Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 74 The bakery was shrouded in darkness, illuminated only by the pale, ethereal glow of the moon.
Turan explained to Meisa how he had obtained the documents and why he had begun investigating them in the first place. This naturally led to him recounting his past, his unique abilities, the companions he had gathered, and the existence of Solif.
Having told the story twice before, he found his words flowing more smoothly than ever. Turan concluded his tale by detailing the various secrets he had uncovered during his journey and the hypotheses he had drawn from them.
Finally, after manifesting the bloodline abilities of both Zahar and Arabion to prove his words, he fell silent. Meisa, who had listened without interruption, finally spoke.
Her response was unexpectedly sharp, bordering on a reprimand.
"Your logic takes quite a few leaps, and the evidence is thin."
"You're right," Turan admitted with a ready nod.
So far, he had only gathered circumstantial evidence. He lacked definitive physical proof regarding the existence of a god or the true identity of those persecuting Meisa. Had he not met the Librarian himself or experienced the Labyrinth firsthand, he might have dismissed the entire thing as a preposterous conspiracy theory.
"However, I believe the life you have endured until now is evidence enough, My Lady."
A woman born into the most noble status in the world—the successor of a Great Family—yet subjected to an absurd level of persecution. Turan's hypothesis provided a clear explanation for why her life had become so wretched.
"True. That's why I'll believe you. Or perhaps I should say... I want to believe you."
I want to believe. Those were Meisa's true feelings. Only by believing him could she tell herself she wasn't insane—that it was this cursed family that was wrong, not her.
After taking a few steadying breaths, she looked at Turan. "So, what should I do now?"
"First, we must prepare for your escape."
Unlike the relatively young head of the Baraha family, the head of the Arabion family was an old man who could pass away at any moment. No matter how powerful a mage she was, she couldn't simply brush off the reach of a Patriarch who might be backed by a divine entity. She had to flee while the opportunity remained.
"Escape..."
Turan could hear fear and a sense of learned helplessness in her whispered words. Meisa was an Archmage with few rivals outside the heads of the Great Families, but beneath that power, she was an emotionally stunted adult who had spent her entire life oppressed within the family walls.
In fact, considering she was only twenty-two, she was still practically a child by noble standards. Of course, the Turan thinking this was even younger than her.
Suddenly, a look of dread clouded her gaunt face as a thought occurred to her.
"If I run away, won't they retaliate against my aunt's side?"
It was common knowledge that Meisa cherished the Berk family, her maternal relatives. It was highly predictable that the Arabions would persecute them as punishment for her desertion.
Since he had already considered this, Turan immediately offered the answer he had prepared.
"They might. That's why, after we escape, I plan to leak some of the documents I obtained to the vassal families."
There were seventeen vassal families under Arabion located in and around the Dakein Plains. While three or four were deeply entrenched with the Middle-Aged Faction, the rest maintained relatively loose feudal ties.
What would happen if the corruption of the Arabion main house's leadership was exposed to them in Meisa's name?
"It will be difficult for them to persecute the Berk family for the time being. They would lose the moral high ground."
If the Berk family were persecuted immediately after Meisa exposed the leadership's corruption, the other vassal families would inevitably see it as an irrational act of tyranny by the suzerain house. Furthermore, the Youth Faction, which was usually suppressed, and even some of the more upright members of the Elder Faction would find the situation distasteful.
No matter how much the Middle-Aged Faction held the core power of Arabion with the Patriarch's backing, trying to suppress everyone by force would surely tear the family in half. Since there was no guarantee that tormenting the Berks would bring Meisa back, the side effects were too great for what was essentially a petty act of venting spite.
"Ah..."
"Of course, the influence of those documents will wane after a few decades. But before then, we'll have to find a way to face the Patriarch. Or just wait for him to die of old age."
With the combination of Meisa, Solif, and Turan, they could easily hunt even Mythic-rank magical beasts. While such creatures were usually hunted down quickly if they appeared near the territories of Great Families, there were still surviving specimens in the ocean and remote areas untouched by humans.
