As he laid the unconscious Maysa down, Turan clicked his tongue at how pitifully weak her resistance had been. Considering that mana accounted for the largest share of a wizard's physical abilities, being this weak despite possessing the mana of a top-ranking noble meant her body was in a truly wretched state.

'Well, she barely weighs a quarter of what I do.'

He guessed that in a fight with fists alone, she would have been a fairly even match for him back when he tended sheep on Hisaril Hill.

In this condition, not only could she not use her full power, but even her continued survival was uncertain. Determined to restore her health somehow, Turan opened Maysa's mouth and slid in the tube he had prepared.

There was no need to worry about its hard, rough surface injuring her throat or internal organs. A noble's skin could not even be pierced by a needle; why would the insides be much different? In fact, the sphincter inside her esophagus crushed the tube he had pushed in, forcing him to strengthen it with mana.

'About here? No, a little deeper—there.'

Turan blew air through the tube and read its flow to confirm that the tip had reached her stomach, then used fluid manipulation magic to send the nourishing gruel down it. The amount was roughly two ladles of soup.

He had deliberately limited the quantity because, during his time in Kalamap, he had seen someone who had long suffered starvation die after eating too hastily. Even if nobles had sturdier bodies than commoners, it seemed best to avoid any unnecessary risk of harm.

Once the feeding was finished, Turan withdrew the tube and gathered moisture from the air into a ball of water. Splashing her with it would be more reliable than tapping or slapping her awake.

"Mmm..."

Just then, Maysa's eyes fluttered with a faint groan. As Turan dispersed the water gathered above his hand, she struggled to sit up.

"... Is it over?"

"Yes."

Maysa briefly clutched her head against the dizziness, then moved her tongue around her mouth, trying to clear away the metallic taste. Fortunately, she felt none of the nausea that ordinarily surged up the instant she ate anything. Perhaps it was because she did not really feel as though she had eaten.

"I never imagined it could be this simple..."

"A few more times should help you recover quickly. You can't do this for the rest of your life, though, so in the long run you'll have to overcome it yourself."

"I'll try."

Though she was not confident she could actually manage it, Maysa answered that way and put on the magic tools she had removed earlier.

Afterward, they erased every trace they had left in the bakery, parted ways, and returned to their respective lodgings.

Back in her mansion, as desolate as ever, Maysa flopped onto the dusty bed.

'My body... feels hot.'

A strange vitality coursed through her normally sluggish body, heating her from head to toe. Her body, starved for ten years, was greedily breaking down the food and turning it into energy.

* * *

The following day, Maysa rose earlier than usual, left her mansion immediately, and flew to the main house's gate. The guards at their usual posts snapped to attention, astonished by the heir's sudden appearance.

"M-my lady! What brings you here...?"

"I want some fresh air."

For all the contempt and persecution Arabion's powerful figures subjected Maysa to, publicly she remained the house's sole heir. No one had the nerve to demand an entry pass or anything else from her, so she went straight through the checkpoint without a single noble or knight accompanying her and soared into the vast sky.

Perhaps because she felt better than usual, she seemed to be flying faster, too. When she returned after spending several hours savoring her freedom in the air, the house was, unsurprisingly, in considerable uproar.

"What on earth were you thinking, Maysa? How can the heir behave so recklessly? Do you realize how many people had to abandon their work and assemble because of you?"

Kadram and the other senior members of the house had all rushed out to surround and interrogate her. Their menacing aura could easily have made an ordinary person wet themselves, but she faced them without so much as twitching an eyebrow.

"I just felt cooped up and went for a stroll. Do you or any of the others ask permission before going out, Uncle?"

"You ought to understand your position! If Zahar's assassins were to attack you—"

"Are you worried their House Head might come all the way to the Dakayn Plains? Otherwise, there shouldn't be a problem. Besides, you were the one who said I was being oversensitive."

"That was when you were a child."

"In any case, I'll go out whenever I feel like it and come back on my own, so don't concern yourselves."

Having fired back at them, Maysa returned straight to her mansion without waiting for a reply. Kadram and the other middle-generation nobles merely muttered among themselves with displeasure, unable to rebuke her further. Junior to them though she was, Maysa was still the heir.

