Chapter 163

At the word love, Turan silently studied Harun for a moment. Their earlier conversation had already taught him that the elderly man anyone would see before them was not Harun's true self.

No, on reflection, he could not even be certain that Harun's true self was a woman. The Freyan faith rejected love between people of the same sex in order to spread noble bloodlines far and wide, but that did not mean no one harbored such passions.

Perhaps Otas had truly been a woman. Having absorbed Kadram's memories, Turan had some understanding that the game character forming a god's body did not necessarily match the player behind it.

Just because the Night Hunter's body was male did not mean the person behind the monitor had to be a man. Just as the limping goddess had used that beautiful appearance and girlish manner of speech to seduce others and take their money, only to be exposed as a man and beaten by a crowd...

"I can see exactly what you're thinking on your face. I'm sorry, but that is a private matter, so I shall say no more."

"... Understood. But there is something I find difficult to understand. What do you want from the Night Hunter you brought back?"

If Turan truly was the Night Hunter reincarnated, he could not return Harun's affection simply because Harun desired it. He had already given his heart to Maysa, and even otherwise, it would be difficult to feel romantic love for an old man.

"I suppose you're still too young to understand. Love does not always ask to be returned. Sometimes, giving alone can bring joy."

Looking at that fond smile, as though Harun were speaking to a child, it was difficult to recall the vicious figure who had so calmly admitted a moment ago to grinding up hundreds of thousands of souls to bring about Turan's birth. Truly, the old man before him was the most contradictory person Turan had ever met.

Infinitely cruel in some ways, yet in others possessed of an almost youthful, innocent devotion... Perhaps noticing his turmoil, Harun abruptly asked a question.

"Do you hate me? For sacrificing hundreds of thousands to create you, and tearing your parents apart?"

Rather than answering at once, Turan chose his words carefully. Judging by the question, Harun did not seem to know that Turan had learned the truth of his father's death. Concealing that without lying would require the right turn of phrase.

"I'm not sure. I do think you're a terrible villain... but in a sense, I could also be said to have benefited from what you did. Frankly, I find it difficult to decide how I should treat you."

As he spoke, Turan suddenly recalled the nobles of House Valtas he had met long ago in Orem City, far to the west. He had privately despised the way they used knights as shields against attacks that would hardly have proved fatal to them, yet they had treated him generously as a guest and opened their library to him. Granted, that had been to enlist him in their monster hunt, but still.

Their misdeeds were hardly comparable in scale to those of the old man before him, but there was a similarity: however repugnant their actions, they had treated him well.

"Besides, I wonder whether I deserve this kindness. Even after your explanation, I'm still not certain I'm the Night Hunter reincarnated. I have no memories of a past life, and my bloodlines are different from his."

In truth, even if an opportunity to obtain those memories arose, he would rather decline. Merely absorbing a portion of Kadram's memories recently had left Turan with an unconscious hatred for a family he had never seen, let alone shared a world with.

If he acquired the Night Hunter's memories in their entirety, could he still call the resulting person himself? Harun smiled and nodded at his words.

"Well, it doesn't matter what you think about it. Seeing you for myself has convinced me. That is enough. That is enough."

As Harun murmured those words, a tear ran down his wrinkled face. Turan started, then realized that the House Zahar nobles nearby were far more shaken than he was.

Although the magic tool kept their voices from carrying outside, everyone could still see them. The sight of their House Head suddenly weeping in the midst of the conversation had thrown them into confusion. One of them even tried to enter the sound-blocking magic tool's range, only to be stopped.

"Ah, forgive me... I would have been all right in a younger body, but I seem to have grown overly sentimental with age. Shall we leave the personal matters there? Making a young man listen to an old man's ramblings must be quite an ordeal. Is there anything you want from me? If it isn't too much, I'll grant it."

For an instant, Turan considered asking him to kill all the Zahar nobles standing behind him—especially the gods' vessels—and then commit suicide. He promptly dismissed the thought. Even if the old man regarded him as a lover from a past life, he could hardly agree to that.

Indeed, such possibilities were probably why he had specified that he could not grant anything too great. Promising anything when there were requests he could not fulfill would be a lie.

In the end, after some thought, Turan made a request that was, as Harun had stipulated, not particularly great.

"That rod you mentioned earlier—may I ask what it's used for?"

When Turan pointed to the rod strapped to his back, Harun chuckled.

"Of course! Why not take this opportunity to see it in action? Experience it for yourself, I mean."

"A spar, or a serious match?"

"A spar, naturally. If we fought in earnest, even I would have trouble restraining my friends. Besides, you ought to learn how to use the abilities you've just acquired. A demonstration would make things easier."

If they fought in earnest and Turan suffered a serious wound, Zahar's gods would insist on pressing the advantage and wiping them out. Harun would find it difficult to stop them. Even a powerful god's vessel became vulnerable while changing bodies and needed someone else's help.

