Elias didn't head straight for the Third Supply Depot.
As the freight wagon rolled past the final intersection, he slipped off the back without a sound, slipped into a narrow alley beside the warehouse, and climbed up the outer iron ladder to the roof of an adjacent building.
The area outside the warehouse's main entrance was completely empty.
At least, that was how it appeared to ordinary eyes.
Crouching behind the roof ridge damp with night dew, Elias reached up to press down his derby hat and activated 【Moon Vision】.
In the next instant, three faint silver trails of spirituality entered his vision.
One came from the intersection leading to the docks.
Another was circling around from the street behind the warehouse.
The last one was approaching through an adjacent alley.
The three individuals weren't clustered together, but they had positioned themselves to surround the Third Supply Depot from three different directions.
That cold spiritual aura was all too familiar to Elias.
The Moon Lord pathway.
Members of the Ascetic Society.
“Talk about professional,” he muttered under his breath, a cold sweat breaking out across his back.
Along the way, he had switched carriages, bypassed blocks, and even activated 【Moon Vision】 three times.
Forget people—not even a dog had followed him for more than two blocks.
These people hadn't followed him here.
They had come straight for the warehouse.
Elias looked up at the Third Supply Depot, and the last shred of hope in his heart vanished.
The Ascetic Society might not know who he was, but they had a way to locate the 【Moon Gate】.
The three spiritual signatures were still closing in.
If he waited any longer, he wouldn't be going home tonight; he would be walking straight into a trap set by the Ascetic Society.
Elias immediately stood up.
His Wind-Chaser Boots left a trail of faint afterimages across the tiles as he leaped across the gap between the two buildings, landing on the edge of the supply depot's sloped roof.
His soles slid against the wet tiles, sending a few small stones tumbling down the eaves.
He had no time to look for a door lock.
Shielding his face with his sleeve, Elias raised The Roaring Cane and smashed the transom window high up on the warehouse wall.
Crash!
Shattered glass rained down into the dark warehouse.
Elias immediately climbed through the window, landing on a stack of crates.
The wooden boards groaned under his weight as a cloud of dust billowed up, nearly making him cough.
But right now, even coughing had to wait in line.
He rushed over to the heavy empty crate in a few quick strides, grabbed the edges with both hands, and dragged it aside with brute force.
The bottom of the wooden crate scraped against the floor, making a harsh, screeching sound.
A milky-white ring was revealed behind it.
“Sir, what took you so long?” Jack's voice echoed from the other side of the glowing ring.
“Quick, get ready to close the door!”
Elias stepped into the ring, his body traversing the two spaces in a brief moment of weightlessness.
When his vision returned, the salty sea breeze whipped against his face.
The moment he landed on the reef, he shouted, “Our stronghold has been compromised!”
Jack's expression shifted. He quickly pulled his hand away from the spiritual compass, severing the connection between the return ritual and the 【Moon Gate】.
The milky-white ring contracted abruptly.
The last sliver of dim light from inside the warehouse flashed before their eyes, then sealed shut completely.
Only the damp reef remained, along with a trace of moonlight that had yet to dissipate.
Elias stood in the sea breeze, staring for a few seconds before slowly exhaling.
That was close.
Just a little bit more, and his new persona, barely active for two days, would have been taken down by the Ascetic Society along with the door.
Meanwhile, on the west bank of Hastings Port.
The Moon-Folding Plate in Raymond's hand suddenly went dim.
The silver needle, which had been pointing firmly ahead, lost all its luster and drooped like an ordinary piece of wire.
“We're too late,” Raymond said. He didn't stop, but simply closed the Moon-Folding Plate and gestured toward the Third Supply Depot ahead with his chin. “Go inside and take a look.”
A few minutes later, three ascetics stood inside the empty warehouse.
A hole gaped in the high transom window, and shattered glass lay scattered on the floor.
The empty crate originally used to hide the 【Moon Gate】 had been dragged aside, its wooden corners leaving two fresh scratches on the floor.
Two of the ascetics inspected the corners of the warehouse for spiritual residue, both eventually stopping in front of the wooden crate.
“Bishop, we can confirm,” one of them said, crouching down and pressing his palm close to the floor.
“The spiritual and spatial resonance here hasn't fully settled yet.”
“The 【Moon Gate】 was open at this exact spot just moments ago.”
The other ascetic looked at the floor, which had returned to normal, and asked hesitantly, “But that is a divine-tier spell. Can we still track it?”
“No,” Raymond replied flatly.
He walked over to the scratches left by the crate, his gaze following the marks to where the glowing gate had stood.
“The 【Moon Gate】 doesn't dig a tunnel through the spirit world to connect two ends.”
“It uses spiritual and spatial resonance to make two distant physical locations temporarily adjacent to each other.”
Raymond tapped the floor lightly with the toe of his boot.
“When the door is open, this place is linked to the other.”
