Bill walked out of the temple.
Moonlight stretched obliquely across the ruins, dragging his shadow into a long, thin mark of ink.
A death scout was already waiting outside the door.
It was the shriveled corpse of a scout, with sunken cheeks and two clusters of ghostly green light flickering in its eye sockets, like cold phosphorus buried in ash.
Bill glanced at it.
"Lead the way."
The scout turned around and floated silently toward the depths of the ruins.
Bill followed behind with unhurried steps.
The hem of his suit swept over the gravel without raising a speck of dust.
In the night, Mirror-Shadow City was as quiet as a grave.
The wind emitted a low wail as it blew through the broken window frames.
Bill recalled Bounty City.
That day, he and Jesse had brushed past that black-haired mage.
Jesse had been uncharacteristically quiet after that person left...
She remained silent for a very long time.
"Be careful of this person."
She had said back then, her tone flat, yet using the words "be careful" for a rare occasion.
"His concealment magic..."
She had paused.
"Even my father couldn't see through it."
Bill had raised an eyebrow.
Jesse's father, Carl.
A man even the Vampire elders feared.
Even he couldn't see through it?
A High Rank mage's concealment magic?
At the time, Bill had only thought it absurd, even feeling somewhat like laughing.
At this moment, as he walked through these deathly quiet ruins,
that thought surfaced again.
The opponent possessed a method of concealment that even a Legendary assassin could not see through.
Yet he had intentionally let his trail be discovered by the corpse knights whose perception blanketed Mirror-Shadow City?
He paused in his tracks.
This was too deliberate.
Like a hunter deliberately exposing his scent to entice a wild beast into a trap.
Bill frowned slightly.
But Jesse had explicitly said that the opponent was not God-Favored.
He possessed no divine power.
Then how had he achieved this?
High Rank magic, spanning two full ranks to achieve a Legendary-level concealment effect.
As a mage, Bill understood all too well what that meant.
Impossible.
Completely impossible.
He had read extensively through a thousand years of Vampire archives and perused countless lost ancient texts, yet he had never heard of any High Rank magic capable of reaching such a degree.
So there was only one answer.
Jesse and Carl had been mistaken.
That mage had probably just happened to be scanned at that exact moment...
He must have activated a Legendary-level concealment scroll.
The more he thought about it, the more reasonable Bill felt it was.
He did not believe such magic could exist in this world.
Especially coming from the hands of a High Rank mage.
His steps grew light once more.
A self-satisfied smile hooked the corner of his lips.
"Modo,"
he casually asked the scout at his side.
"Where is that mage right now?"
Every corpse knight maintained a connection with Modo; through them, he could communicate with Modo, who was several kilometers away.
The scout stopped in its tracks.
Silence.
That shriveled body froze on the spot like a puppet that had lost its signal.
A few seconds later, it turned its head.
The ghostly fire in its eye sockets flickered for a rare moment.
The movement unexpectedly carried a trace of strange lag.
"...Disappeared."
Bill was stunned.
"Disappeared?"
He thought he had misheard.
The scout's voice remained dry, lacking any inflection:
"Yes, disappeared."
"I assigned assassins and mages to keep eyes on their position the entire time."
"Yet in the blink of an eye—"
It paused.
"—they were gone."
"The assassins' detection secret arts, the mages' perception spells..."
"None of them could detect their presence."
Bill's smile froze on his face.
Disappeared?
He opened his mouth, for a moment not knowing what to say.
From the nearest edge of the Wall of Sighs to Mirror-Shadow City.
There were no supply points along the way; every town was a dead city.
Even for them, it would take at least four days.
Yet the duration of a Legendary scroll was at most a single day.
This was common knowledge carved in stone in the magic world.
If the opponent truly relied on a scroll for concealment,
it should have expired long ago.
Bill went silent for a few seconds.
The arrogance on his face finally receded a bit.
He frowned, his tone deep and solemn:
"Did they drop any hair or anything like that?"
The scout shook its head.
"No. In the places where they stopped..."
It paused.
"...no dander, hair, or bloodstains were found."
Bill's eyes darkened slightly.
Modo's soul tracking required a medium.
