The realization of Noah’s true potential had acted like a bucket of ice water over his head, cooling his fury and replacing it with a cold, calculating survival instinct.

He realized then, with a sinking feeling in his gut, that it was actually best he didn’t offend this man any further.

If Noah truly possessed the potential to become a Supreme Magus, then the Magus Order couldn’t afford to have him as an enemy.

They needed to stay on the good side of whoever this "Mr. White" was, if only to ensure he didn’t decide to turn his terrifying capabilities toward the capital.

The political implications were staggering. If word got out that a man of this caliber existed outside the Order’s control, it would destabilize everything.

But if they could maintain a bridge—if they could be seen as allies or at least respectful neutral parties—they might survive his emergence.

To antagonize him now was to invite a disaster that Lunge wasn’t sure the current Order could handle.

’That was the plan from the start,’ Lunge thought, his fingers twitching slightly. ’I was supposed to assess him, and try to bring him into the fold. How could I mess it up this bad?’

But unfortunately, had let his own pride as a high Arch Magus cloud his judgment.

A wry, somewhat bitter smile appeared on Lunge’s face.

He took a deep breath, smoothing out the tension in his shoulders and trying to reclaim a shred of the dignity he had lost when his knees had buckled.

He looked at the masked man, acknowledging the shift in their dynamic with a slow, deliberate movement.

"Fine," Lunge said, his voice no longer commanding, but weary and resigned. "You can investigate anyhow you want. The Magus Order... will stay out of this."

The words felt heavy in the air. For an Arch Magus of the Order to officially step back and allow an independent party to take precedence in a high-profile investigation was unheard of.

It was more than just a personal surrender; it was a temporary suspension of the Order’s absolute authority in the region.

Beside him, Yuan’s eyes almost popped out of his sockets when he heard those words.

The Guild Master stood frozen, his mouth hanging slightly open as he stared at Lunge in pure, unadulterated shock.

He had spent his entire career dealing with the overbearing bureaucracy and the arrogant interference of the Magus Order.

He knew them as an organization that never took "no" for an answer and never, under any circumstances, admitted they were not the highest authority in the room.

’The Magus Order... backing out just like that?’ Yuan thought, his mind racing to process the reality of what he had just heard. ’I’ve never thought this was even possible!’

To the adventurers of the guild, the Magus Order had always seemed like an annoying, persistent pest.

They were the elite who looked down on the guild members as mere "mercenaries for hire," always trying to stop them from earning a good profit by imposing taxes, regulations, and "oversight."

The idea that they would simply walk away from a prisoner like Tara—a goldmine of information and political leverage—was mind-blowing.

He turned his head slowly, glancing back at Noah. The masked man hadn’t moved an inch, yet he seemed to fill the entire room.

’Mr. White... what a man,’ Yuan thought, a sense of awe washing over him that nearly eclipsed his fear.

Yuan had already respected Noah. He had seen him easily handle the crisis with the "shadow figure" Tara had once been, which had killed another arch magus.

From this alone, the image of Mr. White in Yuan’s mind further increased.

He wasn’t just a powerful ally or a mysterious benefactor anymore.

To Yuan, Noah was becoming something legendary—a figure who stood outside the petty squabbles of guilds and orders, a force of nature that moved according to its own internal compass.

The Guild Master felt a strange swell of pride that such a man was currently standing in the same room as him, even if that man was currently terrifying everyone in it.

Noah didn’t acknowledge Yuan’s awe or Lunge’s surrender with anything more than a sharp nod. He wasn’t interested in their reactions.

Now that the interference had been cleared away, his focus returned entirely to the woman behind the bars.

Kael snorted within the depths of Noah’s consciousness, the sound echoing like a low roll of thunder against the back of his skull.

’Of course he is going to accept,’ Kael’s voice resonated, dripping with a mixture of boredom and supreme confidence. ’He has no choice, master.’

Noah sighed inwardly, a weary mental exhale that did little to quiet the dragon’s thundering thoughts.

He was still not used to Kael talking like this.

