"Ahh..."

Early that evening, Turan returned from training and sank into the hot bath in his quarters with a groan. Coming from the western wasteland, where water was scarce, he had never been accustomed to soaking in a tub. Since experiencing the hot springs of Shiraf Marsh, however, he had taken to enjoying baths like this whenever he could.

In truth, this hardly qualified as extravagance for the head of a wizard house. All the more so when he even heated the water himself with ignition magic rather than waste firewood.

'I'm tired.'

Managing his house's internal affairs, negotiating relations with its neighbors, and fitting in his own training besides. The position of master of the great House Parsha came with no end of burdens.

Turan possessed the superior physique of a House Head-caliber wizard, as well as exceptional recuperative powers thanks to his Holy Relic being set to the Ravista bloodline. Even so, his current schedule was grueling enough to exhaust him.

Of course, not every great-house head lived such a busy life. He simply had far too many systems to establish as the head of a newly founded house, and too many powerful enemies around him.

Even this respite in the hot bath was not a chance to set everything aside and relax. With his eyes closed, Turan awakened his spiritual awareness and began combining the symbols within him one by one.

'Aeromancer, Thundercaller, Hunter, Pursuer.'

Now that he knew how to combine two of his four symbols, his next task was to learn how to combine the other two. Ultimately, he would need to find a way to combine all four. That was how he would approach the power wielded by true gods—the ancient Freyans.

'Assuming there even is a way.'

Turan recalled what the half-elves had told him about combining symbols. The nobles' bloodlines had originally come from the "classes" in the game they used to play. Or "types," as the librarian had once called them.

Everyone started with one by default, and could unlock other classes by completing certain tasks. These involved rituals such as burning living creatures and covering oneself in their ashes, or riding waves, as Turan had seen before. The total number of types, or classes, one could possess was four.

The problem was that combining them also followed certain fixed formulas. According to the half-elves, Turan's four bloodline abilities formed a combination outside those formulas. In other words, he was a ruined character build with no "final class" like those of the fully realized gods.

["Has anyone ever succeeded with a combination that didn't exist in the game?"]

["Not to my knowledge. Though we lost the ability to manipulate souls on that higher level after merging with the White Elves in the first place."]

Letting Resion's voice drift to the back of his mind, Turan focused inward once more. Wind and lightning tangled together, black mist spread around them, and the eye—

"Ah..."

Once again, the black mist vanished as though driven away by the lightning's glare. Were these truly impossible to combine? Or did he first need to learn the more fundamental step of combining Hunter and Pursuer, Zahar's two bloodlines?

After several more attempts as he soaked in the hot water, dizziness forced Turan to pause. Ignoring his depleted spiritual power and pressing on would expose him to all the side effects the soul-magic book warned against.

Then a woman's soft voice tickled his ears from just behind him.

"When you're resting, you should focus on resting."

Maysa slipped into the bath beside him, speaking in a calm tone as though soothing a child. Turan had already sensed her presence and was not surprised.

"You're back early. Didn't you say it might take days?"

"I got lucky. The tracking magic tool picked up a dwarf just as it was leaving its den."

A few days earlier, Maysa had set out to exterminate dwarves reported near several small cities northeast of Kalamap. She said that following a few of them had led her to a den teeming with hundreds, just like the one they had seen before. Unlike that time, however, these had no special magic tools, so she had had little trouble scorching them all to death.

Turan now knew those weapons were called steam rifles and steam cannons—the legacy of the dwarves' scientific civilization, which had flourished before the Biologist tampered with them.

'Should I put those things to use as weapons, or...'

A handful of powerful nobles might be another matter, but lower-tier nobles and knights would inevitably suffer against massed firearms and artillery. The injuries the steam rifles and cannons had inflicted on them were proof enough.

And considering that the gods had forbidden such development, even Zahar and Karmine, who had been hoping Parsha and Arabion would destroy each other, might intervene in earnest...

"Hm?"

His thoughts had barely begun to grow complicated when wet hands covered his eyes.

"I told you. When you're resting, focus on resting."

She sounded as though she were scolding a small child, yet her voice was gentle rather than stern. With her voice tickling his ear and her soft embrace enfolding him, Turan smiled and closed his eyes.

