While Solif emerged above the prison to confront the Baraha wizards surrounding him, Turan was scouring the cell where Solif’s parents had been confined, using tracking magic and telekinesis.

The principle behind using a medium in tracking magic was to designate a specific target. Using a strand of hair to locate more hair of the same kind was much easier than using it to locate a person, so gathering it up took little time.

Having disposed of every trace left in the cell, Turan intended to expand the range of his tracking magic and remove all the traces remaining inside the temple while Solif sowed chaos outside. Given Baraha’s relatively close ties to House Zahar, they might have set aside anything that could serve as a tracking medium in order to enlist Zahar’s help.

Just then, he sensed five powerful wizards descending into the prison.

‘They’re splitting up the pursuit force? Can they afford that?’

Either way, he could hardly leave enemies intent on hunting down the escapees alone. Remaining concealed, Turan approached them. Since they were moving toward each other, he encountered the pursuers within seconds.

‘Two upper-middle-tier, two upper-tier, and one top-tier... Hm?’

His admiration for their considerable strength lasted only a moment before the symbols within them made his eyes widen. All five bore Zahar’s symbol: an eye in pitch-black darkness.

His puzzlement was brief. Listening to their conversation, Turan identified the apparent leader. Back in the trading city of Komad, he had learned of House Zahar’s three candidates for heir. The woman before him was Alma Zahar, said to be the House Head’s first cousin once removed.

‘They sent a candidate for heir here to strengthen the defenses? Are Zahar and Baraha much closer than I thought? Or is there something else they need to discuss?’

Before he could sort through those questions, the Zahar wizards discovered the tunnel and immediately gave chase. Turan followed them under stealth. Fortunately, none of them lit the way, making it easy to stay close behind.

‘Subdue them, or eliminate them... All right. Eliminate them.’

If any of them was a vessel for one of Zahar’s gods, subduing them and talking would be a mistake that merely handed the enemy information. He had no means of catching a god’s soul as it returned to its base. Yet leaving them alone would mean letting them pursue Maysa and the others.

The conclusion was simple. He had to finish them in an instant, without letting them discover who had attacked or how.

Devising a plan on the spot, Turan first scattered Spirit of Fire across the ceiling and detonated it to threaten the Zahar nobles. As expected, they hid themselves in corners and activated stealth, trying to assess the sudden attack. It was an ideal situation for an ambush.

Turan switched the Holy Relic to the Berserker bloodline, activated it, and stirred up his emotions to draw out its power. As he tensed his muscles, heat rose to his head and a growl escaped from deep in his throat. Without stealth magic, he would have given himself away already.

Clenching his teeth to restrain his excitement, Turan approached Alma from behind as she sat motionless. He looped an arm around her neck and twisted his body.

CRUNCH!

Her neck turned nearly 180 degrees and stretched to roughly twice its length.

‘Got her.’

The resistance against his arm had been greater than expected. She seemed to have possessed something similar to his guardian magic tool. Ordinary defensive magic tools specialized in blocking projectiles and direct attacks, offering no resistance to contact like this.

Before Alma’s body could even fall to the ground after that pitifully abrupt death, Turan drove his fist into the back of the second enemy’s head. There was not a shred of intricate calculation behind the attack, only a Berserker’s impulse. The head burst like a watermelon, stealth unraveling as blood and brains sprayed in every direction.

"A-an enemy?!"

"What in the world!"

"Lady Alma!"

They had been bracing for an attack after the explosion, only to have a companion suddenly die. The Zahar nobles cried out in horror, but unfortunately, their shouts reached no one. While concealed by stealth, they could not hear one another’s voices.

The second victim’s death was so spectacular that they did not even notice Alma’s corpse lying in a corner.

Then another of them tumbled to the ground and became visible, a gaping hole through the chest. Only then did they realize their enemy was one of their own bloodline—and an extraordinarily powerful noble at that. By then, of course, only two remained alive.

"An ambush! Stealth—no, light!"

It was a contradiction: a Zahar noble, who used darkness as a blanket, had to summon light to find the enemy. One hastily dropped stealth and tried to illuminate the tunnel with an unfamiliar illumination spell. At that instant, an unseen enemy struck, crushing his torso diagonally.

The last survivor fled toward the tunnel’s exit, screaming soundlessly under stealth, praying that whoever the enemy was would fail to notice him.

Naturally, that hope vanished seconds later with an impact that felt as though his spine had caved in.

