["One of his bloodlines is Frost. Be careful."]

["What about the other?"]

["I don't know. But I think it's probably for close combat. His mana is top-tier, somewhere between the two of yours."]

Before the fight began, Turan used wind magic to carry his voice to his companions in secret. Of course, Solif, the only one of them who could not manipulate wind proficiently, could only listen.

Their exchange created a momentary opening. Seizing it, Renod swung his ice axe, sending a crescent of frigid light shooting from its blade. His target was Turan, who stood between the other two.

"Ugh!"

Turan immediately raised an earthen wall to block it, but to his astonishment, the light sliced effortlessly through the mana-infused rock and hurtled toward him. At that instant, a green shield sprang from his body and intercepted it, freezing solid. It was the automatic defensive magic tool he had taken from a Baraha noble.

'That was close.'

Turan narrowed his eyes at the destructive force transmitted through the shield. That attack had been far too powerful for the amount of mana Renod possessed, and he could scarcely begin to understand what kind of magic it was or how it worked. Could it have something to do with the merging of his two bloodlines?

"Hah!"

With a shout, Solif tore up the ground and sent dozens of stone bullets flying forward. Maysa followed with a volley of flaming spears, forcing Renod to abandon his offensive and retreat, swinging his axe to knock the attacks aside.

"What? How are you this strong...?"

For the first time, dismay appeared on his previously confident face. Until now, Turan and his companions had used only upper-tier noble strength to batter House Nagin's wizards. Now they were finally revealing their true abilities. Of course, since they were deliberately refraining from using their bloodline abilities, they could hardly be said to be giving it their all.

While his two companions kept up their attacks, Turan took out the light-eating cloth and had it swallow the orb of light Renod had created. Darkness instantly engulfed the brightly lit camp. The three concealed themselves again, throwing concealed weapons and freezing blood from the nearby corpses to fire at him.

Turan clicked his tongue as he threw a long, slender needle.

'I just can't get used to these.'

The concealed weapons they were using had belonged to Reto, the Zahar noble in Arabion. Naturally, without any practice in handling them, their efficiency left a great deal to be desired. Had they not been trying to pass themselves off as Zahar assassins, there would probably have been no reason to use them.

"Ugh...!"

Yet Renod could no longer bat aside those clumsily thrown weapons as easily as before. Their stealth made it impossible to tell where the projectiles were coming from. Every time he tried to create more light, Turan snuffed it out with his magic tool. He could do nothing to stop that while his hands were full fending off the other two's unrelenting attacks.

"Aaaaargh!"

Finally losing patience, Renod gave a furious roar, and a frigid chill spread around him. The pleasantly cool air became cold enough to freeze one's breath in an instant. The Nagin knights lying on the ground began shivering violently.

"L-Lord Renod."

"It's so c-cold..."

Having lowered the temperature with a single shout, Renod gestured and created dozens of ice spikes, firing them in every direction in an attempt to locate his unseen enemies. Of course, the outcome of an exchange of projectiles between those who could see their opponent and one who could not was obvious. Cuts and punctures continued to appear, slowly staining his body red.

'That's strange...'

As he continued attacking, Turan lightly moistened a finger with saliva and waved it through the air. The climate here was fairly dry, yet Renod was condensing ice into projectiles with astonishing ease. Even someone with the water-manipulating Rapids bloodline should not have been able to exercise their powers so freely in this environment.

Despite all the ice he kept making, the surrounding air did not even seem to be growing drier. It was as though he were creating ice outright rather than gathering and freezing moisture.

He resisted for roughly a minute, like a buffalo hunted by a pack of wolves. By the time the knights finally succumbed and froze to death, the cornered Renod's eyes had turned blood-red.

"Ugh..."

With that low groan, the mana circulating within him began to surge violently. Turan realized he was up to something and was about to drop his stealth and shout a warning when Renod stamped his foot.

"You bastards—!"

Ice spread from his foot in an instant, covering the ground for well over a hundred meters in every direction. A spell that covered the ground in ice? What use could that possibly be? Was he trying to make it too slippery to walk?

Even as that question occurred to him, Renod slid forward at tremendous speed. Turan wondered whether even a giant picking him up and moving him could have been that fast. His target was Solif, who had just exposed his position by throwing a concealed weapon.

"Diiiie!"

Reaching Solif's position in an instant, Renod screamed like a madman and slammed his axe into the ground. The result of that seemingly pointless motion was nothing short of staggering.

CRACK!

Ice spikes erupted from the point of impact, spreading in a fan for dozens of meters ahead. It was as though he were declaring that if they hid with stealth, he would simply blow everything away.

