About a month had passed since the Parsha–Ravista coalition occupied Baraha. After a period of turmoil, the land of lakes under Baraha's rule was beginning to regain a measure of stability.

Of course, not everything was as it had been before. The recent war had drastically reduced the number of Baraha's wizards, leaving none to spare for remote areas outside its heartland.

Dozens of small villages near the fog region at the eastern edge had fallen to monster attacks, and a city had been destroyed. To a ruler, these were merely minor problems—even if they meant shattered lives for the people involved.

As stability began to return, a delegation arrived in Helio, Baraha's capital. They had come from Ruban, the great house to the north.

* * *

"We have come on behalf of Ruban to request the compensation stipulated in our contract."

"Compensation?"

"Baraha's previous House Head promised to cede the northwestern Garam region and the warship Galepiosa in exchange for the deployment of twenty-one Ruban nobles. As you have inherited the name of Baraha, we trust you will do your duty and honor that agreement."

In the reception hall of the Temple of the Sun, Solif, Baraha's new House Head, clicked his tongue at the woman spouting utter nonsense before him.

The Garam region she spoke of was an area rich in high-quality iron mines that had once been offered as a bounty for Solif's capture. And the warship Galepiosa was the enchanted vessel Resion had sailed to Ravista.

"No, seriously... Have you forgotten who the troops you sent were fighting? You're asking me to pay you for a job that was meant to stop me? Are you out of your minds?"

"My lord, a little dignity in your language—"

"She's pissing me off! Do I look like I'm in the mood for dignity?"

The elderly Baraha noble who had cautiously tried to restrain him recoiled with a startled gasp at the harsh reply. Baraha had once been the most obsessed with empty formalities of all the great houses, but that tradition had declined sharply since Solif's accession. It could hardly have been otherwise when the House Head, who ought to set an example for everyone, behaved like this.

Without so much as blinking, Ruban's female envoy continued with another outrageous statement.

"The master of Ruban has decided not to demand blood money for the nobles of our main house who died in that battle. We sincerely hope Baraha will repay this goodwill in kind."

"Good heavens."

"Has she gone mad?"

Even the Baraha nobles trying to maintain their dignity could not help stirring at those words. This was nothing short of picking a fight.

Realizing that, Solif asked with a calm expression, in stark contrast to his earlier outburst.

"Let's get to the point. What do you want? A fight?"

"If Baraha's House Head refuses to inherit his predecessor's contract, we will have no choice but to collect payment ourselves."

"So you want a fight. You should have said so from the start."

At that brief reply, the atmosphere in the reception hall abruptly grew oppressive. He was the head of a great house—one of the few strongest beings in the world—and his anger was reflected directly in his mana.

"Ugh..."

Normally, it would have been absurd for a House Head to attend to a diplomatic matter like this in person. Such affairs were usually handled by a trusted subordinate. Solif dealt with every one of them himself not only because he still distrusted the main house's nobles, but because he had no confidants of his own whom he had trained for the task.

"Fine. I'll dress up my answer the way you want. Resion was a bastard of the highest order, and the new Baraha that killed him and took his place couldn't care less about his idiotic contracts. Tell your master to come fight me if he doesn't like it."

"... I will convey your response."

Watching the noble withdraw, Solif suddenly had a thought. Killing her now would give him a slight advantage when war broke out later.

Having thought it, he realized it was exactly the sort of idea his closest friend often had. Had their ways of thinking grown alike because they had spent so much time together, or because he had recently had all those needles pulled from his head?

"Must be rubbing off on me."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing. Anyway, you all heard her, didn't you? Prepare for war!"

The faces of the assembled Baraha nobles darkened at Solif's words. After all the calamities their house had suffered over the past few years, no one could call its military strength impressive, even in flattery.

The nobles from the top-ranking tier down through the upper tier, who normally formed the backbone of the house's forces, had been all but wiped out. A fair number of middle- and lower-tier nobles remained, but that was hardly enough strength to boast of being a great house in its full glory.

Considering how difficult it would be to recover the mana lost in the war, restoring their former prosperity might take a hundred or two hundred years—three or four generations. And now they were going to war with another neighboring great house?

"My lord, might we receive support from another house...?"

"Not Ravista, but we should be able to get Parsha's support. I'll look into the details."

"Understood."

The reason they could not resist their new House Head was not simply that he was Baraha's strongest wizard, equal to his predecessor Resion.

