Uhtred instinctively wanted to snap his head in the direction of the two red dots, but he caught himself at the last second, forcing his posture to remain perfectly slack.

He kept his expression light, continuing to scroll through the interface as if nothing had changed.

The fact that he hadn’t sensed a single bit of these individuals yet pointed him toward a glaring fact:

Either these two intruders were exceptionally high-leveled enough to bypass his heightened perception attribute, or they were operating under the cover of a camouflage device similar to the one he had pulled off the Homo erectus scout back in Zone 0.

They clearly didn’t realize they had been compromised the moment they crossed his territory. Uhtred wasn’t about to give away his advantage, especially considering the constraints of the local space.

The entire span of his newly claimed territory was only 2,000 square meters. While that was large enough for his first territory, it was not a large enough area that a sudden shift in his expression would not be spotted by a perceptive person standing on the other end.

He glanced up from the translucent screen toward Dennis. The scholar was still thoroughly engrossed in his surroundings, his keen eyes scanning the distant treeline where the faint, shimmering boundary of the system barrier warped the natural light.

"This is fascinating," Dennis murmured in interest. "It feels as though the barrier is interacting with light in unique ways to keep the interior hidden..."

Diya and Minh Quan were equally intrigued, their attention fixed on the edges of the territory. Even Zara seemed to be observing the invisible lines with a rare trace of idle interest.

As the blue-eyed girl’s gaze flitted around, she caught Uhtred’s eyes. And in that brief microsecond, Uhtred let his mask slip just enough to pass across a hard, silent message.

Zara picked up on it instantly. Her eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. Without missing a beat, she casually turned her back to Uhtred, letting out a soft, dismissive scoff.

"It’s just a translucent wall," she muttered, her tone deliberately flat and bored as she began walking back toward the dungeon. "There’s nothing so special about it. I’m going back into the dungeon to rest."

Diya and Minh Quan opened their mouths, looking as if they wanted to retort immediately, but their eyes caught the look in Zara’s eyes before they then flitted their gaze over to Uhtred, seeing something similar.

The two weren’t quite as fluid with their acting, their bodies freezing for a split second, but they caught themselves quickly.

Diya feigned a heavy, theatrical yawn, leaning slightly against Minh Quan’s arm.

"Actually, she’s right, it’s not that special," Diya said, then rubbed her temples and groaned.

"I taxed myself too hard earlier. I still need to rest. I think I’ll be heading in with her too."

"I’ll take her back inside," Minh Quan added immediately. He spoke in his usual Vietnamese language, but his intent was clearly understood by the others.

Dennis, who was still standing beside Uhtred, was by far the most adept of the three. Even without turning his head to look at the exchange, his high intelligence had enabled him to immediately sense the weirdness of the entire dialogue exchange.

He knew something was wrong.

Maintaining his enthusiastic, scholarly persona without a single hitch, he continued his observation of the surroundings, naturally strolling in a wide arc as Uhtred continued to wave his hand in the air, scrolling through an interface only he could see.

Eventually, Dennis also called out that he was going into the dungeon, and Uhtred responded naturally, heading after the scholar.

The two turned and began walking toward the glowing portal.

As they walked, Uhtred kept his focus entirely locked onto the periphery of his vision where the territory panel remained open.

The two red dots hadn’t budged an inch. They were still perched silently near the crest of the hill, right at the edge of his two-thousand-square-meter boundary.

Because of the hill’s natural, sloping topography, the moment Uhtred and Dennis stepped toward the indented face of the portal entry, the line of sight from the crest was completely cut off by the curve of the earth.

The exact moment he was certain the hill fully shielded them from the spies, right before they entered the dungeon portal, Uhtred clamped a heavy hand down on Dennis’s shoulder.

His relaxed expression vanished instantly, his eyes turning cold and sharp.

"We have spies watching the camp," he whispered. "They’re hiding right on this hill above us. You guys stay inside the dungeon and be ready for anything. The moment you step through, tell Zara that under no circumstances is anyone to follow me out. I’m going to loop around and trail them."

Dennis’s eyes hardened, but he didn’t waste a single word on useless questions. He simply gave a firm nod and stepped through the glowing blue light of the dungeon portal.

Uhtred stood alone in the shadow of the indentation, his gaze fixed back on his translucent territory map.

The two spies remained entirely stationary. At this point, he was roughly sixty percent certain he was dealing with Homo erectus scouts.

It was the only logical conclusion.

Unless the wilderness of Zone 1 was suddenly crawling with high-level human ascenders like Zara, there shouldn’t be anyone capable of masking their presence from his perception this effectively.

It certainly wasn’t Max Wagner or any of his men. None of them possessed the level of stealth required to remain invisible to a Level 17 Pathfinder.

Of course, without visual confirmation, he couldn’t be entirely certain, which was why he kept a margin of doubt open for a rogue human powerhouse.

But he chose to act on the primary assumption that these were ancient variants utilizing the exact same cloaking gear he had encountered during the initial Zone 0 skirmishes.

Remaining entirely within the blind spot of the hill face, Uhtred opened the interface for the multiversal store. His eyes traveled rapidly down the list of stealth gear until he located the entry for a cloaking device.

The cheapest option available was an identical model to the one he had stripped from the Homo erectus scout days prior — a full-body cloak designed to bend light wavelengths around the user’s mass while also suppressing cosmic essence disturbances to an extent.

However, the price tag made his jaw tighten slightly.

100 multiversal tokens?

It was a staggering sum for a basic piece of cloth, costing exactly as much as a standard 1,000 square meter territory landmarker.

To make matters worse, the description explicitly stated that the light-bending fiber required a continuous internal fuel source to maintain its effect.

The store listed a separate item for this purpose. Something called a "Cosmic Essence Crystal" capable of powering the cloak for thirty hours before being fully expended.

The cost for the crystal alone was another whopping 50 multiversal tokens.

The total investment would cost 150 multiversal tokens, a cash value Uhtred currently did not possess in liquid currency.

While his name sat proudly at the top of the Global Wealth Rankings with a staggering valuation of 25,105 tokens, that number calculated the net worth of his entire asset, including the raw evaluation of the regional dungeon core itself.

Right now, his true cash balance sat at exactly 100 multiversal tokens.

He looked at the cloak again, his thoughts racing. He didn’t buy the essence crystal. He purchased the [Basic Camouflage Cloak] alone for 100 tokens, watching his liquid balance instantly drop to zero. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

The gray, shifting fabric materialized directly into his palms. He threw the heavy cloth over his body and fastened it properly with the straps it came with.

The moment he did, the fabric began aggressively trying to leach cosmic essence from his body to spark its cloaking mechanism.

Uhtred didn’t panic, though. In fact, he was kind of happy it was doing this. He focused his mind, urging his cosmic essence into the lining of the fabric.

The cloak hissed softly, the gray color instantly dissolving into the air as the light-bending effect activated with his essence.

Thanks to his primordial grade core, his passive essence draw from the environment was vastly superior to anything a standard ascender could manage.

He could feel the drain on his reserves, but it was well within his tolerance levels.

He calculated he could comfortably fuel the cloak for several hours using his own passive generation before the constant tax would begin to affect his recovery rate.

He checked the territory panel one final time. The two red dots were still lingering on the ridge.

Taking full advantage of their blind spot, Uhtred turned away from the dungeon entrance and moved with silent steps around the base of the hill in a wide arc to come up behind the two spies...