House Zahar's army reached the appointed meeting place just as the sun was sinking fully below the horizon. Osel, who was eating an early dinner with Turan, frowned at the dust approaching in the distance.

"Only arriving now? They've certainly taken their time. Do they think we're beneath them?"

"Considering the distances we all traveled to meet here, they aren't really all that late."

With well-maintained roads and numerous monsters at its disposal, the Parsha army under Turan had arrived in just four days. Ravista's army, however, must have taken nearly two to three weeks to cross the South Sea and reach this place. Zahar's army, coming all the way from the eastern Enril Desert, had probably spent at least a month and a half on the march.

Besides, his periodic reconnaissance through Vije had told Turan that they had deliberately adjusted their pace to arrive at this hour. Indeed, for Zahar, the nobles of the night, there could be no better time to meet a threatening opponent.

"Then perhaps we should..."

"Yes. Let's have them fall back."

Turan and Osel each kept a dozen or so people near their dining table and ordered the rest of their troops a hundred meters back. Apparently understanding the gesture, Zahar's army halted at a similar distance, and only a dozen or so of its members approached.

"Masks? How insolent."

Osel muttered in displeasure at the sight of them. As he had said, every approaching Zahar noble wore a plain mask—the same kind Turan had worn when hunting Ymir under the guise of the Night Hunter's servant.

Wasn't one of House Zahar's signature fighting methods to wear masks like that while repeatedly appearing and disappearing through stealth, confusing their enemies about who was who? Viewed in that light, merely approaching in masks could hardly be taken as a sign of goodwill.

Perhaps sensing their displeasure, the man at the head of the group removed his mask and bowed politely.

"Forgive us, masters of two great houses. This is a Zahar tradition. I ask your understanding."

The man who had removed his mask was Talis, younger brother to Zahar's House Head and Turan's grandfather. On seeing his face, Osel looked back and forth between him and Turan in bewilderment.

"I'd heard you looked alike, but this... Goodness."

"You needn't concern yourself with it. We never even met until I was grown, anyway."

After that quiet, almost whispered reply, Turan responded to Talis not with words but with an imperious tilt of his head. No one failed to understand its meaning: You are beneath me. Bring me your master.

For a top-ranking noble of a great house, and one of its handful of most powerful men at that, it could well have been humiliating. Yet unlike Jemel Karmine, who had openly bristled in such circumstances, Talis smiled courteously and inclined his head toward someone beside him, like an attendant.

A tall man standing at least half a head above the other Zahar nobles removed his mask. His wrinkled face looked a little short of sixty by ordinary human standards—old enough to be called elderly. Harun Zahar, Zahar's House Head, spoke with a cheerful smile.

"We've exchanged letters a few times, but this is our first meeting in person! A pleasure. I am Harun Zahar."

* * *

This was Turan's first meeting with Zahar's House Head, and his first impression differed considerably from what he had once imagined. Wasn't Zahar supposed to be a gathering of cold, ruthless assassins, its House Head the foremost among them—an assassin among assassins?

Instead, Harun Zahar looked like an ordinary old man one might find anywhere, with rather unassuming features and a merry smile. He bore little resemblance to Turan. More precisely, he looked nothing like his own younger brother, Talis, either.

"Well, may I join you?"

"Of course, Great-Uncle."

Whatever he made of Turan's choice of address, Harun chuckled and sat opposite the other two House Heads. As the seating had deliberately been arranged, Turan and Osel sat together on one side, facing Harun.

"Oh, quite a fine spread for a place like this. Don't mind if I do."

With that brief remark, Harun began eating and drinking the food and water set before him without hesitation. Even if ordinary poison could not kill a noble, it was an exceedingly bold attitude.

The sight let Turan and Osel relax somewhat. Now that hospitality had been offered and accepted, any of them who tried to harm another would suffer a correspondingly grave moral stain. Such customs might seem trivial, yet they could carry great weight: the former Baraha House Head, Solion, had faced considerable opposition even within his own house for violating this custom in Ravista.

While Harun quenched his thirst, Turan used the Mimic Holy Relic to peer inside him. The first things he saw were the two symbols of Hunter and Pursuer, just like his own. And then...

'As I thought. He has three as well.'

Even if their battle had largely been staged, the fact that he could fight as an equal to Arabion's House Head, Badal, had given Turan some idea. Sure enough, Zahar's House Head possessed three bloodline abilities too.