Turan Parsha. Master of the newly founded great house Parsha, and the great wizard who had earned the epithet "Invisible Sword" in the recent battle south of Helio.

Everyone knew that this extraordinarily powerful being reigned as Baraha's patron and de facto ruler. Solif openly admitted that whenever he made an important decision for the house, he always considered Turan's wishes and consulted him.

Many lamented that the great Baraha had been reduced to another great house's subordinate, but some actually welcomed it. At least they now had someone to turn to when a crisis like this struck.

After the meeting ended, Solif returned to his quarters, sealed the entrance, and recited an incantation in the study.

"Om Amogha Vai... Ah, this damn thing won't stick in my head."

He suffered the minor mishap of forgetting the incantation midway yet again and having to consult his written notes. Still, after crossing through space, he arrived in the secret chamber beneath Helio.

He stepped through the enormous mirror installed there and emerged in a basement in Kalamap, House Parsha's capital far to the northwest in the Gray Zone. Opening the magically locked door, he found a merman floating in a large bathtub.

"Soaking again?"

"I've been feeling rather dry lately."

As he greeted the merfolk boy, Armani, Solif suddenly laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

The head of a great house had traveled to another great house's capital through a teleportation gate hidden in his quarters, and the one guarding the passage was a merman who could turn into a great sea serpent. Would he have believed such a scene could exist if someone had told him a few years ago?

"Where's Turan?"

"I heard he went to a meeting. I never realized powerful demons were so busy. Then again, my royal father was always busy too."

Now that Armani could roam freely in the mask Asiz had made him, he still usually preferred to rest in Turan's quarters, the safest place available.

This had even sparked the unsavory rumor that Armani was not Turan's relative, as previously rumored, but his male concubine. Still, none of them cared about that sort of thing, so it was no great problem.

"I'm off, then. See you later."

"You won't. I'm going to sleep now."

"The sun's still overhead. What do you mean, sleep?"

After that idle exchange, Solif left the House Head's quarters and walked down the corridor. Passing servants and wizards bowed in greeting.

"Greetings, Commander."

"Good afternoon."

No one paid any mind to the fact that Baraha's House Head was strolling through House Parsha. Naturally so: a month was far too short for news of events in the eastern land of lakes to spread this far.

News of a war or a change in Baraha's leadership traveled swiftly only among those at the top who could gather information quickly. To ordinary people, Solif was a guest of the house who appeared out of nowhere every few days, then vanished again.

'Honestly, I like this better.'

He had taken the position of Baraha's House Head out of necessity, but a role like this naturally suited him better. Few privileges, but few responsibilities either—a position he could shed at any time and simply leave behind.

However deliberately informal he might be, a great-house head inevitably faced certain restrictions on his behavior. He could no longer easily disguise his face and visit gambling dens, or drink merrily with strangers in taverns as he once had.

Of course, this was no time to complain over such things. There was no helping it. Hard as they had worked to grow stronger, their enemies were still powerful and numerous.

After a short walk lost in thought, his destination finally came into view: the office of Parsha's House Head. Ordinarily, he should have knocked respectfully and waited for permission to enter. Instead, Solif casually opened the door and walked in.

"Good morning."

"We've already finished lunch. What do you mean, morning? What brings you here? You should still be in Baraha at this hour."

"Something came up."

After greeting Turan, who had been busy leafing through documents, Solif flung himself onto the nearby sofa. Turan frowned slightly at the sight.

"You're kicking up dust."

"Oh, it's barely anything... More importantly, Ruban's picking a fight. They want to have a go."

Could there possibly be a more flippant way to announce an impending war between great houses? Turan answered Solif's casual remark with equal composure.

"Them too?"

"What do you mean, too? Don't tell me something's happened here as well."

"Zahar wants a proper face-to-face discussion. About what happened."

Turan immediately sent the document in his hand floating toward the reclining Solif with telekinesis. Solif caught it, read it, and gave a quiet exclamation.

"A summit between House Heads...?"

"Yes. They want to meet in person at the border between the Gray Zone and the Enril Desert. Given the travel distance, you could say they're making something of a concession."

Even the heads of ordinary wizard houses seldom left the cities they ruled, making it difficult for them to meet. That went without saying for the heads of great houses. Unless they went to war with one another, they would normally go their entire lives without ever meeting face-to-face.

