As Kenis, who had been tagging along, left with a cautious look, Leonardo was given a brief moment to smoke and think.
Now's not the time to worry about Nero. If he had any sense, he would’ve gotten out long ago. No, the problem lies on my side.
He had to decide now.
Whether to return and rejoin the 1st Battalion as things stood—or not.
Realistically, rejoining them made sense. But he was reluctant to give up just when it felt like he could catch the tail of whatever had seemed suspicious. No, not just reluctant—uneasy. It felt as though there were things here he couldn’t afford to miss.
And the current situation might be his chance to grasp them.
In fact, recently Leonardo had been receiving permission for individual time from Hugo and wandering far on his own. During that time, he hadn’t only been hunting monsters.
He had also been searching for ruins within the peninsula mentioned in reports from liaison officers who visited the commander and in the information directly shared by Hugo, as well as exploring the monsters’ food storage. And among the things he discovered in the process was an underground tunnel.
What he realized while going out for food with Kenis was that the place they were staying in was itself a vast cave carved beneath the ground. In other words, the crack that looked like a ceiling from inside was, from the outside, a crevice formed by the earth splitting open.
The reason his mana had nearly bottomed out before the collapse was ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) partly because he had overexerted himself in monster hunting without caring for his condition, but also because he had been conducting several experiments that constantly drained mana in these tunnels.
From those experiments, he learned that mana was suppressed here, and it was impossible to track the energy or mana of any target—which meant that if they stayed inside the tunnels, even if the 1st Battalion was searching for him and Kenis, they wouldn’t find them easily.
When he asked the scholar earlier how much time had passed since the mountain collapsed, the answer was roughly a day and twenty hours. In other words, even after nearly two days, the 1st Battalion still hadn’t found them.
This was an opportunity. A chance to roam freely, beyond their eyes.
He wondered—was there really a need to throw away such a chance and return to the ranks? Even if he went back, the tense atmosphere would remain, and he’d have to endure uncomfortable companionship under watchful eyes. In that arrangement, he alone would lose.
That’s right. Honestly, he was sick of it now.
Still, he couldn’t make a rash decision. He knew it wasn’t right to act independently on emotion alone in a situation where there had even been casualties.
Moreover, he’d heard there were missing persons on the Southern Branch’s side. If troops were diverted to search for him and Kenis, the delay would obviously hurt the subjugation effort. That wouldn’t benefit him either.
And because of the outsider’s attack, the 8th Platoon Leader had been caught in the explosion and lost consciousness, while Agrizendro had suffered a severe arm injury trying to protect himself and the others.
Leonardo had thought that as a strong commander, Agrizendro would escape well from the collapse site with the platoon leader—but the sight of his blood spraying everywhere as he tried to catch him, and the way he still reached out to him despite that, was still vivid in Leonardo’s mind.
The voice and gaze directed solely at him in that desperate moment continued to shake him. In the end, one phrase alone kept blocking his decision.
This time, I will wait for you.
“...So annoying.”
Leonardo ran a hand irritably through his hair. His fine brows furrowed.
What the hell was that supposed to mean? He probably didn’t even understand it properly, so why did it keep lingering in his head, interfering with his judgment? It was maddening. And yet, when he tried to shake it off, it wasn’t so easy.
With a self-mocking sigh, Leonardo flicked the burnt cigarette ash and raised the filter to his lips, then hesitated. The cigarette had burned too short while he’d been lost in thought.
Staring at the stub between his fingers in dissatisfaction, he lit a small flame and burned up the last of the tobacco. He reached for his pack, but it was empty.
As he crumpled the pack with an annoyed look, a cigarette suddenly appeared, pushed in from the side. Looking up, he saw the scholar grinning as he held it out.
Leonardo frowned slightly at the offered cigarette. When he didn’t take it, the scholar stuck it between his own lips, lit it, then pulled out another one of the same kind. With a smile he offered it again, saying,
“You’re too suspicious.”
It seemed he was trying to show the cigarette was untouched. Only after the scholar had taken a few puffs himself did Leonardo accept the one offered and put it to his mouth. The scholar’s lighter flared at the tip.
“What’s got you so annoyed?”
The sound of the lighter’s lid closing rang clear. The new cigarette didn’t taste bad. But the man who suddenly pretended to be friendly—he wasn’t so welcome.
After ignoring him a while, Leonardo finally turned and said bluntly,
“You.”
But the scholar was quick to answer.
“I’m honored.”
Leonardo disliked that smile and turned back to the front. The scholar, unfazed, kept his gaze fixed on his side profile.
His eyes trailed over the red lips and sharp jawline, then lingered on the neck circled by the black choker. Fixing on that discordant yet strangely fitting sight, he spoke.
“How’s your mana? Stabilized yet?”
At that, Leonardo, who’d been about to raise the filter again, froze and turned his head. The scholar smiled brightly, shifting his gaze from Leonardo’s neck to his eyes. Leonardo narrowed his own, unable to read the intent.
“It’s not like you didn’t know,” the scholar went on. “Your mana’s been leaking out.”
What Leonardo had discovered through his experiments in the tunnels wasn’t simply that mana was suppressed.
As this man said, his mana had been leaking all along. It had probably begun after he felt relieved, thinking the control instability had been resolved.
Mana leakage meant that if there was a mana tank to be filled for casting and the pipe connected to it had a hole, it would take twice the mana to fill. In that sense, this leaking pipe could be seen as another form of instability—one unable to hold steady.
In short, his control problem hadn’t been solved. It had only shifted—from an output larger than expected to an absurdly high cost to achieve the expected output.
The first time he realized this was when creating a divine beast, shaping mana to track monsters.
From a simple perspective, the hypothesis was that creating a divine beast underground, where mana was suppressed, would consume more than on the surface. But that turned out to be wrong.
Though there was a difference in casting speed between the two, the total mana used was the same. On the surface, mana was constantly wasted; underground, the leak was suppressed, so less was lost from his body.
Until then, he had only worried about his magic’s scale becoming larger than expected. Relieved that the output had normalized, he failed to notice the excess consumption until much later.
The problem now was—how had this man noticed what even he himself hadn’t right away?
“How do you know that?”
Leonardo’s wary gaze fell on him. The scholar only smiled and replied lightly,
“I researched mana rampage before, and I saw plenty of cases like yours. I’m very good at spotting abnormal mana flow. You probably had trouble controlling scale before, didn’t you? Am I right?”
“....”
“I happened to have a stabilizer left from back then. I tried it on you, and it seems to be working quite well.”
“...Stabilizer?”
Leonardo frowned. The scholar explained with a grin.
Though it couldn’t be distributed without official approval, he claimed it was safe, and many had seen results. His words went on, but to Leonardo, it sounded like he’d administered some unknown drug without consent.
When the scholar mimed pressing a syringe into his arm, Leonardo’s face paled. The man burst out laughing and added,
“Don’t worry. All I gave you was a stabilizer and a painkiller. The effects are real, aren’t they?”
