OH! OH!

It was a long while before Elorin reached any sort of semblance of calm. With red eyes, he looked up to Leonel to find him staring back at him indifferently, his wife in his arms.

Elorin took a shaky breath and nodded only once.

There were no words that needed to be exchanged. Leonel already knew that he wanted to revive his grandfather.

When Aina thought of reviving her mother, she had come to think of several issues as well, things about her current life that her mother simply wouldn't be able to accept. owns all content.

Could her mortal mother accept that she killed as easily as breathing now? That her daughter used blood to strengthen herself?

What if her mother transferred some of the blame of the torture she experienced onto Aina herself and their relationship was never the same? It was impossible to tell what someone who had gone through such trauma might think or feel, and it was even more impossible to take back words that had already been spoken.

No matter how lenient or forgiving Aina would want to be in such a situation, once some lines were crossed, there was simply no going back… especially now that Aina was even more sensitive about certain things with their first baby on the way.

Would she still be able to forgive her mother if she said something about their child?

All of that was all before she even considered the fact that her mother might not even come back human at all…

Invalids might have been living creatures in some sense, but they were the antithesis to the living in others. Pawns of Existence, they were designed only to do one thing: destroy.

Their souls were corrupted and they simply weren't the kind of beings that could be "saved".

As much as some might want to talk about extending an olive branch, or treating all the same… Leonel was willing to do such things when it came to all Races under the sun. But Invalids didn't fall into such a category.

Invalids could come from practically any Race to begin with and they represented the underbelly of Existence, the Yin to the Yang that was life, the Destruction to the Creation of the world.

Even when they broke free of those violent instincts and evolved into Variant Invalids, those tendencies only became more twisted and sinister in nature, backed by an intelligence no less than any other creature that only made them all the more dangerous.

Invalids weren't people. They were the representation of a Force of Nature… A Force that Leonel had no ability to reverse or fix.

Elorin obviously knew this, or else he wouldn't have killed his parents with his own hands. And part of the reason he had sobbed so much was because he too had begun to realize some of the things that Aina had.

Even if his parents weren't Invalids, what would he do if his parents despised him for killing his grandfather? Would they even be able to look at him the same?

Now, he was facing the same issue with his grandfather. They had already been growing distant after the Metamorphosis descended, but what would happen now?

However… this time, Elorin was ready. Even if his grandfather hated him down to his guts, he would still revive him.

That sort of punishment was precisely what he deserved, and his grandfather deserved to live life.

Elorin took a deep breath and stood to his feet before he began working with Anastasia again.

It was much harder to commune with Hutch because his Dimension had already been in the Seventh when he died. Luckily, that Seventh Dimensional cap was decided by an Incomplete World which made it somewhat easier. But that didn't stop beads of sweat from falling down Elorin's brow. Controlling this much Time Force was still beyond him.

However, he grit his teeth and pressed on.

His grandfather deserved a chance at life. He knew how much his grandfather loved to battle. He had been waiting to step out into this world for the longest time, a time where he would finally be able to test his blade against the world and see how his Machete Arts stacked up against the geniuses of the rest of the world.

But his own grandson had robbed him of that opportunity. Maybe even worse, Elorin had abandoned the Machete Arts his grandfather had passed down to him, wanting to distance himself from the man as much as he could.

Knowing his grandfather, this was probably an even crueler torture than just outright killing him.

'I'll make up for all of it, I swear… even if you hate me to the bone… even if you never want to speak to me anymore…'

Blood began to seep from the corner of Elorin's mouth but the staunchness in his eyes only grew deeper.

At that moment, a flickering Dharma began to appear to his back.

This time, it was Leonel's turn to be a bit shocked… because the Dharma was actually in the shape of a Silver Machete. No, it wasn't just a single Machete… it fanned out forming two… three… nine… twelve…

The number seemed to keep expanding until the layers of machetes fanned out like a fan, so numerous that it was impossible to see the individual ones.

'This is…'

Leonel's expression flickered as he came to grasp something.

These machetes, each one, represented a time Elorin could have chosen to practice the machete but ignored it.

He was using his Causality Ability Index to go back and rewrite this causality for this one event. But as he did so, he was giving up his Time Force control in equal parts.

Leonel didn't stop him although he felt like it was a waste. Instead, he looked at Anastasia and gave her a message. If he didn't say anything, this little dolt wouldn't have realized.

"Oh! Oh!" she said in a cute cadence, giggling as she understood something.

And at that moment…

BOOM!