Something like a bubbling purple swamp. It was a symbol unlike any he had seen before, leaving him little clue as to its identity.

'Could it be one of the Night Hunter's other two bloodlines? Alchemist and Shadow... Both should have died out long ago.'

Even granting talent through soul magic should not make it possible to awaken a bloodline that had never been inherited. No—perhaps it could, if it meant awakening a latent bloodline.

All four powers had originally resided in the Night Hunter's blood, and Zahar's ancestor must have inherited all four. He had simply failed to awaken two of them.

As Turan remained lost in thought, Harun addressed him with a smile, seemingly without the slightest inkling of what was on his mind.

"Ah, that's better. I thought a long journey at my age would be the death of me. The sun beating down, sand catching in my throat with every breath..."

"Hmph."

Osel answered the talkative old man with a faint snort from across the table. Yet Turan could sense that beneath that outward demeanor, he was bewildered.

'Well, who could blame him?'

House Zahar, famed for assassination, was feared throughout the world, and its head reigned as its strongest assassin, a terror of the night. Who could have imagined such a man would look so unassuming and prattle on so meaninglessly?

But Turan was not taken in by his appearance. Even as he poured out empty chatter, Harun's eyes kept subtly moving, examining Turan.

Given that the being inside him was a fallen god who had lived for thousands of years, and the leader of a faction at that, it would be foolish to think him truly guileless.

Turan quietly gestured for the nearby attendants to withdraw farther before addressing him politely.

"It does sound as though the journey was arduous. Please, take your time with the meal while we talk."

"Thank you. What a fine grandnephew I have, to pamper me so."

The food hardly merited calling it pampering, yet Harun devoured it like a genuinely hungry man.

Well, his height and sturdy build certainly suggested a hearty appetite. Unlike the relatively fine-boned Turan, he had a strongman's thick limbs and waist, all well trained. With equal mana and bloodlines, Turan would probably lose to him in hand-to-hand combat.

After quietly studying him, Turan turned his attention to his equipment. On the surface, his clothes looked like a convincing desert nomad's outfit, but the Mimic Holy Relic revealed that his whole body was wrapped in treasures on par with Holy Relics.

Most striking were the garment covering his upper body and the long rod strapped to his back. The latter ran straight before bending slightly sideways partway along its length, and Turan could not begin to guess how it was used.

If only the cloth wrapped around it were removed, he might have some idea...

"Hmm? Curious about this?"

Apparently noticing his gaze, Harun grinned mid-meal and pointed at the rod strapped to his back. Turan nodded without hesitation.

"To be honest, I am. Would you tell me about it?"

"Of course. But not for free."

Harun brushed the crumbs from his hands and looked at him with a smile. In that instant, Turan felt a peculiar pressure as he met those gray eyes—one of the few features they shared.

'This is...'

At that moment, the three symbols within Zahar's House Head began to merge. The eye, previously separate, sank into the black mist, then turned into thousands of tiny eyes surrounding it, like the seeds on a strawberry.

A fourth symbol appeared alongside them, resembling a triangular glass bottle. The bubbling purple liquid flowed into the bottle and sloshed about, then poured out and solidified into thousands of arrowlike shapes.

As the arrows sank into the eye-covered mist and pointed outward, it looked as though a giant with thousands of eyes and arms lurked within.

'The Night Hunter!'

Turan understood instinctively at the sight. Harun Zahar had manipulated his soul to draw upon the Night Hunter's power.

Was he actually going to attack here? Perhaps noticing Turan's body stiffen in anticipation of battle, Harun grinned and asked,

"Did you see that?"

"Yes."

"So you can indeed look into another's soul."

Turan had already suspected that Harun—that Zahar—would know this. More than once, he had watched an opponent combine symbols through soul magic and demonstrated his ability to imitate it.

Combining symbols was almost impossible to master alone without knowing the correct answer in the first place. Even if one imagined something like what he had just seen—an eye sinking into shadow, then becoming thousands of tiny eyes looking in every direction—it was difficult to reproduce without someone demonstrating it.

That was why Turan had needed various methods to provide examples for Maysa and Solif, who could not see it directly.

"You may not know this, but the Mimic never originally had that ability. It probably developed when he became a Holy Relic."

"Is that so?"

"I doubt anyone knows better than I do! I was the only one who traveled with him for a while after coming here."

This was hardly Turan's first conversation with fallen gods, but he had never met one who acted so familiar with the Mimic god. Laughing heartily, Harun turned to Osel.

