The walk back was silent.
Beside me, the captain kept his head bowed, his knuckles white against the grip of his sheathed sword, stealing nervous, reverent glances toward me every few steps as if walking alongside an unhinged storm deity in human skin.
I paid him no attention.
My mind was focused on the high ridge overlooking the canyon.
Who was that watcher?
Was it an upper-ranking demon general scouting the perimeter defenses of Cassandra's vanguard company before launching a synchronized siege?
Or was that tracking me?
If someone—or something—had detected the localized reality distortion of my Code Intuition or the spatial erasure of Void Thunder, my emergence from the dungeon had just tripped an invisible tripwire across the regional mana grid.
"Keep your mouth shut about what happened out there, Captain," I said coldly as we reached the outer log barricade. "If the men ask, you handled a routine sweep."
