Explosions of gunpowder, tremors of the earth, torn screams, the thick scent of blood.
Memories like inseparable shadows.
Leonardo wandered through a terrible nightmare, consumed by those memories.
Whispers of resentment dug into his ears as if to devour him, bringing on loud tinnitus. It sounded like human screams, or perhaps rusty metal. Either way, it was not at all welcome.
Something hot flowed from his brain to his eyes and down his spine. The thick blood vessels connected to his heart shuddered at the tingling sensation. Soon after, it became extreme pain that spread throughout his body along the peripheral nerves. Along with this, his hazy consciousness, growing distant, dragged him back to the battlefield once again.
Standing in the midst of explosions that seemed to tear off his eardrums, his sense of reality often dulled. He would fall into a state of panic, unable to move a leg even as bombs rained down overhead.
At such times, the surroundings, turned into a mess, were strewn with fierce flames and droplets of blood. Pale hands approached through the red feast, grabbing at skin and hair.
His head tilted back, and his neck bent limply. As his airway opened, stinging dust rushed in. He coughed, and at some point, his breath was cut off. The white hands grasped his neck.
Leonardo, his pupils turned white and rolled back, twisted his body while making choking sounds. As he opened his mouth, gasping for air, his internal organs felt as if they were burning.
Along with this, the curse in his ears raised its voice. It screamed as if to snatch away his mind. In the midst of the overwhelming hallucinations, he could do nothing. He could only suffer, hoping for liberation.
"...do."
At that ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) moment, a familiar voice knocking on the door of his consciousness drew close. The faint sound was both unclear and familiar.
It seemed he’d had a similar experience before, and perhaps because of that, he was able to focus more easily than before. As he cleared away the unpleasant whispers one by one, the muffled sound became clear. His eyeballs, which were about to roll back, found their place. His clouded vision was clearing.
Soon, as he could breathe again—faintly, but still—the voice from earlier pierced his ears once more.
"Leonardo-!"
The moment he heard Hugo’s voice cutting through the roar, his half-closed golden eyes flew open.
"Huk, kuk-"
Along with a choked groan, the first things Leonardo became aware of were the golden flames surrounding him, the ominous roar like bombs exploding, the vast, uncontrolled mana—and his own two hands strangling his neck.
His hands were clenched so tightly that his entire forearms were tinged purple. Veins bulged grotesquely on the backs of his hands, and liquid, whether blood or saliva, ran from the corners of his mouth.
Bewildered, he tried to move his shoulders and forearms, but contrary to his will, his hands wouldn’t loosen at all. As they tightened even more, veins stood out on Leonardo’s temples and forehead. His confused face turned pale, almost ashen, and things that couldn’t become words spilled from between his stiffened lips.
On the verge of death from suffocation, Leonardo unknowingly raised his fingernails and clawed at his neck. His conscious self desperately hoped this would stop.
"Leo, calm down! You mustn't lose your mind!"
However, what freed him from this self-harm was not, unexpectedly, the nails digging into his nape. It was Hugo’s desperate voice, its source indistinguishable.
Sharp currents entangled with mana swirled all around. Because of this, the other man’s figure was barely visible in his dizzy vision. But as Hugo’s successive shouts shook his consciousness, Leonardo’s fingers, which hadn’t been moving, gradually twitched.
His fingertips, which had been holding on to the point of bending their joints, at some point fell away from his neck as if they’d been struck off.
"Ughk, heuk-, huk."
On the pale neck thus revealed were clear bruises shaped like handprints. However, unable to check his own neck, Leonardo only breathed roughly, his upper body heaving. Though the air was murky with volcanic ash and gas, even that small amount of oxygen was enough to let him think properly at last.
At the same time, as the events up until now flashed by like a kaleidoscope, his heated spine suddenly turned cold.
'Was I just trying to kill myself?'
All around, as if Armageddon had been cast, flame-filled rocks fell, bringing roars and shockwaves. Lava occasionally flickered through the black smoke screen, and the monsters’ screams and nature’s roar made the chaos feel real.
He couldn’t remember clearly what had happened after stabbing the mother body. He only vaguely recalled it returning to “nothingness” along with the sacred spear’s light, entering eternal rest.
But the problem started after that. As if it were the price for power, the sacred spear gradually expanded its domain beyond the range he could control. Then it began to draw in the things around it one by one, and eventually tried to swallow even him.
Struggling in the gap of distorted space-time, he barely managed to escape only after releasing his mana. After that, everything before his eyes was painted in darkness, and when his vision occasionally brightened, all that lingered was the image of himself unable to control his power—and Agrizendro’s voice chasing after him.