The gods formed groups rather than living alone precisely so they could help one another change bodies smoothly. A loner could eventually find themselves driven out without a new body to inhabit. Through the half-elves, Turan had learned something of these delicate dynamics among the gods.

"I will never use an attack that could prove fatal to you during our spar. And if any of my people cause trouble, I will stop them. What do you say?"

"Very well."

After a moment's consideration, Turan accepted. Harun had not spoken a single lie since Turan activated the Eyes of Truth. If those words were true, sparring with Zahar's House Head would certainly be valuable experience.

"Now then, shall we have a light bout to work off our meal?"

Harun deactivated the sound-blocking magic tool and called out loudly, leaving everyone around them looking puzzled. He had been crying a moment ago, and now he was suddenly announcing a spar? None of it seemed to make sense.

While Harun spoke to the Zahar nobles, Turan informed Osel and the other Parsha nobles that they had agreed to spar. Osel frowned, his face looking youthful as he spoke.

"Will you be all right? This may be a scheme to prevent you and me from fighting him together..."

In an ordinary fight, Turan and Osel would naturally join forces to pressure Harun, but the pretext of a spar would let him fight Turan alone. If he then launched a surprise attack, inflicting a fatal wound before the battle began, he would effectively have defeated his two opponents one at a time.

"Your concern is reasonable, but I don't believe he intends anything of the sort."

"Very well. If anything seems wrong, signal me. I'll join you at once."

* * *

The spar took place in an empty stretch of wilderness beside the temporary meeting site. However light the exchange was meant to be, this was a clash between the heads of two great houses, and the other wizards withdrew a good several hundred meters or more.

Only Osel remained relatively close, being a powerful enough wizard himself that he was unlikely to die easily. Standing about thirty meters away, Harun nudged his hat into place with a few movements of his head and spoke to Turan.

"To be honest, I made the suggestion, but I didn't expect you to accept so readily. I thought you'd weigh it up a little first."

"You were telling the truth."

"The way you press ahead once you're certain is just like him, too."

Wasn't interpreting absolutely everything to support one conclusion called confirmation bias? Turan repeated the phrase that had suddenly occurred to him, then took his sling from his pouch.

Since this was a light spar, he had no intention of using advanced techniques such as the Spirit of Fire or the railgun. The publicly known techniques he had used back when he was a somewhat more ordinary wizard would suffice. Harun already knew about the Mimic Holy Relic, so Turan could use that freely as well.

"Then... shall we begin?"

With that quiet murmur, Harun vanished from sight. It was the Zahar bloodline's signature stealth ability.

Turan had wondered whether it might be different for a House Head-caliber wizard, but fortunately, the Mimic Holy Relic could detect even this. Rather than immediately launching the stone he had loaded, Turan created an orb of light, just as his opponents had done against him. In an instant, everything for several kilometers around lit up—

"... Oh."

To his surprise, instead of dropping his stealth, Harun countered by wrapping himself in pitch-black mist. Naturally, this had to be a skill rather than ordinary magic.

Turan responded by sending the stone he had been whirling straight into the mist. After all, it was obvious Harun was inside.

BOOM!

Without a wind channel, the stone tore through the air at the speed of sound with a thunderous report and struck its target precisely. Or rather, Harun raised his rod and knocked the incoming stone away.

"That doesn't seem to be a particularly useful technique."

Turan addressed Harun, who had dropped his stealth. Of course, the Holy Relic's detection ability had allowed him to aim precisely, but even without it, simply attacking the black mist would have solved the problem. Harun laughed heartily.

"I wanted to show you that this was an option, too. Besides, it isn't entirely useless. Not knowing how badly your opponent is hurt inside the mist—or even whether your attack worked at all—puts quite a lot of psychological pressure on you."

So that was what the technique was for.

Turan felt around for the handles within himself, then used the same technique Harun had just demonstrated. Black mist, which ordinarily existed only as a symbol within him, enveloped his body, allowing him to conceal himself easily even under the bright light.

"My turn, then."

As Harun spoke quietly, he unwrapped the cloth around his rod and leveled it straight at Turan. That motion alone made its purpose easy to guess.

The steam rifles the dwarves had used when he fought them in the mountains... Though smaller and simpler in shape, it was too similar in its basic design for him to fail to recognize it.

The instant light flashed inside the black opening, Turan covered his chest with both hands and switched the Holy Relic to the Ruban bloodline. A metal bullet shot from the muzzle at a speed almost too fast to perceive, threatening to tear his arms apart.

"Urgh...!"

Even with the guardian defenses of the Ruban bloodline, his guardian magic tool, and the protective clothing Maysa had made for him, his forearms stung. He guessed that without the Holy Relic and magic tools, the shot would have pierced both arms and his heart.

He had already sensed it through his Holy Relic, but that firepower was possible because the gun itself was a tremendously powerful Holy Relic. Knocked backward and sent tumbling dozens of meters, Turan glared at Harun, who chuckled.

