IN THE EYE

A sharp pang cut into Yuri's heart. Somehow, she inwardly knew that these words were the truth. Her sister had died, and that bastard couldn't even take the time to look her in the eye and tell her that he had failed to protect her.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, her chest felt like it was being ripped apart, and her blood felt like molten metal in her veins, pulsing about and making her organs feel as though they were being seared from the inside out. And yet, that feeling was only a reprieve from the heart-hollowing pain.

What was he doing? Couldn't he resurrect everyone else easily? Why hadn't he resurrected Aina? Was he truly that cruel?

Yuri grit her teeth so hard she felt as though her jaws alone might shatter this rattling mortal of hers.

The cruelty this man was capable of was beyond her expectations. Or was it? This was exactly what she should expect from him. She could still remember those callous eyes. She had known how Leonel would respond to Aina's outpouring before anyone else had; she could feel the darkness within him.

That day, on Planet Luxnix, when the Selection was taking place and Leonel was slotted to battle Aina, she had never expected that Aina would do such a thing, or else she would have done everything in her power to stop her.

In the past, she had never made an effort to stop Leonel's attempts at wooing Aina because she felt that they were people from two different worlds. One was a quarterback, and the other was a Five Star Health Profession. One had a father born to a world that the other couldn't imagine, and the other was a normal human boy who couldn't even live on the surface. One was a talent destined to bring the Brazinger family to their knees, and the other couldn't even fathom what a family like the Brazinger family was capable of.

In her views, he might even become an Invalid the moment the Metamorphosis descended, and it wouldn't be something to even worry about. But even when he didn't become an Invalid, his reaction at seeing Aina kill was all she needed to see.

Aina was too focused on revenge for her mother, and there wasn't time to care for all of these other things, especially not the coddling of the feelings of a grown man.

However, as time passed, she slipped further and further away, and the feelings of a high school crush she thought would fade with time instead became stronger.

It all culminated in that day when Aina told that man the truth, poured out her heart to him, described every secret little moment that she had kept to herself until that moment, secrets that she hadn't even told her own sister...

And how had that man responded?

So what.

Those were his exact words.

She could see it coming. She wanted to scream out for Aina to stop, to save those feelings for someone who was worthy, and yet it was already too late.

She had to stand there and watch as her sister's heart crumbled to ashes. And then, she watched as that night, she gathered herself up, cleaned away her tears, and put on a dress she didn't even like to wear, just to go and support the man who had ripped her heart out the very next day.

Yuri didn't have words for how furious that made her, didn't have the capacity to express exactly how filled with rage and fury she was.From .

She wanted him to die, she wanted his body to be ripped limb from limb, for him to withstand unimaginable torment and spend the rest of his wretched life kneeling before the grave of her sister.

The thoughts steamrolled as she imagined what could have happened to Aina. Why would she not be alive if the man had the capability? What cruelty had she experienced? Could he have lashed out at her in rage due to that father of his? Could they have gotten into another argument and he once again cut her off, not worrying for her life and death? What kind of torture had she experienced at his hands.

The wild thoughts just kept churning and churning until her entire body seemed to emit a dense, black fog, the Forces in her vicinity turning over with an almost solid darkness.

...

Leonel breathed heavily. In order to deal with an existence on the level of this Overlord, he had to lean on the Dream Plane to be able to read and react to her movements, but doing so while keeping a portion of himself lucid drained even his vast stores of Dream Force quickly.

The moment he had shattered the large-scale Force Art, he had felt a wave of fatigue collide into him like a truck. But he had to withstand the assault of the Spirituals right afterward.

The Segmented Cube in this state was an excellent Force Art destroyer, but its defenses still weren't any better. Having thrown himself into the thick of battle, and within the time to reverse knowing that the Overlord was already upon him, he had no choice but to stand out and take action himself, pulling on the strength of Raj and the others.

Now, he had to fight while protecting the Segmented Cube to his back. Although it would be easier to turn it back into a treasure he could wear as a finger sleeve like he usually did, if he did that he would be cut off from the strength of his squadron of ten, and by then, he would find himself dying in a single strike to this enraged Overlord.

But Leonel wasn't a fool, he had prepared for this exact thing.

With the Overlord occupied dealing with him, the rest of the Spirituals, or rather Half Spirituals, were vulnerable.

He didn't like relying on Yuri, but she was the only one under his command with the sensory capacity to do this. In addition, as a Half Spiritual he had yet to be exposed to be under his command, when she acted, the Spirituals Religion wouldn't even see him coming.

Leonel's ear twitched and he sneered inwardly. Here it came.

A beam shot over from the distance, and in the next instant, the confident Leonel froze.

He looked down at his chest, a blood hole the size of a bowl having formed.