* * *

In the early hours before dawn, a sudden chime woke Turan from a deep sleep. It came from the magic tool the servants used to summon him from outside, since the House Head's bedchamber was sealed tight while he slept. No one would dare activate it unless something truly serious had happened.

As expected, when he opened the door, a knight with a deathly pale face bowed and delivered urgent news.

"Open is under attack?"

"Yes! The beacon signals report an attack by large creatures and wizards!"

"Large creatures..."

Armani's relatives, the great sea serpents, immediately came to mind. House Parsha's possession of a magic tool that traversed space was an open secret. Connecting that to the Jade Mirrors was hardly surprising. And yet...

'Another house, perhaps, but I didn't expect them to figure it out this quickly.'

It was an open secret only among the upper classes—the wizards. The creatures' only sources of information on human society were their pirate lackeys in a few ports and islands. Such sensitive intelligence should have been beyond their reach.

Besides, hadn't they been busy waging war against House Karmine recently?

'Someone who knew about the Jade Mirrors told the merfolk. Who are the candidates? Karmine, Arabion, Zahar, Ruban...'

Speculation was meaningless when practically every great house except his two allies was a candidate. What mattered was that House Parsha's only port city was under attack.

Given the distance between the two cities and the speed of the beacon relays, the attack must have begun a day or two ago. Turan immediately reached for the parchment and quill beside him, wrote out his orders, and handed them to the knight.

"Deliver this to Maysa."

"Yes, my lord!"

His instructions were simple: he would go ahead and deal with the situation while she mustered a proper force to reinforce him. Since weak wizards would be of little use against great sea serpents, he added that she should gather only middle-tier nobles and above, limiting their numbers to what the house's riding monsters could carry, and come swiftly.

After confirming that the knight had left for Maysa's quarters, Turan went straight to Armani's room and woke him.

"Mmm, what... what's going on? The sun isn't even up yet..."

"It seems your relatives are destroying my city. We need to go take a look."

Armani's face stiffened at his words.

"Do they know I'm here?"

"Probably. If you're afraid, I won't force you to come."

Armani would be a tremendous help in a battle by the sea, but he had placed himself in Turan's service precisely to seek protection from them. Turan could hardly force him to fight. Besides, hadn't he already rendered an enormous service with the Jade Mirrors?

Armani hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.

"No, no. I'll come! If you die, I'll have nowhere else to run anyway."

Giving up House Parsha's protection was no easy choice for the merfolk boy. Even if he left and fled inland, he could not mingle with human society without exposing his identity. He would have to hide in a lake or river. Naturally, that would mean an end to the luxurious treatment he enjoyed now. Having grown up pampered even in the merfolk kingdom, Armani had no desire to endure such a life.

"Then let's leave at once. Vije!"

At his call, Vije sprang from his body, gave Armani a disapproving look, and grew to an enormous size. As they climbed onto her back, Turan heard her grumble in a voice only he could hear, "Smelly fish. I don't want to carry him."

Several hours after their departure, as the first faint sunlight pierced the damp morning mist to announce the dawn, Turan arrived at a devastated Open.

"It's already over."

He had expected as much, but seeing it for himself was unpleasant. The harbor and buildings lay in utter ruin, bodies visible here and there among the wreckage...

Open had only a few dozen wizards to begin with, and just three or four of them were nobles. It would have been razed by a single great sea serpent, let alone a whole group.

"Armani, hold out your hand."

"Why? Ow!"

Despite his question, Armani obediently held out his hand, then cried out when Turan cut his finger with a knife. Rubbing a handful of the blood between his hands, Turan immediately activated tracking magic.

'The target is a merfolk with the same kind of transformation ability as the owner of this blood. Or a close blood relative.'

Setting conditions like this was absurdly inefficient compared with using a piece of the actual target's body as a medium, but Turan's immense mana could sustain even that. As all five senses faded and the tracking spell's range expanded, he felt his mana draining rapidly.

A moment later, Turan opened his eyes and pointed northeast.

"Found them."

* * *

"You're certain the ruler of that land has the Jade Mirrors?"

"Everyone among us already knows about it. Why would I lie when my life is at stake?"

