Chapter 162

Turan was momentarily speechless at the revelation that the old man before him had attempted to resurrect the Night Hunter. He had imagined all manner of possibilities while preparing for this meeting, but never anything like this.

The Head of Zahar had tried to revive the Night Hunter. Did that mean Turan himself had been born as part of some scheme this old man had devised? Even his father and mother's meeting, and everything else?

For a moment, he felt dizzy, as though the ground were falling away beneath him. Then he tried to recover his composure as quickly as possible. Harun seemed to notice, however, and gave him a faint smile.

"That seems to have come as quite a shock. Here, have some water."

"... Thank you."

Turan pretended to drink the water Harun offered, then set it down untouched. Alchemist, one of the Night Hunter's four bloodlines, granted power over poisons. Drinking a liquid Harun had touched, however briefly, was far too great a risk. Harun showed no displeasure, despite knowing why.

"Heh, cautious, aren't you? Well, now that we've each answered one question, I believe it's my turn again. Where did you obtain the Mimic's Holy Relic?"

"... On an island in the South Sea. Old tales of worshipping that god still remained there."

"That's a lie. I can tell that much."

His voice held certainty, not a mere attempt to sound him out. Why? The Mimic god had been active in the South Sea. Almost no one should have known he was in the North Sea when he died.

Turan's mind raced, but he could find no reason the old man should have spotted his lie at once. Had Harun detected some sign in his physical reactions rather than relying on prior knowledge? He should have suppressed the reactions characteristic of a liar.

After a brief moment of thought, an idea flashed through Turan's mind. The combination of the Night Hunter's symbols that Harun had shown him out of nowhere...

Just as the Zahar bloodline's hypersensitive sense of smell could detect emotions, Harun was clearly reading Turan's mind with the Night Hunter's abilities. It was probably some sort of lie-detection power.

Instead of apologizing for lying, Turan complained to the other man.

"This is unfair. You can detect my lies, Great-Uncle, but I can't detect yours."

"Haven't you enjoyed that same unfair advantage all this time? Even in Zahar, only a handful are born with a nose sensitive enough to detect hormones. Most people would never have taken precautions."

Turan could offer no objection to Harun's gentle reply. It was true. So he decided to change his approach. If he could not prevent his opponent from discerning the truth, he would be better off gaining the same ability himself.

At that thought, the symbols within him stirred. Hunter and Pursuer: in the year or so since discovering soul magic, he had tried hundreds, thousands of ways to combine them.

Now that he knew the answer, fusing them was laughably simple. The eye seeped into the pitch-black mist, splitting into thousands and spreading outward. At the same time, he felt dozens of handles appear within him, just as they had when he combined the Storm Bloodline's two symbols.

'Let's see—'

When Turan first attempted to combine symbols, he had been so inexperienced that he had to pull handles at random to test the techniques. Now that his spiritual awareness had advanced considerably, he could take a somewhat more refined approach. Extending his spiritual awareness and resting it on a handle gave him a rough sense of what it would do.

'This releases something, and this one strengthens me? Let's see... Not this one either.'

Thirty-odd seconds passed. A brief interval in some circumstances, but quite a long time to fall silent in the middle of a conversation.

Harun simply watched the apparently pensive Turan without interrupting or interfering. Thanks to that, Turan quickly examined a dozen or so abilities before finding what he wanted.

When he activated it, the colors around him seemed to distort for a moment.

"May I ask a question first? It's a simple one, and you can answer however you please."

"Go ahead."

"Did it rain on your journey here yesterday?"

Considering House Zahar's army had come from the Enril Desert to the east, the answer hardly warranted thought. But Harun seemed to understand the question's purpose and replied with a smile.

"It did. I was soaked through."

As he answered, red light flashed from Harun's eyes and mouth. Turan could tell that this ability let him distinguish truth from falsehood in another person's words.

"I see."

