"Kratos! Zeus! Greek mythology! Urgh, stop!"

Inside the Temple of the Sun, the elder desperately parried Turan's golden greatsword while blurting out incomprehensible words.

He had begun behaving strangely after hearing Turan's last remark. Had claiming to be the Baraha House Head's son come as such a shock, or was there some implication in the words themselves?

Either way, Turan had no choice but to keep pressing the attack. It was bound to involve the gods' secret, and he had no confidence he could give the right answer.

Fortunately, the balance soon tipped. The elder had been compensating for the overwhelming difference in mana with superior physical abilities and weapons. Now that the gap in weapons had closed, the outcome was inevitable.

Only then did the elder realize Turan had no intention of talking and resume his fighting stance. But the rhythm he had lost while speaking did not return so easily. A brief respite would have allowed him to recover, but Turan was not foolish enough to give him one.

Moments later, six golden needles sprang from Turan's halo and pierced the elder's arms and torso, pinning him to the floor. As his tendons were pierced, the two swords wrought from the Light of Judgment slipped from his grasp and dissolved into the air.

"Urgh, w-wait—"

Was it because he was using the guardian bloodline's power? The attack could easily have killed an ordinary top-ranking noble outright, yet the needles seemed to have stopped halfway through his body.

As the elder tried to speak through the blood spilling from his mouth, Turan brought his greatsword down on his neck.

BANG!

The first blow cut only a third of the way through. A second cleanly severed the head left dangling from his neck.

"Whew..."

Unlike Ymir, this Baraha elder had not seemed to grow all that dramatically stronger after revealing his hidden bloodlines. Strictly speaking, using the two bloodlines had improved his combat prowess, but he had barely used that strange power that was something other than magic.

As Turan briefly reviewed the fight, a soul began seeping out of the dead elder's body. He expected it to soar into the sky and disappear as the others had, but—

'... The floor?'

For some reason, the elder's soul sank into the ground instead of flying away like those of the other gods. The instant Turan wondered why, the answer came to him. The place where the dead man's soul returned lay beneath this very building!

'I have to find it.'

Originally, he had only intended to rummage through the House Head's study and see whether there might be a secret passage. Now he had changed his mind. If he found their base beneath these quarters, he might discover a way to root them out entirely...

Just then, he sensed people approaching from far away.

"There's an intruder in the inner quarters!"

"Everyone, defend that area first!"

The fight had taken place indoors, but a clash between great nobles beyond the top-ranking tier had repercussions that reached outside. The wizards pursuing Solif had noticed something was wrong and were returning.

"Tsk."

Clicking his tongue, Turan picked up the elder's corpse and passed through the door he had been guarding while absorbing his mana. The barrier at the entrance detected his intrusion and sent a shrill alarm ringing through the area.

'Bath, bedroom, sitting room, study, office, bedroom...'

Turan discarded the elder's corpse after draining all its mana and scoured the building with wind magic, hoping to uncover a passage leading underground. But even after searching every plausible hiding place—vents, floors beneath carpets, drains—he found nothing.

'I don't have much time...'

Upper-tier nobles, their powerful mana making them swifter than the others, were already nearing the quarters. If they caught him here, he would have to wage an all-out battle against every wizard in Baraha.

He wanted to smash everything until he found a passage underground, but he could not. This building was part of the Temple of the Sun. Even a great wizard approaching House Head caliber like Turan could not easily destroy ancient structures built during the old empire.

Then another explosion sounded outside, followed by shouts.

["Where do you think you're going?!"]

["You bastard!"]

It seemed Solif, who had been circling the area to buy time, had returned to hold off Baraha's wizards.

With that reprieve, Turan considered his options briefly, then stormed into the study and stuffed everything in sight into his High-Capacity Pouch. Surely at least one thing here would prove useful.

The shelves were relatively sparse, as though the House Head had taken the truly important materials with him. Even so, the room was enormous, leaving plenty to pack away.

After confirming that the study was completely empty, Turan poured out a large quantity of Spirit of Fire and detonated it, wrecking the study and the other buildings. That would make it difficult to tell what he had taken, or how much.

It was also one last attempt to uncover a secret passage. The blast might expose a hidden room behind a bookcase or beneath the sitting room. Unfortunately, even this failed to reveal a passage underground.

Clicking his tongue in disappointment, Turan left the quarters and saw a visibly tired Solif surrounded by Baraha wizards.

