Beside him, Varis let out a long, heavy breath that carried a deep, echoing sigh of professional exhaustion.

He raised his large, calloused right hand, the silver rings on his fingers catching the dimming light of the setting sun as Varis rubbed his bald head, the friction making a soft, scraping sound against his polished skin.

"That’s right..." the tall master magus from the headquarters agreed, his brow furrowing.

He looked directly at the matte-black cat mask hiding Noah’s features, his posture still maintaining that slight, respectful tilt despite his growing impatience.

"...I think we should head back. Standing around in a quiet neighborhood like this while wearing merchant disguises and masking our mana is only going to draw the attention of the local sector watch if we linger any longer. We’re chasing ghosts at this point."

Yuan nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing into cold, sharp slits as he stared out at the passing clerks and laborers who were completely oblivious to their presence.

"Either that... woman was wrong," Yuan said. He paused for a second, his fingers tightening into white-knuckled fists inside his pockets before he forced his breathing to steady. "...or whoever these people are, they’ve changed their base of operations completely and erased every trace of their existence before moving on."

As he said Tara’s name, or rather, alluded to the fragile woman who had provided the blueprints for this entire excursion, there was a raw, unmistakable anger in his voice that cut through the cool air like a razor blade.

It was a flash of pure, unadulterated venom that completely shattered his usual, professional composure, but he quickly masked it, drawing a deep breath through his nose and resetting his facial features into that stoic, unyielding guild master expression before Varis or Noah could openly comment on the lapse.

The underlying source of that bitter resentment was something Noah understood perfectly from his secret review of the guuld.

Yuan was still mad at her for killing one of the guild’s arch magi—a catastrophic event that had sent shockwaves through the entire global network.

That singular, violent act of desperation had up resulting in intense, unrelenting pressure from the Magus Order, the supreme global syndicate that governed over all high-tier spellcasters. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The Order didn’t take the assassination of their apex members lightly, and they had unleashed a brutal, administrative inquisitorial campaign to demand answers and accountability from the frontier offices.

As a branch guild master of the affected territory, Yuan was one of those at the receiving end of the pressure.

He had spent the last several weeks drowning in a sea of hostile inquiries, and political threats from the capital directors, his authority constantly undermined and his career pushed to the absolute brink of ruin because of Tara’s actions.

It was only natural that the mere mention of her name or a reliance on her historical memories would provoke fury within him, especially now that her directions had seemingly led them straight into an unproductive dead end.

Noah, on the other hand, remained standing perfectly still beneath the shadow of the brick repository, his arms folded.

He didn’t let the frustrations of his companions sway his analytical focus, nor did he allow the mundane normalcy of the street to deceive his refined senses.

He shook his head in a slow, deliberate motion, the matte finish of his black cat mask cutting through the dimming light of the alleyway as he countered their defeatist logic.

"No..." Noah said, his voice dropping slightly. The single syllable carried a heavy, unyielding finality that instantly silenced the murmurs of the two master-rank magi. "...leaving now will be too early. We haven’t scratched beneath the surface yet."

Yuan and Varis simply gulped, swallowing whatever objections they had in mind.

Noah focused his mind, activating one of his skills.

His eyes suddenly lit up with a golden yellow light, a brilliant, luminescent aura bursting out from behind the narrow slits of his black cat mask.

The golden illumination didn’t just flicker; it burned with a thick, high-density magical radiance that cast sharp, long shadows across the brick walls behind them, which even Yuan and Varis noticed instantly.

The sheer, raw weight of the sudden mana release was suffocating, a silent explosion of processing power that made the hair on the back of their necks stand up.

The two veteran adventurers gasped sharply in perfect unison, their bodies freezing completely in place as their eyes widened in absolute shock.

Their previous frustrations and complaints vanished from their minds like mist before a furnace.

To them, they were about to witness the true, uninhibited prowess of an S-rank arch magus executing a supreme tracking technique, and they didn’t dare interfere or compromise his concentration with their lower-tier human chatter.

They stood like ancient statues, holding their breath as they watched the golden light dance along the matte surfaces of his mask, entirely consumed by a profound, reverent terror.

Beneath the blazing golden light of his enhanced vision, the entire world transformed into a complex, multi-layered tapestry of glowing energy currents and resonance.

Noah watched as the mundane brick walls and the clean granite pavements faded into translucent outlines, allowing his gaze to pierce through the physical matter of the street.

’Mana’s Vision... I never thought this would come in handy so fast.’ he thought.

It was one of the skills he got when he broke through to the arch magus rank.

The skill was just like the name implied, and allowed him to literally see mana traces in the air.

To a common adept or even a seasoned master magus like Varis, the atmosphere of Ter Street was completely empty, a transparent void where wind and dust moved without consequence.

But through Noah’s glowing golden lens, the air was a living, breathing canvas of history.

Every spell that had ever been cast, every enchanted artifact that had been carried down the avenue, and every creature that had leaked internal energy left behind a faint, microscopic trail that lingered for years within the molecular structure of the environment.