Dimensional Descent

Joel sighed when he heard these words. He had already expected as much, but hearing it so clearly like this made him feel that it was unfortunate.

Sometimes, Joel felt like there was some sort of god looking down on them and pulling these strings, making certain that they all looked as foolish as possible at any given time for their sick form of entertainment.

For a long while, they thought that Aina was completely unworthy of Leonel. And, truth be told, she hadn't really done much to change their opinion aside from becoming extraordinarily beautiful. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough to move the needle for Leonel.

Now, in an irony of ironies, it was they who wanted Leonel to step up. Of course, this wasn't for Aina's sake, but Joel believed that she was truly Leonel's best chance at happiness. Or, at the very least, if they didn't end up together, Leonel deserved some better form of closure than this.

And yet… It was now Leonel who wanted no part of it.

Leonel hadn't even bothered to say a word to Aina. They weren't face to face when she left, and he didn't even look in her direction after hearing Rychard's announcement. No matter how you spun it, they just found it impossible to feel that such a thing was healthy.

Joel wondered how they would take things from here. On one side, he wanted to support Leonel and his decision. After all, it was still Leonel's right to decide how they dealt with these matters. But, on the other, he didn't want Leonel to decide on something he would regret for a lifetime.

Unfortunately, Joel felt that Leonel wasn't a normal person by any stretch.

If it was someone else, Joel might think that they were just being vindictive and wanted their significant other to suffer just as much as they had, taking responsibility for their own decisions. But, he simply couldn't find any rage in Leonel's eyes at all. No matter how good of an actor a person was, it was simply impossible for them to mask such a fresh wound so easily.

never got the chance to make his decision, though… Because Leonel's next words seemed to close off any sort of

do something, thinking it to be in my best interest, but I hope that you won't." Leonel's gaze gained a sincere and patient light to it. "I do not want my brothers to risk their lives,

she's currently stuck at a bottleneck she can't break past. She has a lot of guilt on her shoulders even though I do not blame her, if you bring this possibility to her, I'm certain that she will go all out

that this path won't bring me happiness. If anything, it will lose me brothers and there's an over 80% likelihood that it will

but he wanted to convey his feelings as clearly as possible. When he laid out the truth so plainly and succinctly, the expressions

hearing it explained like this truly made them understand what kind of game they were trying to

worth the reward. I can't trade the lives of people I

simply nothing else they could do to refute it. Judging by Leonel's tone, even though he didn't say it, if he felt that they were about to take action, he would stop

they could…

matters to weigh on you all, but I can't force it to not either. If it makes you all feel better, the current Aina can snap Rychard like a twig and she's completely immune to poisons due to her

We have much bigger things to

nodded. Maybe this was the

Leonel's grandmother in danger when he explicitly asked them not to. How

was nothing they