Dawnlight dispelled the last traces of mist over Silent Moon Dock, and the Joint Investigation Team, formed by the four major magic academies, had already assembled on the road leading to the first Teleportation Anchor.
Their destination was the Raymon Territory, located at the northeastern frontier of the Aulai Empire.
Setting out from the easternmost Silent Moon Dock, they needed to make a transfer through two remote Teleportation Anchors established by the Empire.
At the very back of the group, Ize occupied his position firmly, head lowered, footsteps deliberately light, wishing he could compress his presence down to zero.
He was perfectly practicing the core tenet of “the art of staying low”—hide among the crowd, stay away from all potential spotlights and sources of trouble.
However, there are always those tactless enough to shatter the barrier he painstakingly erected.
“Ize-senpai!” Luke had somehow slipped to his side, lowering his voice, his face brimming with the excitement and secrecy of someone who’d found treasure.
Ize’s heart tightened, warning bells ringing faintly. Could it be… did something go wrong with last night’s highly effective “physical version of the grand memory-erasure technique”?
Did this kid recover his memories?
He kept his face calm, maintaining his lowered-head posture, and replied in an even, unruffled tone, “Just say what you have to.”
Luke glanced around furtively to ensure no one was paying attention to their corner, then offered up his secret like a prized gift, speaking in a breathy whisper, “Reporting, senpai! I’ve discovered something big!”
“What is it?” Ize’s heart leapt.
Luke’s eyes sparkled as if holding an exclusive scoop: “I’ve been watching closely along the way! Other than Senior Sarah, you seem to be the most ‘popular’ one here!”
Ize’s brow immediately knotted, and he scolded in a low voice, “What nonsense are you talking about?”
He’d been as cautious as possible, almost merging with the air itself, avoiding all eye contact. How could he be “popular”?
Everyone was clearly orbiting around Sarah, weren’t they?
Seeing Ize’s disbelief, Luke hurried to back up his claim, “It’s true! Look at Lien from Liyue Academy. Aside from keeping his eyes glued to Senior Sarah, most of the rest of the time he’s watching Lord Rhea…”
Hm? Ize’s mind stirred.
Lien’s frequent attention to Lord Rhea?
That wasn’t all that surprising.
After all, in the pre-transmigration game settings, Rhea was one of the female leads Lien could pursue.
It was just that the difficulty was so high that no one had managed to clear her route before he transmigrated.
As the protagonist, Lien might already have noticed Rhea’s secret.
That could also explain why Rhea always kept a deliberate distance and coldness towards Lien, her direct junior.
“What’s so strange about that,”
Ize tried to steer the topic to safer ground, analyzing in the most natural tone, “They’re direct senior and junior, close by relation, so paying more attention to each other is normal.”
He hoped to extinguish Luke’s overly rampant flame of gossip.
Luke, hearing this, put on an “I see” expression and nodded, “Senpai, you make sense! I must have overthought it. No wonder Emma-senpai and Sarah-senpai keep glancing at you too, without realizing it.”
Ize’s just-settled heart shot back up to his throat.
“I counted carefully,” Luke continued, as if claiming credit, even making a show of counting on his fingers, “Emma-senpai peeked at you exactly thirty-six times! Sarah-senpai was a bit more subtle, but she did it twenty-one times!”
Ize’s expression froze instantly, a fine layer of cold sweat breaking out on his back.
The “direct relationship” logic might work for Lien and Rhea, since they were the male and female leads.
But to apply it to himself was like receiving a death sentence!
Sarah-senpai’s overly “kind” attention already made him feel like he was sitting on needles, and now Emma-senpai too…
Thinking back, there really did seem to be gratitude, curiosity, and perhaps even a faint, hard-to-discern probing in Emma’s glances?
Suppressing his tumbling thoughts, he tried to keep his voice calm, “Mm… Sarah-senpai cares for her juniors, and Emma-senpai probably… is thankful I helped her with the Apothecary Sales Channel before. It’s normal, nothing to make a fuss about, or it’ll attract attention.”
“Oh…” Luke nodded in half-understanding, but then suddenly shifted, his face filling with deeper confusion, lowering his voice to an almost inaudible whisper:
“But… senpai, then why… does Lord Rhea look at you way more than both of them combined? I counted, very clearly, seventy-two times in all! And… there’s no direct relationship between you two…”
Se…seventy-two times?!
Ize felt as if his heart had been gripped tightly by a cold hand, stopping for a beat.
This brat Luke’s perception when it came to gossip was this sharp?
A chill raced up his spine.
Suddenly, he remembered that complicated, unreadable look in Rhea’s eyes before she left last night, and that damned bottle of Obedience Water with unknown side effects that lasted three days.
Could it be… the lingering effects of the potion, making her instinctively seek him out without rational control…?
The thought sent shivers down his spine.
If so, would he have to live in the shadow of Rhea’s “invisible attention” for the next three days?
Would there be any chance for him to stay a background character in Raymon Territory?
Or… was she still suspicious he’d leak her Core Secret, so she watched him so frequently as a silent warning and surveillance?
Either possibility spelled nothing but trouble and risk for Ize.
Almost involuntarily, he quickly glanced up at the front of the group where Liyue Academy was. As if fate itself were playing tricks, in that split-second, his gaze met a pair of cool, clear eyes.
