Chapter 14: Silent Walker

"My Lord?!"

"Hmm?"

Kaios stood up from behind an easel.

"Ah! My Lord!"

"Sharvella, help me move this painting to the study," Kaios said, taking the lead and walking out of the studio.

"Yes, My Lord," Sharvella replied, tilting her head in confusion as she glanced around the room. When she first walked in, she had been completely unable to sense the Lord's presence. It seemed she needed to put in the extra hours to train her Spiritual Energy Perception.

Meanwhile, Kaios, who had walked out first, could not hide the smile on his face. When Sharvella entered the room, he had actually been standing less than four meters in front of her, but she simply could not see him. After that, he had walked directly behind the easel and crouched down. She hadn't heard his footsteps or noticed him at all.

This was one of the functions of the Protective Bracelet he had discovered in the Old Baron's diary—Silent Walker. By activating this function within the range of the Array, he could temporarily enter a state of "non-existence."

Simple Invisibility was merely a visual disappearance. To a Spiritual Energy Warrior or Mage, a person's presence offered a wealth of sensory, Spiritual Qi, and Magic Signals to track. Even with their eyes closed, they could use this information to pinpoint someone's exact location and state. But Silent Walker eliminated all of this information. As a result, even in the eyes of a powerhouse like Sharvella—who was already a Level 8 Middle Tier Spiritual Energy Warrior at the age of sixteen—Kaios could vanish without a trace.

According to the dates recorded in the Old Baron's diary, it was only half a year before his passing that he had hired a renowned Array Master to add three new functions to the North Mountain Manor's Guardian Array. These three functions cost him 20,000 vouchers and were not completed until a month before his death. To everyone else, he claimed he was merely maintaining the Array, meaning not even the Housekeeper knew the truth.

The reason he spent such a fortune to secretly add these functions was because he sensed someone scheming against him and his son. Furthermore, the culprits were hiding within the family itself—among their Contracted Servants.

One of these three functions was Silent Walker, embodied in the Protective Bracelet as a round, green bead. According to the functional explanation in the diary, this feature did not directly grant the Lord wearing the Protective Bracelet the ability to conceal all sensory information. A Lord who had not undertaken Cultivation in Magic or Spiritual Qi would not be able to withstand such a powerful Magic Enhancement.

In reality, the function applied a magical shroud over everyone else within the Array's range, except for the Lord. It blocked them from perceiving any information about the Lord—including sight, sound, smell, and Spiritual Qi—effectively making the Lord "disappear" from their perception. Therefore, this function had two obvious weaknesses. First, it consumed a massive amount of energy, meaning it could not last very long. Second, it had no effect on Top Tier Powerhouses, as that exceeded the Array's maximum power output.

When Kaios read the part of the diary where the Old Baron expressed his suspicions that someone was targeting the Li family, he felt a shift in the writing style. It felt as though it had been written specifically for the original owner of the body to read. Upon seeing the detailed introduction of the Array's new functions in the appendix, he was practically certain: this diary was left for the original owner as a precaution, likely starting from the moment the Old Baron discovered the conspiracy against them.

Perhaps this was why the original owner, after seeing the Old Baron describe him as "extremely depraved," had crumpled the page in anger but ultimately decided to smooth it back out instead of tearing it out.

The Old Baron had kicked the bucket less than a year after making these preparations, and his only son had fallen into a coma shortly after inheriting the Lord's title. Coupled with what Kaios had experienced since crossing over, it was safe to say the hidden mastermind wielded considerable power.

However, the greatest advantage of the moles planted within the Li family was their secrecy. Once exposed, rooting them out would be incredibly simple—even if Kaios had not yet fully grasped the functions of the Soul Subordination Contract.

Silent Walker was the perfect tool for catching spies.

Kaios had initially planned to reveal this Array function to Sharvella. After all, she was constantly by his side, even standing guard outside his bedroom door. It was too difficult to do anything behind her back. But after realizing she didn't notice him at all when he activated Silent Walker and opened the door right next to her, he decided to keep it a secret for now.

Over the next two days, whenever the cooldown period ended, Kaios activated Silent Walker and roamed around the North Mountain Manor. He specifically shadowed those with an abundance of purple in the halos behind their heads. He overheard quite a bit of gossip and learned what these ordinary Servants and Contracted Servants thought of him—or rather, the original owner. But for the time being, he hadn't found anyone directly linked to the incidents targeting him.

Right now, for instance, Kaios was standing in the corner of the kitchen, listening to two cooks converse in hushed tones about him.

"Did you hear? Yang Jing, whose leg was broken when that Mad Knight from the Kendall family caused a ruckus, got his leg reattached. He won't be crippled, and once he recovers, he can continue being a Guard. I heard that once his Spiritual Energy Level reaches Level 7, he'll be directly promoted to Chief Guard. The Lord really spent a fortune this time to save the injured Guards and Servants." The speaker was a young Servant with a mostly gray halo, bearing only about a twentieth of yellow.

"He's just buying loyalty." The responder was a Servant in his late thirties or early forties. He spoke with a know-it-all tone, sounding as though he had seen it all. His halo was predominantly gray, with about a third being purple.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been at the manor for less than a month, right? Stay a bit longer and you'll understand. Back when he was still the young master, our Lord was notoriously hard to please. This momentary kindness is probably just a whim. If the same thing happens again, he might react completely differently. Having an unpredictable temper is our Lord's defining trait."

"When I was in the Fengjiang Territory, I think I heard some 'legends' about our young master. Are they true?"

"You're from the Fengjiang Territory? Then you must know about the two Chief Stewards from the Woda family and the Tec family..."

"Ah! You mean... the man-eating rumors are true?!"

"Shh! Do you want to die? Don't say that out loud..."

Kaios frowned deeply. Just as he was getting completely engrossed in their conversation, a figure flashed by like lightning. The two chatting Servants were suddenly lifted by their throats and slammed against the wall with a loud BANG, startling him.

When he looked closer, he realized that the blur who had pinned the Servants high against the wall by their necks was none other than Sharvella.

Huh? Hadn't she switched shifts? Shouldn't she be sleeping right now?

For the past two days, Sharvella had essentially been on duty twenty-four hours a day, constantly guarding him—even while he ate. It was only after asking her yesterday that he learned she was currently his only Personal Guard, so she was just toughing it out using Spiritual Qi. She had insisted it was completely normal and that it wouldn't affect a Middle Tier Spiritual Energy Warrior at all.

Even so, Kaios immediately promoted Harvey from Chief Guard to Personal Guard so the two could take turns on shifts. That way, she could finally get some real rest.

She was supposed to be resting right now. How did she suddenly pop out of nowhere?

Furthermore, at first glance, this Sharvella felt like a stranger to Kaios. Her eyes were cold and ferocious, like a starving tiger eyeing its prey from the shadows of a forest. Her entire aura felt like a sharp, slender sword gleaming with a frosty edge, ready to kill at a moment's notice.

She seemed like a completely different person from the obedient, gentle, shy, and somewhat goofy girl she usually was in front of Kaios. Even the other day when she cleaved the Mad Knight with a single strike, she hadn't given off this kind of overwhelming, bloodthirsty aura that seemed to freeze the very air around her.

He suddenly recalled the only sentence in the Old Baron's diary that mentioned Sharvella:

"This girl is a natural-born God of Slaughter. The fact that Kaios wants to train her as a maid-style Guard just proves what a lust-addled piece of trash he is."