The forest, dark beneath the night sky, should have been silent. Instead, it had become a nightmare of light and fire, blood and lightning. Its animals had long since fled, leaving only the deeply rooted plants, unable to move, as victims of the overwhelming violence.

Kadram, the Arabion noble who was one of this festival's masters of ceremonies, swept aside a blade of wind. He countered by launching a translucent sphere, which exploded and annihilated the surrounding air, creating a vacuum.

"Whew..."

Taking advantage of the brief respite, Kadram sighed.

Despite Turan's new ability and Ymir's departure, the battle had not yet turned particularly unfavorable for Kadram. Learning the secret of combining symbols did not suddenly erase all the wounds Turan had suffered.

The problem was that his mind, which ought to have been focused on combat, was now crammed with all manner of complicated thoughts.

'Combination techniques using soul magic? Has someone taken over his body in the meantime? I sensed nothing of the sort when we were speaking just a moment ago.'

They had already spent thousands of years in this world. Of course, there had been periods of rest without possessing a body, and they had spent so long apart that it was difficult to say they had known one another for all those years.

Still, when they met face-to-face and spoke, they could usually recognize one another. Their distinctive personalities—the ways of thinking of those born and raised differently from everyone else—readily showed through in their words and actions.

And his use of techniques drawing upon the power known as the Storm Bloodline was just as astonishing. Neither the Mimic bloodline nor an object containing its power could reproduce something like that.

Did that not mean either that Turan's body held four bloodlines, including the Storm Bloodline, or that the unknown specter inhabiting it could wield the power of storms?

'There should be very few with the Aeromancer or Thundercaller types engraved on their souls. Fewer still with both...'

Could someone they had believed destroyed in the distant past have returned to life? Just as Otas was said to have returned from death?

No. His use of the techniques was visibly far too clumsy for that. It stood in stark contrast to his deft handling of wind magic itself.

Anyone could see he was a novice who had only just succeeded in combining the Storm types and was trying whatever techniques came to hand.

"Urgh!"

His thoughts were cut short as searing heat at his ankle drew a groan from him. A platinum whip withdrew, writhing like a snake.

While launching wind blades as before, Turan had subtly closed the distance and concealed the Light of Judgment low down to strike. It was a trick Kadram would never have fallen for had he been concentrating properly. Thinking too much had been his undoing.

'Damn it...'

He hastily took to the air with flight magic, trying to minimize the disadvantage of losing his ankle, but Turan buffeted him with wind magic just as before, making even that difficult. The technique directed winds of different strengths and directions at individual extremities—his arms, legs, and more...

He had felt it earlier, too, but the boy's magical talent was so extraordinary that he could scarcely believe it had arisen by chance. It was like being told that rubbish dumped in the sea had been assembled by the waves into a light aircraft on the shore.

Meanwhile, Turan, the subject of Kadram's admiration, was shivering from blood loss as he assessed the handles in his mind. This one was a vortex, this one a wind blade, this one a wind barrier.

At first he had grabbed at anything within reach, like a child fiddling with a complicated tool. Now, he was beginning to get a feel for each handle: this one was too heavy to pull yet; that one held wind-aspected power.

Naturally, he deliberately avoided even touching those that wielded lightning. If that armor was the Sky Guardian Maysa had told him about, electrical attacks would only recharge it.

'To think my experience in the dueling arena would help me again like this.'

Maintaining clear thought through the pain of being slashed all over was far from easy. However courageous a person might be, facing death was a rare experience.

But Turan had suffered worse injuries fighting Maysa and Solif—experiences whose mere memory would give an ordinary person nightmares. He, however, had used them to temper his mind into something stronger.

'This one next.'

With a click, he pulled another unfamiliar handle, and his body accelerated. It felt entirely different from thought acceleration through lightning magic: his body itself seemed to move faster.

Adding flight magic, Turan raced across the ground in a half glide, keeping a suitable distance from Kadram as he sprayed a great quantity of Water of Death.

His opponent's Holy Relic, the Sky Guardian, detected the harmful substance and instantly vaporized it. But even the vapor of the Water of Death was lethally toxic.

"Khurk, khak...!"

Having inhaled the toxic air, Kadram hurriedly tried to blow it away with wind magic. Turan had no reason to let him. In a contest of skill with wind magic, Turan won hands down.

Each time the poisonous vapor began to leave Kadram, it was pushed back. In the end, he had to hold his breath and physically flee, hobbling on one foot.

'Just as I thought. Since that technique steals control of magic, it seems it can't deal with an attack like this.'

Turan continued spraying Water of Death to create poisonous vapor, driving Kadram into it with wind blades and vortices. Since attacks aimed directly at his head or torso were usually dodged or deflected, Turan targeted his extremities one by one instead.

A few Arabion wizards noticed their captain's plight and tried to help. But after a casual wave of a hand sent heads flying, the others no longer dared interfere. They had eyes enough to see that this fight lay beyond the realm of ordinary wizards.

