Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 70 As soon as Asiz finished his explanation, Turan pressed the mask to his face.
At first, it felt cold and rigid to the touch, but the moment he infused it with mana, it grew lukewarm and pliable, clinging tightly to his skin. He could feel a steady stream of mana being drawn out, just as he'd been warned, but his natural recovery rate was more than enough to offset the drain.
"How do I look?"
"You've aged a lifetime in an instant. It's perfect."
When he spoke to Asiz, his voice came out much coarser than his original tone—a deep bass that rasped like grinding metal. Looking into a nearby mirror, he saw a middle-aged man with an impressive, bushy black beard and dark brown skin, weathered as if by long exposure to the sun.
However, looking closely, the skin below his neck remained Turan's original, relatively pale complexion—a jarring contrast.
Right, now that I think about it, he did say the scars would remain too…
Indeed, if it could alter one's entire physique, Solif would never have failed to notice something was off. If it possessed that level of power, it wouldn't have been tossed around for a mere pirate to use for an impersonation.
Just then, Asiz, who had been watching intently, asked, "I didn't know it could grow a beard, though. That's not real, is it?"
"Hardly."
Just to be sure, Turan plucked a single strand. It came out without any pain and immediately crumbled into dust. Aside from that, even when he ran his hand over it, the texture felt completely natural. It was a flawless disguise.
"I don't know what the matching piece is, but this alone is useful enough."
As he spoke, Turan felt a strange vibration thrumming against his chest. The source was the object he always wore as a necklace—the Mimic Relic.
"Why is this…?"
"Could that be the other half of the pair?"
Come to think of it, the two did share similarities. The bloodline of the relic's original owner was 'Mimic,' and its function was to absorb another's mana to replicate their bloodline abilities. Was the mask not also an object meant to mimic another's face?
However, if it were truly paired with an item belonging to a god who had slumbered beneath the sea for millennia, it would mean the mask was also a holy relic. Its mana capacity and functionality seemed far too meager for that to be the case. If it were such a treasure, the Baraha family wouldn't have been foolish enough to let it circulate outside.
"Don't they seem to be on completely different levels?"
"Totally. If we're comparing them, the difference is like your Guardian Magic Tool versus a common mana lamp."
Before appraising the mask, Turan had first asked Asiz to examine the Mimic Relic. Up until now, he had been using it through trial and error rather than fully understanding its functions.
However, after attempting the appraisal, Asiz had stated that the item was beyond his ability to identify. He mentioned it was likely a top-tier artifact even among holy relics. To truly understand it, he would probably have to consult his mother or his older brother.
"Setting that aside, if they are a pair, what should I do? Just put them together?"
Just in case, Turan took off the mask and brought it into contact with the relic, but there was no reaction. In fact, even the vibration from moments ago ceased. It seemed they only reacted when being used simultaneously.
"Nothing's happening."
"Why don't you try injecting mana while they're touching?"
Following Asiz's suggestion, the moment Turan touched the two items together and infused them with mana, a deep, resonant hum echoed through the room. Both the mask and the relic began to vibrate—a signal so clear even a fool couldn't miss it.
Turan let out an exclamation as he felt a massive amount of mana being siphoned through his fingertips.
"You're right. This is the way."
The two vibrating objects began to devour Turan's mana with startling greed. At first, he thought it would stop quickly, but as one minute turned into five, then ten, then twenty, he began to feel his mana reserves running dry.
However, it would be a waste to stop now and risk damaging the items. Ultimately, they called in Solif, who had been idling in his room. The three nobles joined forces, pouring their collective mana into the resonating artifacts.
*
The sudden mana absorption finally ended only after the three of them were exhausted, having spent their mana nearly to the limit. Turan, Solif, and Asiz collapsed onto the large bed without a word.
"I'm so dizzy I could die."
"Hey, if you were going to do something like this, you should've called me sooner. I was in the middle of practicing levitation magic…"
"How was I supposed to know this would happen?"
It took nearly an hour of lying there in a daze before they recovered their strength. Asiz, who had joined last and thus had the most mana remaining, touched the mask with his finger and spoke to Turan.
"This mask… I can't appraise it anymore. Just like your necklace."
In other words, its status as a magic tool had risen astronomically. Turan struggled to his feet, picked up the two transformed items, and observed them closely.
The first thing he noticed was the change in appearance. The once translucent mask now bore a faint wave pattern, and the relic was engraved with the face of a person wearing a hat adorned with bells.
