Inside E-44, Cabrao was meditating, his body falling dormant while his soul slipped out of it. If anyone were here, they would only see a cloud of miasma surrounding the body but would not feel its effects. Being a Grand Elder, he had the means to place down a protection spell containing his Undead aura from spreading and alerting others. In his incorporeal form, he was examining the memories of his consciousness and subconsciousness, all the little details that all of his senses could pick up but were filtered out by his mind. It was like looking at images captured by his senses, things that he never noticed, down to the most minute details.

"There…" He opened his green eyes after seeing an image in his mind depicting Lia and the group entering the underground highway, going past him in the crowd. Even if they were obscured by the hundreds of people there, the distinct features of the Amarins were immediately recognizable. Returning to his vessel, redrawing everything, he let out a long sigh. "Amarins… And the younger one was the one who almost noticed me… that means she studied the Sea of Souls. Troublesome. I will need to leave." He stood up, feeling disappointed. The body he chose was way too good to pass up on… it was the most compatible vessel for his soul that he had ever seen. He even suspected that the unmarked man was his descendant from when he was still a human. Maybe some of his blood survived to this day, even though he died early. "They… shouldn't notice the marks. She is too young to be able to do so... I just need to keep my distance from the girl and wait for an opportunity to capture my new puppet… yes. I will be careful. I need that body, and that soul would be extremely useful… yes… yes… With it, I could traverse the land more easily and capture and consume souls, growing stronger!"

He couldn't help it. He was always greedy, which was why he betrayed his original master, switched sides inside the Sect, and now served Supreme Elder Yuya. She offered him assistance decades ago for information on his original master, Supreme Elder Loonah, as the two had been trying to kill each other for almost a whole millennium. It was basically a game for the two, and even though Cabrao knew he was just a pawn in their hands, the rewards made him salivate.

Yuya helped him kill the last of his rivals, consume their souls, and grow stronger without anyone else realizing what he had truly done. All he had to do was feed false information to Loonah, culminating in butchering her critical mission and wasting away the rare resource of a dead dragon. All of that ended up costing Loonah a lot and got her marginalized by the other Supreme Elders, deeming it her failure.

Cabrao's shift of allegiance was clear as day for Loonah as it was all his suggestion to start with… even though it went better than Cabrao imagined. He expected the failure would come after the inept pawn, and Senaita would break out of the sub-realm. Yet, she failed to do even that. Though this put his life in a precarious situation, it was ultimately worth it. Otherwise, he would not be here, surrounded by millions of souls that he could snack on. If anything, Yuya would have to protect him now, or she would lose more than face. She would lose the opportunity to draw anyone to her side ever again.

All the risks he took in his life, aiming to grow stronger, gather even more power, and rise higher, were worthy of doing so. He always succeeded and managed to get through even the most dangerous tasks or missions. He only had to take a few more risks, right until he was also someone with the title of Supreme Elder. They just had to kill Loonah, and he would take her place. It was so close… In the upcoming chaos, nobody would suspect anything.

"So close…" He shook his whole body, turning his hair and eyes black, making a decision. "High risk, high rewards!" He shouted before going out to attend the finals. He wasn't about to run, not when the finish line was right before him. He took many risks in all these centuries leading up to the present… and this time, he could run away if all came crashing down. He was in Meriath… even if he failed, his soul could still run. He could still escape. That was what convinced him in the end, filling Cabrao's soul with the thrill of gambling. The excitement of the unknown and the chance of winning big... the same thing that all those thousands of years ago cost him his life when he was still a human.

…

….

……

"They are marked… except one," Lia said, calling Solren and the Misfits to a private room right after they had a meeting with the finalists, who were nervous yet proud to be able to introduce themselves personally.

"What do you mean?" Aurora wrote while Sion and Simbad stood at the door, ensuring nobody was eavesdropping on them.

"I did not feel any presence of mind control or other marks of the Undead on any of them," Solren interjected, watching his sister, who looked back at him with a serious expression, all childishness gone from her mannerisms.

"You are looking for the wrong clues, Brother." She started to explain, turning her eyes to the rest, watching everyone standing at attention, waiting for her words inside the small dining room. "It is a similar mark that I use. To me, it is to act as a beacon when I teleport! I learned it from the Silly Fox!"

"So it has no fluctuations of an Undead…" Solren murmured, as his and most people's senses were tuned to looking for that. The unnatural feeling that always accompanied them.

"Yes. And it has no relations to mana; that is why there is no scent of the Undead on any of them!" Lia nodded, "I can sense it clearly because I use it constantly! It is a mark that you leave behind spiritually. You have to concentrate your mind to make it; after entering No-Space, you can sense it! It helps you know where is the entry point, how far you have gone from it, everything! If it is placed on a moving object or being, you can always tell where it is! My mark is weaker than those they have been branded with."

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"What do you mean?" Ceiline asked, concerned for the mages who were oblivious to the fact they were being preyed on.

"The one who put it on them has a greater understanding of how it works than me… or the Headmaster. I never saw such strong markers! Mine's intensity is only a quarter of that. If I stray too far from it, I will lose it and be hard-pressed to reappear where I wanted. This one… I bet it is like a beacon inside No-Space, noticeable from very far away!"