After killing the last survivor, Turan snorted and stamped on the body repeatedly, crushing it, then tore it in two before finally managing to regain his reason. He hurriedly switched the Holy Relic’s bloodline and took deep breaths. Only then did his surging fury subside.

‘The Berserker bloodline... I’ve thought this before, but it really is dangerous. The moment I properly draw out its power, I go mad.’

It had granted him enough physical strength to tear nobles apart as easily as ordinary humans, but it was still too dangerous to use recklessly against an equal or stronger opponent. If he had charged the great sea serpent in that frenzy, wouldn’t he have ended up cut in two like Maysa?

After a brief moment of self-reflection, Turan first absorbed the dead Zahar nobles’ mana. The others would not help him in the slightest, but someone of Alma’s caliber might contribute a little to his growth.

Next, he made sure to collect their magic tools. When raiding the underground labyrinth in the past, he had left such things behind for fear of being tracked. Now, however, he could ask Maysa to change their appearance or function without losing their magic, allowing him to avoid pursuit. A privilege of having a skilled Enchanter as a companion, one might say.

Meanwhile, Turan recalled something he had glimpsed in passing during his frenzy.

‘As expected, one of the Zahar nobles was a vessel. Not the leader, either, but one of her subordinates...’

After killing Alma, when he had lost control and struck one of the upper-tier nobles, he had seen a soul leave the corpse and fly away.

Fortunately, the vessel had been his second victim. He had struck the man in the back of the head and killed him in one blow before Alma had even fallen.

At that speed, the man must have lost his life without even properly realizing he was dead. Naturally, he would have no way of guessing his attacker’s identity.

Another useful discovery was that a vessel was nothing particularly special unless it consciously drew out its power. That meant even those possessing great-house heads were merely ordinary nobles when caught unprepared.

As he sorted through his thoughts, Turan looked at Alma’s corpse. Sprawled on the floor with her neck twisted into a spiral, she had met an absurdly anticlimactic end for a top-ranking noble. All the more so considering that her mana had been comparable to Solif’s before the great sea serpent hunt, and somewhat greater than Turan’s had been then.

Of course, that was the price of allowing a Berserker several levels stronger than herself—one who had drawn on madness to push his physical strength to the limit—to strike first.

* * *

Having swiftly dealt with matters underground, Turan returned to the surface and checked on Solif first. Judging by the way he was still leading hundreds of wizards around without any serious injuries, he would likely be fine for another few hours.

Of course, a prolonged battle could only end in defeat: his opponents could take turns recovering, while Solif had to keep moving and fighting. They needed to finish everything and escape before then.

Turan changed into the clothes of a dead Baraha knight lying nearby, altered his face, and roamed the temple using tracking magic to find the couple’s remaining traces. Underground was one thing, but on the surface, the sunlight flowing from the temple walls interfered with stealth.

Fortunately, everyone was busy chasing Solif, leaving building after building empty. No one interfered. The occasional people he did encounter took one look at his clothes and let him pass.

Before long, Turan burned a handful of hair kept in a storage compartment inside what appeared to be a meeting hall. He nodded after confirming that no other traces remained. Just in case, he also searched for traces of Solif, but apparently they had never kept any.

‘Good, that should... No, perhaps I should stop by the mansion again on the way back, just to be sure.’

Normally, there was no need to go to such lengths to guard against tracking through hair. A powerful noble approaching House Head caliber like Turan was another matter, but an ordinary Zahar noble could not use hair to locate a target thousands of meters away.

Their current situation, however, was serious enough that Zahar’s House Head might personally take up the pursuit. They needed to prepare for every possibility.

After making one last circuit to check his surroundings, Turan headed for his final destination.

‘Well, then... Shall we?’

Like the residences of other great-house heads, the Baraha House Head’s quarters stood in the innermost part of the Temple of the Sun. Just as Turan was about to enter, he frowned at the presence he sensed.

‘Someone’s guarding this place even now?’

And it was no nobody, but a top-ranking noble. They should have needed every available hand to catch Solif. Paradoxically, that meant whatever lay within was something they absolutely could not allow others to see.

The building itself was part of the temple, so its walls could not be broken. There were no windows nearby, either, ruling out a shot from a distance. After a moment’s consideration, Turan advanced directly toward the guard.

Noticing his approach, the guard spoke.

"Halt. Who are you?"

The guard was an old man who appeared about sixty, probably one of Baraha’s elders. Turan bowed his head and stammered.

