When Turan first fought a fallen god, it was not the sudden surge in mana that had startled him. It was the techniques whose causal links he could not even begin to fathom—striking the ground with an axe to create a storm of ice, or gliding swiftly across a frozen surface. That bizarre magic, wrought by combining the symbols of different bloodlines to produce far stronger and stranger results from the same amount of mana, had been the most unpredictable and troublesome factor.

The green radiance forming before him would be no different. Rather than block or deflect the incoming attack, he chose to dodge with a high-speed maneuver powered by the Spirit of Fire.

Was it thanks to all the practice he had done in the dueling arena, dying again and again? Unlike before, when his movements had been somewhat excessive, he could now evade an attack by moving only as far as necessary.

Circling around his opponent's flank and seizing the initiative, Turan immediately fired the stone he had already loaded. He had prepared it in case he ran out of iron balls, using granite, the hardest of ordinary rocks. Yet just as before, the stone vanished in a flash of lightning before it reached Kadram's body.

'So it doesn't just melt metal?'

Instead of the metallic vapor that had risen earlier, this time there was dust and smoke. Then again, a sufficiently powerful electrical strike could split even rock. If it could stop this too, ordinary physical projectiles would have a hard time breaking through.

Turan immediately switched the Holy Relic to the Sun bloodline, creating a vast ring of light behind his back. The Light of Judgment.

Born from the union of fire and light, it was material yet immaterial; naturally, it and lightning did not interfere with one another. A whip of light separated from the ring, stretching out to lash at Kadram.

"Mmph...!"

As expected, instead of standing his ground and taking the attack as he had before, Kadram retreated with a low groan. The golden whip swept through the spot where he had stood, felling trees in a cascade and setting them ablaze.

"I don't know how in the world you acquired the Mimic's power, but—"

Ignoring whatever his opponent was trying to babble about, Turan immediately pressed his attack, swinging the whip of light. If the man lost his rhythm through pointless chatter, that would only give Turan an advantage.

But rather than flounder in panic like that Baraha elder, Kadram promptly shut his mouth and traced a circle with both hands. Then he reached toward the incoming whip—

'He's deflecting it?'

The whip of light touched Kadram's hand without burning or cutting his flesh. It seemed to coil around it before rebounding. This felt nothing like someone reinforcing a hand with mana to block an attack. It was as though control of the spell itself had passed to his opponent.

As the deflected whip lashed viciously toward his neck, Turan hastily withdrew his mana and extinguished the Light of Judgment. Then he used the burning trees nearby as a medium to form and launch a fireball. But that too was caught in the circle Kadram traced with his hands and sent flying back at Turan.

'He's turning my own power against me.'

Interfering with another person's magic like this should ordinarily be impossible. Turan put some distance between them to buy time to think, only for Kadram to fire another pale green radiance from his hand. Twisting hastily aside, Turan clicked his tongue as he felt blood run down his cheek.

'This is quite a problem...'

The man melted his greatest weapon, the iron balls, and turned back attacks that lightning could not affect with that peculiar technique. All the while, he kept launching attacks of his own that were astonishingly fast and dangerous. Compared to the Baraha elder Turan had faced before, this opponent was superior in every respect, from combat proficiency to equipment and technique.

Just then, a deafening crash erupted to one side, and a rush of freezing air swept over him. Ymir, who had been idling in the rear, was walking over with an ice axe clutched tightly in his hand.

"I thought you weren't going to fight?"

"The way things are going, this looks like it'll take a while. I can just use this body up here and replace it afterward anyway."

Ymir's eyes were bloodshot as he looked their way, as though he had already drawn on the Berserker's power. Within him, the two symbols of Berserker and Frost had risen and mingled, but unlike before, they wavered with extreme instability. Was it because, as he had said earlier, this was a body he had 'put on in a hurry'?

Seeing the ground become coated in ice beneath Ymir's stamping foot, Turan immediately anticipated the next attack and threw himself aside. Ymir, who had glided forward while swinging his axe, widened his eyes.

"What? How did you know?"

"He uses thought acceleration. He must have learned it from Maysa."

"No, that's not what I mean... It felt like he already knew."

Ymir tapped his shoulder with the axe, looking troubled for a moment. Then he clicked his tongue and lunged at Turan again. The instant Turan rose into the air with flight magic to evade him, Kadram fired a dark blue sphere his way.

