[Are you sure it's here?]
Lukas stared at the entrance to the teacher's dorms with his face twisting in a sense of unease.
It was one thing to follow his junior's tracking skills throughout the academy, but to invade into a zone occupied strictly by the teachers?
While not exactly forbidden, doing so was sure to draw everyone's attention! And with this entire excursion being no more than a result of Lukas' whim, now that the stakes suddenly skyrocketed, he couldn't help but hesitate.
[I'm sure.]
Ludwig's telepathic message rang true, full of certainty and confidence that knew no bounds.
While he had no idea what it was that he saw, his instincts led the two of them as if they followed a guiding line, as if his technique… or maybe a constitution he didn't even know about, allowed Lukas' young junior to peer into the unknown that somehow managed to elude their eyes.
'Even if she's a master of hiding and movement, it will be all for nothing once she steps through a place narrow enough,' Lukas thought, taking his sweet, sweet time to consider his options.
This wasn't just his private adventure, but a chase that he dragged Ludwig onto, making the weight of potential responsibility for anything that could go wrong all the heavier. And with the risk of such in mind, he had little to no other choice but to restrain his junior's eagerness a bit.
Ultimately, he went for the time-consuming but safer option of the dormitory's back entrance. He then doubled down on it, opting out of using the building's main staircase and choosing the more remote option located even further out of their way.
'It costs us time and makes it relatively difficult for Ludwig to follow the traces, but…' Lukas thought as he looked around the deserted rear of each floor's main passageway, 'but it's better than getting teachers' eyes on us, especially when we have nothing but a hunch to follow.'
Thankfully, even after taking such a roundabout way, Ludwig somehow managed to keep track of the trail, his senses, instinct, divine talent or whatever it was that allowed him to track their target, still refused to let it go.
It was thanks to this weird talent that the two of them managed to find their way all the way to the top floor of the dormitory, only to then navigate through the simple, mesh-like set of corridors to arrive at the most remote and desolate corner of the whole building.
'Just what in all hell would she be hoping to steal from a place like this?' Lukas thought, the more weirded out the further into this whole mess he ventured.
[I can sense it somewhere near…] Ludwig telepathically announced, not daring to raise his voice in fear of breaking through Lukas' covert technique.
By no means was it some sort of a legendary spell or an ability lost to time and only retained throughout his bloodline.
Just like every other spell in existence, it was well within the limits described by its class—reaching only the middling rank amidst the third-ring active enchantments.
The one and only reason why Lukas put as much faith in it as he did, was because of how much of an edge case it was—a technique that could be disturbed by almost anything, even something as fleeting and ambiguous as a lapse in his emotions.
It was thanks to this massive trade-off that its effects reached far beyond what one would expect from the third-ring spell, allowing the two of them to traverse the dormitory unseen, not spotted even by the few teachers they were unlucky enough to stumble upon.
Yet, as they slouched down at the very edge of the most remote corridors in the whole dormitory, with only the steady movements of their chests as they breathed to prove they were not just an inanimate and perfectly colored sculpting, Lukas could do nothing but think.
And the more he did of that, the more he allowed his desire to catch the untraceable phantom thief and finally gain a proper proof of both her existence and, more importantly, evidence of her identity that no one would be able to refute… the less confidence he felt in Ludwig's nose picking up on anything even remotely related to the phantom thief case.
There were no fluctuations of mana suggesting the use of a spell. No traces of aura were to be seen or felt to indicate a cultivator passed through. None of the marks left by all the other ways of utilizing the divine energy could be seen, felt, perceived, or spotted in any way or form.
'Unless she uses the same level of methods as this obsolete spell of mine, that is,' he thought, gritting his teeth as he forced himself to remain calm, still and as observant as his brain would allow.
A decision that, mere moments later, came to pay off in the best way possible when Lukas managed to, with his very own eyes, notice a shadow suddenly materialize roughly halfway down the corridor, seemingly out of thin air.
The scary part of it?
This was no technique, spell or any sort of divine method.
Somehow, the girl's clothes, weird pattern of steps and constant, slight twisting of her body managed to obscure the outline of her frame to the point where Lukas, even if he stared right at her, simply wouldn't recognize her from the background of his vision!
Heck!
The very moment he blinked his eyes in a restrained shock, he lost track of her again!
Now, however, with his suspicions confirmed, he knew better than to doubt whatever it was that made him follow up on Ludwig's sense.
[Good job, man] Lukas telepathically spoke to his junior, his message filled with warmth and appreciation. [From the look of things… you might be the one to catch the legendary phantom thief in the act!]
It was this careless message that sparked enough excitement in Lukas' junior that his hiding spell nearly broke!
The shadowy figure vanished once again, perfectly merging with the background as if the phantom thief sensed the two of them through the lapse in Lukas' technique, freezing still as she patiently searched through the whole area.
A several, extremely long moments later, however, the shadows moved again.
And strangely enough, before Lukas' very own eyes, whatever physical art she was using to obscure herself from his vision… started to fall apart.
He first spotted her pretty much exactly halfway through the corridor, the outline of her body existing for the shortest of moments, appearing as no more than a glitch of reality, an effect of a speck of dirt falling within Lukas' eye.
A short moment later, however, her technique grew sloppy enough for Lukas to train his eyes on the target, now perfectly able to follow it, even if not without some difficulty in the task.
But things continued to get weirder and weirder, as the phantom thief's abilities continued to degrade with every step she took, making her pretty much casually walk up to a specific door, no longer even trying to hide her presence and appearing more like a weirdly dressed student whose hunched frame made it seem as if she was obediently appearing on her master's doorstep to receive some sort of harsh scolding!
Her moves, once so nible his eyes literally couldn't follow them, now turned unreasonably static, forced... weary, as if some sort of invisible and undetectable force started to greatly weigh her down.
'What the hell is going on?'
This wasn't the performance Lukas expected from one of the academy's legends!
Not only did it feel like a let-down from a figure he once considered a proper rival, it also spoiled the fun he had tracking her and the sense of achievement of successfully doing so!
At the same time, however, this weirdness sparked a burning question.
'Just what makes her act like that?' Lukas asked himself right as the girl froze by the very doors she appeared to be about to raid, only to grind to a complete halt, for some reason refusing to go through with the very last step of approaching her target.
A question that ultimately remained unanswered when she suddenly rose up… only to push the door open and-with a look of shock and terror so profound, Lukas could see her even through her face mask-fall through the doorway and into the very room she was about to raid!