Leonel frowned, his gaze landing on Aina.

Seeing her odd reaction, his heart constricted. One would have thought that her reaction was his own. To Leonel, though, Aina's happiness was practically linked to himself.

"Aina?"

Aina shook out of her thoughts hearing Leonel's voice.

"What's wrong?"

Aina shook her head and fell into silence, her body returning to normal. The little mink nestled closer to her, his little face rubbing against Aina's.

In truth, Leonel almost didn't notice Aina's weird reactions. If it wasn't for his connection with the little mink, he likely would have missed it entirely. The irony of it all wasn't lost to him, especially when he said he would pay more attention to her.

Leonel's frowned deepened. His gaze shifted from Aina to the Variant Invalid and back again.

'Is it that thing? But, Aina shouldn't have met this thing before…'

It could be said that with the exception of the time he spent within the Mayan Zone, Leonel had spent practically all his time on Earth since Invalids had appeared with Aina. In addition, when he was in the Mayan Zone, Aina had either been unconscious or within her own Zone.

Since Invalids didn't appear within Zones, at least with Leonel's current comprehension, it was impossible that Aina had met this Variant Invalid.

Of course, this was all deduced under the speculation that Earth didn't have Invalids before the Metamorphosis descended. Leonel felt that this was a fine assumption to make, even when considering the fact Aina came from a hidden family of Earth.

Invalids were just humans who failed to awaken their abilities and thus lost their consciousness. Variant Invalids were just Invalids who managed to reawaken their consciousnesses. But, by then, they would no longer be the version of themselves they once were.

Unless…

'Does Aina know this Invalid from when it was a human?'

Leonel pouted slightly, mostly because from what he could see, despite the odd coloration of its skin, this Variant Invalid was quite a handsome young man.

Leonel shook his head. This wasn't the time to be thinking of such things.

He looked back toward Aina. "Do you want to leave and come back another time? From the flow of battle, I doubt that this Invalid horde will be able to breech the walls during this wave. They'll likely need two or three more attempts."

Aina looked toward Leonel. She could tell that Leonel sensed something amiss about her reaction earlier and wanted to take some pressure off of her. But…

"No."

Aina's voice came out somewhat coldly. In fact, her demeanor somewhat shocked Leonel. She sounded as though he had said something to enrage her.

Aina looked away from Leonel's surprised gaze, not saying anything further.

The little mink peeked over her shoulder as she faced away, sticking out his little pink tongue toward Leonel.

'…'

Leonel was really at a loss this time.

**

Miles Leum.

His life should have been perfect. He was the Heir to one of the few most powerful families of Earth. He was already given the Junior Governor Duke title by his father. He awakened an S-grade ability that granted him power and strength in addition to the status he was born with.

However, ever since that matter of several months ago, everything had been going downhill.

He had expected that upon reporting these matters to his father, he would gain control of the resources he needed to hunt Leonel down and end all of this. But, not only did he not gain the support he expected, his power in the province was restricted even more than it originally was.

As things stood now, Secretary Marquisette Maia was effectively the leader of the Province despite the fact she never seemed to be around. Despite this, she somehow managed to oversee everything and even the small tricks he tried to play to gain back power were snuffed out by her with a casual thought.

Miles could hardly believe it all. His father had actually chosen to abandon his heir in favor of an old woman masquerading as a young beauty.

Maybe the worst part about all of this was that he was slowly being ostracized.

Due to the matter of him bombing his own citizens, a scapegoat needed to be trotted out. Miles understood this, it was just that he never expected that the scapegoat would actually be himself.

The nobles painted him as an immature, rash individual who was too young to be fit to lead, or ever lead, for that matter. This caused him to lose a great amount of influence.

This would have been fine under normal conditions. After all, the title of Duke was hereditary, at least historically. The issue was that… The title of Governor Duke wasn't so simple.

During the transition of power between father and son, though Miles would have an inside track as his father's chosen heir, he would still need to fend off competitors. This blend of hereditary titles and democracy was how The Empire continued to breed talents.

Though one would be hard pressed to say that The Empire were the 'good guys', one thing you couldn't say was that it had incompetent nobles. Any family that raised incompetent Heirs would just as quickly lose their status as nobles.

Due to this, there were no shortage of prosperous, once-royal, families, looking to claw their way back up to the top. So, a position like Miles' was constantly being eyed.

It was no surprise then that Miles was wracking his brain, trying to find a way to claim back what was his. But, rather than good news, everything only became worse.

Just a few months ago, he learned that Maia was pregnant.

Back on 21st Century Earth, this would mean the end of a woman's career for at least a couple months. However, in modern times, it was as easy as breathing for Maia to have her embryo transplanted out of her body and into a machine that could nurture her baby far better than even her own body could.

This seemed like a useless tidbit of information, but Miles was almost certain that this child was his father's. holds text © rights.

If his conjectures were correct… he was finished.

This reality left Miles, who once sat atop of the world, in a tailspin.