When he hung the relic around his neck, put on the mask, and activated them, he realized that more than just the appearance had changed. He could see the flow of mana swirling around the two nobles in front of him. Within that flow, small symbols were taking shape.
Asiz has a white anvil and a black hammer. Solif has… two white, glowing hands holding a ball of fire?
They were symbols that perfectly represented the two men's bloodlines. Turan immediately looked inward and saw that his hunch was correct.
A white cloud laden with lightning, surrounded by darkness—and within that darkness, a single, wide-open eye. These were undoubtedly the symbols representing Arabion and Zahar.
Just then, Asiz pointed at Turan's face.
"Wait, aren't you wearing the mask right now? Your face hasn't changed."
Hearing that, Turan looked in the mirror again and saw that despite wearing the mask, his face remained the same. Had he lost the ability to transform in exchange for the ability to perceive bloodlines?
His alarm was brief. A sudden realization struck him, and as he faced the mirror, he imagined his face changing.
Before long, his features began to shift freely—from the man he had seen earlier to Asiz, then Solif, and even the women, Meisa and Lida. Watching from the side, Asiz and Solif's eyes widened in shock.
"No way…?"
"You can change it at will now?"
Turan continued to test the limits of the item. He could adjust his height by five to ten centimeters, tweak his bone structure and the proportions of his fingers, and change his skin tone or voice almost exactly as he imagined. While each change consumed mana, this was undoubtedly a top-tier holy relic of legendary proportions.
"It seems this item really was a holy relic after all. Our mana acted as a catalyst to unlock its true power…"
When he took off the mask just to be sure, he could no longer perceive the bloodlines of others. Conversely, when he wore the mask without the Mimic Relic, he could only transform into the middle-aged man's face. In short, the additional functions only worked when the two items were used in tandem.
When he shared this analysis, Asiz and Solif looked at the two items and tilted their heads.
"That's strange."
"Right?"
"Definitely."
How could a top-tier holy relic left behind by an unnamed member of the Frea Divine Clan and a magic tool that had been kicked around the Baraha family be a set?
Then, Turan offered an opinion.
"Maybe this relic wasn't originally such an incredible item?"
"What do you mean?"
"One of the questions I had when I first went there was why neither the god nor the Great Sea Serpent had turned into undead. Even if they didn't turn because they were divine beings, at the very least, their mana should have remained."
If someone had arrived earlier and absorbed the mana, there was no reason for them not to take the Mimic Relic. If they couldn't take it because they weren't 'chosen,' like the Mermaid Prince Armani, they could have just taken the entire corpse. A mage capable of absorbing the mana of those two wouldn't have been as powerless as that baby shark.
"Are you saying this relic absorbed the mana of those two beings?"
"It's just a guess. Maybe they were originally a decent pair of magic tools, but one became a holy relic by taking in the power of a dead god and a mythical beast, while the other just circulated for thousands of years as an ordinary magic tool."
He had thought of something similar in the past, but he hadn't been certain because the Mimic Relic hadn't seemed that impressive for something that had absorbed the power of two divine beings. While useful, it wasn't on the same level as a potion that could bring back the dead or a suit of immortal armor.
However, if that power hadn't been fully utilized but rather stored, and was only now used to reinforce the mask using the mana of three nobles as 'priming energy,' it made a certain amount of sense.
Turan's reasoning involved several leaps of logic, but since they couldn't think of a more plausible explanation, the other two accepted it.
Then, Asiz pointed at the Mimic Relic and said, "But isn't identifying bloodlines not actually that useful?"
Unless they were outliers like Turan, most nobles didn't bother hiding their bloodlines. Since the role of bloodline abilities in combat was so significant, they were difficult to fake anyway.
Turan turned to the puzzled Asiz and said, "We can use this to check. To see if there really are Zahar assassins hiding inside Arabion."
"Ah."
Only then did Asiz seem to realize the true value of the item. In the face of this newly transformed combination of relics, no spy would be able to escape detection.
*
After finishing the appraisal of the magic tools, Turan walked through the annex of the Berk family, observing the people moving about.
From the passing servants to the knights, and occasionally the nobles. The nobles and knights all showed symbols of the hammer and anvil—the Enchanter bloodline—and some knights had the latent symbol of a cloud laden with lightning. Even among the commoners who weren't knights at all, there were quite a few who were born with these symbols.
Well, even my mother wasn't a knight, yet she had the latent Arabion bloodline…
Observing the people as he walked, Turan eventually arrived at the Berk family stables. There, a massive horse and a golden eagle were playing together.