'That...'

Like the green radiance from earlier, it was magic whose nature he could scarcely guess. At least it was not particularly fast, so avoiding it seemed easy enough.

But the moment Turan dodged the dark blue sphere, leaving what he thought was a reasonable gap, it suddenly exploded with a roar, sending electricity arcing in every direction. Naturally, Turan, still within its range, could not escape it either.

"Ghk...!"

A tingling paralysis seized his entire body—a sensation he had experienced often enough while sparring with Maysa. In the distance, he saw Kadram smile upon confirming that his attack had landed.

Fortunately, he could still move with flight magic even while his body was paralyzed. Seeing Kadram fly toward him, Turan instinctively used wind magic to hold him off.

"Urgh!"

Unlike Maysa, who thought nothing of interference like this, Kadram reacted far more strongly than expected to the disruption of his flight. Turan had expected a god who had practiced magic for thousands of years to possess transcendent skill.

But before he could scoff at his opponent's unexpectedly crude flying, Ymir leaped from below with explosive leg strength and swung his axe at him. Turan detonated the Spirit of Fire again to dodge, but as though he had been waiting for this, Ymir created a foothold of ice in midair and changed his trajectory.

"Got you!"

His momentum from the first dodge left Turan poorly placed to move again. Instinctively, he drew his dagger to defend—

'Ah.'

Was it because the paralysis from the electrical attack had yet to wear off? The dagger he raised at an awkward angle shattered easily, and the axe buried itself in his chest. A brilliant flower of ice bloomed from the wound—yet another technique of some kind.

"Gah..."

Every petal was a blade. The flower shredded his upper body, more than capable of tearing apart the very place it had bloomed. Had Turan not been a mighty great noble, and had he not possessed his guardian magic tool and various other defensive magic tools, it would have hacked him to pieces and killed him on the spot.

Turan hastily kicked his opponent away and retreated. Falling to the ground, Ymir shouted in disbelief.

"What the hell makes you so tough?!"

"I told you not to kill him!"

After crashing to the ground, Turan sprayed the Water of Death in vapor form toward the rapidly approaching Ymir, trying to make him inhale it. Even a top-ranking noble would suffer if caught off guard by this attack, but Ymir froze it and brought it down with nothing more than a glance.

"That won't work twice, you acid-throwing bastard."

One-on-one, Turan was confident he could not only hold his own but overwhelm his opponent. Against both at once, however, he simply could not cope. If he could keep flying and hold out somehow, Maysa or Solif might be able to help—

"Not so fast!"

Kadram thrust a hand toward Turan, and the surrounding air churned violently—even the air Turan was controlling for his flight magic.

Turan tumbled to the ground in a crashing heap, then quickly pushed himself up and dragged in a deep breath.

"Hhh, hah..."

Was it the severe blood loss, or had some of his wounds reached his lungs? He had barely moved, yet he was already gasping for air. Kadram approached at a leisurely pace and asked,

"Well? Ready to surrender?"

Unwilling to waste even the breath it would take to answer, Turan merely glared at him and tried to recover. Beside Kadram, Ymir spun his ice axe from side to side, then pointed at Turan.

"What is that bastard, anyway? His skill with magic is absurd. Even Maysa, whom we deliberately made, isn't that good, is she? Can something like that happen by chance?"

"Who can say? Even where we lived, there were talents that exceeded the limits."

"I'd love to use him as my next body—"

"Mind what you say. Others are watching. And speak respectfully."

"Whoops."

Kadram shot a sidelong glare at Ymir as he flippantly covered his mouth, then turned back to Turan.

"It seems you have no intention of surrendering. I won't give you much more time. The battle isn't going entirely in our favor."

Maysa and Solif were indeed quite exhausted from each fighting so many enemies, but the Arabion wizards facing them had suffered a considerable reduction in their actual numbers. In a battle of many against one, if the lone fighter spent stamina, the many had to spend lives.

Capturing Turan would not end matters here. They still had to capture the others—Maysa in particular. Taking Maysa was the very reason they had gathered here in the first place. As Kadram shaped the green radiance into a floating disc to finish things, Ymir suddenly exclaimed beside him.

"What is it?"

"Time's up."

