After leaving the static tower in the temporal zone, Albert, Kaelya, and Leon regrouped outside the barrier. Time flowed normally again, but the air remained tense.
— From this point on, we're targets, Albert said. Someone isn't just watching us. They're analyzing how we react.
Kaelya:
— Then let's make ourselves hard to read.
Leon pulled his cloak tighter over his shoulder and noted:
— To our left... someone lit a fire recently. Three, maybe four hours ago.
Albert closed his eyes. A brief flicker passed across his forehead—but it wasn't a flashy spell.
— Passive Sense: Layer Break. We're being tracked. They haven't gotten too close yet, but they've crossed the magical threshold. At least level 7.
Kaelya:
— Are they disguised?
— Likely. But not enough to fool my eye when I'm paying attention.
Fifty meters behind them, three figures watched from the shadows. One of them, a red-haired woman with a black mask, touched her communicator.
— Confirmed. The group has regrouped. No visible concealment or aura masking. Either they're confident... or this is bait.
— Orders?
— Observe. Don't engage. Not yet.
Albert opened a special scroll, sealed with a silver rune. He unfurled it and raised his hand to the sky.
— Location Sync – Surface Range.
An animated map appeared on the parchment. In the center ring—their current position. In the outer rings—seven active signals, all slowly converging.
Leon:
— We've got company. More than three.
— Main group and at least two backup units, Kaelya said.
Albert nodded.
— We don't draw them here. The terrain's too unstable. We pull back northwest. There's a recorded ruin there—with energy isolation walls. If they want us, they'll have to step into our ground.
The group began a measured retreat—no rush, just precision. Every step counted. Albert walked in the rear.
And from time to time… he looked back without turning his head.
Virelle. A port city bordering the four frontier realms, where the chaos of the outer world met the quiet discipline of adventurers. The massive building of the Adventurer Guild dominated the urban landscape like a bastion of order against the unpredictable. Inside its thick white stone walls, the world was divided by ranks, contracts, and blood-measured risks.
Albert stepped first onto the granite stairs. He took a breath and let his black cloak fall loosely over his shoulders. Beneath it, simple, dusty traveler's clothes—but his gaze was clear, too deep for anyone around to read.
Kaelya walked beside him, wearing a crimson mantle with a belt adorned by two magical crystals embedded in silver. Leon adjusted his hood and muttered:
— What are we going to tell them? That we're a rookie team that just escaped a capture squad and wandered through ruins without raising suspicions?
Albert didn't answer immediately. Instead, he raised two fingers, forming a strange symbol. A faint light spun in the air before him—a false identification spell:
"Identity Veil: Triple Echo."
Three layers of reality overlapped them. Their names, histories, and magically detectable attributes were now a façade—perfect for superficial scrutiny.
— They'll register us as a rank E team. That's where we'll start. But once we enter the chamber, don't interfere during my assessment, Albert said calmly. The measurement will be... problematic.
---
The Evaluation Chamber was a cylindrical room of marble, with magic circles inscribed into the floor and walls covered in runes that lit up with every step.
— Next group! shouted an old examiner wearing a green mantle, his eyes tired. Group of three… names?
— Kael, Lio, and Valen, Leon replied, matching the false identities.
The examiner mumbled and pointed to the mana flow measurement device—a crystal obelisk with a softly pulsing blue core. One by one, they had to place their hand on it and concentrate their magic.
Kaelya stepped up first. A soothing warmth surrounded her, and the obelisk vibrated gently.
— Sacred element… Grade C. Healing and protection, the examiner announced.
Leon stepped forward. A red glimmer burst from the top.
— Fire element… Grade B minus. Combat capable.
Albert moved silently. He lifted his hand and closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, the lights of the Nine-Colored Eyes shimmered for a moment. He activated a form of energy filtration, just enough to avoid destroying the entire room. Only... the obelisk.
When his hand touched the crystal's smooth surface, everything went dark. No sound. No magical response.
And then—
CRACK!
The obelisk fractured, then shattered into thousands of shards of light, triggering a high-level alarm. The runes in the walls lit up as if an entity from beyond the world had tried to penetrate the system.
— What was that?! the examiner shouted, stumbling back.
