Goldie Neckie let out a soft, low whine, a deeply reluctant expression appearing on her majestic face as she nuzzled against her master’s hand.

She clearly didn’t want to leave his side after such a long journey, but after a moment, she obediently nodded her large head.

With a powerful flap of her massive wings, she unleashed a sudden gust of wind that swept across the courtyard, taking off into the clear skies.

The mana beast soared higher and higher until she became a small speck in the distance, leaving Ayu standing alone on the stone ground.

As soon as the beast vanished from sight, Ayu let out a quiet sigh.

In an instant, the gentle, playful expression he held for his companion melted away, his face hardening as it changed back to the cold, aloof mask he usually wore around humans.

As he turned toward the fortress entrance, his sharp gaze snapped toward two adventurers who were standing nearby, openly staring at him with wide, curious eyes.

"What are you two looking at?" Ayu snapped coldly, his voice dripping with an icy, dangerous authority that cut right through the lingering murmurs of the crowd.

The sudden, freezing pressure from the Arch Magus caught the onlookers completely off guard.

The two adventurers almost peed themselves in sheer fear, their faces instantly draining of all color. They stumbled backward in a panic, nearly tripping over their own boots as they raised their hands defensively.

"N-nothing!" they stammered out frantically, their voices trembling as they desperately tried to shrink away from his terrifying gaze.

Ayu scoffed disdainfully at their pathetic display, not wasting another second of his time on them. He turned on his heel and casually walked into the grand building, following the path the others had taken.

Left behind in the courtyard, the two adventurers glanced at each other, their hearts still pounding wildly against their ribs.

They let out a collective breath they didn’t know they were holding, quickly raising their trembling hands to wipe off the cold sweat that had completely drenched their faces.

"Lord Ayu is so terrifying when he isn’t with Goldie Neckie..." one of them muttered, his voice barely a whisper as he gripped his trembling chest, trying to calm his racing heart.

The other adventurer nodded in frantic agreement, swallowing hard as he looked toward the imposing doorway.

"Tell me about it. I feel like he could crush you with a giant boulder just for saying a single wrong thing to him," he whispered back, his body still tense from the close encounter.

It was common knowledge within the headquarters that the Arch Magus reserved his warmth solely for his sacred beast, treating ordinary humans with an icy indifference that could freeze a man’s blood.

Slowly, the two elites turned their attention back to the massive fortress looming in front of them, their eyes filled with a deep, burning curiosity.

The atmosphere within the central sanctuary was thicker and more tense than it had ever been in the guild’s history.

This was the first time that virtually all the high-ranking Arch Magi in the guild’s network were being gathered in one single place.

A mobilization of this scale was entirely unprecedented, and it was blindingly clear to everyone present that this summons was due to no ordinary matter.

Rumors of an impending crisis had been circulating for weeks, but seeing the top brass assemble proved that something world-altering was happening behind closed doors.

To make matters even more ominous, there was also the presence of the strange being with three horns that had been transported into the fortress, frozen solid inside a block of magical ice.

The rumors of its capture had sent shockwaves through the elite ranks.

Merely thinking of that horned creature—and the oppressive, malevolent aura it radiated even while completely sealed—made the two adventurers’ bodies tremble in involuntary fear.

They couldn’t begin to comprehend what kind of monster required the personal attention of the continent’s strongest entities.

Minutes later, the chaotic murmurs of the courtyard were completely shut out, replaced by the heavy, suffocating silence of a private room deep within the fortress.

Noah was now seated at a large, polished round table.

Surrounding him were the most powerful and influential figures present: Morris Edgar sitting prominently at the head, Ayu resting with a cold and aloof posture, while Yuan and Varis sat rigidly nearby.

The two lower-ranking men looked completely out of their depth, sitting stiffly in their chairs as if a single wrong move would cost them their lives.

Every single person at the table had a very grim, dark expression on their face.

The previous facade of lighthearted enthusiasm Morris had put on outside was completely gone, replaced by the heavy, crushing weight of a leader facing an existential threat.

