When Turan had captured Arabion's vessel Kadram, he had found that the being inhabiting him had a humanlike shape, little different from his own spirit form or those of Solif and Maysa.

That was why he had assumed Resion, whom he was capturing now, would also resemble a human. Even the mighty Freyans would be no different from them once stripped of their shells.

["You, how—how could you—!"]

But the true form Resion revealed was far from human by any measure.

The first thing that caught his eye was the mouth, smooth and without a slit. His whole body was marble white, and his eyes lacked irises or pupils, looking instead like inset golden gems. Then there were his unusually long ears, drooping like tentacles.

Were it not for a few features such as the burning hair, white halo, and golden scales, he would never have believed this was Resion's spirit form. Surely Healer was the only additional bloodline he possessed. Why, then, was he so different from Solif?

["Aaaaagh!"]

As that question crossed his mind, a woman's piercing scream rang out beside him.

["Maysa?"]

["M-my head..."]

Maysa had just left her body in spirit form to join him in the spiritual battle. Dozens of needles still embedded in her head vibrated—needles he had not managed to finish removing with how busy they had been lately.

["Get back in your body! Quickly!"]

She was in so much pain that she could not even steady herself. Turan pushed her back into her flesh, then launched himself after Resion, who would have fled in the meantime. Fortunately, the creature had not gotten far, occupied as he was in a fierce grapple with Solif.

["Hurry up and help! This bastard's too strong!"]

The few needles remaining in Solif's head were vibrating as he shouted, but though his face was contorted with pain, he seemed relatively able to endure it. Was that because he had far fewer embedded in him than Maysa did?

Turan rushed in and joined him in beating what they presumed to be Resion's spirit form until it weakened, then forced it into the jewelry box. Just as Solif had said, the spirit form was nearly twice as powerful as Kadram's, enough that even Turan would have struggled to fight it alone.

After Resion's spirit form was sucked into the jewelry box, screaming to the very end, Turan turned to Solif, who was clutching his head with a grimace.

["How's your head?"]

["Still hurts a bit, but I can bear it."]

Solif murmured that at least the pain from the needles had vanished once the spirit form disappeared from view, then returned to his body.

'I never imagined those needles would do that in spirit form.'

He had not known because neither Solif nor Maysa had been capable of leaving their bodies in spirit form when he subdued Kadram.

His curiosity about the needles deepening, Turan returned to his body and immediately checked on Maysa beside him. She was still grimacing from the lingering headache, but seemed much better than before.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. A bit better now... When I looked at that thing and thought about attacking it, my head suddenly started hurting."

It had felt like hundreds of needles stirring through her brain, Maysa murmured, a trace of fear in her voice. Clearly, the pain she had experienced had been incomparably worse than Solif's.

"So, did you capture Resion?"

"For now."

Turan raised the jewelry box, checked it again, and nodded. In one of its compartments, a prison he had deliberately made large, Resion's spirit form was trapped in the same inhuman shape he had seen moments ago.

"How's the battle going?"

"I'd say it's pretty much over."

As Maysa said, Baraha's army had lost its will to fight the moment Resion's head went flying. Only a few of his most loyal supporters had continued resisting and died for it. Most had dropped to their knees in submission or fled into the distance.

In particular, most of those levied from vassal houses rather than Baraha's main house surrendered readily. It made little difference to them whether Resion or Solif ruled Baraha, so once defeat seemed certain, they had immediately decided to switch sides.

Thanks to that, the Ravista–Parsha coalition could devote more effort to pursuing fugitives than guarding prisoners. Most conspicuous among those pursuers was a single enormous black eagle.

Vije had hidden inside Turan during the battle to avoid getting in his way. When her master left his body in spirit form to fight Resion, she had decided on her own to emerge and hunt down the fugitives.

"A b-black eagle—"

"It's the Parsha House Head's bird! Scatter!"

Her exploits in the past several battles had spread her fame far and wide. Rather than attempt to confront the mythical monster, Baraha's nobles scattered, desperate to get even one more of their number away.

Most of their attempts were futile. Even Arabion's flying nobles could scarcely dream of escaping Vije. What chance did those bound to the ground have?

While Turan treated the wounded alongside the nobles of Ravista's main house, Vije killed or subdued dozens of prominent fleeing nobles before returning to him. Having shrunk back down, she perched on his shoulder and cried proudly.

—Turan! I caught lots of them! Didn't I do well?

"You were amazing. Truly."

Feeling her dance with pride as she slipped back inside him, Turan gathered moisture from the air into water and washed the blood from his hands. Most of it belonged to Parsha's nobles and knights.

'More died than I expected...'

From what he had confirmed while helping treat the wounded, House Parsha had lost around twenty people. Given that there had been 136 of them excluding Turan and his two companions, roughly one in six had died.

