Those who thought through their true selves and opened their spiritual eyes could see a new world. Now that Turan had opened the third eye nestled somewhere within his brain, inside his skull, he understood what that meant.

In the spiritual world, things did not have the same colors as in reality. The sky was pitch-black; the ground and the various inanimate objects were dark gray. And every living creature in sight writhed with mingled reds, blues, and yellows.

After a while, Turan turned his gaze upon himself. Such a thing would have been impossible with physical eyes, but this spiritual eye allowed him to look inside himself.

A tiny, tiny mass nestled within his brain. Far too small, it seemed, to be the medium controlling this enormous body, it was his spirit form—his true self.

'I thought I was fully healed, but looking at it like this, there are still quite a few cracks. Will it take a little longer?'

A newly awakened spirit form was normally as helpless as a newborn. Having used it as an anchor to forcibly restore his dissolved body, he could hardly be surprised that it was this damaged. If anything, he ought to be grateful it was as intact as it was. Fortunately, he had an instinctive sense that these hairline cracks were not permanent damage and would heal with sufficient rest.

Looking more closely, he saw four symbols inside his cracked spirit form: lightning and clouds, darkness and an eye. The powers of Arabion and Zahar that dwelled within him.

'Touching those... should probably wait until I'm more used to this.'

Unlike with the Mimic Holy Relic, which only let him observe them, he could now feel that he could reach out to those symbols. The gods' ability to mix different symbols and wield mysterious powers was probably based on these spiritual abilities as well.

But Turan did not rush to try it. As the book had repeatedly warned, one could never be too careful when dealing with the spiritual world. Especially in his current fragile state.

"Whew..."

"What? Why the sigh? Are you feeling unwell?"

"No reason."

His head throbbing, Turan had switched off his spiritual awareness and sighed when Solif, who had come up beside him, spoke. The now-tiny Vije clinging to his side suggested they had been into town together. For some reason, she was furious and kept pecking at his neck.

"What's wrong this time?"

-The idiot stole all my jerky again!

"You ate her jerky?"

"A little on the way back. It was good."

Solif answered nonchalantly, as though inviting her to peck away, and went inside. Apparently cowed by his attitude, Vije slipped into Turan's body, dejected.

-I really hate him. Teach him a lesson!

"Be indulgent. You're Lady Vije, the greatest Monster King in the world, aren't you?"

-But even kings get hungry.

"I'll make you more jerky. Let me see if we have any spices left."

A little later, Turan took to the sky with Vije. Before, her small size had forced him to hang from her legs, but now she could grow large enough for him to ride on her back. Judging by the feelings coming through their soul bond, she was quite proud of that.

-I found a rabbit!

-Let's go down.

Being able to communicate through thought while both were using stealth was another major gain. Normally, communicating with one another while concealed was impossible.

After quickly ranging over several dozen kilometers nearby and catching three or four rabbits, Turan butchered them, seasoned the meat with spices, and dried it by drawing out the moisture with fluid manipulation magic. In no time, he had some respectable jerky.

"There. Happy now?"

-Yep!

Fortunately, the great Monster King, Lady Vije, seemed quite pleased with this humble one's offering of jerky. For some reason, she preferred meat dried this way to tearing into it fresh. Her favorite, of course, was freshly caught herring.

Once he had supplied Vije with snacks, he visited a small nearby village. Its people were going about their lives as usual. When he activated his spiritual awareness, he saw a scene quite unlike the quiet hideout, where perhaps no one had ever lived before.

There was the ghost of an old man sitting despondently, perhaps recently dead; the ghost of a baby who had died of illness; and a boy's blood-soaked ghost, perhaps mauled to death by some wild animal. The translucent dead wandered all over the village.

Watching them, Turan had a sudden thought and sent it to Vije beside him.

-Vije, could you ease up on the stealth for a moment? Not completely. Just stay invisible.

-Okay!

Even spiritual awareness could not reveal a creature under complete stealth, but ordinary stealth that merely hid it from sight was another matter. Turan looked at Vije's spirit form, now revealed to his spiritual eye.

Unlike other humans, whose interiors he could not examine, she had four openings visible within her. They resembled the shapes of Turan's own four bloodlines. These were probably what allowed her to borrow his bloodline abilities, as well as what made the two of them 'fit.'

'It would be nice to find more monsters that fit.'

A monster that could wield Solif's bloodline abilities would make the ultimate front-line fighter. And wouldn't one that could borrow Maysa's abilities be an enormous help in making magic tools?