"I trusted you could withstand that much, of course. By that reasoning, your stone would have hurt quite a bit if I'd simply let it hit me, wouldn't it?"

As before, the old man had a gift for making anyone who tried to argue with him look foolish.

"More importantly, judging by your reaction, you've seen a gun before. How did you learn about them? Did Kadram or Resion tell you?"

"I saw the dwarves in the mountains using them. Theirs used steam."

"Oh ho."

"More importantly, how did you know I have Kadram and Resion?"

"I heard from that friend in the northwest. He said someone had stolen the Soul Labyrinth. If that someone was you, naturally you would have taken the souls of those you defeated and interrogated them."

It was a little surprising that the Biologist had freely admitted to Harun that his property had been stolen, but it made sense on reflection. He would have wanted to solve the problem without lifting a finger by making Zahar wary enough of Turan to eliminate him.

Though surprised by the unexpected revelation, Turan searched the handles within himself to keep his attention on the spar. Among those he had seen earlier was one he wanted to try in practice. It seemed to grant a particular property to an attack...

"Oh!"

Harun cried out in surprise as he knocked aside the incoming stone as before. The stone he had deflected flew some distance away, then turned back and hurtled toward him again.

The principle was similar to the pursuit magic Turan had often used as an ordinary wizard, but the angles it could turn through and its mana consumption were on another level entirely. Ordinarily, trying to compensate with mana for the tremendous loss of force involved in defying inertia would exhaust the caster to self-destruction. This, however, pursued its enemy effortlessly, without even that drawback.

The ancient Night Hunter had probably used this ability to shoot enemies dead from afar. Otherwise, an opponent could hardly be expected to remain still while a projectile traveled over a hundred kilometers.

'I'll have to test whether I can add tracking to the railgun later.'

If it worked, he could refine that dreadful weapon even further. Though he had a feeling it would lose some of its power.

While Turan was thinking this, Harun made something like a pitch-black tentacle rise from the shadow beneath his feet and swallow the stone Turan had thrown. Presumably, it was an ability of the Shadow bloodline.

"Don't take this as a demonstration. You won't be able to copy it."

"I imagine not. This is merely curiosity, so you needn't answer, but didn't the Shadow bloodline die out long ago?"

Even as they spoke, Turan extinguished the light and concealed himself to evade his opponent's incoming attacks. To overcome that, Harun would probably have to create light just as Turan had.

Contrary to his expectations, however, Harun stamped his foot as though casting an earth-alteration spell instead of creating light. Dark-purple tentacles burst upward simultaneously across an area hundreds of meters around him, stabbing in every direction.

Naturally, Turan's position was no exception. Still concealed, he used flight magic to rise into the air and evade the attack. The instant a tentacle grazed him, Harun's gaze turned his way.

"There you are."

BANG!

The crack of igniting gunpowder, which he had not properly heard before, rang out, but to no effect. Instead of blocking with his body as he had earlier, Turan detonated gunpowder around himself to maneuver out of the way.

When Turan landed and dropped his stealth, Harun likewise withdrew the shadow tentacles covering the ground.

"We've been preserving the Shadow bloodline in secret. But we keep its power too diluted for it to readily awaken in a wizard, and prune away those who are occasionally born too strong."

"Because of the rules governing bloodline management?"

"That's right. Besides, the Shadow bloodline is rather... dangerous. Though not as much as the Alchemist bloodline."

"Is that why you cut off those two bloodlines?"

"It is. If they had remained, the world would have suffered far more than it does now. I can assure you of that."

As they spoke, Turan closed in and threw a punch. Unexpectedly, Harun met him with aggressive hand-to-hand combat. Even though Turan had activated the Ruban bloodline's power, Harun was not easily driven back; if anything, he felt even more unyielding.

Just as Turan used a guardian magic tool, Harun must possess one that granted immense strength akin to the Strongman bloodline.

How many blows had they exchanged? Turan stepped back a few paces, rubbing his stinging jaw, and Harun slung his gun over his shoulder.

"I think we'd best stop here. I'm beginning to tire."

It did not appear to be an empty claim. Harun's face looked visibly more drained than before. Just as Badal's had in the past.

Turan had not understood why then, but now he knew. Unlike Turan and his companions, whose souls and bodies were fully in harmony, the gods' vessels lacked that harmony, causing the spirit chains linking the two to tire easily.

If, as with the half-elves, even the races of the soul and body differed, using skills properly could become difficult, as it had for Resion. If Turan fought them in the future, he would have to exploit this to the fullest.

Would it be better to finish his opponent while he was exhausted? Turan wrestled briefly with the sudden temptation, then shook his head.

Morality aside, if he launched a surprise attack while sparring as host and guest, not only his subordinates but even his ally Osel would despise him.

"That was a good spar."

As the two bowed politely to each other to signal the end of their spar, cheers erupted all around them.