The tension in the room was palpable, especially as everyone’s gaze inevitably drifted toward the corner of the room, staring intently at Yaroth, the demon supervisor who remained tightly encased in a massive, unmelting block of ice by the side.

Morris broke the silence, his deep voice echoing solemnly against the stone walls of the secure chamber.

"Demons... a cosmic being that devours entire worlds... and they have already successfully infiltrated the highest levels of our society," he murmured, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table as his sharp blue eyes scanned the faces of those gathered, ultimately landing on Noah’s black cat mask.

No matter how he tried to look at it, no matter how much he analyzed the reports or calculated their defenses, the conclusion remained identical.

The situation they were currently in was extremely dire, and the fate of the entire continent, or rather, the world, was hanging by a dangerously thin thread.

Morris shifted his focus away from the tense group at the table, his gaze sliding toward the corner of the room.

His eyes locked onto Yaroth, who remained suspended in a prison of frigid, unyielding ice.

As the Grand Guild Master, Morris possessed an intimate understanding of the strength required to combat such otherworldly entities.

Yet, as he scrutinized the demon’s current state, his brow furrowed deeply, and a shadow of genuine confusion crossed his face.

He had spent hours reviewing the initial reports from the field, yet he still could not fathom the mechanics behind the subdual.

He could not comprehend how Mr. White had managed to neutralize such a powerful, chaotic beast without leaving a single trace of collateral damage or signs of an all-out magical war.

Inside the icy tomb, Yaroth was trapped in an agonizing, silent existence.

Every fiber of his being screamed for the release of death. He felt a desperate, clawing urge to end his own life, to find a way to shatter his consciousness and escape the absolute humiliation of being captured by mortals.

He pushed against the boundaries of his demonic core, searching for a spark of self-destruction, but the unrelenting pressure of the Dragon Command acted like a shackle on his very soul.

It wouldn’t allow him even the mercy of death. He could only remain conscious and trapped, wallowing in a pit of bottomless misery, forced to exist as a pathetic, lifeless monument.

He was no longer a supervisor of a world-devouring force; he was nothing more than a grotesque display piece for the magi in the room to study, prod, and judge at their leisure.

The air in the room grew heavy and cold as Morris finally pulled his eyes away from the demon and back to Noah.

He leaned forward, his elbows pressing into the polished table as he fixed his piercing blue gaze upon the black cat mask.

The weight of his authority pressed down on everyone present, but his voice remained measured, betraying a crack of genuine, unfiltered fascination.

"I have seen countless battles in my life, and I have fought beings of immense power," Morris said, his voice low and steady. "But I have never seen a capture so clean, so absolute. Tell me... how were you able to subdue him?"

Noah didn’t shift his posture or show the slightest hint of pretense.

He sat back, his head tilted slightly, as if he were discussing a mundane household chore rather than the dismantling of a cosmic threat.

"I fried his brain with lightning," Noah answered in a flat, monotone voice. "It was simple enough. Now, he’s nothing more than a dummy following any instructions he’s given."

The bluntness of the response hit the room like a physical blow.

Morris’s eyes widened, his composure flickering for the first time since the meeting began. His mind raced, latching onto the chilling simplicity of the words.

’He damaged his brain, turning a cosmic being into a literal dummy?’

That single, casual explanation was far more frightening to Morris than a display of raw, destructive power would have been.

It forced him to confront the reality of who—or what—was sitting across from him. This explanation alone made Morris realize exactly how terrifying Mr. White was.

While the method sounded deceptively simple, Morris was a master of his craft; he understood the staggering level of finesse such a feat required.

He knew that to meticulously fry the neural pathways of a being as complex and resilient as a demon, without accidentally liquifying the brain or killing the subject instantly, was an act of surgical perfection.

It required a control of mana so refined and so absolute that it bordered on the impossible.

To Morris, this wasn’t just a combat tactic; it was a demonstration of a monstrous, godlike skill that made the man behind the mask far more dangerous than any Arch Magus in the guild’s history.