"Have you been having fun, Bije?"
[Turan! He's so stupid!]
Bije fluttered over and began scratching letters into the dirt with her talons. From past experience, Tilly was a fairly intelligent horse, but he didn't seem to meet the standards of a creature that could freely write letters and construct sentences.
"Don't be like that; just have fun together. Don't bully him."
[I'm not bullying him!]
Bije went on a long explanation about how she had tried various games with Tilly, only to be frustrated because the horse was too 'stupid' to understand anything. Judging by Tilly's stoic expression, Turan suspected it wasn't that he didn't understand, but rather that he just found the whole thing tedious.
Turan comforted Bije and peered into her inner self with his enhanced relic-senses.
The Arabion symbol… but it's translucent.
"Can you try blowing some wind? Not too hard, just a breeze."
Like a good girl, Bije didn't argue and immediately created a gust that swept around the stables. As she did, the translucent symbol activated, and Turan saw a yellow light being transmitted from within his own body.
So, Bije has the potential for the Storm bloodline, but she can only use that power if she has a partner bound to her soul…
Seeing that Tilly beside her didn't have such a symbol, it seemed not all magical beasts possessed this potential. It wasn't as if one of Bije's ancestors was a human of the Arabion bloodline, so how did she gain this potential? This was another topic worth pondering.
Afterward, Turan returned to his room and further researched how to utilize the mask. This time, he attempted to sculpt the face of a person who didn't exist, rather than someone real.
At first, he tried creating a face entirely from scratch, but it felt unbearably awkward and uncanny. He changed his method to taking the face of a real person as a base and subtly altering its features.
There were more than enough faces to use as bases, both inside and outside the palace. Every day, Turan went out and observed the faces of people passing by, memorizing them. At night, he would modify or combine them to create the faces of non-existent people.
A young farmer with bold, cheerful features; a sickly-looking scholar with a long face; an old merchant with a hawk nose…
Just in case the need arose, he gave the two relics to Solif and Asiz to practice with, but unexpectedly, neither of them could use them. The Mimic Relic's basic effects wouldn't even activate for anyone other than Turan.
Ultimately, he spent about a week practicing the mask's functions alone. Then, Haram, who had gone out to hunt wolves, returned.
"It's been a while."
"It has. Master!"
"Don't call me that."
Haram's blunt demeanor briefly masked his underlying shyness, but his eyes lit up when he saw Solif standing nearby.
"You're remarkably well-trained. Which great family do you belong to?"
"Um? Oh, no. That's not it…"
Turan had initially thought Solif just had a sturdy build, but it seemed that to the eyes of an expert who had dedicated his life to the blade, things looked different. Haram marveled as he felt Solif's muscles here and there, repeatedly asking him how he had trained.
Since Solif couldn't say he had received training within the Baraha family, he brushed it off by saying he had learned from a wandering noble.
After a period of time that was awkward for Solif but amusing for everyone else, Turan tried to train with Haram as before, but he soon had to stop. He no longer had equipment that could withstand his physical capabilities.
"You've grown stronger."
"I was lucky."
Haram knew that even if he didn't know Turan's bloodline, the boy wasn't specialized in physical abilities. Yet, for him to have this level of physical power meant he had accumulated mana on par with a top-tier noble.
"Hmm."
Haram seemed curious about how he had gained such power in such a short time, but he didn't pry. Perhaps he assumed Turan had done something unsavory to achieve it. Regardless, possessing such overwhelming mana wasn't always a blessing.
*
About three weeks passed in this manner. Turan realized that a reply to the letter he had sent to Meisa should have arrived long ago.
"Asiz, how long does it usually take for a letter to travel between here and Morgen City?"
"A week at most is plenty. If it's a letter between noble families, it's even faster…"
Even when he asked Asiz just in case, Arabion's communication system wasn't particularly slow. In other words, if Meisa had read the letter and sent a reply, it should have arrived by now.
There were three main possibilities for why the reply hadn't come.
First, Meisa read the letter and ignored it.
Second, Meisa read the letter but isn't in a position to reply.
Third, the letter wasn't delivered properly.
Whichever it was, it was clear that staying here and doing nothing wouldn't solve it.
"I think I need to go to Morgen City myself."
"Wouldn't it be better to wait for Mr. Solif's arm to heal and go together?"
Turan shook his head and placed a finger on his face.
"Normally, going together would be safer, but now I have this. If I'm just going in to check and then coming back out, it's actually easier to go alone."
It was finally time to test the results of his weeks of practice.
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