Albert withdrew his hand, calmly observing the still-vibrating fragments of crystal.
— It seems you need a new device. This one wasn't… compatible, he said, without raising his voice.
A wave of tense silence fell over the room.
Time stopped for a few moments in the evaluation hall.
The shards of the measurement obelisk still hovered in the air, faintly glowing, as if the residual magic within them was trying to comprehend what had destroyed them. Silence reigned—until a side door hissed open.
— Everyone out. Except the three who were just evaluated.
The voice belonged to a woman clad in light obsidian armor with golden Guild insignia on her shoulders. Her black hair was tied in a short tail, and her steely eyes betrayed her rank: she was a high-ranking officer—likely a supervisor of the Virelle branch.
Kaelya instinctively took a step toward Albert, but he remained still.
— Orders are to be followed, he said calmly. We observe... and act only when needed.
The officer analyzed them for a few moments, then spoke:
— My name is Sierra Vaylen, in charge of overseeing anomalies during registration. What happened here is not a simple error. You three will explain everything, in the clarification chamber.
---
The clarification chamber was a plain room, decorated with anti-teleportation and anti-illusion runes. No trick worked here. It was used only in red-level cases — meaning major interference with the Guild's magical systems.
Sierra stood in front of them, arms crossed.
— I won't accuse you directly. But I need explanations. What level of mana are you using, Valen?
Albert closed his eyes. He no longer needed illusions. But he wasn't about to tell the whole truth either.
— I trained near the edge of the Fallen Gods' Continent. My mana can't be quantified by standard artifacts. That's what happened. That's all.
Sierra stared at him.
— You're not lying. I can detect lies through subtle field pulses. But you... you have none. You're completely "silent" on the empathic scan channel. That's impossible.
— For others, maybe, Kaelya snapped. But what if he's different?
Leon shook his head, trying to look awkward:
— We're sorry, Lady Vaylen. We're just a regular group, but Valen… he's special. We can't explain everything he does either.
Sierra sighed, then raised a hand toward the wall. A circle of light opened there — some sort of internal portal, leading to a higher-tier magical archive.
— Your names will be registered provisionally as the Northern Shadow Team. But you will be monitored.
Albert smiled faintly.
— We accept.
---
As they left the building, Kaelya whispered:
— That was too close. One wrong move and we would've been caught.
Albert shook his head:
— No. Now they're starting to watch us. And that's exactly what we need.
Far in the distance, from a tall building, an unknown shadow observed the scene with elongated orange-glowing eyes. He touched the communicator in his ear:
— Confirmed. Target has registered. Capture order remains in effect. Awaiting final approval.
The air outside the Guild building felt heavier than before. Though the city of Virelle pulsed with its usual bustle of adventurers, merchants, and hurried nobles, Albert sensed that reality around them had thickened. A subtle energy stalked him from the shadows—an unseen presence that couldn't be ignored.
"They'll follow us," Leon said, glancing over his shoulder. "We don't see them yet, but they're there."
"Let them come," Albert replied without turning his head. "Let's see how far they're willing to go."
They left the northern district of the city and stepped into one of the transit zones—a network of narrow streets and magical corridors that connected the central district with the training fields. It was a poorly lit area, scattered with old runes and abandoned defense structures left behind by ancient magical architects.
"This is a good place for an ambush," Kaelya murmured, discreetly activating a Detection Aura sphere around them.
Suddenly, the ground trembled subtly—a sign that someone had triggered a latent seal. Albert raised an eyebrow.
"It begins," he said calmly.
From the shadows, six cloaked figures descended without a sound. Each wore a crystal embedded in their chest and bore the guild's tattoo on their left arm: the symbol for "Intervention Permission."
"Identify yourselves," the leader commanded. "Under Internal Guild Council Order 7-A, you are suspected of unregistered high-level manipulation of magical artifacts."
Albert stepped forward, meeting their eyes directly.
"Then let's begin," he said. "Fire Chain."
A spiraling burst of reddish energy shot from his palm, forming a flaming chain that wrapped around the nearest enemy and slammed him into a nearby wall. The remaining five reacted instantly.
"Shadow Step!" shouted one, vanishing into a plume of black smoke.
