Once, Turan had watched the old man before him wield magic and felt admiration. Seeing the might of the most powerful wizard in the world, he had longed to wield such power himself.

Now, several years later, he finally faced the opponent whose heights he had aspired to reach: the House Head of Arabion, descendant of the Thunder Lord.

'He seems very different from before.'

The Badal he remembered had been a listless old man. Ordinarily, he let a proxy act for him while he even nodded off in the sun, and when he exercised his power himself, the strain had been obvious.

But now he looked ten years younger, his expression and movements brimming with vitality. It should have been impossible without drinking some mythical elixir of immortality.

Turan immediately awakened his spiritual awareness and opened his soul's sight, only to shudder at what he saw. Badal's spirit form had swollen as though it might burst out of his head at any moment, forcibly holding his body together...

And beneath it, the inner landscape revealed by the Mimic Holy Relic was unchanged. He glimpsed the Thunder Lord's symbol: a massive hand wielding a hammer, with lightning and wind raging each time it struck the anvil.

Suppressing the fear welling inside him, Turan spoke mockingly.

"So this is what you've done to your precious daughter? Just what I'd expect from a White Elf."

"A White Elf. That was quite an amusing lie."

Rather than fly into a rage at the provocation of a youth hundreds of years his junior, Badal replied with an expression as calm as still water.

Despite the deafening din of screams, shouts, and spells flying in every direction, they had no trouble conversing. Both were using wind magic to send their voices straight to the other while drawing the other's voice toward themselves.

That alone told Turan that, even if Badal's magical talent fell short of his and Maysa's, it stood on an entirely different level from an ordinary wizard's. Of course, why would a god choose a body without talent?

Even as they spoke, Turan glanced at his two companions to assess their condition. Solif appeared seriously injured, but Maysa seemed to have merely bled profusely, without suffering any mortal wounds.

"There is one thing I would ask. Do you have Kadram's soul?"

"Well, what do you—"

Before he finished speaking, Turan's hand spun, and the sling he held erupted. It was a high-speed throw propelled by the Spirit of Fire.

A sudden, underhanded ambush. Yet Badal did not so much as twitch an eyebrow as he called down a lightning bolt that intercepted the projectile with perfect precision.

Just as when Turan had attacked the Sky Guardian, the enchanted steel ball melted away in an instant, leaving only metal vapor.

'This is...'

The sky, fairly clear when he flew in, had already been blanketed with dark clouds for some time. Most likely, the old man before him had created them to make lightning magic easier to use, just as he had in the past.

Turan immediately melted into the darkness with stealth. He did not truly expect to hide, of course. As in his past fight with Maysa, he meant to force Badal to expend even a little mana on creating light and divide his attention.

Instead of illuminating his surroundings with a sphere of light, however, Badal drew a long staff from his clothes. No—on closer inspection, that was no staff.

It was a hammer, a square jade-colored gemstone set at the end of a long shaft of blue crystal... The moment Badal raised it high, Maysa, who had been catching her breath behind Turan, cried out urgently.

"Dodge!"

Turan swiftly detonated the Spirit of Fire to hurl himself away, and a violet flash erupted around Badal. It was a bizarre color, impossible to reproduce with conventional lightning magic.

He did not know it was a form of plasma, but he could instinctively tell that the power within it was terrifying.

From where Badal had been standing to where Turan had stood—a distance of over a hundred meters—the air shimmered with heat across a swath dozens of meters wide.

Watching this, Turan had already released his stealth. That dreadful brilliance had burned through his mana in an instant.

As expected of a House Head, even the way he forced someone out of hiding was on a different level from an ordinary wizard's.

'So this is Heaven's Punishment...'

It was the Thunder Lord's Holy Relic, considered a pair with the Sky Guardian Maysa wore. But unlike the merely upper-middle-tier Sky Guardian, this was a top-ranking Holy Relic, one that Arabion prized above all others.

In other words, it was on par with Turan's Mimic Holy Relic. Hadn't people in ancient times called it a fire-kindling staff after watching a single swing dry up a river?

"Oh?"

Badal arched one eyebrow, seemingly surprised by Turan's mobility, then swept his hammer through the air. With a growl, the immense electrical charge gathered in the sky converged on a single point.

"You're quite good at dodging. How about this, then?"

If a gnat could easily evade an attack concentrated on a single point, all one needed was a broad flyswatter. Guided by the hammer, the charge gathered in the sky took the form of violet dragons and descended to the earth.

The technique defied the fundamentals of lightning magic, which by nature appeared in a flash and vanished.

Turan hurriedly detonated the Spirit of Fire again, combining it with flight magic to evade them, but the dragons did not give up after a single miss. They pursued him relentlessly. Dodging once would not end this spell; it had been endowed with the ability to track him.

"Ugh—"

Retreating hastily, Turan drew on the combined power of Arabion's two bloodlines. A month and ten days had passed since he learned divine magic. Through practice, he had already learned which levers to pull to wield each power.