When she returned, the elderly maids crowded around her, trying to complain about something, perhaps having already been scolded themselves. Maysa dismissed them with a light wave, went into her bedroom, and settled down to sleep.

Several hours later, in the early hours before dawn, she checked whether anyone was nearby and left the mansion. She entered the bakery where they had met before and snapped her fingers once, but nothing happened.

'... Is Reto nearby?'

They had agreed the previous night that Turan would reveal himself only when he was certain Reto was not around. His failure to appear now would mean either that he had not found a way to see through her stealth or that Reto was hiding nearby, watching.

After wandering through a few more places, Maysa returned to her mansion empty-handed and tried to sleep. Perhaps that single meal had awakened her digestive organs; hunger like a stabbing pain in her belly tormented her all night.

On the second day, several relatively low-ranking Arabion nobles greeted Maysa when she headed to the checkpoint as she had the day before. Perhaps they thought that if they could not stop her going out, they should at least keep her under surveillance.

Maysa made no effort to shake off those who offered to accompany her on her stroll. Instead, she flew even faster, as though teasing them, and thoroughly wore them out. After returning, she slept, then left her bedroom in the hours before dawn and wandered through deserted places, but once again she could not meet Turan.

Two more days passed. Just as she was beginning to grow anxious, Turan appeared before her as she wandered through the knights' training ground, thick with the stale smell of sweat.

"Turan!"

"Reto's been following you for three days straight."

"You can detect her?"

"Yes. Fortunately."

Turan nodded, touching the Mimic Holy Relic. For the past few days, he had hidden inside Maysa's mansion and watched its interior without even stopping to sleep.

Thanks to that, he had seen Reto enter Maysa's room under stealth and search every corner, then secretly follow her when she left in the middle of the night. Learning that the Mimic Holy Relic could see through even Zahar stealth had been an added benefit.

After secretly watching Reto spy on Maysa for three full days, he had finally revealed himself only once Reto, satisfied that Maysa was merely wandering aimlessly, stopped following her.

"... I never sensed a thing."

"You couldn't have. So, do you think your strolls will be all right?"

"Yes. It seems they're going to let me do it for a change of pace."

Maysa might be able to exercise her standing as heir in public, but House Head Badal was an absolute monarch whom even she had to obey without question. If he ordered her not to go out, she would have to comply.

Yet he had taken no active measures in response to her sudden outings. Only the house's senior members—the nobles Turan had dubbed the 'middle generation'—were noisily raising objections on their own.

He had expected things to turn out more or less this way. The internal records he had investigated in various studies showed that the House Head had spent the past several decades shut inside his residence, leaving almost every duty to his relatives. His only recent departures had been for the war with Zahar and to see off the Dark Elf subjugation force.

"If the House Head had come out himself, I was going to take the opportunity to search his residence."

Taking advantage of the House Head leaving to reprimand Maysa in person had been one of their plans, but it seemed they would have to abandon that one. After their brief discussion, Turan rendered Maysa unconscious and fed her as he had three days earlier.

The same routine repeated for several days: strolls, sleep, and food delivered through a tube.

On the fourth night, Turan spoke as Maysa woke from unconsciousness.

"Let's escape tomorrow."

"Already?"

"Any longer and people will get suspicious. You're putting on weight faster than I expected."

Over the past few days, Maysa's body had changed so rapidly that calling it a transformation would hardly have been an exaggeration. Flesh had filled out the hollows around her eyes, her shriveled skin had smoothed, and her stick-thin body had thickened. For now, people might still doubt what they were seeing, but in a few more days the changes would be obvious to anyone.

"Let's meet west of Morgen City at noon tomorrow. If I haven't come about an hour after noon, return here. It'll mean something has gone wrong."

One advantage of being able to track people was that there was no need to settle on an exact meeting place.

* * *

On the day of their escape, Turan woke at the first light of dawn and immediately put the operation into motion.

The first step was to infiltrate the mansions of Kadram and the other middle-generation nobles and secure the incriminating documents they possessed.

For this task, he relied heavily on the mask's disguises rather than stealth. His repeated visits over the past several days had given him a clear understanding of the situation inside.