"E-Elder..."

"Rabo?"

Turan’s eyes widened momentarily in surprise. Dressed as a mere knight, he had never imagined the man he was impersonating might know an elder.

His dismay lasted only a moment. His mind was already racing, devising a performance on the spot.

"Yes, it’s Rabo. Elder Ason ordered me to hurry and fetch a magic tool from the House Head’s quarters to help capture the traitor..."

"Be quick about it."

Ason was one of Baraha’s senior elders, whose name Turan had learned from Solif. His appearance differed from the man before him, so he was probably outside chasing Solif.

With the elder’s permission, Turan bowed respectfully and slowly approached, then abruptly reached out. At that instant, a golden spike shot out from behind the elder and collided with a spear of white light extending from Turan’s hand.

"Tsk."

The elder’s surprise attack did not fluster Turan. The scent of his emotions had already revealed that he regarded Turan as an enemy. In effect, their brief clash had been a contest of timing between two men who knew they were foes. The elder gave a hollow laugh.

"Sorry, but Rabo was just a name I made up. I thought someone might try to slip in wearing stolen clothes amid the confusion. Besides, Ason isn’t careless enough to entrust a knight with something like that."

"I had no idea. Aren’t you clever."

Despite his sarcasm, Turan felt relieved. At least the story of the mysterious Mimic who had wreaked havoc inside Arabion did not seem to have reached Baraha.

Then, apparently sensing the mana transmitted through his spike, the elder frowned and asked, "Still, I didn’t expect an intruder this powerful. Where in the world did you come from? A face I’ve never seen, yet such strength..."

Rather than answer, Turan immediately formed a longsword of light and charged. Though his mana was far greater, matching ordinary light magic against the Light of Judgment in a contest of firepower would be inefficient. He intended to settle this in close combat, taking advantage of his more agile body and superior reflexes.

The elder looked incredulous.

"You dare use light magic against the Sun bloodline—"

Before he could finish, however, his eyes widened as he realized Turan was charging far too quickly. In that moment of crisis, Turan noticed two additional symbols emerging within the elder.

‘A vessel!’

The two newly manifested bloodlines were Strongman and guardian. The emerging fist grasped a shield’s handle and wrapped around the sun as if to conceal it.

At the same time, the Baraha elder instantly transformed his Light of Judgment into two longswords and parried Turan’s thrust. Turan involuntarily grimaced at the force transmitted through his grip.

‘Even allowing for bloodline abilities, he’s unnaturally strong...’

The two close-combat bloodlines clearly reinforced each other, but there seemed to be something more at work. His hands vibrated painfully, and he felt as though his weapon might fly from his grasp at any moment. It was probably some mysterious technique like the one Ymir had used before.

He had only a moment to think before hastily transforming his longsword into a huge greatsword and blocking the follow-up attack. Now that they were within sword’s reach, there was no time for talk.

Weapons of gold and white clashed, sending deafening noise and heat down the corridor. The elder had the advantage in physical strength and the quality of his weapons, thanks to the Light of Judgment, but Turan possessed far greater mana and superior reflexes. If he revealed his Berserker bloodline as well, he could easily overwhelm his opponent, but...

‘I don’t want to let a god see me using multiple bloodlines. How can I finish him without revealing what I can really do?’

There was little around him that could be classified as earth for the Earthkeeper bloodline, and the surroundings were too dry to use the Karmine bloodline. The Nagin bloodline clearly would not help in the slightest. Naturally, using the powers of Zahar or Arabion would be tantamount to suicide.

Then an idea struck him. Turan quickly stepped back to create some distance. The elder opened his mouth to use the brief respite for psychological warfare, but what emerged was not a taunt, but an exclamation.

"You! That’s...!"

The Light of Judgment. The elder’s eyes widened as a power reserved for Baraha’s nobles rose behind Turan.

He even manifested the halo with the consummate skill of someone who had practiced for decades. Shaping the Light of Judgment into a spear, Turan shouted.

"Tell the House Head! His son has returned!"

His improvised plan was to pretend to be the Baraha House Head’s illegitimate son. Given how tightly great houses controlled their bloodlines, the story would soon become a baffling mystery, but it could at least cause confusion.

Contrary to Turan’s expectations, however, the elder appeared far more shaken than he had anticipated. He looked as though he had seen a ghost...

"That line! Could it be?!"

As those incomprehensible words rang out, a golden javelin imbued with tremendous power hurtled toward the elder.