As Turan cast his spell, dozens of lightning dragons engulfed him. A thunderous blast sent out a shock wave that hurled a couple of nearby knights far into the distance.

"No!"

"You bastard!"

Maysa and Solif cried out in anguish and immediately attacked the now-exposed Badal: a javelin fashioned from the Light of Judgment, and a boulder pulled from the ground with earth-alteration magic.

Badal deflected both attacks without moving from his spot. The Light of Judgment tangled with violet light spilling from the hammer and vanished, while the mana-laden boulder was caught in a tempestuous wall of wind and flung away.

Seizing that opening, Solif shaped the Light of Judgment into a sword and attempted close combat. But Badal deftly evaded the blade and swung Heaven's Punishment into Solif's chest.

"Gah—!"

The flawlessly fluid movement ended in a deafening crash, sending Solif flying hundreds of meters. Maysa's eyes widened in shock at a distance no ordinary blow could have sent him.

"Sol...!"

Of course, they knew how far below Badal they stood. They had spent the past several hours fighting a hit-and-run battle to let their main force retreat, yet had still been driven to the brink of death.

Even that had only been possible because Badal had not revealed his full strength. Perhaps because of the false rumors about White Elves, he had refrained from using divine magic, and had even held back his blows to capture Maysa alive.

Solif had made good use of this, using Maysa as a shield whenever a potentially lethal attack came his way. Since the Sky Guardian rendered her all but immune to lightning magic, she had been an enormous help.

But now, with Turan's arrival, Badal had revealed his true ability and become stronger by another whole order of magnitude.

Maysa had barely begun trembling with a despair that threatened to break her resolve when Badal turned his head and exclaimed.

"Indeed, you really can use skills. So the rumors were true."

A gust of wind soon cleared the air, revealing Turan to them both, half-collapsed. A translucent, dark-blue barrier hung around his body.

This divine spell, once used by Kadram, offered the greatest defense of any technique Turan possessed. Yet his entire body still stung as though burned. Had he taken the attack directly, he would likely have died instantly, defensive magic tools or no.

'He's even stronger than I expected...'

Osel had repelled Baraha's House Head, albeit at Ravista's stronghold, so Turan had assumed that even a god inhabiting the head of a great house could not be that powerful. He had thought that, at the very least, the three of them together could hold their own, even if they could not gain the upper hand.

Yet the Arabion House Head he now faced was more powerful than he had imagined. Was it a matter of compatibility with the vessel? Or a difference in the strength of the god within?

Whatever the reason, Arabion's House Head was overwhelming them without even revealing the true magic he would possess as the Thunder Lord. Of course, they might have fared somewhat better if Maysa and Solif had not been near exhaustion...

As Turan inwardly marveled at his opponent's prowess, the stinging burns across his body rapidly subsided. The Humble Wish, the Holy Relic around his neck, was healing him.

Its restorative power was not particularly strong, so it could do little more than ease a serious injury. But simply undoing minor damage like this made it enormously useful in combat.

"Hold on a little longer! Reinforcements are coming!"

Calling out to encourage his companions, Turan immediately flew upward to gain the high ground, then formed several vortices and launched them at Badal.

It was the technique Kadram had called a cyclone. This time, he did not simply fling them out carelessly as he had on his first attempt.

Using wind magic, he arranged for the vortices he had sent out around Badal to converge and surround him. Combining ordinary magic with divine magic was one of the techniques Turan had worked painstakingly to develop over the past month or so.

"Not bad."

With that brief compliment, Badal lightly stamped a foot and rose straight into the sky. Turan sent the vortices upward after him.

Ordinary flight magic could never outrun them—

"What?"

Turan's eyes widened involuntarily at what followed. Badal shot through the sky and out of the encirclement in an instant, truly as swift as lightning. His speed was beyond ordinary flight magic, more comparable to Vije's flight.

"Does it fascinate you?"

Muttering words that might have been mockery or a genuine question, Badal hurtled at Turan without slowing. The hammer in his hand brimmed with the same violet light as before.

Turan made another emergency evasive maneuver, but the power exploding right beside him slammed into his flank.

"Gah...!"

A groan escaped him as though his lungs were being wrung out. Having moved clear, he looked back at where he had been and felt a chill down his spine.

A vast fissure, dozens of meters across, had opened around the spot where Badal's hammer struck. Even a glancing blow would have been like being hit by a great sea serpent's tail. He began to worry whether Solif had survived the earlier blow.

"You evade the powerful attacks and block the ones that cannot miss... A troublesome opponent."

At first it sounded like a complaint, yet a faint smile played across Badal's face. Did he find it entertaining to face a troublesome opponent?

As Badal charged again, Turan detonated the Spirit of Fire to dodge away, only to be caught up with almost immediately. Whatever method his opponent was using, his flight was impossibly fast.

'Moving your body with wind shouldn't allow that kind of speed. Even among divine spells, there's nothing like it except acceleration. Could it be an ability unique to the Thunder Lord?'

