When the first explosion went off, no one on the battlefield understood what Turan had done. Having watched him use the Spirit of Fire for emergency evasions time and again, they merely wondered why he had detonated it when nothing was attacking him.

They first sensed a change when the boulder, propelled by centrifugal force and explosive force together to several times the speed of sound, struck the great sea serpent squarely in its weak point. It was the wound some god had inflicted long ago, almost certainly the one that had originally killed the enormous beast. The boulder tore through flesh made of storm, pierced the scales on the other side, and burst out.

The blow was so devastating that the great sea serpent could not even scream. It merely gaped and thrashed its entire body.

"Get ouuut of the waaay!"

The merfolk king shouted with a whale's tremendous lung capacity, his voice ringing out through the storm. Watching his children hastily retreat, he recalled the terrifying attack he had just witnessed.

'What in the world was that...?'

Though his life took him no farther than the waters around his kingdom, the merfolk king had lived a good many years and inherited considerable wisdom from his forebears, giving him greater insight than ordinary merfolk. In his judgment, the stone-slinging attack Turan had just unleashed was not something a wizard of that caliber should have been capable of.

That was power befitting the mightiest of humanity's wizard rulers, those they called the heads of great houses. Given the strength Turan had displayed until then, its destructive force was abnormal.

'He really must be one of those immortals...'

Turan's strength had fallen short of his expectations, prompting some doubts, but the sight renewed the king's conviction. Suppressing the thoughts that rose within him, he shielded his children from the havoc caused by the thrashing great sea serpent.

[□-------■-------!]

The thrashing of a monster over a hundred meters long had truly staggering consequences. Each time its immense mass churned the air and water, tidal waves rose, while tremendous gusts poured from the wound Turan had opened, whipping up a magical storm. A giant octopus, its body alone over eight meters across, was half out of the water when the gale caught it and hurled it hundreds of meters away.

"Whoa!"

"Inside my mouth! Hurry!"

After seeing Solif slip into the mouth of the sea turtle whose shell he had been attacking from, Turan used tracking magic to locate Vije. The tidal waves and storm swept all the way to the island, scouring the beach already ravaged by columns of water and demolishing the forest beyond it. Fortunately, they did not seem to have reached Vije farther inland.

"Whew..."

With a sigh of relief, Turan tossed away the sling, left in tatters by the explosion. He normally protected it with mana when throwing stones, but apparently that had not been enough to withstand the blast.

'Now that I look, my hand's hurt too.'

His fingers stung and had begun to blister, apparently burned by the blast. Considering he had not even activated his guardian magic tool to minimize mana consumption, he was lucky to have escaped with so little damage.

As he debated taking a little restorative potion, Maysa flew over and asked,

"How did you do that just now?"

"I used the Spirit of Fire... I'll explain how it works later."

He had put a spur-of-the-moment idea straight into practice, so he had actually thought there was a considerable chance of failure. Yet somehow he had coordinated everything perfectly on his first attempt, as though he had already practiced hundreds of times.

He had experienced this sensation a few times before while throwing stones: a certainty, felt only at crucial moments, that he could hit exactly what he wanted. Perhaps it was the product of the proficiency and intuition he had developed through countless hours of practice since childhood. He had not even been able to guide the stone with magic this time, since he was using a wind channel.

'More importantly, this technique could have all sorts of uses with a little more research...'

Several applications already sprang to mind. He could fill a large pouch with hundreds of pebbles and the Spirit of Fire, throw it into the midst of his enemies, and detonate it. Or he could place a piece of metal inside a long, narrow tube, pack the Spirit of Fire behind it, and blast it out, much as the dwarves had once done.

As his imagination ran through the possibilities, the great sea serpent's thrashing gradually subsided. Was it truly on the verge of death now? Turan apparently was not the only one to think so. The giant octopus that had been blown away earlier approached and raised an arm toward the serpent.

At that instant, he saw a change within the half-dead monster.

"Get away!"

Turan shouted urgently, but the two were already too close together. The great sea serpent, which had been wheezing as though on its last breath, suddenly opened its eyes wide and erupted in green radiance. The storm spirit housed within it escaped somewhere, leaving it wholly a wraith.

Its body was still shattered and on the brink of death, but the transformation seemed to have granted it one last measure of strength. It opened its jaws toward the octopus and gathered mana in its mouth. What burst forth was—

"Aaaaaaagh!"

With a flash of gold, the giant octopus melted away like butter sliced by a hot knife. The Light of Judgment. Turan was momentarily speechless at the sight of the secret art of Baraha's Sun bloodline pouring from the great sea serpent's mouth. How could that creature possibly use it?

As though mocking his bewilderment, the serpent began spewing vast quantities of lightning from its entire body, targeting not only the nearby merfolk royals but Turan and Maysa in the sky. It was not difficult to guess that it was returning the very same lightning attacks Maysa had been hammering it with until recently.

