The place Tara described to them wasn’t far from here.

Because of the close physical proximity of their destination, the three of them would go there without the horse so they wouldn’t draw attention to their approach.

Walking the paved stone paths as a small, unpretentious group of high-class traders checking on their local inventory was a flawless method of camouflage.

They couldn’t do so while riding the great horse since that would shattered their low-profile strategy before they could even cross the boundary line.

Yuan and Varis turned to Mr. White, their bodies shifting into perfectly disciplined angles of deference as they stood perfectly still, waiting for his order to proceed.

Yuan, the regional guild master, kept his arms folded loosely beneath his heavy leather coat, his eyes locked onto the black cat facepiece with a quiet, unwavering trust born of their previous encounters.

Beside him, Varis, the tall and bald master magus from the central headquarters, held his hands flat against his sides, his broad, muscular shoulders slightly hunched to show absolute submission to the S-rank hierarchy.

They were two respectable magi, each at master rank,, yet they stood like common foot soldiers, completely paralyzing their own initiative until the supreme entity before them dictated the first move.

Noah sighed inwardly, a heavy wave of mental fatigue rolling through his chest as he felt the absolute weight of their unblinking scrutiny pressing against his skin.

He was still not used to this. Despite the immense, destructive power circulating within his dual-element arch magus core and the the system, his underlying reality remained anchored to a young nineteen year old student who had spent the last four years sweeping training floors and dodging academy bullies.

Being treated as an ancient, hyper-calculating commander who held the literal lives of veteran master magi in his hands was a bizarre, exhausting performance that required a constant, draining expenditure of his acting skills.

He had to carefully pace his breathing, ensuring that not a single shred of his youthful hesitation leaked through the seams of his eccentric persona.

He stabilized his voice, forcing the syllables to drop into that cold, detached, and utterly unyielding register that defined the ghost of Mr. White.

"We simply have to first find the area Tara was talking about," he said, his tone flat and empty of any emotional inflection as he gestured faintly with a single, gloved hand toward the northern exit of the alleyway.

Yuan and Varis glanced at themselves for a fraction of a second, a silent, rapid exchange of looks passing between the two adventurers before nodding in absolute agreement.

Noah’s strategy was simple, direct, and stripped of unnecessary complications, which perfectly suited the volatile nature of a high-risk reconnaissance foray into an unfamiliar sector.

Before now, Tara had already described the area where the experiments were done with an agonizing, exhaustive amount of detail during her frantic debriefings at the regional guild.

She had mapped out the spatial markers of the subterranean facility—describing the specific alignment of the drainage conduits, the distinct smell of old copper and blood that clung to the stonework, and the unique, multi-layered iron grates that sealed the entrances to the lower vaults.

Her memory of the geographical layout was etched in the raw trauma of a survivor, providing them with a clear, highly accurate blueprint of the laboratory’s historical location.

However, the operational parameters of this excursion were tightly constrained by the realities of time and intelligence.

The goal of this mission wasn’t to find the whole truth about the shadow network or to dismantle their entire operations in a single evening, but all they could by observing that area from a safe, analytical distance.

They were a reconnaissance cell, not a siege army.

Noah knew that launching a premature, aggressive assault on a highly sophisticated organization would likely result in the targets executing their cleanup protocols, murdering any remaining witnesses, and vanishing into the vast, unregulated corners of the continent before the guild could mobilize a proper response force.

The primary variable they had to account for during this initial phase was the heavy weight of the intervening years.

Since what happened to Tara was years ago, there was a very real, very dangerous chance that the strange organization didn’t use that area for their experiments anymore.

A syndicate capable of bypassing the kingdom’s magical tracking grids and systematically transforming living children into volatile shadow figures wasn’t run by amateurs; they were a hyper-vigilant, fluid apparatus that understood the necessity of structural mobility.

Once an asset or a location was compromised—even slightly—standard rogue protocols dictated a complete migration of resources.

Noah narrowed his eyes behind the sharp slits of the black cat facepiece, his mind running through the worst-case scenarios as they prepared to step out into the street.

There was even a chance they were no longer in Vale, and had moved to an entirely different city within the eastern provinces or the capital districts, leaving behind nothing but an empty, dust-covered stone shell beneath the old market docks.

If they had completely abandoned the sector, the investigation would become infinitely more complex, forcing the guild to launch a continent-wide manhunt through hundreds of overlapping merchant networks.

But he refused to let the bleak probabilities dampen his immediate resolve.

Hopefully, they would be able to find things—clues, faint mana footprints, or discarded runic fragments—that would at least lead them to the strange man with horns.

That individual was the central pillar of the entire atrocity, the supervisor who held the keys to the entire network’s identity.

If Noah could secure even a single, microscopic thread of the horned man’s unique magical signature, he would hunt him across every city in the kingdom until the debt was paid in full.

With a decisive, silent turn, he led the two master magi out of the shadows and into the busy sunlight of the street.

They soon got to the street Tara told them about... except, it looked very normal.

Noah slowed his pace by a fraction of an inch, his analytical mind immediately checking their surroundings against the horrific, dark imagery he had prepared himself to encounter.

He had expected to step into a desolate, tension-heavy alleyway radiating a palpable, foul stench of blood—a place marked by the obvious signs of structural decay or heavy, secretive security parameters.

Instead, the scene that greeted his eyes through the sharp slits of his mask was completely mundane, almost devastatingly ordinary.