Dozens of thoughts flashed through his mind in that brief instant. Then Turan realized that Badal's movements differed somewhat from ordinary flight magic.

Rather than being pushed along by wind as in ordinary flight, he moved as though an invisible hand were pulling him... Just as a realization began to flash through Turan's mind, a distant commotion broke his train of thought.

"Reinforcements!"

"The enemy! Fall back and form up!"

The Ravista wizards who had ridden Vije with him had finally joined the battle in earnest.

'Only now? No, come to think of it, they got here quickly...'

Only then did Turan realize that less than a minute had passed since he encountered Badal and began fighting him. The battle had been so intense that it merely felt as though much longer had passed.

"Arabion! Attack the Arabion forces!"

"Which ones are Kalamap's wizards? Bring us the wounded!"

The arriving Ravista wizards slammed into the flank of Arabion's army as it pressed House Berg's wizards hard. Not all of them were Healers of the Ravista bloodline; some were nobles from vassal houses with bloodlines specialized for combat, and were by no means poor fighters.

Meanwhile, although he did not show it, Badal seemed to have grown anxious. Abandoning his earlier leisurely manner, he flew at Turan. Each swing of his violet-lit hammer made the air burn and shimmer with immense heat.

Turan set his Holy Relic to the Sun bloodline and countered with the Light of Judgment.

Badal had just demonstrated that the violet lightning could interact with the Light of Judgment. If it could block Turan's attacks, then its own attacks could be blocked in turn.

As expected, unlike his other techniques, the Light of Judgment blocked Badal's attacks fairly effectively—though each exchange tore away a hefty chunk of mana.

As he desperately evaded Badal and tried to knock him off course with wind magic, Turan realized something else. He could sense no trace of wind magic around Badal's body. What moved him were pieces of metal placed throughout his clothing.

At that moment, Badal grimaced and thrust one hand behind him, interrupting his attack on Turan. A dark-blue barrier extended from his hand and met an incoming wind blade with a ringing crash.

"So you can use it now. You really were... well made."

Beyond the murmuring Badal, Maysa glared at him, pressing her fingers against one temple as though suffering a headache.

Turan saw wind and lightning intertwined within her and realized that she had finally succeeded in linking her symbols through soul magic. Since she had not used it until now, she had either kept it hidden as a trump card or only just managed to succeed.

"You... will never lay a hand on him!"

Perhaps linking the symbols was too much of a strain. Maysa's face, already pale from blood loss, had gone beyond white to a bluish hue. Badal watched her silently, then suddenly glanced around.

"Things are going poorly."

As he said, the Arabion army accompanying him was now being driven back by Ravista's wizards. Apart from Badal himself, no wizard among them was powerful enough to stop Ravista's two top-ranking wizards.

"That is enough."

He tossed out the words, lowered his hammer, and backed away as if to demonstrate that he had no intention of fighting further.

"Enough?"

"Fighting any further would only end badly for us both."

Turan wanted to shout, "Says who?" and tear into him, but he was in no position to do so. He had to check on Solif, who had been sent flying earlier, and Maysa was visibly struggling to use soul magic.

Had Badal sensed his dilemma? In place of his earlier vigor, weariness settled over his face as he spoke.

"How utterly exhausting. Having to waste my strength on such trivial matters at a time this important..."

What did he mean by an important time? Before Turan could ask, Badal shot away at the same tremendous speed as before.

["All forces, retreat!"]

His voice boomed from the sky. Cutting through even the noise of the battlefield, it sent the beleaguered Arabion wizards into a coordinated retreat. They, too, had only been waiting for their leader's command.

The battle had ended with utter anticlimax. Remaining alert for a possible feigned retreat, Turan searched for Solif, who had been knocked far away.

Before long, he found him buried nearly a meter deep in the earth, his breastbone crushed.

"Still alive?"

"I think I'm already dead. Or about to be."

Turan chuckled at the grumbling voice, then immediately activated the Ravista bloodline and cast restorative magic on Solif. Before long, his caved-in breastbone sprang back into place with a series of cracks, and the minor wounds across his body vanished.

"You've picked up another new trick while you were away... Where's the old man?"

"He ran away."

"Damn it. That monstrous old bastard. We should have finished him here."

In truth, saying he had run away was not entirely accurate. Although the Arabion army had been falling back, Badal would have had plenty of strength left to fight if he had gone all out.

Above all, he had barely used divine magic—the techniques he had called 'skills.' Whether he had been holding back or was unable to use them, Turan did not know.

'Still, have we finally grown strong enough to put up a fight...?'

If he had to make a comparison, the gap was still that between a burly, muscular man and a slender woman. But at least they had reached the point where they could exchange blows.

Unlike before, when they had been no more than insects he could crush beneath a finger. Turan allowed himself a brief flicker of pride, then walked toward the Ravista wizards tending the wounded.

He hoped desperately that no one he knew had died. As if to mock that wish, before long he heard a familiar voice crying out in anguish.