Hearing that, Solren picked out a transmission jade from his holding bag, activating it, barking orders into it when the connection was established.

"Check on all the contestants who were sent away prior to our arrival! Did they arrive at their posts?"

When the answer came back, it was like dumping cold water on everyone. None of them arrived. All of them were gone, same with the escorting troops. Nobody could connect them. A dozen talented mages, who did not make it into the finals but were prodigies, were gone forever.

"Mark them all as dead and distribute their appearances on all channels! They are no longer living beings. If any of them resurfaces, kill them on sight." Solren stated coldly, and on the other end, they merely acknowledged his words without questions.

"We have been played…" Koadriana moaned, rubbing her forehead, feeling vexed.

"Their infiltration became even more subtle… advanced," Sion added, biting his lips, feeling just as furious and troubled.

"Or we just did not know about this." Simbad spoke, crossing his arms, looking at Solren and Lia, "Back in the Dark Ages, nobody listened to Erias Amarin at first. We know very little of the first steps of how they infiltrate our society. How they operate, what they do… One thing is for sure; they are already collecting an army with capable bodies."

"No matter the reason… we have an Undead hiding in the city." Aurora wrote, driving the conversation back to its foremost issue. "One that we did not notice at all."

"We won't purge the whole city… will we?" Keily asked, looking at Lia at first, then turning towards Solren, who was now wearing a stoic and cold expression.

"No way…" Raufon murmured, feeling a chill running down his spine.

"The city is already being placed under quarantine," Solren answered after a minute of nervous, spine-tingling silence. "Anybody trying to leave is stopped and detained for inspection. Soon, they will start noticing it."

"What if the Undead has already escaped? Through No-Space?" Koa asked, holding her own arms to prevent herself from trembling. It seems reality just hit the group in the face, what it was like to live through the Dark Ages, through a time filled with paranoia… yet it was just the beginning.

"Lia?" Her brother asked, turning to his sister.

"I think I would have picked up on it. I did it so many times and trained with the Headmaster a lot… I will keep my senses sharp and-"

"I have an idea!" Ceiline chimed in suddenly and summoned a few of her peashooters. "These little ones are made to be ultra-sensitive and designed for scouting! Lia, if you can place a mark on them, I can distribute them in the city, and they will be able to identify if something similar appears! They don't need to know about how it works; they will warn us if anything resembling the source occurs!"

"Could work…" Lia murmured and placed a little mark on them before Ceiline recollected the plants, waiting for their meeting to finish and sending out her peashooters.

"I will have to relay all this to Mother." Solren nodded, approving Ceiline's idea, "She will make a decision about what to do with the city. I can't."

"..." Keily and Raufon wanted to sigh in relief but couldn't. This simply meant that Solren pushed the responsibility onto his mother, avoiding signing the death warrant for 200 000 souls.

"Lia, can you take the mark off of them?" Simbad interjected, thinking about what to do.

"I… don't know. I may be able to influence it, but I am sure the Undead would notice that."

"Why wasn't one of them marked?" Keily asked, which made the rest fall into silence.

"I can see two possibilities." Sion spoke up first, fixating on the table in the middle of the room as he was still thinking while describing his ideas. "For one, he could be the Undead."

"There is a chance." Solren agreed as it also occurred to him, yet he felt nothing like that coming off the man. "But it probably would have slipped out in the tournament. They had to perform spells and a lot of it."

"I doubt it..." Lia interjected, looking at her brother. "I felt something weird when coming in... I am now sure we walked past that monster... hiding in plain sight!"

"So we can throw out the idea of the unmarked being lesser than any of those who went missing so far?" Sion asked again, trying to continue his thoughts, and Solren nodded in answer.

"Most certainly."

"Then why is he not marked?" Sion questioned them but continued immediately, not waiting for an answer. "He is special in some way or form! Something that our hidden judge wants for himself and not present to its comrades."

"That is a big leap…" Solren murmured but did not refute his thinking completely.

"There is a chance for that to be the case." Aurora agreed, taking his side, and now it was Lia who had a flash of inspiration.

"We can set a trap, even if Sion is wrong with this! We let the competition end naturally first. Let's throw them into a free-for-all brawl and tell them the last one standing will be the champion! Easy, quick, and we can observe their spells! If that guy is the Undead, it has to show! Then we can be 100% certain about his status! The ranking does not matter; our goal will be simple! After everything settles, we start sending them away immediately!"

"And now we know what will happen." Solren nodded, understanding her plan very quickly. "We will be ready for the ambush and catch them before they can hurt our people and strike back!"

"Even more…" Lia smiled, "If our sneaky Undead is watching, he will want to follow his prey… If Sion is right about this, he will have to do it on foot if he wants to go after the unmarked one! If someone from the city follows us, we will have our target!"

"I can instruct our men to let through people who are leaving the same way as we and follow them secretly."

"That is the best we can come up with now!" Lia nodded, clapping her hands, feeling fired up that they at least had a plan. "Notify Mom about this all! We will start with the selection! Let's catch this invisible monster and cut off his ugly head!"

"Now you are speaking my language!" Raufon grinned, ready for action like the rest, wanting to do anything to capture it before it signed the whole city's death warrant.