"Stasis Bullet!" another cried out, attempting to freeze Albert's movements with a concentrated gray sphere of magical energy.
Kaelya intercepted the projectile with a transparent barrier.
"Glass Shield!"
Leon dashed forward in a lightning-quick motion, activating his training spear.
"Piercing Fang!"
Albert murmured a second incantation under his breath.
"Black Hole Initiate."
Between him and the attackers, a small but intense black sphere opened, drawing in all surrounding magical energy. The spells launched by the enemies dissolved immediately, pulled into the unstable vortex.
"He's bending the fundamental laws!" one of the pursuers shouted, retreating in fear.
"We'll continue once they show us what they're capable of," Albert said, his voice carrying that calm timbre that always came before disaster.
At that moment, from a teleportation circle at the edge of the zone, a new figure appeared.
He wore a black mask, and in his left hand, he held a short sword engraved with pulsing runes.
"I am the Sentinel of Classification. My order is to test your limits. Begin Arc Shift."
The atmosphere distorted—reality itself seemed to ripple.
Albert stepped forward, and his left eye lit up in red.
"Chrono Lock."
Time froze—only for a fraction of a second… but enough to unleash the inevitable.
Time had frozen—but only for a moment. A single heartbeat suspended between reality and what was to come. In that instant, Albert evaluated everything: positions, the intensity of auras, residual enemy magic, and the structure of the distorted dimension. Then, reality rearranged itself at his unspoken command.
"Partial reset," he said calmly, and the world began to move again.
The Sentinel lunged forward with a speed that defied the laws of inertia, his blade cutting through the air in a semicircle from which unstable runes erupted. When these struck the ground, each one generated a perfect illusion—distorted versions of Leon and Kaelya, dangerously real.
"Living illusions," Kaelya said, her brow furrowed. "They feed on our mana if we touch them."
"Then we'll avoid them," said Leon, twirling his spear with lethal grace.
Albert advanced, each step leaving behind a trail of blue light. Around him, magic was subdued, obedient, waiting only for a thought.
"He's not using classical magic," Albert said. "His weapon generates runes from an unknown alphabet. It's Unregistered Magic—a language from a civilization this world refused to accept."
"And it still lets him act?" Leon asked.
"That means the test comes from higher up," Kaelya confirmed. "Likely one of the neutral observation zones."
The Sentinel suddenly changed his fighting style. In a fluid motion, he created a spiral of runes orbiting his blade. Once activated, it detonated in a wave of pure magical pressure. Albert raised his hand.
"Spiral Wall."
A translucent helical wall appeared before him, fully absorbing the attack and fragmenting it into threads of energy that evaporated before they could reach the rest of the team.
"Full evaluation: Albert's Spiral Barrier matches the classification of Infinite Magic. Total resistance to physical and energetic aggression," the Sentinel said, apparently emotionless. "We continue."
"You want to continue?" Albert asked, taking a step forward. At that moment, a subtle vibration filled the air. It wasn't sound—it was an equation. A form of pure logical magic transposed into reality.
"Matrix Encoding," Kaelya said. "He's activating a new testing level."
Above their heads, a black sphere slowly opened. It wasn't simple magic—it was an entire space. A plane of reality layered over the present one, beginning to absorb the local laws.
"Dimensional Overlay," said Leon. "If we don't stop it, it'll erase everything tied to this zone."
"We won't stop it," said Albert. "We'll replace it."
And with a light gesture, he opened a second plane, this one white. The two spheres—one black, the other white—collided in silence, without a sound, but between them, reality began to unravel.
"It's a duel of realities," said the Sentinel. "So, you truly are the one."
"I am the one who walks through worlds," Albert replied, and in that moment, his eyes gleamed with pure white—truth without judgment.
"Mission canceled," said the Sentinel, stepping back. "Confirmation received. But others will come."
Then he vanished. The transit zone remained quiet, but distorted.
"They've analyzed us completely," Leon murmured.
"That was only the beginning," said Albert. "This was just an invitation."
Kaelya looked at him, but there was no fear in her eyes—only awareness.
"Where are we going now?"
Albert looked at the distorted sky and answered without hesitation:
"Inside the world that doesn't want to be found."