The moon hung low in the midnight sky, its pale silver glow filtering through the swaying branches of the ancient woodland. Leornars rose silently from his makeshift seat by the embers and strode toward the shadowed depths of the trees, leaving the camp behind. The soft, rhythmic crunch of dry leaves underfoot was the only sound that accompanied his solitary march.
He paused near a secluded clearing, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. There it stood—a lone forest deer, drinking cautiously from a small, bubbling spring. A sharp, predator's smirk crept onto his face.
"Undead, arise," he whispered into the dark.
From the black mist pooling around his boots, gaunt figures slowly materialized—his summoned knights of decay. Moving with an uncanny, unnatural silence, they encircled the deer in an eerie, coordinated formation. Before the animal could even register the trap, Leornars leapt high into the air, descending like a grim reaper. The deer didn't even have time to flee. With a single, precise strike of his blade, it fell lifeless into the mud.
"Carry it," he ordered coldly, sheathing his dagger as one of the compliant undead knights hoisted the carcass over its armored shoulder.
When he returned to the campsite, Stacian was sitting wordlessly by the fading fire. Her ashen-white hair gleamed brilliantly under the dim light of the embers. She turned her quiet, guarded gaze toward him as he stepped into the light.
Without a word, Leornars began slicing strips of the venison, skewering them onto a sharp stick to roast over the open flames. The heavy silence between them lingered, thick and unyielding, until he finally broke it.
"How far is the next nation from our current position?"
She looked up, her voice surprisingly steady despite her frailty. "About 3,000 miles north is the Lurtra Kingdom. If you travel another 500 miles beyond its borders, you will find the Holy Nation of Zeldris."
He pulled a fully roasted piece of meat from the stick and handed it over to her. "Then we're going to Lurtra."
She blinked in confusion, her hands hovering over the food. "We?"
"Huh? I thought you were just begging me on your knees not to abandon you to the wild. Backing down already?" His voice was laced with a smug, teasing cadence. "Oh well. If you want to stay—"
"No... please, don't leave me behind," she whispered frantically, her voice trembling as she clutched the food. "If I am left alone out here... I'll just end up enslaved by the humans all over again."
Leornars let out a weary sigh, running a hand through his matted, silver-red hair. "So basically, I can't leave you alone for a single second, huh? Tossed into another world entirely, and I'm already stuck playing babysitter... this is definitely not what I had in mind."
Stacian tilted her head, her black horns catching the firelight. "Another world? You're... a visitor? A summoned soul?"
He nodded slowly, staring into the flames. "That's what the authorities in the capital told me. Where I come from, magic and mana weren't real. We just utilized refined crystals to mimic their energetic properties. We called them tech-cores."
The moment the forbidden knowledge left his lips, a sudden, blinding agony surged through his skull like a spike of lightning. The sheer pressure forced a thick stream of blood to drip from his nose, spattering onto the dirt. He staggered backward, his vision spinning violently.
"Leornars!" Stacian rushed to his side without hesitation, placing a glowing, delicate hand firmly onto his forehead.
A soft, warm white light enveloped his upper body. Slowly, his ragged breathing grew deeper... slower... until his pulse returned to a normal rhythm. The agonizing pressure in his skull receded into a dull ache.
"...What exactly did you just do to me?" he asked hoarsely, wiping the blood from his lip.
"High-tier healing magic," she replied gently, pulling her hand back. "Unlike your mechanical crystals, it is immediate, adaptive, and free... provided you have the specialized aptitude to wield it."
Driven by a sudden surge of frustration at his own weakness, he forced himself up, channeling his dark mana to call forth his guardian wraith. "Bellian—!"
But the moment the massive undead demon emerged from the shadows, Leornars's remaining energy vanished. His knees buckled completely. He collapsed hard into the dirt, gasping for air as a violent cough racked his chest.
"What... is this...?" he wheezed.
"You're suffering from acute mana depletion," Stacian explained softly, kneeling beside his trembling form. "You pushed far past your natural threshold and mistakenly tapped into your fundamental life force—your Life Ki. Most ordinary beings would have suffered a total system collapse and died by now."
"Mana... depletion... I see..."
He tried to force his limbs to move again, but his body refused to cooperate. This time, he didn't have the strength to resist the heavy, suffocating sleep as it dragged his consciousness down into the pitch-black darkness.
When he finally woke, the harsh glare of warm morning sunlight was filtering through the canopy. Stacian's hand was resting gently on his forehead, her eyes closed in deep concentration as a faint, rhythmic glow emanated from her fingertips.
"Huh?" Leornars sat up abruptly, his tone instantly turning to ice. "You've got exactly three seconds to explain why your hands are touching me."
A dangerous, unstable crimson glow flickered aggressively within his left eye.
"You were... you were in immense pain while you were sleeping," she said softly, her small frame trembling under his gaze, though she didn't pull away. "You were crying out. I... I kept channeling magic to heal your fractured mind every few hours. Forgive me if I overstepped my bounds..."
