Leonel stood silently for a moment then took a step forward.
Aina gazed toward his back with a complicated look. Why would he allow her to come here? It can't be that he really trusted her to this extent, right?
But when she thought about it, what other choice did Leonel have? She sprung this sudden mission on him without warning and even plainly said it was in the area his Paradise Island might have fallen.
Let's assume for a moment that he didn't come here? What then? What if he waited until he separated from Aina to come to this place? What would those observing him think of this?
It was obvious. Their first instinct would be to think that he was hiding something.
However, Aina's actions gave him a good opportunity. There was a level of spontaneity that made everything seem natural. He really seemed like a boy who was looking for the remains of his father.
When Aina analyzed things to this point, she found a corner and crossed her legs in meditation.
Of course, she had no idea that this was only part of the truth. There were ultimately still many ways Leonel could have avoided this outcome. He could have made her wait outside under the pretext he wanted to grieve alone, for example.
The ultimate reason he allowed her to come here was because he trusted her. It was as simple as this.
Whether that trust was due to his rosy colored glasses or if she was really worthy of it, maybe even Leonel himself didn't know.
Leonel noticed that Aina had closed her eyes and had stopped paying attention to her surroundings, but he didn't say much about it. He continued forward and eventually stopped at the pedestal furthest to the left.
He reached forward through the barrier of energy. He had thought that it would stop him, but surprisingly, it didn't. His hand passed right through as though it was nothing more than air.
Leonel picked up the unpolished ring. As expected, it had a texture similar to an uneven coat of dry paint.
After observing it for a while, he couldn't find anything special about it. He even got the vague feeling that it wasn't even in front of him despite the fact he was very much aware that it was in his hand.
Suddenly thinking of something, Leonel stopped observing with his eyes and focused all his attention on his hands. Maybe he could find something similar to the Force Art on the door handle?
But, Leonel was soon disappointed. No matter how he looked at it, this really was just a ring with a poor finish quality. Whoever made this thing really must have not cared for his craft very much.
'Wait…'
Just when Leonel was feeling stumped, he thought back to Montez teaching him how to use his spatial bracelet. What if this was a similar item?
'… Take control of my Internal Sight… Concentrate it… Imagine opening a door…'
The truth was that not everyone could use spatial treasures even if they had one on hand. To the current Earth, those who even had Internal Sight were a rare few. And, those who could control it were even fewer.
If Leonel had been willing to risk it and hid the existence of his spatial bracelet, it was unlikely anyone at Royal Blue Fort would be able to call him out on it.
Just when Leonel was about to succeed, he felt a BOOM resound in his mind.
Pain ravaged his thoughts and blood dripped from his nose.
He fell backward in a daze, crashing to the ground.
To an outside observer, he was staring blankly at the ceiling, not even reacting to his head rebounding off the hard floors. However, if one looked closely, his eyes were completely vacant as though he had already died.
Shocked by the sudden noise, Aina's eyes flashed open. When she saw Leonel on the ground, she shot up and to his side, but no matter what she did, she couldn't seem to wake him up.
While Leonel's body was being violently shaken by Aina, his mind was in a completely different place. He felt as though he had stepped foot into a hellish world. No, he might not even disagree if one said this was hell itself.
Above, clouds of black-red rolled, the low rumbling of thunder beating against his ears repeatedly.
In the distance, these clouds formed vertical swirls of cyclones and tornadoes, touching the ground like demonic omens of greed and gluttony.
The ground was covered in sands of grey and black. However, these specks of earth looked more like the world had been covered in a thin layer of dust rather than being an actual part of the world itself.
In the distance, Leonel could see the ground begin to roll into small hills. The further into the distance he looked, these hills gradually grew in size, eventually becoming small mountains. In the end of it all, there was a mountain of black so tall that even the rumbling clouds above were pierced through by it.
Still, this wasn't the end of it.
What caught Leonel's attention the most in this hellish place weren't the tornado clouds, the suffocating atmosphere, or even the impossibly tall mountains. What he couldn't take his eyes off of were the countless polearms pierced into the ground.
Like a densely packed graveyard, countless spears were dotted across the world. Some of them were broken, others were whole, some had dried blood caking their polearms, while yet others were spotless.
Leonel stood in a daze for a long while before he finally licked his dry lips. What the hell was this place?
Leonel tried to take a step forward, but suddenly found that a mountain was weighing on his shoulders.
Sweat fell from his brows as he gritted his teeth, eventually struggling forward by just a single step. However, even though he succeeded, it felt like half of his body's stamina had been drained.
Leonel reached to the side to find something to steady his wobbling knees, eventually catching hold of the shaft of a wooden spear. However, the result was completely outside his expectations.
Another BOOM resounded in his mind.
He suddenly found himself in another world, racing through a jungle.
A single layer of beast skin covered his lower half, his bare torso rippling with muscle as he hopped from tree to tree with nothing but a wooden spear in his hand.
What seemed to be a saber toothed tiger raced toward him from below, roaring as though completely enraged.
A laughter left Leonel's lips, but he somehow felt that it wasn't a laughter that came from him.
Completely unable to control his body, his free hand caught onto a vine and swung downward in a wild but controlled arc.
At the perfect moment, he let go, his spear cocking backward as a savage grin coated his features.
Unable to react, the back of the saber tooth tiger's head was completely pierced through, its last roar being followed by a gurgling of blood.
Leonel found himself sitting on the tiger's massive head. He pulled the spear from the beast's skull, savagely licking the blood that drenched his spear and palm.
A moment later, Leonel jolted awake. He suddenly felt something heavy on his chest, making him think that he might have returned to that hell scape graveyard of spears, but he soon realized that the pressure wasn't heavy enough.
"… Aina?"
Leonel frowned, realizing the weight on his chest came from a delicate fragrance that made his senses feel incomparably comfortable. When he noticed how soft the weight was, and even sensed that his chest was a bit wet, he realized that this 'weight' was actually a sobbing girl.
"You…"
Aina looked up from Leonel's chest. Her amber eyes were puffy with tears, giving them a red hue that Leonel felt bad for thinking suited her. There was something about this crying Aina that made his heart stir uncontrollably.
He didn't even think before he hugged her, causing her to fall back into his chest.
"What happened?" Leonel asked, trying to appear soothing.
But, he couldn't have expected what happened next. In fact, he didn't even truly register what happened at all. It was just that he found it weird he was looking up at the ceiling again.
When Leonel landed on the ground again, he only barely registered a pair of slender legs walking by him as he slid across the floor. And, by the time he sat up, Aina was back in her corner with her eyes closed as though nothing had happened.
Leonel couldn't help but laugh.