Searching the vast world would take time, but with a bit of luck, it wasn't impossible to gain enough power to rival the Great Families within a decade or two.
Realistically, this was the best course of action. Meisa couldn't simply wait around to become a sacrificial lamb for the sake of the Berk family forever.
After a few minutes of silence, Meisa gave a difficult nod.
"...Fine. I'm in your hands, Turan."
And so, Turan gained another companion.
*
Once the general direction was settled, they began discussing the specifics of the escape.
"Getting out shouldn't be too difficult. You wear your magic devices all the time anyway, so you can just insist on going for a walk and leave. Though, we'll need to deal with that woman first."
"You mean Reto?"
"Yes."
Reto, the Zahar noble serving the Arabion nobles. If they fled without dealing with her, they would surely be tracked down in no time. Turan could erase her traces within the mansion, but he couldn't stop her from using other means to pursue them.
"Based on my search of this place, she's the only noble of Zahar blood within Arabion. If we eliminate her, we'll buy plenty of time. Are the two of you close?"
Turan hadn't been able to check often while scouting the other nobles over the past few days, but whenever he sensed Meisa's mansion, he felt Reto visiting. Given that Meisa had even asked her to bring a fairy tale book, there might have been some level of friendship.
At Turan's question, Meisa shook her head.
"To be honest, I did feel a bit of kinship with her. But not anymore."
When she was at her most isolated, Meisa had inwardly appreciated Reto for being the only one who wasn't replaced and who treated her kindly. However, she had intentionally acted cold, fearing that if they became too close, Reto would be taken away from her.
Even so, they had shared small moments of comfort, like when Meisa mentioned the fairy tales her mother used to read to her.
"It's ridiculous. To think I actually cherished a woman who was helping to kill my family and torment me..."
Meisa began to recite the things that had been done to her, sounding like a madwoman rambling. Windows shattering without warning while she was resting; her clothes being shredded the moment she looked away; the portrait of her family she kept so dearly suddenly vanishing.
Every time these things happened, she told the family members—mostly the adults—but they simply dismissed it as her being oversensitive.
At first, she had reacted to every incident by casting light and firing offensive magic, but eventually, she learned to ignore it. Even if she were attacked directly, the defensive magic devices she wore were more than enough to handle it. She had decided to simply coexist with whatever invisible, ghost-like entity was haunting her.
Listening to the specific details of what the documents dryly described as "providing appropriate stimulation," Turan felt a surge of pity. A normal person would have surely snapped under the pressure long ago.
"So, do whatever you want with that woman. No... I want her to die a miserable, horrific death."
She said it would be hard to control her emotions if she had to face Reto again before the escape, her eyes welling with tears once more. It seemed her suppressed affection had curdled into a betrayal and hostility ten times as potent.
Thanks to that, Turan could plan to capture and interrogate Reto without any pangs of conscience.
"Then I'll handle her. Are there any other tracking magic devices Arabion uses? The kind that can track someone from a great distance."
The magic device Meisa had used before was for identifying hidden targets at a relatively close range—useful for fighting Zahar nobles, but not for long-distance tracking. Given how relentlessly they had pursued the Dark Elves, there had to be something else.
As expected, Meisa nodded.
"There is. I returned the one I used to the main house, but there's an astrology magic device that uses the constellations. My Uncle Kadram... that bastard probably still has it."
Turan thought that calling her uncle a bastard was technically insulting her own grandfather as well, but he didn't point it out. He doubted his own Zahar relatives on his father's side were anything to be proud of either.
"I've already been inside his house, so I can just steal it right before we leave."
"Having a Zahar on my side is certainly convenient. You can just steal whatever we need," Meisa joked with a faint, teary-eyed smile, having regained some composure.
They spent more time identifying potential problems and brainstorming solutions, though the conclusion was somewhat lopsided. While Meisa would simply walk out, Turan would be the one running around everywhere to clean up the aftermath.