Leornars stared at her for a long moment. Then, he stood up, walked over to her side, and lightly patted the top of her head. "You don't need my permission for that. Do whatever you want."
With that, he turned on his heel and walked toward the edge of the nearby river, muttering under his breath, "What in the actual hell am I doing..."
As he splashed the freezing river water onto his face, he mused to himself in the quiet of the morning.
*No wonder I actually slept well for once... Usually, I can only manage two hours of rest before the psychological nightmares begin. My head used to hurt so badly from the data loops that I'd literally bash my skull into the cell wall just to make the noise stop. Perhaps this girl isn't so entirely useless after all...*
Then, a vicious, guttural growl shattered the morning peace.
His eyes snapped toward the sound. A massive, black-furred beast sporting a violent, crimson mane was currently tearing through the flesh of another forest deer a few dozen yards away. A wicked, predatory grin slowly crept onto Leornars' face.
He leapt from the rocky ledge, his dark mana flaring as he issued an instantaneous telepathic command. "Bellian! Knights! Encircle!"
The undead ambush materialized out of thin air, trapping the monster—a ferocious **Crimson Dreadwolf**.
The beast realized it was cornered and lunged with terrifying velocity. Within mere seconds, its massive jaws tore three of Leornars's undead knights completely apart into flying fragments of bone and shadow. Bellian retaliated instantly, his darkened broadsword carving a deep, ragged gash across the creature's flank. The Dreadwolf shrieked in agony, stumbled through the dirt, and then locked its predatory gaze directly onto Leornars.
Before the boy could properly cycle his elemental magic, the massive alpha wolf was already airborne, descending directly onto him.
"Your breath stinks," Leornars snarled.
Mid-air, Bellian intercepted the beast, tackling it with immense force and slamming its heavy torso hard into a massive oak tree. Capitalizing on the opening, Leornars dashed forward, jamming his jagged dagger deep into the creature's exposed underbelly, ripping upward.
Then—a sharp, terrified scream pierced the air from behind him.
"Stacian!" he roared, spinning around.
Back at the primary campsite, a rogue group of heavily armed bandits had emerged from the brush, violently dragging the thrashing demi-human girl away by her hair.
In an instant, Leornars's vision blurred, the colors of the forest bleeding into a chaotic mess.
A suppressed, agonizing memory forcefully breached his conscious mind. *His mother. Being dragged ruthlessly by her silver hair through the ash. Utterly helpless. Screaming.*
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
The atmospheric air around the clearing instantly thickened, growing heavy as a mountain. Leornars' knees hit the dirt as an absolute, unadulterated rage completely overtook his central nervous system.
One of the bandits split from the group, stepping toward the kneeling boy with a sneer, his hand resting on his sword hilt. "The hell is this? Who's the random brat?"
Both of Leornars' eyes ignited into a brilliant, blinding crimson light.
With a sudden, explosive flash of speed, he leapt forward. Before the bandit could even draw his steel, Leornars' bare hands clamped onto the man's throat—and violently ripped his windpipe clean out of his neck.
Blood sprayed across the foliage.
> **[Warning: System Detecting Critical Mental Overload]**
> * Emergency Protocol Initiated.
> * Activating Passive Skill: [Heartless]
>
The cold, mechanical voice echoed faintly within the deep recesses of his mind, but he could no longer hear it. He clutched his head as a violent stream of blood leaked from his nose. He turned toward the remaining men, his eyes wild, unfocused, and entirely feral.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
He rushed the next bandit like a localized hurricane. He slammed the grown man bodily into a tree trunk, grabbed a thick, jagged fallen branch from the dirt, and stabbed him repeatedly, systematically through the neck until the screaming stopped.
Then, his gaze locked onto the final captor.
A thick, white steam hissed visibly from Leornars' mouth as his internal body temperature skyrocketed from the mana friction. He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, shattering the man's jaw with a brutal, rising knee strike, before bringing his heel down onto his skull over and over again, stomping until there was absolutely nothing left but a crimson smear on the forest floor.
Then... the monster turned its gaze toward Stacian.
In a terrifying blur of motion, the mindless, raging boy lunged directly at her throat.
"Leornars, stop!" she screamed in pure terror, channeling her remaining mana to activate a **[Holy Barrier]** just a fraction of a second before impact.
Leornars crashed against the golden translucent shield, snarling like a rabid beast as his blood-stained fingers clawed frantically at the divine energy, trying to tear it apart.
"Divine Magic—!" Stacian wept, her hands trembling as she poured the entirety of her soul into the incantation. "**[Pure Salvation]**!"
A concentrated blast of pure, radiant holy light erupted from the barrier, sending Leornars' body flying backward through the air. He crashed heavily into a solid tree trunk, the concussive force instantly knocking his overstimulated mind into unconsciousness.
The forest fell deathly still, save for the crackle of the remaining embers.
Stacian rushed to his side, her hands shaking violently as she placed her glowing palms onto his battered, blood-stained chest. Tears dripped from her chin onto his pale skin.
"I'll protect you..." she whispered resolutely into the quiet woods. "I'll protect you... even if it means protecting you from yourself."