In the bakery, unlit save for the moonlight, Turan explained to Maysa how he had obtained the documents and why he had investigated the matter.

Naturally, this led him to discuss his past, his abilities, and Solif, the companion who had joined him.

Perhaps because this was now his third time explaining it, he found he could tell the story a little more coherently than before. He concluded with the secrets he had discovered on his travels and the hypothesis he had drawn from them.

Finally, he demonstrated both the Zahar and Arabion bloodline abilities as proof. Maysa, who had listened silently throughout, spoke at last. To his surprise, her words were almost a sharp rebuke.

"There are quite a few leaps in your reasoning, and not enough evidence."

"That's true."

Turan readily nodded in agreement. So far, he had gathered only circumstantial evidence, not conclusive physical proof of a god's existence or the true nature of those persecuting Maysa.

Had he not met the librarian and learned what he had, or entered the labyrinth and experienced it firsthand, he might have dismissed the whole thing as an absurd conspiracy theory.

"But I believe the life you've led is itself a piece of evidence, my lady."

Despite being born heir to a great house, the most exalted station in the world, she had suffered persecution to an absurd degree. Turan's hypothesis offered a clear explanation for how her life had become so miserable.

"You're right. So I'll believe you. Though perhaps I should say I want to believe you."

She wanted to believe him. Perhaps that was what she truly felt. Only then could she say that she was not mad—that the fault lay with this accursed house. After taking a few steadying breaths, she looked at Turan and asked a question.

"Then what should I do now?"

"First, we need to prepare your escape."

Unlike Baraha's relatively young House Head, Arabion's was already old enough that it would be no surprise if he died within a few years. Powerful as she was, she could not defy the grasp of a House Head who might be a divine being. She needed to flee while she still had the chance.

"Escape..."

Turan could hear fear and learned defeat in her murmur. Maysa was a great wizard with few equals outside the heads of the great houses, but she was also an immature adult who had spent her entire life persecuted within the confines of her house.

Indeed, considering that she was only about twenty-two, it was hardly an exaggeration to call her a child by noble standards. Of course, Turan himself was even younger.

Then, as something occurred to her, fear crossed her gaunt face.

"If I run away, won't they retaliate against my aunt's family?"

Everyone knew how much Maysa treasured her mother's house, Berg. It was entirely foreseeable that they would be persecuted for her escape. Turan had considered this too, and immediately gave the answer he had prepared.

"They might. That's why, once you've escaped, I intend to circulate some of these documents among the vassal houses."

Arabion had seventeen vassal houses in and around the Dakayn Plains. Three or four were all but in collusion with the middle generation, but the others maintained relatively loose bonds of fealty. What would happen if documents detailing the corruption of Arabion's senior figures were delivered to them in Maysa's name?

"That should make it difficult for them to persecute House Berg, at least for a while. They won't have a leg to stand on."

If House Berg suffered persecution after Maysa exposed the corruption of her house's senior figures, the other vassal houses could only see it as unjust tyranny on their overlord's part. Moreover, not only the usually downtrodden young faction but also several principled nobles of the elder faction would find the situation objectionable.

The middle generation might be Arabion's core power, backed by the House Head, but trying to crush all of them by force would surely split the house in two.

With no guarantee that persecuting House Berg would bring Maysa back, the consequences were far too great to justify what amounted to little more than venting their anger.

"Oh..."

"Of course, those documents will lose their force in a few decades. Before then, we'll have to find a way to stand against the House Head. Or hope he dies of old age."

Together, Maysa, Solif, and Turan were more than capable of hunting most mythical-class monsters. Such creatures were usually hunted down soon after appearing near a great house's domain, but some would still survive in the seas and other remote places untouched by human hands.

Searching every corner of the vast world would take considerable time, of course. But with luck, it was not impossible to gain enough strength to contend with several great houses within ten or twenty years. Realistically, this was their best option under the circumstances.

After all, they could hardly sit and wait for Maysa to be sacrificed for House Berg's sake.

