The transition from the estate to the central sector was swifter than Alaric anticipated.
The freezing winter air bit into their skin as they traversed the stone-paved streets, finally halting before a monstrously large, imposing stone establishment.
The grand architecture loomed over the plaza, dominated entirely by a massive, towering monument at its center: the statue of Vtle, the legendary founder of the Western Sector.
A dense crowd of commoners, laborers, and mid-tier merchants stood scattered around the plaza, their faces turned upward, gazing at the cold stone visage of the founder with a mixture of historic reverence and weary compliance.
Alaric and Tylor walked smoothly past the spectators, drawing no unnecessary attention to themselves.
As they approached the deep shadows of the building's arched entrance, they reached into their coats.
With practiced ease, Alaric pulled out his dark, familiar wood and bamboo mask, tying it securely across his face. Beside him, Tylor unrolled a thick, dark cloth mask, wrapping it tightly over his features until only his sharp eyes remained visible.
Thus concealed, they stepped through a side door and entered a white, ordinary-looking corridor.
It was a passage where no ordinary citizen ever entered.
The lack of foot traffic wasn't due to guards, but rather the sheer, suffocating display of wealth that lined the walls.
The long corridor was heavily covered in luxury and historical items: ancient, priceless tapestries hung from the molding, gold-trimmed frames encased massive oil paintings of forgotten eras, and glass cases showcasing relic-tier artifacts stood at regular intervals.
It was an environment designed to intimidate the common man into turning back. But the two Arcanists moved forward without breaking stride.
At the very end of the luxury-laden corridor, the white walls gave way to a hidden, spiraling staircase leading sharply downward.
As Alaric's boots hit the bottom step, his senses were instantly assaulted.
The atmosphere down here was entirely different.
A unique, pungent smell hung thick in the air a heavy mixture of crushed dried herbs, bitter chemical compounds, and the faint, sweet scent of metallic preservatives. But beneath the olfactory strain, Alaric could clearly feel the subterranean thrum of conduit everywhere.
The ambient air was thick with it, vibrating against the skin of his face and humming in perfect alignment with the anchor behind his ribs.
The underground establishment opened up into a vast, hidden market bazaar. Dozens of small, discrete shops were carved directly into the stone walls all around the perimeter, their counters illuminated by dim, flickering gas lamps.
Roughly ten to fifteen people
all wearing various masks, heavy hoods, or veils to hide their identities were walking or standing in quiet clusters before the different storefronts.
No one spoke above a harsh whisper.
The transactions down here were silent, mechanical, and dangerous, with the masked clientele systematically buying specialized medicines, volatile raw extracts, and refined conduit elixirs to stabilize their own internal currents before the approaching eclipse.
"Only ten to fifteen." Alaric murmured.
Those are the only people in the whole Valthokar who really know what this world really is.
Tylor grabbed Alaric's hand and moved forward. He stopped at a shop where one man, who was wearing an orange woodish mask, was looking at pills.
The man glared at Alaric as if trying to find out Alaric's identity. Alaric didn't meet his eyes, he focused on the medicines.
In front of Alaric, hundreds if not thousands of different medicines in different forms were presented, all with different colors: some were bluish, some were greenish, and some were black. A man with a long black mask was sitting there.
Tylor opened his mouth. "Give me fifty two pills , fifty two bandage and fifty two bottle sprays and twenty six of each in one box and twenty six of each in other."
The man nodded, as it was a usual order.
Tylor leaned toward Alaric and whispered, "Twenty six for me and twenty six for you."
Alaric nodded silently. He looked in the direction where the man with the orange mask was standing. He was still there, looking at the medicines. But he threw the medicine back and walked away.
After five to ten minutes, Alaric had received the medicines as he asked Tylor, "How are we going to take this outside in that crowd."
Tylor observed Alaric as if he were speaking something weird. "Teleportation, obviously."
"And how ?"
"I don't know if you know the rules of teleportation but it's heavily risky last time I did because if officials would have arrived in the cathedral we were gone."
"I didn't ask you to justify yourself or justify the loophole just answer how and why?"
"We will teleport the medicines back to your house."
"I asked how?"
Tylor shifted his weight, his eyes narrowing slightly behind his dark cloth mask. He leaned closer to Alaric, his voice dropping into a low, clinical murmur that FMT barely carried over the ambient, heavy hum of conduit vibrating through the subterranean market.