A minute passed. At the end of the chase, Kadram rolled helplessly across the ground, missing one arm and both legs. Turan gazed down at his incapacitated opponent.

"... You wouldn't tell me who you really are even if I asked, would you?"

"Of course not."

Having given that brief answer, Turan noticed that his opponent's face showed only dismay, without a trace of the fear or despair typical of someone whose life hung by a thread.

"Aren't you afraid of death?"

"Well, who can say?"

Kadram mimicked Turan's earlier evasiveness with a mocking expression. An immortal who had lived for thousands of years and would live on for thousands more—to him, the death of this body was no more than a single failure.

Ymir's attitude when he had announced that his time was up and left had probably come from the same confidence. Had it truly been a battle he needed to win, had that one victory been vital, he would have fought while husbanding even his last breath.

Turan thoroughly disliked the composure that confidence afforded them. He and his companions fought with their one and only lives at stake, while these beings could change bodies like clothes and try dozens, even hundreds of times.

It was time to change that.

"Then I'll teach you to fear it."

Before Kadram could ask what he meant, a wind blade extended from Turan's hand and severed his head.

* * *

As his field of vision spun, Kadram inwardly sighed at the aching pain.

'Tsk. Dead, then.'

He had rather hoped the boy would keep him alive to extract information or something of the sort. But then, with the fighting still going on, who had time to leisurely take hostages?

As he felt his soul slowly leaving his body, Kadram's first thought was of his superior's reprimand. Once they had been equals—Kadram had even held the upper hand—but now that was someone he dared not defy.

This failure would probably leave him languishing among the lower ranks of his companions for a while. Of course, finding a body with suitable compatibility and talent might earn him another chance, but the power he currently enjoyed, to dictate the affairs of an entire great house, would most likely go to someone else.

'I'll have to put in some effort for a while. Shift some of the blame onto Ymir, too...'

But his thoughts of the future were brief. Kadram realized his soul was traveling far too slowly. No, it was as if someone were holding him—

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

At the sound of an unfamiliar spiritual voice, his spirit form abruptly began to be dragged away. Only then did Kadram realize that Turan stood opposite him, his own spirit form also extracted from his body.

Having emerged from its nest within his brain to assume a human shape, Turan's spirit form looked quite unlike an ordinary human. Its basic features—hair, face, and build—matched his physical body, but two wings sprouted from its back, and antlers crowned its head.

A seasoned practitioner of soul magic, Kadram knew these signified the Storm Bloodline. The antlers represented the dragon that commanded lightning; the wings, the bird that cleaved the wind in flight. Unlike the physical world, where such traces remained hidden, the spiritual world revealed them when a complete spirit form was brought forth.

The problem was that those were not his only changes. There were also vertically slit, snakelike pupils and black dust drifting around his body. Those two features clearly belonged to the Pursuer and the Hunter.

'Four features...'

Of course, the fact that Turan's spirit form displayed four traits was not especially surprising in itself. Kadram had already suspected him to be one of 'those who had crossed over,' and their souls held four powers without exception.

What Kadram could not understand was the combination. Thundercaller and Aeromancer, Hunter and Pursuer?

The traces left upon the soul should have been entirely separate from the possessed body's bloodlines. Did that not mean his very essence was like that? Surely none of them possessed such a bizarre combination—

["This is where you belong."]

With those words, Turan's spirit form reached out. An immense pull arose, sucking in Kadram's consciousness. Its source was the small jewelry box held by Turan's physical body.

Kadram realized that it was an object his leader had made, one specialized in seizing and binding spirit forms.

["How!"]

Hadn't Ymir lost that object while attempting to use it? Only then could Kadram be certain that Turan had been one of the unidentified group who had claimed to be Otas's descendants.

'Could it really be Otas? No. He's dead. But then what in the world is this—'

His thoughts were cut short as Turan's spirit form rushed him, forcing him into hand-to-hand combat.

Naturally, the fight was utterly one-sided against Kadram. Having lost his body, he was little different from a spirit without an anchor, whereas Turan still had a living, breathing body supporting him, however badly injured it might be. Battles between souls also consumed a kind of resource, so the side with an intact source of supply was bound to be stronger.

No, that was not all. The power of Turan's soul itself—its sheer weight class, so to speak—far exceeded Kadram's. Much as Kadram's own had when his body had held the Dominator and Tamer bloodlines...

["Wait, spare—"]

Feeling threatened for the first time, Kadram cried out urgently, but Turan's spirit form ignored him and continued its beating.

A soul's stamina was its willpower. As blow after blow landed with force that would have knocked out teeth and broken bones had he been alive, Kadram's consciousness grew increasingly dim.

A short while later, Turan's spirit form seized Kadram's tattered one and crammed it into the jewelry box, which existed across both the physical and spiritual worlds.