"Who's that?!"

"Were you the one who broke into the House Head's quarters?!"

"What have you done to Elder Rounel?!"

Rounel was presumably the name of the elder he had just killed. Turan immediately joined Solif and whispered to him.

"I've searched as much as I can. Let's go."

"Which way out?"

"West."

Their brief discussion over, the two charged in the same direction. The wizards blocking their path stared in horror as a halo rose behind Turan as well.

"What...?!"

Despite their surprise, spells immediately rained down, leaving no doubt that they were well-trained wizards. Turan and Solif fashioned the Light of Judgment into whips, batting aside the incoming magic as they sprinted south.

"Out of the waaaay!"

While Solif broke through the encirclement in front, Turan stayed close behind and concentrated on deflecting the incoming spells. Soon, they passed through a gate and escaped the Temple of the Sun.

"Where now? South?"

"Let's stop by your parents' house first. I'll get rid of every trace there, too."

"All right."

Had Turan known the two houses were so closely allied that Zahar nobles would be stationed at Baraha's main house, he would have removed those traces long ago. It was regrettable, but there was no changing the past.

Naturally, lights blazed throughout Helio. The noise from the Temple of the Sun had carried for several kilometers in every direction.

Ignoring the terrified stares of ordinary people, they raced toward the mansion on the city's outskirts. A three-story house with roughly a dozen rooms came into view, rather modest for the home of a noble couple.

"Anything there?"

At Solif's question, Turan cast tracking magic again and nodded. Apparently someone had once guarded the place, but it was empty now, perhaps because it was nighttime.

"A few traces. Finding them one by one would be a nuisance... Let's burn it."

"Tsk. I was rather attached to this place."

Despite his grumbling, Solif poured flames over the mansion. With their combined power, it took barely a dozen seconds to burn the place to the ground.

Naturally, hair and nail clippings could not survive such heat. Turan stopped his magic after confirming that every trace of Solif's parents inside the mansion had vanished.

"Let's go. They're coming after us again."

Masses of mana were rapidly approaching from the distant Temple of the Sun. They were, of course, Baraha's enraged wizards.

* * *

The chase that began in the middle of the night took quite some time to end. Of course, ordinary nobles could not hope to match Solif's running speed, bolstered as it was by his tremendous mana and the guardian bloodline's exceptional physical abilities.

The problem was the monsters. Several pursuers rode creatures specialized for running, from horse monsters like House Berg's tilly to huge reindeer and cheetahs. They clung relentlessly to the pair's trail, relaying their position.

To deal with them, Turan used one of the magic tools taken from the dead Zahar nobles: a staff that fired spears of frost.

Though it consumed a fair amount of mana, the staff launched frost spears comparable to those of a true Karmine noble. Turan increased their speed by eliminating air resistance with wind channels. After the swift, silent spears killed several of the pursuing monsters in succession, the others no longer dared follow closely.

How many hours had passed? After running and running with Helio behind them, the two finally stopped at the sight of the rising sun. Drenched in sweat, Solif flopped onto the dirt.

"Ah, damn it. I'm completely worn out... You could beat me to death now and I still couldn't run another step."

Running alone would never have left him sprawled on the ground after a mere few hours. But covering such a distance after exhausting himself in a fierce battle against hundreds of wizards was bound to be grueling.

Turan, by contrast, was in relatively good shape, having switched to flight magic the moment they were out of sight. He had spent somewhat more mana intercepting the pursuing monsters, though.

"I can't sense them at all now. We've put at least several dozen kilometers between us. Let's disguise ourselves and rest before we move on."

Turan dispelled the mask's disguise and handed it to Solif, then used Maysa's magic tool to age his appearance. This time he went a little older than before, to somewhere in his mid-sixties.

Soon, the pair had become a grandfather and grandson resting during their travels. Disguised as a gray-haired boy, Solif turned his head as he caught his breath.

"How's Maysa doing? Did they get away safely?"

"It seems so. I think we can meet up with them if we go another three hundred kilometers or so north."

As planned, Maysa and Solif's parents had escaped the tunnel first and fled far away on Vije, who had been waiting outside Helio.

Through their soul bond, Turan tried to let the worried Vije know that he was calm and safe. This form of communication was far less natural than speaking directly, but it could convey sincerity all the more powerfully.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah. Somewhat."