After several minutes of silence, Maysa gave a reluctant nod.

"... All right. I'll be counting on you, Turan."

And so Turan gained another companion.

* * *

Once they had settled the broad outlines, they began discussing the details of the escape.

"Getting out shouldn't be all that difficult. You wear all your magic tools normally, so you can simply insist you want to take a walk and leave. Though we'll need to deal with that woman first."

"Reto?"

"Yes."

Reto, the Zahar noble who served Arabion's nobles. If they fled without dealing with her, they would certainly be tracked down in short order. Turan could remove Maysa's traces from the mansion, but he could not prevent Reto from pursuing her by other means.

"From my searches here, she's the only noble in Arabion with the Zahar bloodline. Eliminating her should buy us enough time to escape. Are you close to her, by any chance?"

He had been too busy investigating the nobles over the past few days to check often, but when he did look in on Maysa's mansion, he sometimes sensed Reto visiting. Maysa had even asked her to bring fairy tales, so there might have been some friendship between them.

Maysa shook her head.

"To be honest, I was starting to feel a little fond of her. But not anymore."

In her isolation, she had secretly welcomed the gentle, friendly Reto, who was not replaced despite their frequent contact. Yet she had deliberately treated her coldly, afraid that becoming too close would get her replaced as well. Even so, she had found quiet comfort in small exchanges—occasionally mentioning, while reading a fairy tale, that her mother used to read it to her.

"It's laughable, isn't it? I cherished the woman who killed my family and tormented me..."

Like a madwoman rambling to herself, Maysa recounted what she had endured. A window shattering without warning while she was resting. Clothes left in her home shredded during a moment's inattention. The cherished portrait of her family vanishing from her breast. Each time another incident occurred, she had told members of the house, mostly the adults, only for them to dismiss it as an overreaction.

At first, whenever it happened, she had flooded the area with light and fired off attack spells indiscriminately. Later, she had taken to pretending not to notice. Even a direct attack could be handled by the defensive magic tools she wore. She had decided to think of it as living alongside some invisible ghost.

Listening to the details of what the documents had dryly described as "providing appropriate stimulus," Turan felt pity for her. An ordinary person subjected to this would surely have buckled under the pressure and gone mad long ago.

"So do whatever you like with her. No, I want her to die a miserable, horrible death."

She began to cry again, saying she doubted she could control her emotions if they met before the escape.

It seemed the affection she had secretly felt had become betrayal and hatred dozens of times greater. Thanks to that, Turan could plan to capture and torture Reto if necessary without any pangs of conscience.

"Then I'll deal with her. Does Arabion have any other tracking magic tools? The kind that can follow someone over long distances?"

The magic tool Maysa had used before identified hidden targets at relatively close range. It was useful for fighting Zahar nobles, not for long-distance tracking. Given how relentlessly they had pursued the Dark Elves, they surely possessed something for that purpose as well.

As expected, Maysa nodded.

"Yes. I returned the one I used to the main house. There's an astrology magic tool that uses the constellations. Uncle Kadram... that son of a bitch probably still has it."

Turan reflected that calling her uncle a son of a bitch also insulted her own grandparent, but he did not mention it. His own paternal relatives in Zahar were hardly likely to be people he could take pride in, either.

"I've already been inside his house, so I can steal it just before we leave."

"Having someone with the Zahar bloodline on your side really is convenient. You can just pop in and steal whatever you need."

Perhaps feeling a little more at ease, Maysa smiled as she joked, her eyes still red from crying.

They continued raising potential problems and working out solutions, with a somewhat comical result. While Maysa simply walked out, Turan would have to run all over the place and take care of every loose end.

"... Can you really do all of that alone? Surely there's something I can—"

"I can manage it. For now, let's focus on your escape, Maysa. Suddenly going out for a walk would likely arouse suspicion, so start taking a walk every day from tomorrow. People become inured to things that happen repeatedly."

"You mean make it part of my routine."