"Well, how does it feel to use the Eyes of Truth? Easier than detecting it by smell, isn't it?"

"Yes, certainly."

What he found difficult to understand was Harun's attitude: demonstrating the ability himself and cooperating as though he were teaching him. Compared to the sinister, relentless Talis, this old man felt more like a real grandfather, to the point that Turan was beginning to like him. Though he still slipped underhanded tricks into the proceedings.

"Be careful, though. You can't trust it completely either. Hmm, for example... Ask whether I'm a woman."

"Are you a woman?"

"I am."

Green light flashed from Harun's eyes and mouth as he answered. Turan instinctively knew this different reaction indicated truth. As though he already knew what Turan had seen, the old man spoke with a faint smile.

"I may look like an old man now, but I've lived as a woman before. Several times, in fact. Given that, can I define myself as a man merely because this body I currently wear, Harun Zahar, is male? The woman I was back then was unquestionably me as well."

Some might think so, but others might not, Harun murmured. Hearing that, Turan understood why the Eyes of Truth were not infallible.

Their judgment depended entirely on what the other person thought. Someone believing something did not make it true. Reading emotions through scent required similar caution, so it was easy to understand.

"Well, I think that earns me a teaching fee. Where did you obtain the Mimic's Holy Relic?"

"Inside an underwater cave on an uninhabited island in the North Sea. I found it on a corpse that had died fighting a great sea serpent."

A peculiar gleam entered Harun's eyes at Turan's honest answer. After the shocking revelation earlier, Turan had even wondered whether Harun had arranged for him to obtain the Mimic Holy Relic. Judging by his reaction, that did not appear to be the case.

Indeed, if Harun possessed such a treasure, why would he give it to Turan instead of using it himself? Especially an item that was effectively the natural enemy of every Zahar noble.

"Great sea serpents... They've been quite a nuisance lately. So that's what happened. Weak as he was, he always had too much pride. If he'd stayed with me, it never would have happened."

His words sounded mocking, but the emotions beneath them were closer to regret and sorrow.

"Was he a weak god?"

"He was quite good at fighting people, since he could copy their abilities, but poor at fighting monsters. Night Hunters like Otas and me were better at that... Ah, Otas was the Night Hunter's name. Though I'm sure you already know."

"You were a Night Hunter too, Great-Uncle."

"Didn't you know that already? Well, it would be absurd to put us on the same level simply because we shared a class."

Harun chuckled, then abruptly posed a question.

"Do you know the legend of the Enril Desert?"

"Yes. I've heard that in ancient times, the giants' tyranny reduced Enril, once grassland, to something little better than a desert, so the Night Hunter shot them dead."

"The part about giants turning grassland into desert is nonsense, but they were certainly monsters capable of it. There were hundreds of them, practically great sea serpents walking on land. Aside from a few of our best, most of us struggled to fight more than one or two."

Harun's words brought to mind the great sea serpent wraith Turan had faced around two years earlier. Even now, it would be a troublesome opponent in single combat, one he could not confidently say he would defeat...

And even that had been weaker than it was in life. A living great sea serpent must truly have been a monster worthy of being called divine. By present standards, perhaps three or four great-house heads, or more, would have to join forces to face one.

And there had been hundreds of such monsters? The mere thought took his breath away, yet Harun's next words made even that seem laughable.

"Otas shot every last one of those hundreds of giants dead by himself. All we did in that battle was guard him against any possible surprise attack. In the end, even the giants' queen died to a single arrow fired from over a hundred kilometers away."

A being who harvested the lives of godlike monsters with arrows fired from unfathomable distances... Merely imagining it gave Turan some sense of how monstrous the ancient Freyans had been, and how overwhelmingly powerful the Night Hunter had been even among them.

It also explained why Ymir had once said that if Otas returned, Zahar's gods, including the old man before him, would prostrate themselves and beg.

