered as he offered his warning. Why had sea monsters suddenly attacked the land?

Too much time had passed for it to be an effect of the great sea serpent wraith's rampage. It was more likely a side effect of the merfolk using its corpse.

'Or the merfolk might have deliberately driven the monsters toward the coast...'

Turan sincerely hoped they had not. He did not want to find himself forced to kill comrades who had fought alongside him against a mighty foe.

After three days of walking the road and listening to all manner of stories, Turan entered Abacha, Karmine's capital, for the second time. He immediately realized that the city's atmosphere had changed completely.

The sailors and laborers walking about all wore gloomy expressions, while the merchants shouting their wares sounded desperate rather than cheerful. The vitality he had felt before was almost nowhere to be found.

After making a brief circuit of the city, Turan headed straight for the district where House Karmine's members lived.

'Security is quite tight here, too... Well, Zahar is a potential enemy, so I suppose that's only natural.'

It was not on the level of Arabion, which had built the Citadel of Light and even operated checkpoints, but Karmine's main-house nobles also lived within a headquarters enclosed by high walls. Considering that key members of houses like Ravista lived outside the main residence altogether, even this represented extraordinary security.

Unlike Arabion, however, which guarded even the sky thoroughly, the compound was open above. Turan combined stealth and flight spells and entered without difficulty by descending from high overhead.

'If they're going to war with Arabion, they ought to pay more attention to the sky.'

Of course, that was probably because they would ordinarily be able to see an Arabion noble flying toward them.

Once inside, Turan immediately heightened his senses and infiltrated the mansions of nobles with powerful mana, just as he had at Arabion's main residence. Each had secured their study in a different way, but with several such burglaries already under his belt, he deftly dismantled their defenses and searched the rooms.

What he had not anticipated was how little those thorough searches would yield.

'Not here either...'

Leaving the third mansion, Turan clicked his tongue in disappointment. Despite searching the studies of three high-ranking nobles, he had found little useful information. At best, they were full of the sort of corruption common to any great house, like the scandals he had exposed at Arabion's main residence.

He had not come merely to uncover such things. His aim was to learn how Karmine's collusion with the merfolk had begun, whether that relationship still held, and, if it had broken down, how.

Apparently, like Arabion's nobles, they did not keep secrets concerning the gods in their homes.

Setting his disappointment aside, Turan left the Karmine nobles' residential compound and spent the night at a well-appointed inn nearby. He was fortunate that coming and going was relatively easy compared with his infiltration of Arabion's main residence. Snatching naps in secluded corners of mansions every day was more exhausting than one might expect.

'Perhaps I should disguise myself as an insider and search somewhere more secret...'

The following afternoon, as Turan wandered Abacha deep in thought, he heard a street vendor's cry. Unlike the gloomy or desperate voices of the others, this one was quite cheerful.

"Grilled skewers! Get your freshly grilled skewers!"

A heavily bearded man of about thirty called out in a booming voice, his hands busy over a sizzling grill. He seemed to be a good cook, judging by the steady stream of customers. After watching him for a moment, Turan joined the line and bought a skewer.

"Keep the change."

"Thank you, sir! Enjoy!"

Eating the quite tasty pork skewer, Turan focused his awareness on the busy vendor's inner being.

An eye stared wide open within pitch-black darkness. A knight bearing Zahar's symbol, selling skewers in a place like this? Anyone would find that deeply suspicious.

'A spy sent by Zahar... Being a knight, he must be a lower rank than Reto. Should I grab him and question him? Or follow him?'

After a moment's deliberation, Turan chose the latter. He was fairly confident in his ability to loosen tongues through pain, but there were bound to be people in the world on whom such methods would not work.

'Looking into this might turn up some unexpectedly useful information.'

Rummaging through Karmine's main residence meant picking out what he needed from a haphazard mass of information. Intercepting a spy's intelligence meant obtaining only the results someone else had already gathered and sorted. It was obvious which would be more useful.

That evening, Turan waited until the vendor closed up and headed home, then followed at a leisurely pace under stealth magic. Naturally, the vendor had no idea anyone was trailing him and led Turan straight to a shabby house on the outskirts of Abacha.

"Ugh..."

Once inside, the spy stretched and acted exhausted. Selling skewers should hardly have been enough to tire a knight. Had he been trained to keep up the act even when no one was watching?

The spy put away his wares, washed, and lay down on his bed. Only once he began snoring did Turan search the shabby house. It took nearly half an hour to discover the collected intelligence hidden in a floorboard beneath the bed where the spy lay.

Perhaps the spy had deemed a cipher unnecessary. His records were organized in a form that Turan could read without difficulty.

'The whereabouts of House Karmine's members, their travel routes, their conversations... They've certainly investigated a lot.'

He had probably obtained this information through collaborators inside the house, or through subordinates. Surely he could not have gathered it all while grilling skewers here. Perhaps this vendor was a mid-ranking operative who compiled reports from his subordinates.

It was a reasonably sound strategy, considering how unlikely anyone was to suspect a skewer vendor. They could hardly have anticipated that someone capable of sensing other wizards' mana would happen by and notice a vendor with a knight's reserves.

While reading the spies' accounts of the house's members, Turan came upon an entry about Bisen.

'No contact since leaving with several close acquaintances from vassal houses... Family presumes she is on a pilgrimage beyond the house's territory.'

Apparently, House Karmine was unaware not only of Bisen's death, but even of her companions' deaths. Then again, they had been killed and buried in a deserted place, so it was only natural that ordinary methods would have trouble locating them...

Turan clicked his tongue and continued reading the spy's records, until an underlined passage made his eyes widen.

'A secret meeting of the house's senior members is scheduled for the second day of the ninth month. Infiltrate and gather intelligence on the proceedings if possible.'

A secret meeting scheduled for a week from now, attended only by the upper ranks. Turan was certain that if he could slip inside, he would be able to obtain something meaningful.