"...Can you really do all this alone? Maybe I should help with—"
"I can handle it. First, Meisa, let's focus on your health. If you suddenly go for a walk, they'll be suspicious. Starting tomorrow, go for a walk every single day. People grow dull to repetition."
"Make it a routine, you mean."
"Yes. And we need to address your condition as soon as possible. At this rate, you'll collapse shortly after we flee."
"Ugh..."
Meisa's expression darkened; this was clearly a topic she didn't want to broach. But her physical condition was indeed that dire. Sleeping for thirteen or fourteen hours a day and feeling dizzy after using even a small amount of mana—no matter how powerful a mage she was, escaping in this state would be difficult.
Turan finally brought up the subject he had been putting off.
"Does your refusal to eat have something to do with your deceased family?"
"...Yes," Meisa replied shortly, her mouth clamping shut. She clearly didn't want to go into detail about what had happened.
Since it wasn't vital information that he needed right this second, Turan moved on.
"You can't solve it on your own, can you?"
"I don't think so... no matter how hard I try."
It wasn't that Meisa hadn't tried to fix her eating disorder. She didn't want to show weakness, so she lied to the outside world, saying she was trying to keep her body light for magic. In secret, she had tried stealing and eating all sorts of delicious food to get some nutrition.
But every time she tried to swallow, she saw the faces of her mother and brother, and an uncontrollable urge to vomit overwhelmed her. In the end, her desperate solution was what Turan had witnessed earlier: eating and vomiting repeatedly. That way, at least a tiny amount of food stayed in her system, slightly improving her condition.
Realizing she had been seen in such a state, Meisa looked away in embarrassment.
Knowing that showing sympathy would only make her feel more ashamed, Turan intentionally maintained a clinical, mechanical attitude.
"Then I will help you."
"How?"
"I'm going to feed you directly."
Meisa was momentarily speechless, staring blankly at Turan. Feeding her directly? That sounded like something out of a decadent romance novel from the Old Empire. Passing food from mouth to mouth...
She briefly wondered if she should feel insulted, but surprisingly, Turan's face showed not a hint of personal feeling.
"W-will that really help? I'm not so sure."
The answer that finally left Meisa's lips was awkward even to her own ears. Turan realized his words had been misleading and clarified.
"I will knock you unconscious, then use a tube to push a liquid blend of food directly into your throat. Even if you wake up and vomit later, some of it will remain in your system."
"Oh."
She had certainly never tried that method before. Or rather, she couldn't have. She couldn't trust anyone in her family, and she felt the need to act strong in front of the Berks, whom she did trust.
While she stood dazed by his almost violent pragmatism, Turan pulled out emergency rations from his high-capacity pouch. Dried bean powder, jerky, vegetables...
He didn't have complex nutritional knowledge about carbohydrates or proteins, but he had the common sense to know that eating a variety of foods was healthy. The nutritional porridge he made by mashing it all together and mixing it with water looked unappetizing, but since it was going straight to her stomach, it didn't matter.
Finally, he found a thin rod nearby and used heating and telekinetic magic to shape it into a metal tube for delivering the food to her stomach.
"It's ready."
"But... how should I go unconscious? By exhausting my mana like last time?"
"That's not good. You're barely maintaining your health with mana as it is; we shouldn't drain your strength further. If you take off your defensive magic devices, I'll knock you out cleanly."
To be defenseless and unconscious in front of another person... It was a terrifying request, but after a moment's hesitation, Meisa stepped into a corner and removed her defensive magic devices.
"I'm ready."
"I'll wake you up as soon as it's over," Turan reassured her. He stepped behind her and wrapped his arm around her slender neck.
Who would have thought the restraint techniques he learned from Haram would be useful like this? Fortunately, unlike Haram's thick, log-like neck, Meisa's neck was so thin that her veins were prominent, making it easy to apply the technique.
He recalled the trick was to block the vessels to induce a quick loss of consciousness.
"Guh—"
He applied just the right amount of pressure to her slender throat for about a dozen seconds. Meisa's body, which had been flailing instinctively, suddenly went limp.
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