REMIND

The first thing Leonel felt was the wave of pain. He used [Instant Recovery] immediately, feeling that his situation would be bad if he didn't.

It wasn't just that he was injured; that didn't do it justice. His entire body was fractured, his inner organs filled with lacerations, and his blood pooling into parts of his body it had no business being in.

However, his expression couldn't help but change when it didn't work.

There was some change, and a pillar definitely fell from the skies, but it was as though it was rebuffed. Barely a small percentage of it actually entered his body while the rest was whisked away into another land and time.

Leonel was stunned and the stinging pain came back even swifter than before.

He struggled to try and sit up, not understanding what was happening to him. It was only then that he saw that Aina was by his side, her face filled with panic. She seemed to have been slow to react to the fact that he was actually awake now.

However, before Leonel could say anything, his expression changed once again.

His Dream Force had broken through again, twice in just a few days, and had entered the Higher Creation State. But that wasn't why he was shocked.

The trouble was what he could feel now that he was awake. His body might have been in a mess, but his soul and mind had already reached an unprecedented level of peace and elevated tranquility.

So, he immediately saw through several things in a single instant of time and his eyes couldn't help but sharpen.

The wave of panic came for only a short while before he snuffed it out like it was an insignificant flame.

It wasn't Aina or Anastasia's fault. He learned long ago that Anastasia had some troubling issues that she was struggling to deal with. She had more power than most could fathom, at least within this world, but she was likewise at a loss in how to actually use it.

As for Aina, she might have access to his Dream Force affinity, but she didn't have any true idea on how to use it. Her might was also so occupied by his life and death that she didn't have the time to consider anything else. How could she have the mind to understand the storm that was erupting in the outside world right this moment?

Even so, Leonel seemed to have shrugged it all off almost too easily, almost as though it wasn't worth much of anything to him at all.

"Where are the boys?" Leonel asked in a hoarse voice.

He hadn't forgotten that his brothers were in a bad situation before he lost his mind to fury. Rather than mentioning what happened in the outside world, this was what he was the most concerned about.

"... I've stabilized their situations. Their lives shouldn't be in any danger. They're doing fine."

In truth, Aina could have already healed them completely, but her mind was in a mess because of Leonel's situation so she couldn't spare the thought for anything else.

Leonel's eyes narrowed.

He didn't think that the Demoness spared them because she had suddenly gone soft. This was a woman that drove the father of her own children to death, and pitted those very same children against one another for most of her life.

If she let them live, it was only for one reason: she felt that they were a weakness that she could exploit in the future.

Leonel turned his attention to his body and couldn't help but frown.

Void Beast? Had he awakened such a thing? He hadn't even seen the Life Grade Legacy Tablet before. It was presumably still in the hands of the Four Great Families. So how could he take that step without it?

And why was it that he couldn't sense a difference immediately?

Also, he had already abandoned the Lineage Factor, using it as a conduit to elevate his constitution instead. So how had this even happened in the first place? © 2024.

'It has nothing to do with the Lineage Factor...'

Leonel suddenly came to a realization.

The completion of his Destruction World seemed to have awakened something, but that was only part of it.

That red aura...

The Violet Winds Rise North...

The echoes of the words boomed in his mind and Leonel only seemed to finally understand them now.

This red aura only appeared when he was about to fail to awaken his Lineage Factor. It was a berserk aura and meant that one was about to undergo a sort of deviation of sorts...

But didn't that sound a lot like Invalids? Weren't they precisely people who had failed to awaken their Lineage Factors and as such ended up in their current situation?

North... that could only refer to the Northern Star, the truest face of Destruction.

The violet seemed to have bloomed from the mutation to his Metal Synergy Lineage Factor, but it could also refer to his King's Might, and the truest essence of his Will.

Then Leonel remembered that the Void Beast wasn't the first God Beast of Destruction... At according to his speculation...

Wasn't that the Celestial Terra? The Primordial Terror?

Had he become a God of Destruction on his own?

So where the hell was his power?

Leonel coughed up a mouthful of blood and wiped his lips with the back of his hand as he struggled to stand.

"No! You have to rest," Aina said sternly, holding him. She had been racking her brain trying to figure out a way to cure Leonel, only to realize that she truly had no idea. Her Force Pill Crafting skill actually wasn't enough.

Leonel smiled bitterly. "We unfortunately don't have time for that. How long has it been since I've been out?"

Aina frowned. "A few hours."

"Normally, I would be out for months with this kind of injury. I'm up right now because I forced myself to wake up. Losing hours already means we're getting painted into a corner right now."

"What happened?"

Leonel stood all the way to his feet, wincing as scabs began to peel across his body.

"The details don't really matter right now, but it seems your husband's currently the enemy of the world.

"They think I'm some sort of easy prey. In that case, I'll just have to show them how much I've been holding back."

In truth, Leonel was being a bit unfair. That was because considering how many had been mobilized, they were certainly taking him far more seriously than anyone would expect. These were Gods, after all, taking action. Whether it was directly or not, it was a fact that they were taking him seriously, and at the moment, even Leonel feeling some of that pressure.

However, that wouldn't change his true feelings on the matter at all. Respect first... then Persistence. It was just that he chose to bend the definition of Persistence just a tiny bit.

They hated him because they mistook his breakthrough for being related to the Northern Star Lineage Factor...

Wait until they learned he was a Fawkes.

It was about time to remind the world why this family was feared so much.