Legacy of the Dark Sage

While Kyran's work was taking the market in the eastern empire by storm, Kyran had already left three days prior.

Donning a different set of black attire and the black panther mask Anette gave him, Kyran had warped inside the building where she hid while he went after Zephyr in his first visit.

Upon confirming that the building and its surrounding were devoid of life forms, he immediately activated his Sigil to connect with Zephyr telepathically. However, even though Kyran could faintly sense him, he could not establish a connection.

This made Kyran's expression turned cold.

There were only two reasons why he could not contact Zephyr.

One, which was the less alarming reason, Zephyr was in a place forbidding any type of communication. This reason would also explain why Kyran could barely sense his presence. Two, which was the more alarming reason, Zephyr was in a very precarious situation where his life force could barely hold on making the bond between them through the Sigil fail.

This was one of the fail safe of the Sigil that favored the one in-control.

While the one in-control a.k.a. the master, shared some of his abilities and magic energy to his Sigil, further strengthening the latter, if the latter was in the brink of death, the mark would weaken and slowly disappear. This would ensure that even if the Sigil's body was taken by the opposing side and was inspected, no trace of the person being marked would appear.

With an expression turning colder by the second, Kyran's eyes turned dark purple as he used his magic sense to scan the 30,000 meter radius of space around him.

He could scan further than that, but he did not want to miss anything so he limit it to this number. There was also a chance another mage with a high magic sense was scanning the area and if the two clashes, they might find his trace.

Kyran's magic sense spread out almost in an instant. With utmost concentration, he inspected every corner it touched.

In 30,000 meter radius, his magic sense barely reached the area near the temple he and Zephyr had met. The place was currently surrounded by make-shift tents as well as mobile magic turrets and small towers with restraining arrays. The number of people also exceeded a thousand. All of whom was at least at the Master level, with a few Exalted as the highest.

Kyran also noticed traces of skirmish nearby where magic fluctuations could still be felt.

He recognized the magic fluctuations were similar to the ones emitted by the Elite mages of the Templar Code, albeit they were far stronger.

This made Kyran's eyes flashed with murderous intent.

It appeared the Templar Code did not spare any expenses and manpower to deal with Zephyr. That was how important the rare stone of Shaiha were to them.

Kyran still had not found why they needed it, but regardless of their reason, if he found Zephyr's horn had more cracks than he remembered, he would not hesitate to make a detour and deal with the whole Templar Code first.

He would not tolerate anyone hurting one of his people. Compared to the Royal Family that had such profound backing at the moment, Kyran was more confident in dealing with the Templar Code by himself.

Currently, Kyran was sure Zephyr was still alive because the mark of the Sigil at the back of his hand still had the rune number two. Meaning the number of his Sigils were two, which represented Byron and Zephyr.

If Zephyr falls, or any of the two for that matter, then the number would drop.

Nevertheless, Zephyr being alive did not mean Kyran would let the Templar Code off lightly.

'Zephyr is likely inside the temple,' Kyran thought.

He then diverted his focus on the restraining array within the turrets and he frowned slightly.

Restraining Array calculation were not fixed. The Conclave's restraining array would differ from the Royal Army's even though they had the same effect. All of it was due to the materials used to create them.

However, the reason why Kyran frowned, he noticed that the formula in the Templar Code's restraining array were similar to the Royal Army's. He was familiar with their calculation because they had used it numerous times during his escape after they raided his clan.

From what Kyran remembered, the Templar Code had a research division of their own and their magic technology could rival the Royal Army's. Their leader was also ambitious and proud, wanting to create their own set of arrays, magic attack, and even items.

To see them use the Royal Army's array said a lot about their current relationship.

'No... the Royal Army has been assimilated by the Royal Family again, and there has already been some news about the Templar Code's partnership with them that is why they managed to get the rights on the Shaiha Ruins.'

Thinking of this, Kyran had more reason to deal with the Templar Code. This way he could cut off one of the the Royal Family's 'hands.'

The Royal Family already had too many hands to be honest. If Kyran did not deal with some of them as early as now, he would be overwhelmed even if he possessed great magic.

Because his two greatest weaknesses were resources and manpower.

If Kyran could save his clan, it would alleviate his weakness somehow. Unfortunately, the Royal Family knew that and were already preparing to deal with them.

Kyran had been restraining himself to go save his family. But he knew he had to deal with it one step at a time. He bought some time for his family by using Tyr as the bait, and right now, Zephyr's matter was urgent.

He had to take Zephyr out and keep his promise of protecting the Shaiha. He already had an idea how he would do the latter, but was not sure it would work. Nevertheless, he would still do it.

After a few minutes of studying the Templar Code's makeshift camp, Kyran closed his eyes and also kept in mind the locations of all the Exalted mages he had sensed.

Taking a deep breath, Kyran opened his eyes which glowed silver.

The first time he had come here, he had not used his Void magic but his Draconic magic.

This time, he would also do the same. It was time to lay out a bait to get the Templar Code running on circles.

He used Tyr as the bait for the Royal Family. This time, he would use another one, which would be the mysterious masked man.

At that very moment, in one of the larger makeshift tents, a beautiful woman with short sandy blonde hair and olive green eyes wearing a full-body gold armor stood in front of a long table.

The woman was none other than Freya, the leader of the Templar Code's Elite Team.

On top of the table lay a crude map of that showed the Shaiha Ruins.

A projection was currently shown at the center of the map where the temple was located. In the projection, it showed countless silhouettes of tents, turrets, towers and the cave where the temple was located.

Inside the tents, there were green lights moving around. There were also some moving about outside the cave. These were clearly a live projection of all the members of the Templar Code.

Within the silhoutte of the cave, there was a faint red light and it was currently flickering as if whoever it depicted were on a verge of death.

A man in his mid-twenties with buzz-cut light brown hair and dark brown eyes, entered the room. He also had a scar under his chin. Before it was small cross-shaped scar, but now there was another thin scar that overlapped it making it looked like an asterisk.

It looked like the scar was new.

"Lady Freya," he greeted with a salute.

Freya looked up and nodded her head, "You've arrived."

"Yes."

More than a week ago, the leader of the Templar Code had ordered Freya to pull out her team from the Shaiha Ruins. However, after attending the meeting in Meliora, a new order had been made placing Freya as the new leader in-charged of the Shaiha Ruins.

Apparently, they received a new order from the emperor, telling them to harvest more of the rare stone as soon as possible.

After that, the Templar Code had spared no cost in finding the Quilin, even mobilizing most of the newly developed mobile turrets and restraining towers.

When they could not find the Quilin, they focused on destroying the temple's defensive array. They had succeeded in destroying two of its layers, a few days ago and finally the Quilin was forced to show itself.

As they had expected, he had been hiding inside the temple.

Soon after the Quilin had appeared, a two-day long battle ensued.

At first they could not hold a candle against the Quilin's offensive. However, once its stamina dropped, they finally had the upper hand.

Because of this, they managed to destroy another layer of the temple's defensive array.

Then the Quilin emitted a glowing light which reinforced the temple's defensive array.

When it did it, Freya managed to land a fatal blow on the Quilin's chest, forcing it to fall back inside the temple.

Now, four days later, the Quilin had remained inside the temple and no matter what they did to the defensive array, they could not seem to put a scratch on it anymore.

Freya already guessed that what the Quilin had performed to reinforce the temple's defensive array had something to do with its life force.

Now it appeared, as long as the Quilin inside was alive, they would not be able to destroy the array.