Aboard a warship in the North Sea, roughly two hundred kilometers from Open, a young human man answered a grim-faced merman in a rather frightened voice. That alone made it easy to tell which of them held the upper hand.

"Good. If he really is sheltering the traitor to our people, as you say... I'll spare your life as promised. Your family's too."

Not long ago, House Karmine had lost its battle against the great sea serpent merfolk, abandoned its capital of Abacha, and retreated inland. The man was one of the few Karmine nobles the merfolk had taken alive in that battle.

His captors' demand had been simple. If he knew the whereabouts of Armani, the traitor who had vanished with the Jade Mirrors, they would spare his life.

Knowing nothing of the matter, the Karmine noble had naturally expected to die. Yet an unexpectedly solid lead had emerged: the traitor had disappeared with an ancient merfolk treasure that linked distant spaces.

Hadn't rumors been circulating openly that House Parsha possessed a Holy Relic of teleportation? The timing was far too convenient for coincidence, and the merfolk had seemed convinced when they heard the story.

Above all, hearing the Parsha House Head's name had convinced them that he was sheltering the traitor.

"Turan. Yes, that was his name."

"Surely he was one of the deathless ones too. Aren't we just making another enemy?"

"We've destroyed one of his cities, so he'll come looking for us. We can negotiate in earnest then."

The merfolk royals sat on the deck of the warship seized from Karmine, chatting quietly. Watching them, one would hardly have guessed that they kept hundreds of humans belowdecks to snack on.

Head bowed low, the Karmine noble prayed only for this nightmare to end, whether they negotiated with Parsha's House Head for the traitor's return or fought him.

"Well, they were fairly strong, but if we threaten them with the power we have now, they'll hardly have a choice but to listen. We've already brought down one of those great houses they're so proud of."

As one royal boasted, their clan's power had reached an entirely different level since they awakened as priests of the great sea serpents. Even one of the demons' leaders—the fallen god who had enslaved them with the Blue Coral Crown—had been unable to withstand their relentless aerial attacks on Abacha and had retreated. Of course, venturing inland would clearly have led to their extermination, so they had been unable to advance any farther and had been forced into a stalemate.

According to the human, the port they had just devastated was the only one in the lands ruled by Armani's demon friend, Turan Parsha. Given the importance of ports and waterborne transport to human cities, Turan would have no choice but to negotiate.

After conversing for some time, the merfolk royals suddenly frowned and looked around.

"What is this?"

"Something feels strang—"

"Transform!"

At someone's urgent cry, all three merfolk immediately changed into great sea serpents. Naturally, the warship beneath them shattered in an instant. Every human aboard was crushed between the three enormous bodies, staining the sea red: the Karmine noble who had served as their lackey until moments before, his family brought along as hostages, and all those taken for food.

The merfolk had no leisure to concern themselves with that. The moment they transformed, a flash of light and heat erupted from empty air and hurtled toward them.

The streak of light achieved a stunning result: it pierced one serpent's midsection and caved in roughly half of another's face.

["Graaagh!"]

["Who was that?!"]

The creatures were slightly smaller than the great sea serpent wraith that had once descended upon these waters, but still so immense that humans would have seen them as natural disasters rather than living beings. Their cries sent waves surging and raised a storm, yet no one answered.

["What in the world..."]

The merfolk whose belly had been pierced murmured in a rather thin voice, then jerked its head up in alarm. The same subtle sensation as before had come from somewhere.

All three dove at once. At that very instant, another flash cut across the surface, vaporizing seawater and raising an immense cloud of steam. Had they remained above, they would probably have been struck again.

["That attack... If we can't see them at all, could it be those ones?"]

["Zahar."]

They knew well of the demons who could conceal themselves. They had also heard that Turan, whom they had just provoked, possessed that ability.

What shocked them was the power of the attack. How could it shatter their scales so easily even in great sea serpent form? Even the enormous boulder attack he had used when they fought together could not have delivered this much firepower.

Had he grown stronger in that brief span of time? Or was this a hidden technique?

["Ah."]

Their thoughts were cut short as their enormous eyes widened at a familiar presence approaching from far away. Armani. The one in whom they had once placed their greatest hopes, but who had now betrayed their people and fled, was coming toward them.