OPEN BOOK

"Will you?" Leonel asked lightly.

The indifference made Gregwyn squirm. He pushed and pulled, disregarding the injuries just for the chance to even scratch Leonel, but it was all useless.

Leonel's body was growing stronger by the day and he was already at a strength that dwarfed his previous Fifth Dimensional body. In such an injured state, with his bones practically turned into paste, Gregwyn could do nothing against him.

"You slaughtered my people, I will make you pay even if it's from beyond the grave."

"Oh? And what did you think would happen when you invaded the Human Domain? Did you just want to advance and retreat as you pleased?"

Gregwyn snarled. "We don't kill women and children you coward! Your Morales family got what they deserved, and we'll make sure everyone you care about remains a dog for the rest of their life."

"Interesting." Leonel nodded. "It doesn't seem to me that you care very much about women and children, though. What enrages you the most is that you've lost your lifestyle.

"You no longer have huge backers to make your life simple. You're no longer the most talented in the room. You now have to, ironically, be the dog of others yourself as you bow your head and do whatever the Spirituals tell you to do.

"And look at you now, stranded, without someone to help you, being held up like a cheap toy in my hands... and it wasn't even me who took action, but rather my beast companion.

"What makes you think you have a chance? What makes you think you have the right to judge me?"

Leonel didn't raise his voice even a single time. He didn't even seem to mind if no one other than Gregwyn could hear him.

Gregwyn didn't have a response other than a rage-fueled stare and snarl, but Leonel wasn't very impressed by this. He already expected that someone like Gregwyn would be all too easy to render speechless. There likely didn't exist a person that he couldn't do this to, at least not at his level.

It didn't really matter how wrong he was, he could always find a way to legitimize himself. But it made him wonder just how much of that was truthful. If there was a seemingly obvious and objective morality, why was it that others couldn't argue for it effectively.

He didn't have to attack Gregwyn's own convictions and drives to "win" the argument. Just the fact Gregwyn said they wouldn't target women and children was laughable.

Weren't Tommie and Nora a pair of children? Did they really have such a bottom line?

Even if one wanted to say that it was Leonel's fault that they ended up in this state, what did your morality count for if you could decide who to use it on when it was convenient for you?

A step further than that, how could any invasion not involve women and children? Did the humans they enslaved in their Domains not include women and children? When they killed the warriors and left the women defenseless, to be sold off as they pleased, or the children to be raised up to be ideological spearheads, would that not be involving women and children?

Even if they did none of this and truly returned to their homes afterward. Would it not be their own women and children benefiting from the pain they had caused in another Domain?

Truthfully, Leonel knew what he had done was abhorrent. But even more truthfully than that...

He simply didn't care.

He couldn't muster up sympathy. Maybe it was partly due to the fact he still wasn't over his father's death, maybe it was another part due to the fact there was so much circular and pointless "logic" tied with what was moral and what wasn't, and maybe it was because right now...

He was too pissed to think about it.

BANG!

With a single burst of energy, the chains that bound the bear beasts were crushed.

Rhangyl, who had a hand extended outward, clearly intending to stop this, tilted his head in confusion somewhat. His attack had missed?

Dozens of swirls of blackness enveloped the bear beasts and when they reappeared once more, they were by Leonel's side. Not even a split moment after that, they, too, had vanished into the Segmented Cube.

Little Blackstar bared his little teeth and growled. The skies above seemed to rumble with thunder and the earth shook.

Rhangyl slowly lowered his hand. His expression didn't give anything away, but through the Dream Plane, Leonel could feel his rage bubbling up.

Leonel swept another gaze through the armies that were here.

"I've said this once before. I kept my promise then, and I'll keep it this time as well.

"For every Morales that died, I will be certain to kill twice of your number.

"Wait patiently." © content.

"Do you think I'll allow you to leave?" Rhangyl said calmly.

Leonel gave him a glance. Then, he spoke a single word and vanished into thin air.

Swirls of elemental energies, carrying shades of fire, wind, earth, and water all appeared at Leonel's location, bursting with a violent chaos shattering the earth for the surrounding kilometer.

But Leonel was simply nowhere to be seen.

Rhangyl's gaze flashed with sparks of rage, but it was right then he looked off into the distance and seemed to finally sense the same thing that Leonel had earlier.

When he saw this, he remembered the direction Leonel had turned in, and it just made his rage simmer all the more.

Not only had Leonel noticed before him, it seemed to be the case that the only reason Leonel didn't attack was because of this group.

He was slapping his face. He didn't take him seriously at all.

All the while, Rhangyl's expression was calm as a lake. This had always been his expression. He had learned long ago the value of hiding his true intentions from the world.

He just didn't know how much of an open book he was to Leonel already.