Turan hastily detonated a handful of the Spirit of Fire, blasting himself aside to evade the lightning. Maysa, however, was struck and fell screaming into the sea. He started toward her rescue, then abandoned the attempt when he realized the serpent was staring at him. Unlike him, she had fully awakened her Storm Bloodline and possessed strong resistance to electricity. He could only trust that she would be all right.

'Mimic...'

That was the first word that came to mind as he dodged the successive electrical attacks. None of the ancient accounts of great sea serpents he had asked the librarian for had mentioned such an ability. Rather than stealing and wielding the powers of the dead as his Holy Relic did, this seemed to copy abilities that struck it. Had contact with the Mimic god caused that god's wraith to become entangled with it as well?

Since it had used Solif's power once and not again, there were probably some limitations, but even allowing for those, the situation was hardly promising. From the outset, Maysa had taken advantage of the cloud-filled sky to unleash immense lightning storms worthy of the Head of Arabion. If the serpent spat all that power back out, it would have enough to kill everyone here twice over.

As Turan thought furiously and dodged incoming bolts, he realized that the storm around them was abating. With the departure of the storm spirit fused to it, the great sea serpent seemed to have lost its ability to control the weather.

Moreover, the merfolk royals who had retreated from the lightning storm were now approaching underwater and attempting to attack, drawing its attention. So were Solif and Maysa, who had fallen to the earlier lightning attack. They were likely exploiting how lightning spread instantly underwater and lost its force, but considering a single blow from that overwhelming body would probably kill them, their actions bordered on sheer recklessness.

'In that case...'

He could not squander the precious opportunity his companions had bought him. Unfortunately, the explosion had torn his oversized sling apart, making it difficult to repeat his earlier technique. But now that the storm had stopped, he could simply turn to a tactic he had previously discarded. Turan's airborne figure vanished as though it had never been there.

* * *

'Damn it...'

Breathing through a tube fashioned by manipulating water, Solif cursed at the awe-inspiring mythical beast before him. A moment earlier, it had swept its body around as though swatting away an annoying fly, and the resulting current had hurled him dozens of meters backward.

If the great sea serpent had deliberately targeted him, he probably would not have lasted long. His proficiency with fluid manipulation magic was still lacking, leaving him far from agile underwater.

Yet he swallowed his fear, conjured a spear of light beneath the water, and hurled it somewhere between the serpent's belly and chest. The spear-throwing skills he had learned through decades of training as Baraha's heir served him well even underwater.

"Ugh."

He had invested a considerable amount of mana in the attack, and it apparently stung. The great sea serpent turned its wide eyes, now wholly green, toward him. In other words, that was all he had accomplished.

His earlier experience had shown that his specialty, the Light of Judgment, could split its scales and rend its flesh, but getting close enough to use it would surely cost him his life. Besides, for reasons he did not understand, the creature had just copied his technique, making him even more reluctant to try.

The instant he hastily dodged sideways in anticipation of its counterattack, an enormous tail swept through the space he had occupied, generating a powerful vortex.

"Glrk!"

The breathing passage he had made to the surface vanished, and seawater instantly filled his mouth. Inhaling brine instead of air, Solif desperately swam toward shore, calling on every scrap of magic and physical strength he possessed. Fortunately, Rowina happened to pass by and caught him in a claw, lifting him to the surface fairly quickly.

"Cough, hah... Thanks..."

"Where did your leader go? He was here a moment ago, but now he's gone."

Solif hurriedly thrust his head above the water to breathe, then looked up at the sky at Rowina's words. As she had said, there was no sign of Turan, who had been flying overhead and drawing the creature's attention until moments ago. Had the lightning finally shot him down? Or had he found it too difficult to dodge and retreated underwater like them?

He looked to see whether Turan was with Maysa, but that was not the case either. Just as Solif had been doing moments earlier, she was diving around the great sea serpent, continuously firing arrows of light. Perhaps because she could move far more adeptly than he could, she seemed to be getting much too close.

'Should I tell her to back off? I doubt she can see hand signals from here.'

Just as the thought crossed his mind, Solif's eyes widened at an explosion atop the great sea serpent's head.

* * *

[■■■■■■■■■■■■■■--------!]

'This is definitely its weak point.'

Turan had absorbed Sun bloodline mana obtained from the Baraha nobles—specifically, the power of the strongest among them—and used stealth magic to approach the weak point at the crown of the serpent's head, where his boulder had pierced it earlier.

Normally, even with Zahar's stealth magic, fear of an accidental blow from its constantly moving head would have made such an approach almost unthinkable. It was possible only because the creature was sluggish with exhaustion and its attention was divided among the enemies attacking from underwater.

Turan had then poured a large quantity of his Spirit of Fire into the spot where the drowned god's arm had once been embedded, now widened by the boulder's passage, before pulling back and igniting it. The resulting hole was wide enough for a person to pass through.

He leaped inside, activated the Light of Judgment, and lashed out wildly with whips of light, erasing the wraith's essence. The great sea serpent writhed and roared as though death were upon it. It was a natural response: in a living creature, this would have amounted to having its brain gouged out.

'Yes, that hurts, doesn't it?'