He sounded like a civil servant whose shift had ended. He had apparently already withdrawn the Berserker bloodline's power; even his bloodshot eyes had returned to normal. Kadram groaned, looking incredulous.

"You..."

"Hey, it's not like I'm slacking off. This is as far as my abilities go. What can I do? Still, I've beaten him up plenty, so good luck?"

With those teasing words, Ymir's body crumbled into dust and collapsed. A moment later, a translucent figure rose above it. Apparently, this was the consequence of exerting excessive power in a body he had occupied too hastily.

Kadram stared blankly as Ymir's spirit form vanished toward somewhere in the northwestern snowfields, then sighed.

"How utterly exhausting... Why does growing older never guarantee growing up?"

Even as he spoke, he showed no particular concern about facing Turan. It might have been different if Turan were unharmed, but with him so grievously wounded, Kadram could subdue him alone easily enough. It would simply make the process a little more troublesome.

That composure did not last long, however. Blood-drenched Turan had aimed a hand at him—and above it, Kadram saw a small vortex spinning.

* * *

While fighting the two fallen gods' vessels, Ymir and Kadram, at once, Turan had concluded that he would struggle to overcome this situation by ordinary means.

The forces Arabion and Nagin had committed to this trap were that outrageous. If all three of them had been at Maysa's level when she first escaped, they would have been subdued long ago.

He wanted to ask just how highly they rated him to have committed such a force for an indefinite period. Or perhaps that was simply how obsessed they were with Maysa.

But crisis always came with opportunity. Even as he was desperately driven back, Turan observed the symbols of the two gods pressing him—particularly Kadram, who possessed the same Storm Bloodline as he did.

Unfortunately, he could not steal Kadram's favored technique of releasing green radiance. That required combining the symbols of the wind-commanding Aeromancer and the water-commanding Rapids bloodline, and he could use one of those only through his Holy Relic. Even when he activated a particular bloodline with the Mimic Holy Relic, its symbol did not manifest in his soul.

But a little earlier, Kadram had used two more spells, finally revealing a way forward: the spell that detonated lightning and the one that controlled and disrupted the surrounding air.

Another change had taken place within Kadram as he used those two spells. Turan saw an image of pitch-black clouds swirling, entwined with lightning. That was likely what those spells required—and the ultimate way to use the Storm Bloodline, which combined the powers of wind and lightning.

It was a little different from the combination of four bloodlines Arabion's House Head had once demonstrated, but now that Turan had seen it, it was time to put it to use. Even as he continued to be driven back, he secretly activated his spiritual awareness and worked to manipulate his inner symbols. Naturally, he kept his spiritual eye firmly shut so his opponents would not notice.

Fortunately, after all his practice at the hideout, it did not take very long. What he had lacked in the first place was not so much the ability to manipulate the symbols as the knowledge of how to do so.

By coincidence, just as Ymir made his exit, Turan succeeded in reproducing the change his opponent had wrought within himself.

"You, how..."

Rather than answer his opponent's muttering, Turan gently released the little vortex above his hand into the air before him, as though letting a feather fall.

The cute little vortex, only a few finger joints tall, devoured the air it encountered and swelled to an enormous size in an instant. Several nearby Arabion wizards screamed and fled at the sight of it violently clawing across the earth.

"A cyclone...!"

Horrified, Kadram called on the Storm Bloodline as before and formed a dark blue sphere around himself to block it. This was probably another divine spell Turan did not know.

Normally, the amount of mana Turan had just spent should not have been enough to scratch that defense. Yet the vortex clawed madly at its surface, gouging marks like the talons of a beast. Turan narrowed his eyes as he watched.

'The wind can cut?'

No matter how strong the wind, it should naturally have been impossible for it to exert physical force in that fashion. Was that not why he had given up after trying every conceivable way to turn wind magic into an attack when he first awakened the Storm Bloodline?

In other words, just like the fallen gods, he had now used magic that brought normally impossible phenomena into being. Stranger still, this irrational magic was somehow treated as 'something that could happen,' and did not even consume much mana.

"Keeping something this fun all to yourselves? That's hardly fair."

Murmuring under his breath, Turan focused his awareness inward. From the moment the Storm Bloodline's two symbols began interacting, several invisible handles had appeared within his mind.

The vortex he had just created was the result of pulling one that felt comparatively easy to move. In other words, he still had many, many techniques left to try.