Published at 22nd of January 2026 6:58 am

Chapter 1437: Face After Face

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Magus Nilrem walked the city at an unhurried pace, a worn journal tucked beneath one arm and a quill never far from his fingers.

To onlookers, he appeared every bit the scholarly traveler, pausing to jot down notes about street layouts, local customs, and snippets of overheard conversations.

From time to time, he stopped to speak with shopkeepers, guards, and passersby, asking harmless questions about history, trade, or daily life.

When something caught his interest, he would step aside and sketch it quickly, like the curve of a bridge, the sigil above a guild hall, and the way sunlight fell between narrow streets.

Anyone watching would assume he was gathering material for a book, an eccentric Magus indulging his academic habits.

But beneath the harmless routine lay a different purpose...

Every glance lingered a little too long. Every conversation was subtly steered. Every sketch doubled as a mnemonic anchor.

While his journal was filled with observations meant for future readers, Nilrem himself was quietly searching, cross-referencing faces, mana signatures, and faint traces he could sense.

To the city, he was a harmless chronicler whom most residents had come to love.

In truth, he was searching for someone who didn’t want to be found.

The elderly Magus had donned his usual flamboyant clothes and wore a floppy beret on his head, decorated by a feather.

He leaned casually against a wall, calmly sketching the clock tower across the street as people passed by. A few recognized him and waved, and he returned the gestures with an easy smile, never breaking his rhythm.

Though his eyes traced the clock tower’s lines, his senses were fixed elsewhere, quietly observing the building a few doors down. After nearly two months of searching, he had finally tracked down the Magus he was looking for.

A few minutes later, an unassuming elderly man stepped out of the building. He wore plain, well-kept robes, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, his posture relaxed and unremarkable. To any passerby, he looked like just another quiet resident going about his day.

But Nilrem knew better. His quill paused for a heartbeart, his pale blue eyes flashing with a faint gleam.

There you are, he thought to himself.

This was the Mana Core Magus sent by the Sovereign Union to secretly protect House Fireborne from enemies!

Nilrem closed his journal, pushed off the wall, and smiled. Never too close, never too far, blending into the flow of the street as he began to follow the old man, his movements casual and his presence easily overlooked.

You’re a hard man to find, Adam thought to himself, whistling a merry tune as he casually followed the Magus.

After piecing together faint clues from his conversations with Duke Quinn and observing Osbert while the latter stood watch during Marlow and Leila’s heated tryst, Adam had finally managed to track the man down after so long.

Of course, he was careful not to observe the old man directly, wary that doing so might alert him to being... well, observed.

Fifteen minutes in, the old man suddenly paused. He turned around abruptly, his gaze snapping towards Nilrem’s direction!

A moment later, his eyes narrowed, and he wondered, What was that?

A faint sense of being watched lingered, prickling at the back of his mind. Yet when he searched for this source of unease, he found nothing out of the ordinary.

Because Nilrem was already gone.

More precisely, he had slipped into another role, now wearing the face of an unassuming young man dressed in a simple tunic and trousers, passing himself off as a dockworker, moving casually through the street.

Adam casually walked past the old man, a nonchalant look on his face. Inwardly, he couldn’t help but praise:

What sharp senses! If I hadn’t changed my appearance at the last moment, I fear I might have already been found out.

As expected of a Mana Core Magus!

Anyone who has reached this arcane rank is no ordinary being. This is especially true in a backward world like ours, where forming a mana core is far more difficult than in the far more developed worlds of the Greater Universe.

I need to be more cautious...

One moment, he was a sailor seemingly coming from the docks. The next, he had become an elderly woman haggling over vegetables, her basket tucked beneath her arm.

A few streets later, he was a drunken homeless man slumped across a wall, and then, without pause, he had become a portly merchant strolling along with a haughty gait.

Face after face, role after role, Adam blended seamlessly into the city’s rhythm.

The more he relied on the Faceless Mask, the more he learned to become faceless.

At first, it was merely a tool, an artifact he activated and discarded at will. But with repeated use, the boundaries between the mask and the man started to blur.

Each transformation taught him something new, such as posture, breathing, habitual gestures, the subtle cadence of speech, etc. He learned that a convincing disguise was not just a change of face, but a change of presence.

Over time, slipping into another identity became effortless, almost... instinctive.

And as he continued down that path, Adam ceased to be someone who wore disguises.

He became of master of them.

By the time the chase ended, he had followed the old man all the way to a quiet tea shop.

The Mana Core Magus sat quietly at the outdoor seating area, sipping his tea as people drifted past on the street. His expression was calm and detached, as though the passing crowd was little more than background noise.

Suddenly, a young beggar, barely five feet tall, hair disheveled, and one eye disfigured by a jagged scar, stumbled onto a passerby and went sprawling on the ground.

He landed at the old Magus’s feet with a dull thud.

Then he looked up... the old man was already watching him with calm, indifferent eyes.

The beggar flashed a fawning grin, displaying his yellowed, crooked teeth, and scrambled upright on his knees.

"Ah, s-sorry, sir," he said quickly. "Didn’t see where I was going. Times are hard, you see... spare a coin for a poor soul?"

The old Magus regarded him for a moment, then reached into his sleeve and dropped a few copper pieces into the boy’s outstretched hand.

"There," said the old man, waving him off. "Now get lost."

The beggar bowed repeatedly, hiding the slightly mischievous smirk forming on his face. He clutched the coins tightly. "Bless you, good sir! Bless you!"

He then scurried away without another word.

Meanwhile, the old man returned to his tea as if nothing had happened, unaware that he had just offered some copper coins to a Magus far stronger than himself...

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