When Turan returned to the hideout after his outing, Maysa was basking in the garden, looking sleepy. She seemed to have just finished making magic tools.

"Where have you been? You're still not well."

"Just a little walk. Getting some food for Vije, too. I'm almost completely better now, so you don't have to worry."

-I'm rich in jerky now!

Unfortunately, only Turan could hear Vije's voice, but the way she patted the jerky pouch strapped to her chest made her pride easy enough to read. Maysa smiled fondly at the pair, then rummaged in her pouch and took something out.

"Here, try these on."

"You haven't overdone it, have you?"

"What, over this?"

The clothes she held out were similar to the ones Asiz had given Turan, which he used to favor, but the details of the design reflected her own tastes. They had the same basic self-repair and cleaning functions as Asiz's gifts, with added defensive strength courtesy of Solif's power.

"How do I look?"

"They suit you."

When Turan showed her how he looked wearing the whole outfit, a smile spread across her face.

* * *

Several days later, feeling that his spirit form had recovered more fully, Turan began in earnest to awaken Solif's and Maysa's spiritual awareness.

It was rather like helping a baby bird break out of its egg from the outside. Apply too much external force before it had developed enough within, and it would enter the world prematurely.

Turan carefully made contact with their spirit forms from outside, guiding their awakening without damaging them. Fortunately, just as the soul-magic book said, awakening one's soul was relatively easy under the guidance of someone already awakened.

Maysa, who had been progressing faster to begin with, took a week. Even Solif, who lagged a little behind, succeeded in opening his soul's eye as Turan had in just ten days.

"So this is what it meant about how important a guide is."

"If Turan hadn't opened his eye first, I think it would've taken us ages on our own."

Solif spoke while rubbing his temples, apparently nursing a headache.

Unlike Turan's, their spirit forms were still terribly immature. They had to strain to fully open their spiritual sight, and could not maintain it for long.

Turan suspected that the process of damage and recovery had given him a stronger spirit form than theirs. Much as muscles grew stronger after being damaged and healing.

Muscles were a particularly apt comparison, for progress in soul magic followed a similar pattern. Like muscle soreness after hard training, a spirit form suffered damage and recovered, allowing its owner to maintain spiritual awareness for longer.

At first, they struggled to maintain spiritual awareness for more than ten seconds, but steady practice gradually improved their abilities. Once they could keep it active for over a minute, they began practicing basic techniques: clairvoyance, which moved the spirit form to view distant objects, and remote touch, which allowed them to feel objects not touching their bodies.

Meanwhile, Turan stayed one step ahead, practicing and mastering other techniques in advance. He would summon the librarian from the jewelry box and make direct contact with him to learn the finer points of handling a spirit form.

"How does it feel, sir?"

"Strange. A little... creepy, too."

The librarian frowned as they clasped hands, making direct contact with another spirit form for the first time in his existence. Of course, Turan could intuit that this was merely his way of expressing embarrassment. After all, he asked to shake hands several more times afterward.

After learning how to interact with a spirit, Turan took out the soul fragment that had lain dormant in the jewelry box and practiced handling it. He still could not perform advanced work such as delving into it to analyze the information inside, as the librarian did, but he could see a few hazy, indistinct impressions.

["... I... beauti..."]

["...ing... thank..."]

The world in the soul fragment's lingering impressions contained sights Turan had never seen in his life: towering skyscrapers, dust so thick it blotted out the sky, multicolored beams of light embroidering the night. He could not imagine where in this world such sights might exist. Perhaps they were traces of the old empire where the gods had lived.

Having progressed that far, he tried a few more things while waiting for his companions to catch up. He attempted a technique the soul-magic book considered a deviant path: subjugating and manipulating the souls of living creatures. That nearly killed him again, earning him a scolding. He also switched between the Holy Relic's bloodlines to see whether those specialized in close combat or ranged combat were better at handling souls.

During those experiments, he made another surprising discovery.

"How is it?"

"It's definite. My spirit form seems much stronger with the Nagin bloodline active."

When Turan had killed the fallen god Ymir, he had absorbed the power of the Nagin bloodline from the god's vessel, Maysa's older brother Renod. It contained the powers to dominate living beings and to bind the souls of humans and monsters together.

Neither had been particularly useful, so it had originally been first on the list to discard once he secured a better bloodline. Yet, surprisingly, activating the Nagin bloodline made his spirit form stronger and easier to control. Perhaps it strengthened his power to command souls.

