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