Chapter 148: Essence And IdiotsAmanda's POV“He finally left. He sure is an idiot, huh?” Amanda let out a low chuckle, the sound threaded with relief and calculation, and finally stopped arguing with Elira.The argument had been theater, carefully choreographed inside their shared awareness long before Amanda had even stepped onto the rooftop. Every raised voice, every sharpened glance, every brittle line of accusation had been a signal disguised as conflict. The only purpose had been to push Kael away, to make him storm off with wounded pride and misplaced certainty so that he would not linger long enough to overhear what he was never meant to hear.There were several reasons for removing him from the board, but the most critical one pulsed like a red rune at the center of Amanda’s thoughts. If he stayed, she would not be able to extract the fragments of information that Elira carried like contraband beneath her calm exterior.It was fo

Chapter 150: Polite Insult“So, all I have to do is lure out the traitors, then?” Kael asked, not because he lacked clarity, but because clarity was a weapon, and repeating the objective forced it into the open where it could not pretend to be anything softer than what it was. If the mission truly was that simple, then in spirit he had already completed it, because suspicion had names now, and names were the beginning of endings.“It is,” Maren replied, her voice steady, composed, and annoyingly calm for someone orchestrating what amounted to a political exorcism inside a holy monument. “There are a few individuals I suspect, but certainty is a luxury I do not possess. That is why I need you to enter and make them reveal themselves by their own will. You can do that, can you not?”There it was again, that confidence in him, thick and suffocating and wrapped in the velvet ribbon of faith. The System hummed faintly in the back of his consciousness, attentive

Chapter 152: Coffin Smile "Hey, Shingen, long time no see," Kael said with deliberate ease, as though he were greeting an old academy acquaintance instead of a man wrapped in secrets thick enough to choke a cathedral. He chose the moment carefully, because timing in social warfare was as important as mana alignment in spellcasting. Pressure applied at the wrong second fizzled; pressure applied at the right second cracked stone. "...Indeed," Shingen replied in that same dry, minimal cadence, a voice that sounded like it had been rationed. The response fell flat between them, thin as parchment. Kael resisted the urge to sigh too loudly. He had faced undead abominations, divine constructs, and Maren in a lecture mood, yet this might have been the most lifeless exchange of his life. The others were still preoccupied with the gate, debating runic calibrations and dimensional stress tolerances as though they were a

Chapter 154: Gathering NoiseAfter Kael finished everything he needed to handle and exchanged his final words with Elira, he returned to the hotel with the dull heaviness of exhaustion dragging at every joint in his body, before collapsing onto the bed in a way that suggested his muscles had given up negotiating with his will. The day had stretched longer than expected, not because of distance or effort alone, but because every decision he had made carried consequences that stacked on top of each other until even standing upright felt like an act of defiance.He did not remember the exact moment sleep took him. One instant he was staring at the ceiling with half formed thoughts drifting through his head, and the next instant sunlight was spilling through the window and stabbing directly into his eyes as if time itself had skipped forward out of spite.As always, the same familiar dread surfaced in his mind before anything else had the chance to form.<

Chapter 156: Shattered Light“Are you actually mad at me?” Kael asked with a crooked smirk, ducking and spinning as yet another invisible strike whistled past him, slicing through the air like a sharp whisper meant to draw blood.Chloe’s attacks were precise, unnervingly precise, targeting his vitals with a cold focus that made him instinctively clench his stomach. Of course, he would survive; his healing aura always responded faster than pain could settle in, yet the sensation of being so thoroughly studied still set his nerves on edge.He spoke aloud mostly because he assumed she could hear him. The alternative—that she existed in some other spatial plane, her presence only overlapping his by coincidence—had not even crossed his mind. Kael was far from a space-affinity scholar; he was a Light affinity user, plain and simple, whose specialty was either obliterating his opponents or patching them back together afterward, depending on the whim of the fight.