"Holy shit!"

Horrified by the attack coming his way, Solif activated his Baraha magic tool at maximum power. A white sphere enveloped him, and the ice spikes smashed against it, shattering with loud cracks.

'What is this power...!'

Solif's eyes widened at the pressure transmitted through the sphere. The magic tool he had brought possessed defensive capabilities ranked among the finest in Baraha, yet it was shrieking as though it would break at any moment. Turan had clearly said that even Renod's enhanced strength was only somewhere between his and Maysa's. Judging by this, however, it felt as though he were fighting someone with twice his mana.

Enveloping himself in a glowing sphere had forced him to drop his stealth. Spotting him, Renod shouted in delight.

"There you are!"

His bloodshot eyes and slack, gaping mouth, frothing and dribbling saliva, were plainly not those of a sane man. His other bloodline, represented by the crossed axes, had to be Berserker: tremendous physical prowess at the cost of reason.

Renod leaped dozens of meters from where he stood and brought his axe down. A thunderous crash rang out, and dozens of cracks spread across the white sphere. His physical strength was so overwhelming that, if the sphere broke and the fight turned hand-to-hand, the outcome would be decided within five seconds.

"Damn it, help me!"

The instant the cornered Solif cried out, a stone flew in from the side and struck Renod squarely in the head. Hurled with all of Turan's strength in his urgency, the blow knocked Renod unconscious for a few seconds.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm not dead. Ugh... I think I got stabbed in a few places."

Grumbling, Solif swiftly concealed himself and put distance between himself and the enemy. Meanwhile, Maysa uprooted several enormous conifers with telekinesis and slammed them down on Renod just as he regained consciousness. The fully maddened Berserker roared in fury.

* * *

A little over ten minutes later, Turan and his companions bound the dying Renod with the chain magic tool. There had been a few mishaps along the way—an ice spike had pierced Solif's thigh, and an axe blow had broken Maysa's arm—but they had captured him in the end, so the operation was a success.

Treating their wounds with restorative potions made using their scant remaining mana, the three threw Renod down in the middle of a conifer forest a short distance from the camp.

"Whew, I really thought I was going to die. Any stronger and we'd have had to use our bloodline abilities."

"So he really is what we think he is, right?"

"Probably."

None of them spoke the god's name, but all three had a guess as to the identity of the being inside Renod. Frigid Wrath, one of the Freyans. The ancestor revered by nobles of the Frost bloodline, including those of the Karmine bloodline, was precisely the sort of being who might possess both Frost and Berserker.

'Though that doesn't explain why he's in House Nagin rather than Karmine.'

There were several possible explanations. Perhaps their reach did not yet extend to House Karmine. Or else...

'Another god already rules Karmine.'

Hadn't the being possessing Renod just mentioned an "Accord"? Considering that the word referred to agreements and treaties between major powers, one possibility immediately came to mind: the Freyans who remained in this land were not all on the same side.

'Well, if they're only powerful humans called gods, I suppose that's inevitable.'

Given how constantly their wizard descendants clashed and fought, it was absurd to assume the gods would be any different. As Turan lost himself in these deductions, Solif looked down at the sprawled Renod and murmured.

"Honestly, looking at him feels strange. The fact that we caught one of those things, I mean. It doesn't just feel good... It's a little anticlimactic, I suppose? Not that catching him was easy."

He deliberately said "those things" rather than "gods" because they suspected that the beings might be able to sense something from mere conversation. Of course, since they knew only that a conversation had occurred in the library, without knowing Turan's identity or exactly what had been said, that ability did not seem particularly precise. Still, it was best to avoid the risk where possible.

Turan nodded in agreement.

"I think I know what you mean. I felt that way myself."

He, too, felt a strange disappointment that one of the great Freyans—the ancestors of all wizards, the creators who had defeated the other races and saved humanity—had been captured by just the three of them. Was this how it felt to discover that an idol one had longed to meet was merely a lucky drunk?

Behind them, Maysa shook her head at their words.

"Was it really anticlimactic? If he could fight all three of us like that with a body this weak, I can't even imagine how powerful that man must be. It's almost enough to make me despair."

"Ah, fair point..."

The reference to Maysa's father, Badal Arabion, left all three momentarily speechless. The god inhabiting Renod had managed to hold his own against three top-tier nobles merely by combining two bloodline abilities in an upper-tier noble's body.

Then what sort of monstrous power would a god possess inside a great-house head, with all four bloodlines fully interwoven? In theory, even if all three of them gained the mana of a great-house head, they might still be unable to guarantee victory...