"A friend living to the northwest took the giants' corpses and played an amusing little game with them. He said he was recreating the Night Hunter dungeon beneath the old museum we'd built. You've seen it too, haven't you?"

At the unexpected question, Turan opened his mouth to invent a lie out of habit, then closed it again. With both of them using the Eyes of Truth, any lie would obviously be exposed.

After a moment, he gave a quiet sigh and nodded. In this situation, even silence would be an answer, so he judged it better to admit it.

"Yes, I saw it. It was hideous."

"So you were the one who killed Perga. I suspected as much."

"I didn't kill him."

Perga had simply died fighting the queen of the monsters in a weakened state. That creature had probably been made by repurposing the ancient giant queen. Though Turan himself had been responsible for weakening him.

Reading the truth in those words, Harun looked amused.

"Is that so? Hah, that's a little different from what I expected. Well, either way is fine. Personally, I had fairly high hopes for Perga too... But now that you're here, what happens to him hardly matters."

Strictly speaking, Perga was one of their descendants too, yet Harun's attitude was as cold—indeed, as heartless—as that of the other gods. Seeing it helped Turan regain the vigilance he had begun to lose. The being before him might sometimes seem like a kindly grandfather, but at his core he was nothing more than a heartless god.

"From something I heard before, Arabion seemed to believe Zahar knew nothing of the experiment to recreate the Night Hunter. You knew about it?"

"Only I knew. That friend in the northwest probably had no idea I did. I discovered it through sheer luck."

The friend in the northwest he kept mentioning was probably the Biologist. Who else would have the ability to manipulate a dead giant's corpse and soul into such a creature?

"Then... We've strayed a little from the subject. Let us return to it. What did you mean when you said you tried to reincarnate the Night Hunter? Was my very birth part of Zahar's scheme?"

"No. To be honest, your birth was a rather amusing series of coincidences. Though perhaps it was inevitable, considering it took thousands of years for something like this to happen."

After those meaningful words, Harun drank the water he had offered Turan earlier, as though thirsty.

"How much do you know about developing talent through soul magic?"

"I know it involves manipulating an immature spirit form before the soul has fully settled in, from the time in the womb until one or two years after birth."

"Almost nothing, then. To explain a little, the key is delicately sculpting such things as the soul's vessel and form. How you balance the three affects mana aptitude, bloodline abilities, and magical talent."

This was new to Turan, and he committed Harun's words to memory without betraying his interest. Unable to use Living Spirit Sorcery as the half-elves did, he needed to supplement his knowledge of advanced soul magic. If only for the sake of his unborn child.

"Incidentally, your partner was born by refining the orthodox approach in this field to its absolute limit."

At the word 'partner,' Turan felt his heart drop. Had the old man already realized he had a child on the way, despite all his precautions?

Once he calmed a little, he realized his thoughts had raced too far ahead. The old man was merely making a jab at him for taking Berit in and doing nothing with her.

Fortunately, Harun seemed not to have noticed Turan's shifting emotions at all. Was he unable to pay attention to the other man's scent while combining the Zahar bloodline's symbols—or, more precisely, while using the Eyes of Truth?

"Most likely, every wizard's soul lost in the Zahar–Arabion War went into making Maysa. Dozens of nobles alone, and hundreds of knights... Perhaps a thousand or so? It was unprecedented even for us."

"So that war was fought to create Maysa."

"As far as I know. More precisely, that was what our friend to the northwest wanted. I don't know what he intended to do with a body so unnecessarily powerful, though."

Watching Harun chuckle, Turan voiced a question that suddenly occurred to him.

"Then what did Zahar gain?"

"Hmm?"

"If the souls of all the wizards sacrificed in the war went into developing Maysa's talent, Zahar gained nothing. You don't seem to be that man's subordinate, Great-Uncle. You would have no reason to let him reap all the benefits."

"Quite right. I did benefit as well. Did you know? A wizard's soul is worth far more than a human's... But enough human souls can replace a single wizard's. And nobody ever properly counted how many civilians died during that war."