Just a short while ago, their bond had been a thing of primal instincts—a wordless connection.

The rapid evolution of Kael’s mind was a constant weight at the back of Noah’s thoughts, a reminder that he was carrying something far older and more dangerous than any magus in his shadow.

Ignoring the dragon’s comment, Noah looked towards the prison bars.

The heavy iron was cold, smelling of rust and damp stone, but he didn’t flinch.

His eyes narrowed behind the slits of his mask, focusing entirely on the broken figure of Tara.

The atmosphere in the room was stifling, thick with the unsaid thoughts of the two men standing behind him.

Noah could feel Lunge’s gaze boring into his back—a gaze filled with a desperate, hungry curiosity.

Noah turned his head slightly, the white surface of his mask catching the dim torchlight. He didn’t look directly at Lunge, but the intent was unmistakable.

"Some privacy..." Noah said.

Lunge’s face contorted. His pride, which had already taken a brutal beating, flared up one last time.

He was a high Arch Magus of the Order; being dismissed from a common guild prison like a servant was a bitter pill to swallow.

His fingers curled into his palms, and for a split second, the air around him flickered.

But the moment passed as quickly as it came. Lunge looked at Noah’s steady posture, remembered the crushing weight that had nearly snapped his spine minutes ago, and forced the anger down.

A wry, pained smile pulled at the corners of his mouth—a look of a man who knew he was being humiliated but was too smart to complain about it.

Without a word, he turned on his heel, his robes swishing against the floor as he walked toward the exit, his movements jerky with repressed frustration.

Yuan, the Guild Master, gulped loudly.

He glanced back at Noah, his eyes wide and uncertain.

The heavy wooden door groaned shut, and silence returned to the prison room.

Noah turned back to the bars. He leaned in slightly, his presence looming over Tara like a dark cloud.

"Now..." Noah said. "Continue from where you stopped."

Tara nodded weakly, her neck straining with the effort. Her voice, when it finally came, was a dry rasp that seemed to hurt her throat.

A few minutes later...

’Experimenting... on kids?’ Noah thought, his stomach churning. ’What kind of organization would do such a thing?’

Even Yuan was surprised by the things he heard her explain.

As the Guild Master of a rough-and-tumble town, Yuan was no stranger to the darker side of the world. He had seen the results of bandit raids, the aftermath of monster attacks, and the desperate things people did for a handful of copper. He knew the world was a cruel place where the strong often trampled the weak.

But this was different. This wasn’t the chaotic violence of the frontier; it was something calculated, cold, and systematic.

The details Tara was providing—the way the children were selected, the "treatments" they were subjected to, and the cold-blooded efficiency with which the failures were discarded—made his blood run cold.

According to Tara, the few memories she had were that of being in a room.

The details of the room and how it looked like were a bit blurry, but she remembered the strong smell of old copper from jg.

She remembered the feeling of the floor against her bare feet, a surface so smooth and unnatural it felt like walking on frozen oil.

But she wasn’t alone. She described, with a trembling lip, how she had been huddled in that room along with a bunch of other kids. They were all silent, she said. There was no crying, no whispering, and no comfort to be found. They were simply waiting. And at the center of that waiting was a man.

The whole explanation she gave was strange, shifting between lucid details and fragmented lapses in logic, but the strangest of them all was the description of the man who presided over that cold room.

As Noah listened, he noticed a peculiar pattern in her descriptions.

Whenever Tara tried to describe the environment or the sensations of that place, her voice remained steady. But the moment she tried to focus on the people involved, her breathing hitched, and her brow furrowed in genuine distress.

Every time she tried to visualize the man’s features, they remained blurry and indistinct, like looking at a reflection in a disturbed pool of water.

It wasn’t just the man, either. The faces of the other kids who had been trapped with her were similarly wiped from her mind.

She described them as pale smudges in her memory, shadows of people rather than actual children.

She wasn’t even sure of their number; sometimes she remembered ten, sometimes twenty, the figures appearing and disappearing in the fog of her recollection as if they were never truly there to begin with.