The very thought threatened to drain his confidence, so Turan shook his head and changed the subject.

"For now, let's get as much information as we can out of this opportunity. And while we're at it, find out about those strange spells he used."

"Oh, that beam of light? That was really strange. I thought it was cold energy, but it had physical substance, and it froze whatever it hit."

"That too, but even the way he used ordinary ice magic was strange. It's fundamentally different from normal magic."

In response to Solif's question, Turan explained what he had noticed earlier about the ice magic, which seemed to use no moisture at all. Maysa added her own observation.

"Oh, right. I noticed while we were cleaning up that the ice he'd made vanished without leaving any water. Almost like it had been an illusion."

"Then it was ice made from an illusion—no, that can't be it. What was it? Was he summoning ice?"

"That's what we're about to find out."

Solif groaned at Turan's reply. Although his mask hid his face, it was not difficult to imagine the miserable expression underneath.

"Time for that again, is it?"

"If you don't want to watch, you can go keep lookout like before. My partner's probably bored all alone, anyway."

"No. It's about time I got used to it."

While chatting lightly with the appalled Solif, Turan quietly focused his attention on Maysa. Her mask still concealed her expression, but he could sense the turmoil filling her heart.

["Will you be all right?"]

["It doesn't matter. That body is still that filthy woman's son. He's no brother of mine."]

That was all Maysa said in response to his secret, wind-carried question before falling silent. Turan promptly poured a small amount of restorative potion into Renod's mouth and splashed him with a large ball of water.

"Ugh..."

Renod struggled to open his eyes, then stared wide-eyed at the figures surrounding him: three masked strangers in cloaks torn in several places, as though they had been in a battle. Startled by their blatantly sinister appearance, he tried to draw upon his mana, but felt no power in his body.

"W-where am I? What's going on? Who are you?"

"Looks like he doesn't remember."

"Couldn't he just be pretending?"

At Maysa's question, Turan sniffed lightly, then shook his head, rejecting the hypothesis. The slumped Renod smelled of confusion.

In other words, the god had clearly not taken over Renod's body completely, but came and went as needed, like a possessing spirit. Although, judging by his inability to recognize Turan's group at all, it seemed to encroach on his consciousness to some degree even under ordinary circumstances.

"I think it really has retreated inside him. Listen, you know there's something inside you, don't you? Bring him out. Otherwise, I'll torture you."

"W-what? I don't know what you're talking abou—"

Renod shook his head in apparent bewilderment, but Turan did not miss the emotion that briefly crossed his face. It was an expression that all but said, "They know."

'So Renod knows what's inside him, too? Good. This is a chance to find out how they coexist with their hosts.'

Turan removed Renod's shoe, picked up a long needle, and held it to the tip of his toe. Guessing what he intended to do, Renod went deathly pale.

"I have no personal grudge against you, so I'll say this one last time before I torture you. Call out the thing inside you."

He had spent little time with the real Renod, but Turan could already tell he was not particularly strong-willed. As expected, Renod began crying out in terror without any need for torture.

"Ah, ugh...! Ymir! Ymir! Save me! Please!"

Ymir. Was that the name of the god called Frigid Wrath? Contrary to expectations, however, the god within Renod gave no response, seemingly ignoring his desperate pleas. Even with his host's life hanging by a thread.

'I'd suspected as much, but... does the host's death not destroy the soul?'

That possibility was precisely why Turan had insisted they keep their identities completely hidden, both during the battle and afterward. If they killed him only for his soul to return straight to its base, they would have exposed information about themselves for nothing.

At any rate, it seemed unlikely they would gain any useful information by threatening or torturing Renod as things stood. Crouching before him, Turan lowered his voice and recited the words he had prepared.

"Ymir, I have come to convey Lord Otas's will."

Otas. It was the name of a Freyan mentioned in a diary Turan had once read.

Turan believed there was a strong chance that he was the Night Hunter, Zahar's ancestor. What the diary's owner had desperately needed at the time was Zahar's tracking ability. In other words, he was impersonating a messenger acting under orders from Zahar's god.

'If I mention his name this openly, he should at least show himself.'

This would surely make it even harder to imagine that the culprit was Turan, a wandering noble who happened to be passing through. There was no way such a nobody could know the Night Hunter's true name.

As expected, the terrified Renod's expression changed in an instant, as though someone else had entered him. Strangely, the emotion was neither anger nor fear, but something closer to utter astonishment.

Ymir, the Freyan possessing Renod's body, cried out in a shrill voice.

"Otas? That otaku bastard is still alive? How? Where the hell has he been hiding for thousands of years?"