"Yes. And we need to address your health soon. In your current condition, I doubt you'd get far before collapsing."

"Mm..."

Maysa's face clouded a little; evidently, this was not a subject she wished to discuss. But her condition truly was that serious.

She slept almost as though unconscious for thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and even slightly strenuous use of mana made her dizzy. No matter how powerful a wizard she was, escaping in such a state would not be easy.

Turan broached the subject he had been putting off all this time.

"Does your inability to keep food down have something to do with your family's deaths?"

"... Yes."

With that single answer, Maysa pressed her lips shut. She clearly did not want to explain exactly what had happened.

It was not important enough to force an answer out of her now, so Turan smoothly moved on.

"It would be difficult to resolve this on your own, wouldn't it?"

"I think it would, yes..."

It was not as though Maysa had made no effort to overcome her eating disorder. Unwilling to expose her weakness, she publicly claimed that she was trying to keep her body light. In secret, however, she had stolen bites of all sorts of delicious food, trying somehow to nourish herself.

But whenever she swallowed anything, she saw her mother's and younger brother's faces, and an unbearable nausea swept over her. In the end, the only desperate solution she could devise was to eat and vomit repeatedly, as she had just been doing. That way, a tiny amount of food stayed in her body and her health improved a little.

Freshly reminded that he had just witnessed this, Maysa averted her eyes in embarrassment. Knowing that any similar awkwardness on his part would only embarrass her further, Turan deliberately maintained a clinical manner.

"Then I'll help you."

"How?"

"I'll feed you myself."

Maysa stared at him, momentarily speechless. Feeding her himself? Wasn't that the sort of thing found in decadent romance novels from the old empire? Passing food directly from mouth to mouth...

At first, she briefly wondered whether she ought to feel insulted. Yet, astonishingly, there was not a trace of personal feeling on Turan's face.

"W-would that really help? I'm not sure."

Even to her own ears, her eventual answer sounded hopelessly indecisive. Her reaction made Turan realize that his words had left room for misunderstanding, and he clarified.

"I'll knock you unconscious, then use something like a tube to put liquefied food directly down your throat. Even if you vomit after waking, some of it should remain in your body."

"Oh."

She certainly had never tried that before. More accurately, she had never been able to. She could trust no one in her own house, and she had to pretend to be strong before the people of House Berg, whom she did trust.

While she sat stunned by the sheer brutality of the method, Turan took emergency provisions from his High-Capacity Pouch. Dried bean flour, jerky, vegetables...

He knew nothing of complicated nutritional concepts such as carbohydrates and proteins, but he did have the common sense to know that eating a variety of foods was healthy. The nourishing gruel he made by crushing everything and mixing it with water looked decidedly unappetizing. That hardly mattered, since it would be shoved straight into her stomach.

Finally, he found a thin rod nearby and shaped it with heating magic and telekinesis, producing a metal tube to deliver the food to her stomach.

"It's ready."

"But how am I supposed to lose consciousness? By using up all my mana, like last time?"

"That wouldn't be good. Your mana is barely keeping you healthy as it is; that would strip away the very strength sustaining you. Take off your defensive magic tools, and I'll knock you out cleanly."

To leave herself defenseless before another person, and then let herself be rendered unconscious... It was a truly terrifying request. Yet after a brief hesitation, Maysa stepped into a secluded corner and removed the magic tools with defensive functions.

"I'm ready."

"I'll wake you as soon as it's over."

After reassuring her, Turan moved behind her and wrapped his arm around her slender neck. Who could have guessed that the restraint technique Haram had taught him would prove useful for this?

Fortunately, unlike Haram's muscular, log-like neck, Maysa's was so thin that the blood vessels stood out, making the hold easy to apply. Hadn't he said that blocking these blood vessels was the trick to making someone lose consciousness quickly?

"Ghk—"

For a little over ten seconds, he tightened his hold on her slender neck, adjusting the pressure as he went. Maysa's instinctively struggling body went limp.