Wedging his feet into a relatively narrow groove inside the skull, Turan swayed from side to side as he swung his whips. Every time the wraith's green radiance burned away beneath them, its screams and struggles intensified.

—No!

A human voice sounded from somewhere. Instinctively, Turan knew it belonged to the being fused with the great sea serpent: the Mimic god.

—Die.

Who was supposed to die? Turan, who was threatening its life? The answer came at once.

—Monster, die. For humanity, serpent, die...

That was the will harbored by the Mimic god's wraith, the lingering obsession he had probably clung to until his dying breath. How tragic that the wraith of a god who had fought the great sea serpent for humanity's sake should have joined with his mortal enemy.

To end that misguided devotion, Turan squeezed out his dwindling mana, erasing the green radiance filling the space where a brain should have been, over and over with the Light of Judgment. For several minutes, the acrid smell of burning wraith essence filled his nose while his body slammed against the shaking walls of the skull.

At last, the shaking stopped, and then the skull began to fall freely. He could feel that the tangled entity formed from the great sea serpent and the god's wraith had utterly broken apart, and that the mana which had commanded the enormous serpent's entire body was gathering at a single point.

—Thank you...

Turan bowed his head slightly at the quiet voice.

"Rest in peace. I owe you a great deal."

The god probably could not hear him, but it was the best tribute Turan could offer.

A moment later, the skull hit the water with a splash and began to fill. Turan submerged himself and swam out. The Holy Relic's senses, briefly obstructed while he was trapped inside, resumed functioning and revealed the living creatures around him.

The merfolk king and royals, Solif, and Maysa... Upon seeing his two companions atop the sea turtle's shell, Turan hastily flew over.

"Turan! Restorative potion, quickly!"

Solif shouted, his face frantic. Maysa lay below him, deathly pale, with nothing visible below her waist. Her lower body was gone—a horrific injury that would have killed anyone but a top-ranking noble long ago. Turan hurriedly took out the restorative-potion magic tool and handed it to Solif before turning away.

"Where are you going?!"

"To get her body!"

Fortunately, Maysa's severed lower half was still just barely within the Mimic Holy Relic's range. Turan dove swiftly to retrieve it, observing the condition of the merfolk royals as he brought it back.

'They're all badly hurt, and some are dead... but using up all our mana here would be dangerous.'

However poor their condition, killing nobles rendered helpless by mana exhaustion would hardly be difficult. After all, so long as they could transform, they were enormous sea creatures, while Turan and his companions were merely humans, powerless without mana.

Realistically, then, one of them needed to perform the healing while the other preserved what little power he had left. The problem was that Maysa would very likely die if they did that. The restorative-potion magic tool was not particularly efficient for wizards of their caliber, and her injuries were so severe that even pouring in all their mana would not guarantee her survival.

After a very brief hesitation, Turan approached Solif, who was hurriedly giving her restorative potion.

"Lift her upper body. I'll line the halves up."

"Can you reattach it?"

"At least the wound isn't burned or melted like yours was. How did this happen, anyway?"

"I think she got caught by something during its final thrashing. I'd already thought she was too close..."

Solif's severed arm could not have been reattached because the Light of Judgment had melted the cut surface, but Maysa's body had at least been torn apart relatively cleanly.

Should he be horrified by the creature's immense physical might, which had shattered even the multiple high-grade magic tools protecting her? Or grateful for Maysa's durability, which had kept her from being pulverized by a blow from such a monster?

Turan asked the sea turtle to take them ashore, then alternated with Solif in making restorative potion to treat Maysa. He even summoned Vije from inland, and only after nearly twenty minutes of drawing on all their mana did they finally pull her out of danger.

"That's it. She'll recover with time now."

"Thank goodness..."

Already half-dead with exhaustion, Solif immediately sprawled out where he sat upon hearing the news.

After briefly checking that Vije's wing had not healed crookedly, Turan examined Maysa. She remained pale and unconscious, but warm blood was circulating through her reattached lower body. From what the Holy Relic's senses showed him, his calculations had been correct: without both his and Vije's full reserves of mana, her body would not have rejoined properly, and she would certainly have died.

"Whew..."

As he sighed in relief, several shadows fell over him and Solif. The merfolk king stood there with a few of his royal children. Fewer in number than when the battle began, they watched Turan's group with peculiar expressions. The king spoke, his manner appraising.

"She seems to have been badly injured."

"Unfortunately. Luckily, she's out of danger."

Turan answered in a calm voice, as though it really were nothing serious, while subtly studying the merfolk's expressions. If they turned hostile now, his group would die without being able to put up even a token resistance. The mana remaining in his body was so scant that he would have trouble fending off even Armani if the boy transformed into a shark and attacked.

After several tense seconds facing one another, the merfolk king spoke quietly.

"Let me know if you need help. I want to collect the corpse soon, so absorb its power as soon as that woman wakes. For now, I'll bring it to the beach."

Watching the merfolk leave, Turan lay flat on the sand, just as Solif had moments before.