Of course, that was hardly a great loss compared with Baraha, whose casualties approached half its force. But for Parsha, with its small number of wizards, even this was a crippling blow. Had Maysa and the other Enchanters not strengthened their forces with magic tools, their losses would likely have been even worse.

As he silently mourned the dead, Solif approached, smoothing his hair.

"It's over at last."

"I'm not so sure. This might only be the beginning."

Between dealing with the aftermath and the other great houses' responses to these events, thinking about what lay ahead only made his head spin more. Of course, this had been an unavoidable battle, so there was no point debating whether they should have fought it.

"Well, it's over for now, isn't it? I wish every war ended this easily after one good fight."

"Well... we were lucky."

As the past war between Arabion and Zahar demonstrated, wars between great houses did not ordinarily end with a single clash like this. They dragged on in interminable delaying actions as each side devoured the other's territory, or resorted to underhanded attacks on each other's strongholds.

There was no need to reach decades into the past for an example. Arabion and Parsha were still at war. Both were merely resting because they had judged themselves incapable of invading and finishing the other off.

This war had ended quickly because both sides had been convinced of their overwhelming advantage, certain they could crush the other in one decisive battle. The outcome made it plain enough whose conviction had been justified.

* * *

Once the aftermath had been dealt with, assessing merits and distributing rewards naturally followed. This was especially important in battles between humans, since they could grow stronger by absorbing their fellow wizards' mana.

First, following custom, each house reclaimed the remains of its own fallen. As for the enemy dead, a body went to whoever had made the confirmed kill; if no killer could be identified, it was distributed according to battle merits.

Turan did not forget to report the Ruban noble whose mana he had hastily absorbed for the battle and have it deducted from Parsha's share. A dispute over finding the culprit would have been a nuisance, and Ravista had already conceded a considerable amount to them anyway.

"Thank you for your generosity, Osel."

"No need for thanks. It's the least I can do after you came so far to help. All the more so when we would have been doomed without Parsha."

Osel shook his head as he answered Turan's thanks. As he said, the blade Baraha had kept hidden—House Ruban's reinforcements—had been sharp indeed.

Had they sent only Solif as planned, a devastating rout would have been the best they could hope for. Otherwise, they might have been wiped out. Considering that they had avoided that fate and won their revenge, giving Parsha this much of an advantage was more than justified.

After the mana of everyone from knights to high-ranking nobles had been distributed, their final prey was brought out: the body of Baraha's House Head. The mana within it was valuable enough to trade for an entire region. Indeed, the heads of great houses enjoyed such transcendent power because this immense strength passed from one House Head to the next. It was no exaggeration to call it the very substance of a great house.

"These four, then?"

"Agreed."

The three Parsha combatants who had fought Resion directly took their places to absorb his mana, joined on Ravista's behalf by a girl related to Osel. Osel himself had already inherited the previous House Head's mana and reached his limit, so he had selected a highly promising child from his house.

"Begin."

At the signal, all four began absorbing Resion's mana at once. Turan's mana, whose growth had stagnated for some time since he devoured the great sea serpent, began rising steeply again. His body grew stronger, his senses sharper, and the reverberations of power surged within him like waves.

Turan realized that his raw mana had taken another leap forward. Now he could even rival Osel, who stood right beside him.

'At last...'

Though he was still somewhat weaker than Badal, he finally possessed power truly worthy of the title of a great house's head. Then he heard a quiet, startled exclamation beside him.

The mana flowing into Solif's body was scattering, unable to find a home.

"Tch. Looks like this is as far as I go."

He had reached his limit. The phenomenon every wizard who steadily absorbed mana would eventually encounter had finally come for Solif.

Yet unlike an Arabion noble Turan had once seen, Solif did not sink into despair. He merely let out a short sigh and shook his head, as if he had known this would happen.

"Don't look at me like that. Well, I can't say I wasn't hoping... but this is plenty."

In truth, Turan had hoped that Maysa and Solif would awaken a fourth bloodline, as he had, once they accumulated enough mana. Solif, as a descendant of the Silver Sun, would awaken the Healer Bloodline, and Maysa the Strongman bloodline.

Of course, Solif now possessed power equal to Resion's in life. There was no cause to complain that this was all he had gained.

"Never mind that. Hurry up and put someone in my place."

"Vije. Let Vije take it."

Maysa called out softly as she absorbed power beside them. Parsha's nobles all possessed single bloodlines and were at or near their mana limits already, so absorbing Resion's mana would do them little good.

—Can you do it from in there?

—Yes!

At Turan's instruction, Vije began absorbing mana alongside him from inside his body. Most had already been absorbed, leaving her little more than scraps, but even those were a great help to her at her current strength.