Despite his casual answer, exhaustion was still written all over Solif's face. Rather than set off immediately, Turan rested a while and told him what had happened while they were apart, from the sudden appearance of Zahar nobles to killing the Baraha elder and looting the House Head's quarters.

"Old Rounel was a vessel?!"

"Did you know him?"

"A little. Not that well, but he was always quite kind to me..."

Solif clicked his tongue, murmuring that he would never have imagined the man was a vessel. Conflicting emotions filled his face. It was understandable. Despite running away, he was deeply attached to the members of his house. Hadn't he felt bitter even about the deaths of those who had come to capture and persecute him?

Of course, in hindsight, killing all of them had been the right decision. That pursuit force had included three nobles of upper-tier strength or greater. Had they been present today, breaking through the encirclement would have been that much harder.

'Come to think of it, were there no gods among the people who came to capture Solif back then?'

Turan had possessed no disguise ability then. Not only had he fought with his real face exposed, he had freely wielded the Sun bloodline's power through his Holy Relic. Had any of those opponents been vessels, all those facts would have been passed on. Since they had not been, that must mean they had all been ordinary nobles.

'Or... could they have only learned about it recently?'

A new thought occurred to him: perhaps a vessel among those killed back then had only recently obtained another body and returned to life. Learning that Turan had used both Zahar and Baraha bloodline abilities might have prompted the Baraha House Head to travel to Ravista to capture him personally...

The thought alone was frightening, but it was a possibility he needed to consider. In that case, they would likely realize that Solif's fellow intruder had been Turan despite his disguise. His earlier pretense of being the Baraha House Head's son would be useless.

After wrestling with all those worries for a moment, Turan shook his head to clear it. He was already tired enough without dwelling on difficult questions.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Anyway, I should look through the documents I found in there."

First, Turan took the jewelry box containing the librarian out of his High-Capacity Pouch.

"What is it?"

"I'd like you to look through these with me and remember what you see. And if you have any advice, I'd appreciate the help."

"Now you're using me as auxiliary storage."

Turan smiled sheepishly and bowed his head at the librarian's grumbling. Still, being a dependent guest himself, the librarian offered no further objections and silently examined the materials Turan produced.

The first thing out of the pouch was a large map covered in various symbols.

"Hmm, this is..."

"A resource map of Baraha territory."

A map of a great house's territory and its major resource deposits. It was top secret, but far removed from the information Turan wanted. He flipped through it so the librarian could read and memorize it, then immediately burned it.

Next came information on the house's key members. Everything was recorded, from publicly known facts to their reputations within the house, criminal activities, and secret sexual preferences.

Skimming as he turned the pages, Turan stopped when he reached the entry on Solif.

[Strong preference for married women and older women. Do not arrange a family for him until he is at least seventy.]

[Secretly introduce relevant books to cultivate masochistic sexual preferences...]

After reading through the entry, Turan hesitated briefly, then showed it to Solif. Solif accepted it with a calm expression, but soon his hands began to tremble. He burned it with ignition magic.

"D-did you read all of it?"

"I'm sorry."

After all, Turan had seen someone else's private affairs—and things Solif would truly have wanted to keep hidden at that—so he apologized sincerely.

After a long silence, Solif let out a deep sigh.

"Damn it, what are you apologizing for? I'm never going after an older married woman again."

"You shouldn't be going after married women in the first place."

Turan made the point lightly as he continued examining the papers from the House Head's mansion. Unfortunately, there were no communications between gods or anything of the sort. He had expected something more useful from the House Head's quarters...

Just as he clicked his tongue in disappointment, his hand closed on a book bound in oddly flesh-colored, sticky leather. It even gave off a faint flow of mana. Turan sharpened his flagging attention and read the cover.

"What's this...?"

[An Introduction to True Magic]

An introduction to true magic? He could scarcely imagine what true magic even meant, and finding such a book in the Baraha House Head's study was equally puzzling. Why would one of the most powerful wizards in the world need an introductory text?

Puzzled, Turan opened the book and read the preface. Usually that was where an author would include a dedication to a patron or explain the purpose of the book.

He briefly frowned at the blood-red writing inside. Then, as he read its contents, his expression froze.

[... This book records the path of initiation into the true magic handed down among us humans since distant antiquity, not the false magic spread throughout the world by those who call themselves gods.]