"Come to think of it, we talked about that before. Whether the Dominator bloodline's power could control spirits, too."

"Though I never expected it to work like this."

"Maybe magic that controls life is connected to handling souls."

If so, it would be no coincidence that Turan, the most adept at controlling life, was also adept at handling souls. House Nagin's otherwise inefficient combination of the Dominator and Tamer bloodlines might have a similar reason behind it.

By then, Maysa and Solif had largely caught up with Turan, so each night the three left the hideout to visit the graveyards of several distant villages. This time, their training was to make contact with ghosts.

"Uh, hello? Sir?"

["Uuuughhh..."]

"Doesn't seem to be in a very good mood."

Solif shrugged after speaking to an old man's ghost and receiving a groan that might or might not have been an answer.

These ghosts, perceptible through spiritual awareness, were unlike any spirit forms recognized by the existing system of spirit arts. They were not alive, so they were not living spirits. They were dead, but had not been revived by mana, so they were not wraiths. And they were certainly not spirits.

["It's... not... faaair..."]

Occasionally a ghost could speak, but even those were incapable of meaningful conversation. All they could do was endlessly pour out a few powerful emotions from life. It was truly a shame.

"No, maybe it's a blessing."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing. Just talking to myself."

Shaking his head at Solif's question, Turan recalled something that had happened recently. Once he confirmed that spiritual awareness let him see ghosts, he had secretly visited the sheep farm and his mother's grave. But Bijella's ghost had appeared in neither place.

'Usually, ghosts only appear if it hasn't been more than three or four years since they died.'

It varied from person to person, but that was generally the limit. Hadn't the magic book said it depended on various factors, such as lingering fixations from life and the person's spiritual aptitude?

In that case, Bijella's soul had most likely vanished long ago. Considering that these ghosts were effectively no more than the dregs of a person's life—and that she had hardly been a pleasant sight just before her death—perhaps it was for the best that he had not seen her.

Even so, Turan wanted to see his mother just once more. However much awe he inspired in others, he was still only a young man of twenty-one.

* * *

About another month passed before the three finally reached the stage they had originally been aiming for: moving their inner symbols and making them interact.

"Making progress?"

"None at all. I haven't got a clue. How are a sun and a shield supposed to combine?"

"How should I know?"

At least Maysa could copy what Turan had seen Arabion's House Head—the being presumed to be the Thunder Lord—do. She had yet to produce any results, but her direction was clear.

The problem was Turan and Solif. Neither could even begin to work out how their symbols should interact. Moving the symbols was difficult enough in itself, so they could not practice very much each day, either.

"Hmm..."

"What about putting the sun inside the shield?"

"Then the person holding the shield would get burned. Wouldn't sunlight pouring out of the shield be better?"

In the middle of their discussion, Turan suddenly sensed a presence and raised a hand. Vije appeared out of nowhere and landed deftly on it.

"Back already?"

-Yep!

"Did Asiz give you something tasty again today?"

Now that she could shrink and use stealth, Vije came and went from House Berg more easily than ever. She visited once every few weeks to exchange letters, and whatever they fed her, she always came back with a bulging belly.

-No, this time he told me to go right away. And to deliver it as fast as I could. So I came back without sleeping.

Sounding rather glum, Vije offered the letter tied to her ankle. Now that he looked, her belly did seem rather hollow today. What could be so urgent that Asiz had sent her off without even feeding her properly?

"Let's see..."

Turan had barely unfolded the letter and begun reading before a low groan escaped him.

"Looks like it's about time we left."

"Why?"

"Asiz's older brother has been kidnapped."

Solif's and Maysa's faces hardened at the news. The shift was particularly pronounced in Maysa, who was related to Asiz and cared deeply for him.

"... Who did it?"

Maysa's low voice was as high and thin as ever, but now it carried a razor-sharp killing intent. No one hearing it could have felt at ease.

Turan tapped his fingers lightly against the table a few times, waiting for her to calm down before he spoke.

"It doesn't seem Asiz knows exactly who, either. All he's heard is that his brother was kidnapped on the way back from delivering goods to Arabion's main house."

"Then..."

"Well, there are plenty of suspects. Arabion resents House Berg over your escape and the whistleblowing, Maysa. Karmine would want to cut off the supply of magic tools before the war. Or even Zahar, which might have joined either side as mercenaries..."

Of course, it made no difference who was responsible. House Berg was Turan's friend, and whoever had targeted it would soon face his wrath.