Having rested briefly to replenish the mana he had expended on tracking magic, Turan pursued those who had attacked Open, riding Vije straight after them.

He had not intended to attack the moment he found them. There were only two of them on this side, while he had no idea how many were on the other. It would have been enough to approach discreetly, obtain a few mediums he could use to continue tracking them, and then withdraw.

But when he arrived, the enemy's forces were far weaker than he had expected. Three merfolk royals, one or two middling nobles, and several hundred ordinary humans…

It seemed the beacon had merely reported that human wizards were attacking alongside them because a warship was present. Anyone could see that forces of this size were unlikely to mean anything.

Turan had brought the other nobles because he thought a human force cooperating with the great sea serpents had occupied Open. If he had known it would turn out like this, he briefly regretted not bringing Maysa as well.

That regret lasted only a moment. Turan set Armani down some distance away, then approached with Vije while remaining in stealth and attempted an attack. If he fired his newly acquired weapon, the railgun, somewhat off target, he could eliminate only the merfolk without harming the civilians inside the warship.

What he had not anticipated was that the merfolk could somehow sense the railgun's precursor—magnetism. The warship was crushed in an instant when the merfolk suddenly transformed into great sea serpents. They were fairly badly injured, but managed to escape safely into the sea.

After clicking his tongue in disappointment, Turan decided to continue pursuing them. Three should be manageable enough, and besides, the sight of Open he had seen moments earlier had filled his mind.

It was not a city he felt as attached to as Kalamap, but it still belonged to House Parsha's name and was a city he had to protect. The sight of it lying in ruins, with more than several thousand people dead, remained vivid.

[Let's go.]

Carrying his voice on the wind for several kilometers, he sent it to Armani in the distance. Armani transformed into a great sea serpent and advanced toward his kin. At the presence of the traitor they had desperately sought, the three great sea serpents charged rather than retreating, and before long all four were violently entangled in the depths of the sea.

Activating the Karmine bloodline, Turan approached by riding the current and drew a long sword from his pouch. He moved toward the head of the more seriously injured great sea serpent and drove his sword straight in.

[Aaaaaaah!]

In the murky depths, the great sea serpent, whose weak point had been pierced because it had not even anticipated his approach, let out a scream. Only then did another great sea serpent notice Turan's presence; it twisted its body, brightly illuminating the dark night sea.

“Ugh.”

They shouldn't gain a trick like this just by becoming great sea serpents. How, then? Turan was puzzled, but quickly canceled stealth and controlled the surrounding water to pull himself away.

The mouth of the great sea serpent, jaws spread wide, passed through the place where he had been. After narrowly missing its attack, it glared at Turan and shouted.

[You swore you wouldn't fight us!]

[That was when you wouldn't harm humans—especially those under my protection.]

Just as he had carried his voice on the wind on land, Turan wrapped the words from his mouth in a bubble of water and sent it toward his opponent.

The great-sea-serpent merfolk who heard him spoke in a bewildered tone, as if unable to understand.

[The humans in the west had little to do with you, and only a few thousand people died at the port we destroyed as a warning. So why…]

Before he could ask whether they could afford to make an enemy of them, Armani bit down hard and tore through his neck. The other two great sea serpents bit into Armani's body to stop him, but neither was in good enough condition to make the attack particularly forceful.

While the four of them writhed together, Turan approached the great sea serpent clinging to Armani and reached out his hand. In an instant, a mass of ice grew around its long body.

[Aaargh!]

The Karmine bloodline's abilities were water and cold. Seawater was naturally more difficult to freeze than fresh water, but that posed no significant limitation to a wizard as powerful as Turan.

What he created was not merely a mass of ice intended to slow its body. From the outside it resembled a cylinder wrapped around the body, but inside it was a torture device lined with hundreds of sharp blades. It was an art possible only at the extreme limit of skill in shaping water into ice—something only a tiny number of Karmine nobles could accomplish.

[Let me go!]

The ice blades imbued with tremendous mana sliced through the great sea serpent's sturdy scales and tore into its tender flesh. The blow was not life-threatening for such a tenacious creature, but pain was often felt as more intense than it actually was.

Having half disabled one of them, Turan shaped a gigantic ice whip, just as Onil had once done, and struck another great sea serpent that was relatively unharmed—like a master punishing a beast that obeyed his will.

At that point, the great sea serpents realized they were outmatched and that continuing to fight could get them all killed. They decided to flee, splitting into three groups that escaped northwest, north, and northeast.

After consulting Armani with a glance, Turan pursued one of them each in a matter of moments.

* * *

“Where is the House Head?” “Don't tell me we're too late…”

In front of Open's harbor, now reduced to ruins, Parsha's army arrived with Maysa at its head and anxiously looked around. They had rushed over after hearing of a massive attack, only to find the city in ruins, while the House Head—who had set out alone and should have arrived a day earlier—was nowhere to be seen.