“Once the door closes, the connection ends, and there is no longer a trackable direction for the other side.”
The ascetic frowned.
“There's absolutely no way?”
“Not for now, at least,” Raymond adjusted his monocle, his expression turning slightly more serious.
“Besides, rather than worrying about where the exit is, we should be considering something else.”
“What's that?”
“Whether there is a Divine Attendant capable of using the 【Moon Gate】 by his side.”
“Or if he possesses some supernatural relic that can open the 【Moon Gate】.”
The two ascetics exchanged glances.
Regardless of which possibility it was, that scruffy-bearded freelance investigator who had only registered with the Society of Freemen a few days ago could no longer be measured by the standards of an ordinary Scale Two transcendent.
“Re-evaluate his value and threat level,” Raymond instructed.
“Also, you two stay behind.”
“Monitor all the warehouse entrances. Choose concealed positions, don't get too close, and do not alert the Seventh Agency.”
“Understood.”
One of them acknowledged the order, then glanced back at the scratches on the floor.
“Bishop, will he return?”
“I don't know.”
Raymond surveyed the now-useless warehouse, his eyes finally landing on the broken window high above.
“If he doesn't, then this warehouse is the first lesson he has taught us.”
Meanwhile, the man responsible for the lesson had already returned to the wooden cabin on the reef.
Elias pushed open the door and slapped the copper warehouse token stamped with "East Bank Pier Seven, Warehouse Forty-Seven" onto the table.
“The old warehouse is compromised. We'll use this place next time.”
Jack followed him inside, glancing first at the warehouse token before looking up at him.
“Who was it?”
“The Ascetic Society.”
Jack wasn't surprised to hear this. He simply looked down and picked up the copper token again.
“They can sense the 【Moon Gate】?”
“Most likely,” Elias took off his derby hat and brushed the glass shards off his sleeves.
“I made sure no one was tailing me along the way.”
“Yet three transcendents of the Moon Lord pathway still managed to block the warehouse from different directions.”
Jack nodded.
“Then they tracked the door itself.”
Elias gave him an appreciative look.
As expected, communicating with nobility was much less of a headache.
An ordinary person hearing this would probably ask why the Ascetic Society was chasing them in the first place.
Jack had bypassed the nonsense entirely and was already considering where the next door should open.
But the young master stared at the warehouse token for a moment, quickly spotting a new issue.
“Can an ordinary warehouse token really lock onto the coordinates of the 【Moon Gate】?”
“We managed to open the door to Hastings Port with just a supply manifest before.”
Elias pointed to the copper plate in his hand.
“This token has an identical twin nailed directly to the warehouse door. That has to be more precise than a generic manifest.”
“The manifest had Hastings Port's official spiritual harbor seal on it,” Jack flipped the token over, carefully examining the numbers stamped on the back. “This thing only proves you have the right to use Warehouse Forty-Seven. It's not a beacon.”
“But it has a stable connection to that specific warehouse.”
“That is merely your deduction.”
“Last time, it was purely theoretical,” Elias retorted, completely unapologetic. “And besides, wasn't I the one who actually tried it?”
“Nonsense!” Jack looked up immediately. “My family's heirloom flintlock pistol was also part of the experiment!”
Elias was so exasperated he laughed.
The kid was clearly worried Elias wouldn't make it back, yet he couldn't bring himself to say it directly even once in ten sentences.
But the moment that pistol was mentioned, his rebuttals came faster than ever.
“Your damn pistol didn't bring back six hundred and twenty-three gold crowns!”
Jack had been ready to keep arguing, but upon hearing that figure, his voice took an immediate turn.
“Six hundred and twenty-three?”
His eyes swept past Elias's waist before casually settling back onto the warehouse token.
“You collected the commission fee?”
“Obviously,” Elias pulled out a chair and sat down.
Jack, who had just been worrying over his heirloom flintlock pistol, now smoothly pushed the chair half a foot closer to the table for Elias.
The movement was so natural it seemed as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Hey, you should have said so earlier.”
“I thought you'd been chased so hard you couldn't even collect the payout.”
Elias looked up at him.
“And?”
Jack cleared his throat and sat on the other side of the table. He looked just as serious as when they were debating magical theory, but his eyes were noticeably brighter.
“You could buy some things from me—potions, scrolls, supernatural materials. As long as the price is right, I have some collectibles in my Secret Chest that I don't need for now.”
He even rubbed his hands together as he spoke, looking entirely ready to hook up a regular customer.
Elias stared at him in silence.
A young master from a prominent family who could easily pull out a Scale Four scroll at any moment was now sitting in this drafty wooden cabin, wearing the greedy grin of a shady merchant over a mere six hundred gold crowns.
Something about this picture was deeply wrong.
“What is the meaning of this?” Elias slowly narrowed his eyes. “Don't tell me that when you fled, the only thing you didn't bring enough of was money?”
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