Her mana, previously at the lower end of the top-ranking tier, instantly rose to the middle of that tier, putting her on par with Solif a few years earlier. Had she received a full share, she would likely have surpassed even that.

Once the absorption was complete, Turan settled the mana within him and checked the others' gains. Maysa was now slightly stronger than ordinary House Heads such as Osel and Resion. Turan came next, while Solif, who had reached his limit partway through, ranked last, on precisely the same level as Osel or Resion.

"It seems you're finished."

"Yes, thanks to your consideration."

Nodding at Turan's thanks, Osel turned to the Ravista girl.

"And you, Alu?"

"Thank you, my lord! I will never forget your kindness!"

The Ravista girl who had absorbed mana with them had likewise leaped from the middle tier to the top-ranking tier in an instant.

Hadn't they said she was one of the finest talents in Ravista's history, born with lower-tier noble mana from an early age? Osel was still young himself. Perhaps Ravista would one day boast two House Head-level powerhouses.

Finally, after distributing the magic tools as well, the coalition set out for Baraha's capital, Helio, escorting its prisoners. As they passed through the small towns and cities near the capital, ordinary people, too, learned the outcome of the war.

"Look at that."

"Good heavens. Don't tell me..."

"Should we run?"

"Stay put. Whether those high and mighty people change or not makes no difference to mere laborers like us."

Word that bedraggled wizards wearing House Baraha's crest were trailing behind the army would soon spread throughout the land of lakes.

After roughly three hours of marching, the coalition arrived at Helio. Ravista's wizards exclaimed at the city's towering walls and well-built buildings.

"So this is Baraha's capital?"

"Magnificent."

"The buildings really are tall. Must be because the ground is firm rather than soft."

"That's the Temple of the Sun!"

They were behaving like utter country bumpkins. The commotion only subsided after one of the high-ranking nobles sharply ordered them to shut their mouths.

Upon reaching the capital, the coalition split into three main groups. One occupied the key institutions affecting ordinary citizens, beginning with city hall and the police stations. Another guarded the bound prisoners outside the city walls.

The last group seized Baraha's stronghold, the Temple of the Sun, and subdued the few remaining holdouts.

"We lost?! Don't be ridiculous!"

"It's a lie! They're only a detached force! Our main army must still be fighting! Stand firm and hold your posts!"

The few nobles left at the main house raised their voices at the coalition's arrival, but no one rallied to their cries. Even if anyone had, what could they have done?

Baraha, too, had committed its full strength to the battle on the plains. The only nobles remaining in the Temple of the Sun were the old on the verge of death and children who had only just awakened their mana.

"Surrender peacefully, and I'll spare your lives."

"Solif, you traitorous bastard..."

The old Baraha noble's growl fell silent at the size and heat of the halo rising from Solif's back. It was as though a small sun had risen, its majesty recalling Baraha's House Head in life.

"You... devoured our lord?"

"Yes. I am Baraha's House Head now. Accept it or die. The choice is yours."

There was not a hint of swagger or menace in Solif's voice. His manner was calm, as though simply informing them of an obvious fact.

Perhaps that struck them all the more deeply. After exchanging looks, the last survivors heaved sighs and lowered the flag flying atop the Temple of the Sun. It was the first time in the eighteen hundred years since House Baraha's founding.

* * *

"Ugh, I'm dead tired."

"You can say that again."

That evening, Turan and the others gathered in the House Head's quarters formerly occupied by Resion. It was the place in the Temple of the Sun where they could most easily meet without being disturbed.

Ordinarily, it would have been improper for Solif, a guest of House Parsha, to take what was clearly the seat of honor. But his succession as Baraha's House Head was now certain. In addition, as Baraha's House Head, he had agreed to take responsibility for the earlier ambush and surrender substantial wealth and rights.

Once everyone was assembled, Turan carefully set the jewelry box on the desk.

"If everyone's tired, shall we wait until tomorrow to look?"

"No, do it now. There's all sorts of things I'm dying to know. Besides, we'll be busy with other work starting tomorrow."

"Right. You need to go back and check on Parsha too, don't you, Turan?"

"That won't take long."

"True!"

After the battle ended and they entered the Temple of the Sun, Turan had Armani reinstall the mirror leading to Kalamap in the earthen cave inside the prison where Solif's parents had once been confined. The plan was to keep it there for the time being, allowing them to respond swiftly if an enemy attacked either Parsha or Baraha.

"I really hope we can get some proper answers this time."

"It won't turn out like Kadram last time, will it?"

"If it does, I'll just destroy them both and investigate what's left. Better than letting them keep their mouths shut."

There were so very many things he wanted to ask Resion. What were the spiritual needles embedded in Solif's and Maysa's heads? Why did his own spirit form look like that? Why had he attacked Ravista out of nowhere?

It was time to open the jewelry box and learn the truth.