Above the ruins of an abandoned town on the northern fringe of the Central Continent, Ryan's figure suddenly tumbled out of the sky.

  "Damn it!" Ryan was startled and instinctively activated the magic within his body.

  His figure wobbled several times in midair before he managed to stabilize himself, barely hovering a few meters above the ground.

  I knew that damn old man was unreliable! Ryan cursed angrily in his heart.

  What kind of cross region teleportation array sends someone straight into the sky? This was clearly a severe deviation in the teleportation coordinates!

  After landing firmly on the ground, Ryan looked at the shattered town ruins before him.

  Broken walls and collapsed structures were everywhere, while wind and sand swept up fragments of stone and sent them rolling across the ground, deepening the frustration in his heart.

  "Grimoire, initiate regional scan and confirm my current location."

  【Origin Value 5000 deducted. Scan complete. Current location: northern fringe of the Central Continent.】

  "Damn that old man!" Ryan cursed as he stomped his foot in anger, delivering a vicious kick to a nearby stone as tall as himself.

  With a dull thud, the stone was sent flying more than ten meters away, smashing heavily into a broken wall and shattering on impact.

  He had vaguely felt back then that the old man could not be trusted, but he never expected to be cheated for real.

  His original plan had been to teleport directly to the eastern region of the Central Continent. Now it was even worse.

  He had been sent all the way to the northern fringe and would have to find another teleportation array. It was utterly infuriating.

  Ryan scanned his surroundings. The entire town was a desolate wasteland of ruins, and there was no sign at all of the teleportation array that had just sent him here.

  No wonder it had dropped him out of the sky. The array must have been buried beneath the ruins long ago, with only the core magical formation barely functioning, which led to the severe coordinate deviation.

  That said, for a teleportation array buried to that extent to still be able to activate a cross region teleportation, that old man did have some real skill.

  Ryan rose into the air above the ruined town. Looking down at the city that seemed to have been ravaged by war, he let out a helpless sigh and could only accept reality.

  One month later.

  Eastern Central Continent, Skylorn Province, Snowmere City.

  After thirty days of arduous travel, Ryan finally arrived at his destination by relying on the positioning mark from the Grimoire.

  "Grimoire, are you sure the target is here?" Ryan asked in his mind as he looked at the red positioning marker floating in his consciousness, then glanced at the grand and imposing noble manor before him.

  Once he found the item corresponding to the marker, he would also receive a return of one hundred thousand Origin Value.

  This trip of scanning and travel had only cost him one hundred thousand Origin Value, which was entirely acceptable.

  【The positioning is absolutely accurate. Host, please trust my capabilities.】

  Ryan narrowed his eyes and raised his head to look toward the manor gates. Joy flickered in his heart as he quietly planned:

  my current identity is at least that of an apprentice from the Glacial Arcana Academy. Pretending to be a distant relative of the nobles should be enough to get me inside.

  Ryan made up his mind and immediately shrugged off his magic apprentice robe. Holding his head high and chest out, he strode confidently toward the manor gates, his face full of self assurance.

  "Who goes there?" The two guards at the gate stepped forward at once, crossing their spears and shouting sharply.

  Ryan's eyes narrowed slightly. These two gate guards were actually Ninth tier Adept Mages. It seemed the background of this manor was far from simple.

  Ryan coughed twice deliberately, put on a profound expression, and slowly said,"My name is Ryan." He offered nothing more, clearly intending for the guards to fill in the blanks themselves.

  "Ryan?" The two guards exchanged glances, both wearing puzzled expressions. One of them immediately frowned and barked,"Never heard of you. Get lost!"

  Ryan was instantly dumbfounded. If they did not recognize him, fine, but was there really a need to be so aggressive? No, wait. Could it be that the guards of this noble house actually knew every single relative?

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  "Do you know what my status is?" Ryan could no longer be bothered to keep up the act. He slammed his right foot down on the ground, and the magic of a Senior Mage burst out from his body.

  With a muffled boom, the hard stone pavement was stamped into a shallow crater.

  The expressions of the two guards changed dramatically. Their tightly furrowed brows instantly turned into ingratiating smiles as they hurriedly stepped back inside the threshold.

  They made a standard inviting gesture toward Ryan."Please, come in!"

  Ryan was stunned once again. If being tough worked this well, he should not have wasted time pretending to be mysterious in the first place.

  But the very next second, a strong sense of discord surged in his heart. Something was wrong. There was definitely a problem here.

  Carrying deep suspicion, Ryan slowly stepped through the gates.

  As he passed by the two guards, his fingertip twitched slightly, and a slip of paper engraved with a Phantom Swap rune silently stuck to an inconspicuous spot at a guard's waist. It was a contingency he had prepared in advance.

  The moment he entered the manor grounds, Ryan keenly sensed the dense magical fluctuations in the air. A high tier mana gathering formation had been set up here.

  Within the range of the formation, the concentration of mana was more than three times higher than outside.

  To be able to deploy such an advanced mana gathering formation in a private estate showed that the manor's foundation was unfathomably deep.

  At the instant Ryan entered the manor, the two guards outside immediately wiped the smiles from their faces.