Blood yielded the best results, but only lasted a few hours.
Hair was less effective, but could be maintained for days or even longer.
However, that was provided there was hair in the first place.
Bill took a deep breath.
His voice went cold.
"If the opponent truly possesses a concealment magic that we cannot see through,"
he paused,
"and with that Priest behind him replenishing his Mana..."
"...he will be able to maintain that concealed state indefinitely."
His voice was steady, yet it held back an emotion he had never felt before.
"...Leaving us unable to ever find them."
The scout did not answer.
It merely stood there silently, like a genuine corpse.
Bill suddenly raised his hand.
A blood whip swept out!
Boom—!
Half a crumbling wall beside him collapsed at the strike.
Debris scattered in all directions as dust filled the air.
The moonlight was churned into a hazy white.
His chest heaved violently.
Originally,
he had intended to capture that mage with ease and haul him before Jesse.
To see what kind of surprise would appear on that ever-calm face of hers.
"Look, this is the person you wanted me to be careful of."
"I grabbed him and brought him back like a chick."
How amusing.
How delightful.
But now?
Let alone capture him—he didn't even know where the guy was.
Bill lashed out with another blood blade.
A wrought-iron sign on the street was sliced in two, crashing to the ground with a clang.
Amidst the dust, his face was terrifyingly dark.
The scout stood silently to the side, quietly watching Bill vent his rage.
Bill breathed heavily.
His eyes swept aimlessly through the ruins.
Then,
he saw it.
A ray of moonlight shone obliquely on a street corner.
There stood a café, mostly collapsed.
On the broken doorframe, at some unknown moment,
someone had nailed a wooden board.
On the board, a line of words was written crookedly in charcoal.
The handwriting was neat, even bearing a hint of intentional playfulness.
Bill narrowed his eyes and looked at the words on it, reading them aloud slowly:
"The one you are looking for—"
He paused.
"—the one Jesse's companion was warned to be careful of—"
He paused again.
"—the one with the amazing concealment magic—"
His voice grew slower and slower.
The following words were a size larger, traced heavily in charcoal to the point where the surface edges were frayed:
"—the handsome, invincible, super-kind—"
"—little Mage Messenger guy—"
"—is that way."
Below it,
a large arrow was drawn.
The arrow pointed toward the northeast.
The direction of the Voiceless Rift.
Bill stared at that wooden board.
For a long time,
motionless.
Under the moonlight, Bill's expression was...
...difficult to describe.
"..."
He opened his mouth.
No sound came out.
He opened his mouth again.
Finally, a strange syllable squeezed out from his throat:
"...Huh?"
The night wind blew through the ruins.
The wooden board swayed gently.
The charcoal handwriting was stingingly clear under the moonlight.
That arrow was even drawn twice,
as if terrified he might miss the direction.
And in a corner invisible to Bill,
dense clusters of glass beads were squeezed between the gaps of a pile of debris.
Ghostly blue faint light flowed within the glass walls, like swarms of plankton in the deep ocean.
They crowded together, their soul light flickering rapidly,
as if exchanging some silent language.
After confirming they hadn't been noticed, they began to move.
One.
Two.
Five.
Ten.
They rolled along the base of the walls, hiding in the shadows of broken tiles, passing through half-collapsed doorframes.
One after another, they arrived at a corner on the edge of the café.
They flashed at another flickering bead in the nearby ruins.
After the other side responded, they quietly rolled into deeper shadows.
And near every corpse knight in Mirror-Shadow City,
at street corners, on rooftops, behind broken walls, and even in rubble piles three zhang behind the knights,
there were a few inconspicuous glass beads.
They lay quietly there, their soul light suppressed to the dimmest level,
watching every single move of the knights.
Modo's corpse knights monitored the entire city-state,
controlling this transit city that was the necessary pathway to the Voiceless Abyss.
Every intersection, every street, every corner where one might hide,
there were silent dead patrolling and sensing.
They believed themselves to be the sole masters of this dead city.
Yet they did not know
that in this city-state, dead and silent on the surface,
there was also a crowd of ubiquitous "people"
peeking at them.
Rate on N.U.