Rhea really was watching him!
Their eyes met for a mere instant before breaking away.
Rhea, as if burned, turned her head quickly and stiffly, leaving him only the taut line of her jaw and the faint blush coloring the tips of her ears.
But in that brief contact, Ize clearly caught a flash of panic, embarrassment, and… a faint, perhaps even unconscious, sense of inquiry in her eyes.
Ize dropped his head at once, heart pounding, his mind a battlefield of chaos.
It’s over! It’s all over now!
If it was just Sarah and Emma, he could still explain it as “care” and “gratitude” from his seniors.
But being “locked on” by Rhea with such frequency was like being tied up and roasted over a fire!
Could the potion’s side effects really be this strong?
“Senpai, are you alright? You suddenly look so pale.” Luke asked with concern.
Ize took a deep breath, forcing down the turmoil inside, and squeezed out a few words, “Noth… nothing. Just thinking about… how to become even less noticeable.”
Before setting out, he had taken a Presence-Lowering Potion.
He never expected that even after lowering his own presence, he would still draw so much attention from Rhea, Sarah, and Emma…
Should he consider improving the potion’s effect next time?
Yet, Luke, with a mischievous grin as if enjoying the drama, whispered, “Ize-senpai, look, Lord Rhea is watching you again. That makes seventy-three times.”
Hearing this, Ize almost wanted to bury his head in his chest, and gave Luke a knock on the head, “Settle down, will you.”
Rhea’s perspective
Although she had taken the first Sedative from Ize yesterday, she still felt an itchy restlessness in her heart, like a cat scratching at her.
Ize had clearly explained the strange potion’s side effects, but she just couldn’t stop her gaze from drifting over to him.
“Somehow, Ize seems even more attractive and handsome today than usual…”
Why was her heart beating so fast…
Even the blood in her body seemed hotter than before.
“No, I can’t keep staring, it’ll get weird. But… just one last look should be fine, right…”
Lien’s perspective
Lien had naturally noticed Rhea’s unusual, frequent glances towards the rear of the team.
His gaze inevitably followed hers, falling on that seemingly ordinary student from Starlight Academy named Ize.
He was puzzled—why would such an unremarkable person draw so much attention from Rhea-senpai (as he understood her)?
Not understanding, he simply asked.
“Rhea-senpai,” he approached her, his voice gentle but probing, “Is there something special about that Ize? He seems to attract your attention quite a lot.”
Rhea’s brows knit almost imperceptibly, and today, she’d put her frosty, “keep away” mask back on. “Who I look at is my own business.”
Her voice was cold, distant, leaving no room for doubt, “Just mind your own affairs.”
Lien said no more, but silently turned his gaze to Ize once more, his eyes now tinged with caution and a barely perceptible chill.
He possessed a unique gift—Magical Power Attribute Perception.
This ability not only let him clearly distinguish the flow and composition of magic power within living beings, but also discern certain energy weaknesses and characteristics imperceptible to others.
Thanks to this skill, he had gained much in cultivation and adventure.
It was also through this ability that he had long noticed the magical rhythm and qualities within Rhea’s body matched those of a female magician.
Combined with Rhea’s deliberate avoidance and subtle gestures, he’d more or less deduced that this “senior” was actually a woman.
Over the past two years, this senior he knew had always maintained clear boundaries with everyone, living as if nothing existed but endless training.
Yet, ever since entering that tavern yesterday, her attention seemed fixed on Ize.
The unprecedented act of handing over water at last night’s banquet, and now today’s abnormal, high-frequency glances… All of it was out of character.
The degree of attention she gave Ize even surpassed that shown to him, her direct junior of two years.
It would be a lie to say he didn’t feel a little strange about it.
But more than that, he was curious. Curious about what Ize possessed that drew Rhea’s gaze.
With a thought, Lien silently cast Magical Power Attribute Perception on Ize.
The feedback seemed to confirm Ize’s self-introduction: signs of affinity for several elements, but each one so low as to be negligible.
His internal magic power… was so faint as to be almost undetectable, no different from a normal commoner. (What he didn’t know was that this wasn’t because Ize’s magic was weak, but because it was so vast, it formed an invisible Magic Power Field Domain that shrouded everyone present. At this moment, only the Ancient Dragon Soul Iguneel, slumbering inside Swan, could vaguely sense the boundless vortex beneath that calm surface.)
How could someone so “ordinary” attract so much of Rhea’s attention?
Lien’s curiosity only grew.
As for Rhea, it wasn’t as if she intended to keep staring at Ize.
But for some reason, her gaze always wandered uncontrollably to that figure trying so hard to blend into the crowd at the back.
As long as she looked at Ize for even a moment, a strange, indescribable tremor would ripple through her heart, her chest tight and stifled, as if gripped by something unseen.
But if she forced herself to look away, that nameless irritability and emptiness would immediately sweep in, leaving her restless all over.
This uncontrollable feeling left her both anxious and angry, yet utterly helpless.
Ize, of course, had no idea of the turbulent thoughts swirling inside these “main characters.” If he did, he’d probably choose to leave the team immediately and sneak into Raymon Territory alone—facing unknown monsters would be safer than getting caught in this subtle and complicated web of relationships.