"I assume you know the broad strokes as well?"

"That you're the fallen gods of old?"

"He's told you everything already! Well, I suspected as much."

Harun laughed, ate another piece of bread, and pointed behind him. A dozen or so Zahar nobles stood there, Talis among them with his mask back on.

"If you knew how many times they've proposed it to me, you would both be thanking me. They've persistently demanded that we strike Parsha at once, or failing that, wipe Ravista out to the last."

Unlike Osel, who was shaken by the unexpected revelation, Turan acknowledged it with a calm nod.

Berit's reports had already told him that Zahar's leadership had proposed attacking Parsha and Ravista, and that their House Head had stopped them. Unfortunately, even Berit had not known why.

"Now, then, we ought to get down to business... House Head of Ravista, if you don't mind, could the two of us speak alone for a moment? This concerns our house's most intimate secrets. You needn't go far. Ten meters or so will suffice."

Turan caught a peculiar note in the relaxed voice. It sounded subtly divisive, almost a boast that Turan's bond with Zahar was stronger than his alliance with Ravista. He spoke before Osel could answer.

"There's no need. Lord Osel and I have helped each other on many occasions."

"Hm. Well, I wouldn't go that far."

Osel frowned and nodded as though displeased at Turan's words, but Turan could tell that the elderly boy was secretly delighted. Harun noticed it too and burst out laughing.

"You look like a sheltered young master, but you're already an old hand at politics! Well, that's how the leader of a house ought to be. If only my own grandchild were half as capable."

At first hearing, it sounded like a concession, but Turan allowed for the possibility that it was intended to make him lower his guard. To a young person, praise from the head of a great house—and the Master of Zahar, no less—would be sweet enough to numb the mind.

As they went back and forth, Osel abruptly rose from his seat.

"I'll step away for a moment. If it's anything I ought to know, the House Head of Parsha will certainly tell me."

"Oh?"

Like Harun's earlier remark, it was a declaration that Turan's alliance with Ravista was stronger than his blood ties to Zahar. Once Osel had moved a short distance away, Harun took a magic tool from inside his clothes, and the air currents around them changed.

Turan realized that it blocked sound from escaping their surroundings: the same technique he routinely used with wind magic, fashioned into a magic tool.

"You're quite mischievous."

"What, can't I have a little fun with a grandnephew I'm meeting for the first time?"

With his banter, Harun truly seemed as old as he looked. He was entirely unlike Ymir, as frivolous as a man in his twenties, or the gods of Karmine who had chatted together.

Through his conversations with the half-elves, Turan now had a rough understanding of why their mental ages varied so much. Regardless of the thousands of years they had lived, their personalities were greatly influenced by the bodies confining them. They also shaped their own personalities to some extent, like roles in a play.

It was like dividing his own personality into Turan the House Head of Parsha, Turan the lover of Maysa, and Turan the friend of Solif and Asiz. Just as he did not treat the subordinates he ruled with the familiarity of friends, or his friends with the tenderness of a lover, they merely played different parts to suit the person before them.

"Then let us turn to the reason for this meeting... Turan Parsha, do you know that you are the Night Hunter reincarnated?"

He was not asking whether Turan was the Night Hunter reincarnated, but whether he knew it—a question bordering on certainty. Turan considered his answer for a moment.

'Would it be better to agree, or deny it?'

Over thousands of years, the half-elves had forgotten much of what they had known before coming to this world. One of the few things they still remembered, however, was what the old man before him had once been.

According to them, Zahar's House Head had originally been one of the subordinate gods who served the Night Hunter, Otas. Viewed optimistically, he might welcome the reincarnation of his former liege. Viewed pessimistically, he might seek to eliminate it as an obstacle to his own supremacy.

Fortunately, Turan had given the matter some thought before coming, so he was able to answer without much delay.

"To be honest, I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No. I know I was born with far more power than my origins should allow, but I have no memories of having been a being like you."

Harun's face betrayed no particular expression at the honest answer.

Nor was it easy to discern any emotion from his scent. Was he controlling himself with all his might, as Turan did, or did the answer truly stir no particular feeling in him?

As the question arose in Turan's mind, Harun nodded.

"Just as I expected. I thought that would be the case. Thank you for answering honestly."

"Then may I ask a question as well? Why do you think I, specifically, am the Night Hunter reincarnated? Because of my Zahar bloodline?"

Harun shook his head at Turan's question.

"Because I'm the one who tried to bring the Night Hunter back to life."