  One of them took out a communication badge and rapidly swiped a finger across its surface, apparently sending a message.

  Moments later, a green light lit up on the badge, indicating that the message had been successfully sent. Only then did the two guards straighten up again, resuming their previous stern gatekeeping posture.

  "Stop. Trespassers into the manor will die!"

  Ryan, who was advancing according to the Grimoire's positioning marker, suddenly heard a furious shout filled with killing intent from ahead.

  A powerful magical aura instantly locked onto him, reaching the level of a Master Mage.

  Relying on the Phantom Swap spell he had prepared in advance, Ryan instantly exchanged positions with one of the guards.

  The moment the swap was complete, he turned around without hesitation and sprinted away, his figure quickly disappearing into the alleys deep within the manor.

  The guard who had swapped places with him appeared directly within the Master Mage's attack range.

  The other guard nearby was shocked by this sudden change. How could the person beside him suddenly turn into someone else?

  His reaction was extremely fast. He immediately realized it was an enemy illusion technique, but he did not pursue Ryan.

  He merely shouted angrily in the direction Ryan had vanished and symbolically took a couple of steps before stopping.

  Clearly, guarding his assigned patrol area was more important than chasing a petty intruder.

  As for whether the guard who had been swapped in front of the Master Mage would be slapped to death in a fit of rage, Ryan had no way of knowing.

  "So ruthless," Ryan muttered as he sprinted all the way to the other end of Snowmere City. Only then did he stop, leaning against a wall and letting out a heavy breath.

  Fortunately, he had sensed something was wrong in advance and left himself a way out. Otherwise, even with a protective rune, he would have suffered a fair bit from that attack just now.

  It seemed that forcing his way in was not an option. There was no way to get close to the location of the positioning marker like this.

  Ryan straightened up, brushed the dust off his clothes, and cast his gaze toward the central district of Snowmere City.

  That was the most prosperous area of the entire city. Perhaps he could gather more information about the manor from there.

  Nearly two months had passed, and the time spent searching for the target had far exceeded expectations.

  Ryan paused in a tunnel thousands of meters underground and pulled a piece of dried magical beast meat from his storage bag, gnawing on it as he thought to himself.

  Evelyn must have learned by now that I am no longer in the Northern Border Icefield, he mused.

  Yet during these two months, he had noticed a strange pattern. Whenever he reasonably distanced himself from Evelyn, the mysterious bond between them seemed to subtly extend.

  Right now, Evelyn was probably still meditating in the Glacial Arcana Academy, while he was digging tunnels in this dark, sunless underground. The thought struck him as somewhat amusing.

  After two months of repeated observation and testing, he finally decided to use the most cumbersome but also the most reliable method: tunneling.

  He dug continuously underground, using the Grimoire's innate concealment function, and eventually reached the location of the positioning marker without being detected by anyone from the manor.

  "Dig, dig, dig!" Ryan's eyes gleamed with determination. His hands transformed into metal claws resembling those of a burrowing creature.

  But his claws were far stronger than an ordinary magical beast's. Not only were they made of indestructible magical alloy, they could also extend and enlarge at will through magic, making it easy to dig through solid rock as if it were mere soil.

  …

  Northern Border Icefield, Glacial Arcana Academy.

  Evelyn sat quietly in a chair, holding the delicate Clockwork Doll in her fingertips, her gaze blank as she fell into a long, silent daze.

  He ran off again. A wave of indescribable frustration rose in her heart. Beneath her usually calm and composed expression, a faint trace of subtle grievance appeared. She still could not keep him.

  In recent days, she and the three Elder Mages had scoured nearly every corner of the Northern Border Icefield.

  Finally, from the mouths of the teleportation array guardians in a border town, they learned that Ryan had already used a cross-domain teleportation array to reach the Central Continent.

  Evelyn's gaze darkened. Back in the South Territory, he had already been determined to go to the Central Continent. Now, after arriving at the Northern Border Icefield, he still used the opportunity of his task training to run toward that place.

  What is in the Central Continent that makes him so obsessed?

  This time, Evelyn had let Ryan go out for training partly to test whether he felt a sense of belonging to the Glacial Arcana Academy. After all, she had initially taken him back to the Academy by force.

  A prodigy with the potential of a Grand Magus, she would never let him go, and could not let him go.

  A trace of determination flashed in Evelyn's eyes. She lifted her hand, put on her veil, and withdrew the Clockwork Doll into her spiritual domain.

  She then left a letter on the desk, opened the door with a surge of magic, and flew directly toward the gates of the Glacial Arcana Academy.

  Not long after, the three Elder Mages stared at the letter Evelyn had left on the desk, their expressions extremely grave.

  Two prodigies with the potential of Grand Magus had completely disappeared. Even if they tried, they could not help but feel anxious.

  "I knew that boy would steal the Headmistress's heart! Even the Headmistress ran off!" Elara slammed her hand on the desk.

  "And you, Mora!"

  "How can you not even watch over a mere Senior Mage? I really don't understand how you got all that magical power!"

  Mora's face flushed crimson from the rebuke. She had no way to argue and could only stand there, face red and chest heaving violently.