The Zahar–Arabion War was known as a conflict fought strictly between wizards, with relatively few civilian casualties. But that was merely the public account. With the wizard houses between those two great houses shaken to their foundations and even the barest semblance of law and order gone, had anyone counted those who died without a sound?

With the kindliest face imaginable, Harun spoke cruel words.

"Was it five hundred thousand? Six hundred thousand? Harvesting roughly that many yielded something quite usable."

"You used that... on my mother?"

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Hearing of so many wizards being sacrificed had already disgusted him, but even that was trivial compared to this.

Harun must have read Turan's contempt, yet his smile did not change.

"No, I didn't use it on your mother. This is a technical matter, so it's a little difficult to explain... But you don't necessarily need to choose a target in advance."

Ordinarily, it was used on a child who seemed likely to have some aptitude. But he said it was also possible to designate targets broadly, on principles similar to tracking magic, setting restrictions such as 'people within a certain region' or 'a particular sex.'

"The target was a child of the Zahar bloodline to be born somewhere in this world. I ignored magical talent and mana aptitude, expanding only the soul's vessel, over and over. Do you know what happens then?"

"What happens?"

"A miscarriage. An ordinary soul cannot endure such an enormous spirit form. That is why House Zahar currently has not a single child around twenty, your age."

Through those words, Turan learned of an unexpected side effect of developing talent through soul magic. Miscarriage?

He had never heard of this from the half-elves. Either Living Spirit Sorcery had no such side effect, or they had deliberately omitted it. He would need to discuss this separately when he returned.

"I waited about three years after the ritual ended, and searched the house again and again, but no exceptional child appeared. I was disappointed, thinking I'd failed yet again. We'd bound bloodlines to houses for just such an eventuality, so there was almost no chance of a Zahar-blooded noble being born outside the house."

Turan could surmise that this was why wizard houses had developed the tradition of organizing themselves by bloodline. Of course, there were other reasons as well.

"But then... A miracle named you appeared out of nowhere. The sole Zahar noble to survive that ritual. With genius-level talent, tremendous mana aptitude, and multiple bloodline abilities. That could only happen if you received the soul of the mightiest god of all, drifting somewhere in the sea of spirit forms. As I said earlier, we enlarged only the soul's vessel. We never touched anything else."

"But my soul wasn't particularly large, unlike what you describe."

"Impossible. If that is so, it is only because you cannot properly wield your soul's power."

Faced with that certainty from someone who had never even seen his spirit form, Turan began to reply, then closed his mouth.

Harun's explanation sounded plausible at first, but several questions remained that it did not satisfactorily explain. They were not questions he could resolve by asking here, however.

Rather than pursue the matter, Turan decided to ask what he most wanted to know.

"Very well. Everything you've said so far seems to be true... Then may I ask one more thing? I've also told you that my soul isn't very large."

"What else are relatives for? Ask away."

"Why did you try to resurrect the Night Hunter?"

The way Harun had spoken of the Night Hunter's strength almost boastfully during their conversation made his affection clear. But was that reason enough to revive someone who had disappeared thousands of years ago? As Zahar's leader, he already reigned as one of the world's strongest beings.

Learning this was critically important to Turan. If he was the Night Hunter reincarnated, the old man before him could be an ally or an enemy depending on his reason. Though he had committed far too many disgusting acts to make a palatable ally...

Unexpectedly, Harun chose silence in response. For the first time, the talkative old man kept his mouth shut for over a minute. Turan watched him calmly rather than pressing him.

He could sense that his question was profoundly important to Harun, and that this was why he intended to answer carefully. For the first time since their exchange began, Turan held the initiative.

"Yes, the reason... Of course. You would want to know. Whether you truly are Otas reincarnated or not."

"Yes."

"You may think it foolishness from an old man thousands of years past his prime, but to put it simply, love. The emotion that makes us human."