Unlike them, Maysa stood calmly, merely looking up at the sky.

“Does anyone know what kind of enemy attacked?” “I don't. I only heard that it was an enemy.” “Shouldn't we ask Master Solif for help too?” “If Lady Maysa says it's fine, what can we do?”

Only a select few among the highest ranks of the two houses knew the truth about the Jade Mirror connecting Parsha and Baraha, as well as its location. The dozen or so upper-middle-tier nobles gathered here knew only that there was a way to travel through space to Baraha.

A short while later, they understood why Maysa had remained calm.

“Huh?” “Th-that couldn't be…?”

With a rushing sound, something began rising from the sea onto land amid a torrent of water. The Parsha nobles were startled by the sight of the great sea serpent's enormous body and prepared attack magic, but soon realized it was already a corpse.

The sight of the seawater rising on its own and carrying the corpses of two enormous great sea serpents onto the shore was almost epic. Riding atop them were their revered Great House Head, Turan, and the mysterious guest, Arn.

“You're here.” “There are two? Didn't you say there were three?” “I let one get away. It was fast.”

Turan chatted calmly with Maysa as he set the great sea serpent corpses down on the shore. The reason she could remain so calm was that he had already told her roughly what had happened through the hand mirror. He had not had the mana to spare or the time to hear the details while pursuing them, however.

Once the two had landed, Maysa approached and brushed the hair from Armani's head as she asked, “Are you hurt?” “A little, but I was—Turan fixed me.”

The Parsha wizards behind Armani opened their eyes wide in surprise. Hadn't that sounded as though the boy had joined forces with Turan to fight the great sea serpents?

It was difficult to judge how powerful the creature had been now that it was dead, but its sheer size made it easy to guess that it had been a monster rivaling a mythical-class monster. Although all the wizards gathered here were among Parsha's more powerful figures, none of them would likely have found it easy to inflict meaningful damage on that monster alone.

“Could he be Karmine's heir? If they took him instead of Lady Maysa because he fights in water…” “He looks young, so perhaps that's really the case.” “At this rate, will the heirs of every great house end up gathering here in Parsha?”

Ignoring the whispers behind him, Turan informed Maysa of what had happened. His voice was heavy with fatigue from having spent nearly the entire day chasing them.

Unless they chose to fight back, pursuing and killing great sea serpents that were simply fleeing was genuinely difficult.

“They weren't on the same level as the one we fought before, and they're a little weaker than Armani, but they were troublesome enough. Underwater, each was about as strong as a House Head-level wizard?” “So that's how strong they were…” “Especially since you have poor affinity with the sea.”

In the previous battle against the great sea-serpent wraith, the creature had been half out of its mind and rampaged like a natural disaster, allowing them to fight it in the shallows. But there was little Maysa could do against a great sea serpent that deliberately hid underwater. Electricity tended to disperse uselessly in water, and there was no wind in such a place.

After conveying that information, Turan turned his gaze toward the nobles Maysa had brought.

“Everyone, you came quickly despite the urgency.” “Of course!” “Glory to Parsha!”

They had always shown their House Head sufficient respect, but the two great sea-serpent corpses sprawled behind him elevated that respect even further, to a height they had thought impossible. Turan pointed at the corpses and explained the circumstances.

“They were originally merfolk who recently learned how to transform into enormous sea serpents and have been harming humans. I'm sure you've all heard that Karmine has been suffering greatly because of them.” “Ah, that…” “I only heard it was because of sea monsters.”

Everyone was astonished that the enormous sea serpents had originally been merfolk, then listened closely to Turan's words that followed. Their House Head would not have revealed such a secret without a special reason.

“I killed several of them after pursuing them this time, but there are probably still many more with that kind of power in the North Sea. Therefore, I am imposing a temporary ban on maritime access around Open.”

A maritime-access ban. Although Kalamap was also a fairly important center of trade by land, the closure of the sea route was likely to deal the economy a serious blow. Yet none of the nobles gathered here dared object. What reckless fool would ask them to rebuild the harbor when those enormous monsters could descend in a horde at any time? After confirming that everyone had submitted, Turan nodded and said, “Then we'll start by putting this place in order. First, clear away the collapsed buildings and collect the bodies.”

“My lord, I have a question.” “Hmm?” A noble from House Pallen in the north timidly raised his hand to ask permission to speak. “What should we do with that monster… the sea serpent's body? Should we process it with magic tools as well and salvage it…?” “Just leave it. It would be difficult to salvage by ordinary means, and it won't be useful anyway.”