"Hm? Bek? Didn't you leave earlier?"

"The master gave me something to do."

Disguising himself as a servant employed at each mansion, Turan walked in and out of the studies with perfect composure. It took him two hours to collect all the documents. Even that would have taken less than half as long if he had not needed to walk between the mansions like a commoner.

Once he had secured the documents belonging to all fifteen people, Turan took out the hair he had stored away and cast tracking magic to find the Zahar noble Reto.

'Let's see... Good, she's outside the residence. That saves me the trouble of waiting.'

As the House Head's personal maid, she naturally lived in his residence, but she went out several times a day on errands and other business.

In fact, abducting her was the greatest uncertainty in the plan. If she happened to have no reason to go out today and stayed inside the House Head's residence, there would be nothing he could do. In that case, he would have had to put the documents back and postpone their escape until tomorrow.

Disguised as an ordinary gardener, Turan followed his tracking magic across the main compound until he reached a mansion.

'This is...'

Beside the mansion's front gate, large lettering read [Sirel Arabion]. Maysa's older half-brother, born to the woman from House Nagin. Reto seemed to be talking with someone inside his mansion.

'I didn't find much when I investigated this fellow before.'

His study contained only ordinary documents. He maintained a reasonable amount of contact with the middle generation as relatives, but had not joined their faction. Yet Maysa hated him with a terrible intensity, because his mother was the House Head's consort, Anieta Nagin.

'After Maysa's mother and little brother died... that woman mocked her, she said.'

That was also why Maysa had sent her older half-brother Renod a letter calling him a murderer right after the incident. Though the circumstances remained unclear, the mockery had been as good as admitting that House Nagin was behind it.

In truth, the alliance between the middle generation and House Nagin was one of the mysteries that remained unsolved. If the House Head was actually one of the gods, a consort ought to mean little to him.

It might simply be a way to manufacture a pretext for tormenting Maysa, but Turan privately suspected that something within House Nagin was connected to the matter. Or perhaps, conversely, they were trying to use this to exert influence over House Nagin.

While he was lost in thought, he saw Reto emerge from the mansion, her conversation finished. Turan assumed the disguise he had prepared in advance, immediately approached her, and spoke.

"Reto."

At his call, Reto's eyes widened in surprise before she smiled and bowed her head.

"Yes, Lord Kadram! What brings you—"

"Come with me. I have a task for you."

Turan could not be certain that he had reproduced Kadram's appearance perfectly, or that there was nothing odd about his voice. Maysa had told him he was identical, but he had not checked by comparing himself directly with the man.

Yet Reto followed him without any sign of suspicion. He had even prepared an excuse in case she asked what task he intended to give her, but like a well-trained assassin, she did not so much as ask.

When they entered Kadram's mansion, an elderly butler addressed him with a puzzled look.

"Master? Shouldn't you be attending the daily meeting now...?"

"I forgot something."

A flicker of puzzlement crossed the butler's face at Turan's words. Was his disguise too clumsy to fool someone who had known Kadram for so long?

But perhaps the butler dismissed his intuition as oversensitivity, for he merely bowed without saying anything more. Inwardly sighing with relief, Turan led her toward the basement.

"Um, Lord Kadram? Why are we here...?"

Only then did a strange unease appear on Reto's face, as though she had visited the mansion before but never been led into its basement. Did she perhaps think Kadram wanted her body? Rather than answering, he silently continued walking. After a moment's hesitation, she chose to obey.

The unlit basement was pitch-dark. As Reto habitually shut the door behind her, like the trained maid she was, the barrier installed inside activated.

"Ugh...!?"

Before going to find Reto, Turan had expended one person's worth of Barrier-user bloodline mana stored in the Mimic Holy Relic. The barrier he had set with it slowed its target's movements to immobilize them.

Panicking, Reto struggled to draw several concealed weapons from inside her clothing, but her movements were agonizingly slow. Turan leisurely caught her hand, took the weapons away, and wrapped her body tightly in the mana-suppressing chains once used on Solif.

Feeling the mana begin to drain from her entire body, Reto cried out in alarm.

"L-Lord Kadram? What on earth is—!"

Instead of answering, Turan drove his fist straight into her face.