Leonardo, his face stricken as he traced those memories, wrapped his arms around himself and hunched over. His whole body trembled. Until just now, he’d thought the thing strangling his neck was the resentment following him, but he realized that wasn’t the case.
The ideological education constantly drilled into S-grade mages in the Imperial Army. One of its tenets was to take one’s own life if on the verge of going berserk. This was to minimize the damage that could occur from a mage with powerful mana losing control.
If the person going berserk was S-grade, simply restraining them would require an enormous amount of time and manpower. If casualties occurred in the process, it was common for mages of equal rank to clash in a bloody battle afterward, ending in annihilation.
Therefore, the Imperial Army’s policy was for the individual to take their own life before an accident occurred, meeting an honorable death. The self that had been thoroughly brainwashed by that doctrine had unconsciously strangled his own neck when he was on the verge of going berserk.
As that thought struck him, the consciousness he had just regained began to shake madly. He was terrified, not knowing when his hands might strangle his neck again. Fear crept in, consuming him from head to toe.
Only one thought entered Leonardo’s mind. He had to get as far away from people as possible and take the stabilizer Alec Siles had given him.
Having barely reached that decision, he hurriedly changed direction while rummaging through his inner pocket with trembling hands. Even in the midst of confusion, he had carefully tucked the glass bottle containing the pills into his inner pocket. He had even cast a reinforcement spell on it just in case, so he could only hope it had held up.
Just as Leonardo desperately wished, when he felt along his chest, his fingertips touched a rounded surface. A tingling thrill ran through his fingers, and he grabbed it and yanked it out.
Then, just as he urgently pulled the cork from the glass bottle,
Changgrang-!
With mana that was difficult to control and his own grip strength, the glass bottle shattered with a chilling sound.
His golden eyes, sinking into despair, widened fully, not even noticing that his lower eyelid had been scratched by a sharp fragment.
"Ah."
Letting out a sigh laced with futility, he immediately tried to snatch the pills slipping through his fingers.
As he threw himself downward in a fluster, following gravity, he was fortunate enough to spot a piece of the fallen pill caught in a crevice between rocks. More than half of it had been crushed and it was tiny, but he didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t take even that.
However, every situation turned unfairly against him. Fierce rocks pouring down from above mercilessly struck the spot where his gaze was fixed.
"Ah, no-!"
Kwaaang-!
His voice, filled with anguish, scattered and was buried under the roar. The spot, deeply dented as if bombarded in an instant, was left with only sizzling rock fragments. The white pill—his last hope—could no longer be found, not even a trace.
"...Ah."
Staring at the hope that had turned to dust before his eyes, Leonardo could only let out broken sounds. His bloodshot eyes wouldn’t stop trembling. He couldn’t even blink as stinging ash particles scratched at him.
Despair wrapped around his entire body, and he clutched his face and head with both hands. Shaking his head as if to deny reality, he dug his fingernails into his hair. At the same time, uncontrolled mana raged through his body. Finally, a desperate scream rose in his throat.
"Ugh, uk, uuk."
However, when his blocked throat opened, what surged up from his airway wasn’t a scream. Hot liquid gushed out. Unable to hold back the nausea, he gasped and vomited, and black clots of blood came up, soaking the front of his clothes.
He had never vomited this much blood even when severely injured. Watching his condition deteriorate uncontrollably, Leonardo, eyes wide with shock, covered his mouth with his hand.
With each drop of blood falling through his trembling fingers, his mind collapsed rapidly.
"Leo!"
Kwaaang-!
And at that moment, Agrizendro’s voice, which had only been heard from afar, now rang out from much closer.
With the destructive sound that erupted almost alongside the shout, Leonardo flinched and raised his head. The many rock chunks falling overhead were instantly half-destroyed, and through the gap, a man with gleaming blue eyes approached him.
Hugo’s figure, wrapped in swirling currents of mana, was so cut and scratched that it was hard to find an uninjured spot. As he seemed to rush toward him through the vortex around him, Leonardo began to flee deeper into the abyss to keep Hugo from getting close.
"Don't, don't come near!"
He was now on the verge of going berserk—or rather, already in a state no different from it. If he let someone come near him like this, he might unintentionally tear them apart with his mana.
He’d been stressed from the moment he entered the peninsula because of his uncontrolled ability. It wasn’t difficult for those memories to become a fuse, plunging him into panic from the fear of going berserk.
Leonardo, who had now lost trust in himself, didn’t stop even at Hugo’s shouts from behind.
His skin felt as if it were burning, and his vision flashed as he lost his mind. Just as all sorts of sensations mixed and jabbed at his sensitive nerves, his vision suddenly darkened rapidly.