All the Parsha nobles looked baffled by Turan's words. It was common knowledge that powerful monsters retained some strength even in their corpses. Of course, they were not as powerful as when alive, since much of their mana had been drained, but they still overwhelmed ordinary materials.

Instead of explaining at length, Turan decided to show them directly. The long sword he drew cut off one of the nearby great sea serpent's teeth. “Here.” “Huh? Oh…”

The noble who startledly caught the tooth watched it melt away and disappear before long, and let out a groan. “As you can see, their bodies aren't real, so when a piece is cut from the main body, it simply disperses and vanishes. I brought this only to show what attacked the city.”

He did not bother adding that even killing them yielded no mana to absorb. It was much like how killing a powerful Dark Elf wraith sorcerer would yield no particular power from its corpse. The dwarves were the same; most other races were likewise groups that offered little benefit even when killed.

“Then get moving.”

A short while later, the Parsha nobles who had come expecting a major battle began the cleanup that knights or commoners would ordinarily have handled: bringing down buildings that were half-collapsed and collecting corpses crushed beneath the rubble or lying dead in the streets. “I didn't come here to do this…” “Shh. The House Head is working too. Keep quiet.”

Just as they said, Turan was tired from spending all day pursuing and killing the great sea serpents, but he did not stand on ceremony here.

Dozens of corpses shot out in an instant under telekinesis and lay in a row in the open ground, prompting several nobles to exclaim. That was possible not merely because of strong mana, but because of superior mastery over magic itself.

Maysa focused on demolishing and clearing the buildings from which Turan had extracted the corpses. When wind blades passed several times through the buildings, their twisted pillars already half-collapsed, they came crashing down in an instant. Yet thanks to her perfect control of the surrounding wind, not even a speck of dust rose as they fell.

Seeing this, the other nobles also exerted their magical abilities as fully as they could, though their efforts were somewhat lacking. As a result, Open, which had been left in utter disarray, was cleaned up to some degree in half a day.

“House Jaroyen ruled this place, correct?” “Yes, my lord.” “Find a close relative with a claim to succession and ask whether they intend to inherit the city. It won't be possible now, but after we subjugate all the great sea serpents in the future, someone will need to rebuild and govern it.”

No one opposed his decision. The position of House Head in a city whose reconstruction date was unknown—one that had effectively been destroyed and would have to start from nothing—was too distant a prospect.

After the cleanup was mostly finished, Turan spoke solemnly to his subordinates before leaving. “Everyone, remember what this place looked like. This is where those enemies from the sea slaughtered our families.”

Using earth-alteration magic to create a tomb, Turan learned that exactly 6,217 corpses had been buried. Considering the city's original size, the number crushed beyond recognition or dragged into the sea to become fish food must have been several times greater.

That was the blood price Parsha had to remember from this battle.

* * *

The sudden attack by the great sea serpents, and the story of the House Head who repelled it, stirred two emotions among Parsha's vassals: anxiety that a gigantic enemy might trample their city at any time, and relief that they had a powerful Protector capable of defeating it.

As a result, those who had previously sent only relatively weak nobles—members close to collateral branches—to House Parsha began engaging in the farce of sending nobles born with greater power, closer to heir caliber. They had judged that staying in Kalamap as Turan's subordinate was more likely to ensure their survival than remaining within their own houses.

Travelers passing around Open, now a vast graveyard, would gaze at the great sea-serpent corpses laid around the outside of the walls and spread word of their terrifying majesty wherever they went. A few wretched wizards came looking for something to pry from the bodies, ignoring the rumors that the corpses were useless, but all they learned was the miserable truth that their feeble strength could not even tear off a single scale.

Just as Parsha, having suffered such a brutal blow, was hardening its sense of community, an unexpected guest arrived from the north. It was House Karmine, which had retreated inland after recently losing its battle against the great sea serpents.

“I have come to see House Parsha's House Head.” “Good to meet you.”

Turan felt complicated emotions as he looked at the envoy who had come to see him on Karmine's behalf. Jemel Karmine. The father of Onil, whom Turan had once killed and impersonated, and one of the god's vessels ruling Karmine, smiled gently as he spoke.

“I know that the splendor you have displayed has spread throughout the world. In particular, that powerful and vicious horde of great sea serpents shamefully even forced us to abandon Abacha for a time and retreat.”

The memory of Jemel sternly scolding Onil was still vivid, yet seeing him bow and flatter Turan like a sycophant made him seem almost like a different person. Did he feel no hesitation about bowing to a human who was much younger than him—one who was not even a god? Perhaps, as with Renod before him, he had merely entrusted his body's shell with control of his actions for a time.

Apparently unaware of Turan's thoughts, Jemel continued rubbing his hands together and flattering him before stating his purpose. “The Master of Karmine wishes to request joint action from House Parsha—to fight those wicked sea serpents together.”