Turan and Solif could meet and talk whenever they pleased now, of course, but that was entirely thanks to the Jade Mirrors Armani had brought. Without those—and without a monster as excellent for travel as Vije—even they could hardly undertake a journey of a month or two at the very least just to see a friend's face.

"Something smells fishy. They're not planning to lure you out and ambush you, are they? After what Resion did, I can't help thinking that way."

"That's precisely why I've proposed a three-way summit. With Ravista joining us."

"Oh."

"Of course, that alone won't guarantee our safety, so I intend to take every precaution beforehand. We'll have to settle this dispute with Ruban before then too, so we can get Baraha's support if anything happens."

As an added benefit, this proposal would delay the summit. Osel was currently sailing home through the South Sea aboard his house's warship. By the time he reached the main house, cleared his backlog of work, and traveled north again to the border of the Gray Zone and the Enril Desert, at least another two or three months would have passed.

"Well, in any case, you'll finally get to meet your grandfather's older brother. What was it—Caesar? Nazi?"

"They call him both. The former with a measure of respect, the latter with contempt."

Through Resion and Baraha's other half-elves, Turan had learned roughly what the two words meant. He could hardly claim a thorough understanding, however, since learning all the historical background behind them was no easy task.

After they had talked a little longer, Turan gave a small "Ah" and held out another document.

"More importantly, take a look at this."

"What is it?"

"News from the spies we sent north."

Several months had passed since House Parsha's founding. Turan had gradually managed to establish a rudimentary intelligence network through a few nearby wizard houses.

The Tamer power, one of the Nagin bloodline's abilities, had been a great help in doing so. Even if they were neither as intelligent nor as strong as Vije, flying monsters were quite valuable as a means of communication, provided he could tame ones capable of doing the job.

The stronger the Tamer involved in a soul contract, the greater the intimidation and obedience the contract imposed on the monster. With a great-house head personally arranging their contracts, Parsha's spies could communicate using birds that were astonishingly obedient compared with everyone else's.

"... Great sea serpents?"

"That's right. Armani's relatives have made quite a splash."

Reading the intelligence report, Solif let out a sound halfway between an exclamation and a sigh. It said that Karmine's capital, Abacha, had been half destroyed by an attack from the great sea serpents.

* * *

Aksum, the capital in the central-eastern Enril Desert. At first glance, this ancient city, infamous for thousands of years as Zahar's stronghold, hardly looked as though it stood in the middle of a desert. Green fields stretched in every direction, the air felt almost humid, and a large lake lay just beyond the city.

This was the result of thousands of years of effort by Zahar's nobles to make the city even a little more habitable. After powerful wizards had poured their strength into it for millennia, a place once little better than a wasteland had become capable of supporting a metropolis of hundreds of thousands.

In the deepest part of Aksum, in the one room shrouded in darkness, two people were talking.

"He said to meet in about four months? I've thought so before, but your grandson certainly has guts, just as you said. Imagine daring to put off a request from Zahar's House Head to suit his own convenience."

"I see no reason to give him time. If Ravista's House Head attends, as the letter says, things will become troublesome. And there's no knowing what he'll get up to in the meantime."

At Talis's words, the man seated opposite him, just entering old age, shook his head.

"There's no need to weigh things so carefully. If he is what I think he is, we won't be able to stand against him whether he has four months or not. If he isn't, we'll have more than enough strength to crush him."

A grinding sound accompanied his quiet voice. Seated there, the old man was crushing dried leaves in a small mortar.

"More importantly, is the Lawyer's side making excuses for not cooperating, or is it genuine?"

"Abacha really has been half destroyed. Though we can't rule out the possibility that it was staged."

"I wish we could plant a more capable spy there... Well, I suppose it can't be helped. They put a good deal of effort into counterintelligence too."

Rising with that quiet complaint, the old man revealed a surprisingly tall, robust build. Talis beside him was not particularly short, yet the old man stood half a head taller. His eyes gleamed sharply as he spoke.

"Accept his request. We'll meet in four months, at the border of the desert and the Gray Zone."

"Do you really think he's 'that'?"

There was a trace of fear in Talis's somewhat evasive tone, as though he did not dare even mention that being.

Perhaps sensing it, Zahar's House Head grinned and deliberately spoke the name Talis had tried to avoid.

"Until he invaded Baraha, it was only a suspicion... But now I'm halfway convinced that Turan Parsha is Otas reincarnated. Once I meet him and speak with him in person, I'll know for certain."