"Look closely at the box in your hands," Tylor instructed, nodding toward the heavy wooden container holding the twenty-six sets of pills, bandages, and sprays. "Every Arcanist has a Lumen Siphon that acts as an anchor behind their ribs. I don't know the specific properties of your blade, Alaric, but the basic rule of dead matter remains the same across all conduits. It can be converted into a weightless frequency."
Alaric adjusted his grip on the container, feeling the subtle subterranean thrum of the medicines interacting with his internal pulse.
"Teleportation of objects follows that exact same logic, but with a different variable," Tylor continued. "We aren't physically ripping these items through space with raw strength. That would tear the molecules apart and leave us with useless dust. Instead, we use the conduit already infused inside these medicines as a bridge."
Tylor reached out, his gloved fingers tapping the lid of Alaric's box.
"I am going to channel my own conduit into the box I purchased. By matching my frequency to the internal energy of the items, I can temporarily dissolve their physical density into weightless particles, very similar to how any Arcanist shatters their weapon back into their chest."
Alaric's mind instantly flashed back to the shattered ruins of the St. Order Cathedral. He remembered the excruciating pain, the terrifying sensation of half his face, one hand, and a portion of his lower leg missing, and the feeling of his consciousness drowning in a bizarre, incoherent void before waking up. He remembered how Tylor had grabbed his collar to vanish from the scene just before the official authorities arrived.
"Last time, at the cathedral," Alaric whispered, his voice cutting sharply through the mask. "You didn't just move objects. You moved me. I was practically half-dead, my limbs were completely missing, and my mind was entirely fractured. If the process is just about dissolving density, how did I survive that transit without becoming a corpse?"
Tylor's sharp eyes locked onto Alaric's brown ones, a grim seriousness settling into his gaze.
"Because you were only using conduit partially, Alaric. Your body had fractured under the strain of a foreign anchor. When I grabbed your collar, I had to force an immediate, high-risk biological displacement."
He continued, "I converted your remaining energy signature into a current and pulled it through the conduit network directly to your bedroom. If the Crown officials had intercepted that current mid-transit, our frequencies would have been permanently blotted out from the registry."
Tylor pulled his hand back from the box, his expression hidden but his tone unyielding.
"Moving living tissue requires a massive sacrifice of perception or energy to stabilize the coordinates. It's why I told you it was heavily risky: one wrong calculation, and your mind would have been permanently severed from your physical shell while your flesh dissolved into the void. You were lucky your consciousness snapped back at all."
"And the medicines?" Alaric asked, his knuckles whitening against the wood.
"Dead matter doesn't have a soul or a consciousness to lose," Tylor answered flatly. "They don't fight the transit. I will anchor the coordinate baseline to the interior of your estate, a layout my mind already knows perfectly. I will dissolve their density here, let the current flow through the subterranean network, and force them to solidify right on your desk. No risk of biological mutilation, and no trail for the crowd upstairs to witness."
Alaric looked at him, processing everything Tylor had explained.
It was then that a question emerged: "Last time you didn't know where I lived then how?"
Tylor chuckled slowly. "Back at the cathedral I wasn't targeting your house. I was targeting you. Your anchor pulled us to the place where your conduit naturally resonated strongest."
Alaric glared at Tylor suspiciously. "I don't get it."
Tylor chuckled again. "You anchor is where...leave it..you have probably spend most amount of time in your bedroom where you feel safest right?"
"Yes."
"Exactly...so that conduit in your body just went where he feels safest."
Alaric nodded slowly, finally getting what Tylor meant.
But before Tylor could do the teleportation, Alaric asked again, "Then why anchors guides Arcanist or pull them out from dangerous situation."
"It only works during teleportation...and arcanist is not a kid who needs someone everytime."
Alaric again nodded slowly and didn't say anything.
Tylor took the box of medicine from Alaric and closed his eyes. In just some seconds, both of the boxes dissolved into colourless particles and disappeared.
Tylor opened his eyes, looking at Alaric, and nodded. Both knew what this meant. The box had reached its destination, now it was time for them to reach their destination.
Alaric took a step on the staircase when Tylor whispered from behind, "You need to know about Modifications before the attempt."
Gradually, they both dissolved in the darkness.
After a minute, the same man with the orange mask stood nearby the staircase as he walked up the stairs. The moment he reached the door, he dropped his mask. He swung open the door silently.
At first, the crowd didn't notice a person coming out of a door. It was then that a person noticed him and immediately bowed.
The orange-masked man was none other than Volt Tor.