* * *

"Aaaagh!"

"R-run! It's a monster!"

After launching a spear of flame at the fleeing Arabion wizards, Solif gave a quiet groan of pain. His battered, slashed, and pierced body was screaming in protest.

"Fuck, this is killing me..."

He gave the dead snow leopard, its neck broken, a hard kick, then spotted Maysa in the distance driving her sword into an Arabion elder. Beside her lay someone who appeared to be another elder, half reduced to ashes. It seemed the fight over there was coming to an end as well.

Looking for somewhere he could help, his gaze soon turned to Turan. For some reason, Turan stood beside Kadram's corpse with both eyes closed, holding the jewelry box. Vije perched on his head, her eyes gleaming as she kept watch for enemies.

"Oh, you won?"

Perhaps pleased at having won a four-against-one fight, Vije answered with a nod. Just then, Turan's eyes snapped open, and he shut the jewelry box's lid.

"Caught him."

"Who? Don't tell me—Kadram?"

"Yes."

A bright smile lit Turan's face. He had confirmed that, with the Nagin bloodline active, he could overpower even the gods in spirit form.

Of course, their spiritual strength was likely to vary, but in most cases, he should be able to subdue them this way after killing their physical bodies.

"Kadram won't hurt the old librarian, will he?"

"It's fine. I've separated the spaces inside."

Before learning soul magic, Turan had barely been able to use this jewelry box. Since awakening spiritual awareness, however, he had discovered several more ways to operate it. One was to partition the interior for different purposes.

Using that function, he had designated the librarian's quarters as a 'guest room,' allowing him to come out freely whenever the lid opened, and made a separate 'prison' to hold Kadram and any other gods he might capture later. There was also, of course, a separate 'storeroom' for the god's soul fragment he had acquired earlier.

"Well, that's all right, then. Let's get you patched up first. You're a complete mess."

"True..."

He had lost so much blood that even his vision was beginning to blur. Turan took the restorative-potion magic tool from his pouch, supplied it with mana, and gulped down its contents. He could no longer expect dramatic healing from it, but it could at least restore the stamina he had lost through bleeding.

Meanwhile, Solif and Maysa took prisoner the surviving Arabion wizards who had been unable or unwilling to flee. There were plenty of suitable tools on hand: the enemy had brought several magic tools designed for capturing and restraining people, presumably for Turan and Maysa.

Indeed, most of the survivors were already so badly wounded and incapacitated that they had to be given restorative potion simply to keep them alive.

"... Please, just spare my life."

"Lady Maysa, do you remember me? We dined together that time—"

"Traitor! Filthy whore!"

"How dare you abandon your house and join forces with outsiders!"

Once gathered, the survivors numbered a little over ten. They ranged from nobles of the main house to members of vassal houses, and their reactions were just as varied. Some stared blankly, half out of their minds; some begged desperately for their lives; others raged at their captors.

Maysa's eyes turned icy as she looked at those hurling abuse at her. Had Turan not asked her to take them alive, she would have killed them all without hesitation.

"Please, everyone, be quiet for a moment."

When Turan stepped forward and spoke, everyone fell silent. The fighting had been too fierce for them to fully understand what had happened, but all of them knew one thing: Kadram Arabion and the nameless Nagin noble beside him had wielded some mysterious, formidable power—and Turan, fighting them both, had begun wielding a similar power and won.

Of course, Ymir had destroyed himself by using his power in an ill-suited body, but they had no way of knowing that.

The silence lasted only a moment before a Frost-bloodline noble from a vassal house ground his teeth and growled.

"... I know who you are, Turan Zahar. A Zahar lackey who turned our heir against us and spirited her away, aren't you? Whatever nonsense you spout, I won't be persuaded. Kill me if you want! My family will avenge me!"

As expected, Kadram and the rest of Arabion's leadership seemed to have given their subordinates that story in advance. After all, these people were not mindless puppets. Why would they have accepted orders to station themselves in a forest like this without even a reasonable justification?

Looking at them, Turan slowly chose his words. He had already planned what to say, but it warranted one more review before he spoke.

'First of all, I mustn't reveal the gods' existence to them.'

The reason the fallen gods kept secret that they lived by stealing human bodies hardly needed explaining. If it came to light, wizards destined to lose their bodies, like Turan and his companions, would rebel.

Conversely, to the deeply devout, learning that their leaders were gods' vessels would only strengthen those leaders' legitimacy. After all, were they not humanity's great saviors and the ancestors of wizards? Anyone not personally facing possession might consider it an acceptable sacrifice.

That was why Turan had devised a false accusation to level against them—a deception mixed with information he had encountered in Ravista.

If it worked, Arabion and Nagin would have to concern themselves with containing the information these survivors spread, rather than pursuing his group.

"Are you aware, by any chance, that Arabion's leadership was taken over by White Elves long ago?"