"Is this a battlefield?"
Leon looked around and understood where he was.
There were miserable corpses everywhere,
weapons stuck in the ground like tombstones.
It was obviously just a memory scene, but the stench of blood was all too real.
And in the middle of the mountain of corpses and sea of blood,
Aurora was sitting on the ground with her hands crossed over her chest. Although her body looked different from the loli form from before, and she had become a young woman, she was still just a little girl.
"Ahh~ I let you see my boring memories. Sorry about that, I'll clear this up right away."
Aurora sighed, then drew the long sword at her waist and walked toward the younger version of herself.
This was a memory from shortly after she awakened her powers, when the kingdom under the cult's control sent a massive army to hunt her down.
"You can't change anything, even if you cry."
"Why stop me?"
Just as Aurora was about to kill her younger self with a sword, she realized she was being stopped — Leon stood behind her, looking at her with pity.
Leon shook his head.
He felt it was too pitiful.
Even though this was only Aurora's own memory, watching her kill her past self was still hard for him to accept, and…
"It seems the Holy Domain is coming to stop us."
"Eh?"
Before Aurora could react, Leon wrapped his arm around the witch's waist, grabbed the crying little girl, and moved them to a place with fewer enemies.
The corpses on the battlefield — which should have been dead — stood up as if lost, then rushed toward Leon and Aurora.
It was the Sanctuary itself preventing them from advancing.
After all, the two of them were like viruses inside the Sanctuary's computer system, and the system's sterilization program was about to eliminate them.
Leon raised his long sword, charged forward, and easily cut down dozens of zombie soldiers.
"Huh? The Sanctuary is draining my magic power?"
He noticed that his condensed power was rapidly being consumed.
"I forgot to mention — in order to sustain itself, the Sanctuary automatically absorbs the magic around it. Since we're close to the central area, the pull is even stronger. Your power will be taken away before it can even form."
Aurora kicked a zombie soldier hard, but she was already panting.
If her magic hadn't been sealed, how could she have been trapped for thousands of years, branded a demon because of her overwhelming strength?
But without magic…
The witch who once terrified the world was now just a weak woman, unable to even fight off a chicken.
"Ha~ Next time, warn me in advance."
Leon rolled his eyes helplessly.
Relying solely on the strength of his arms, he swung his sword in a wide arc and cut off several heads. Aurora, standing beside him, was a little dazed, admitting he was far too strong.
"You're incredibly powerful even without magic."
"Of course. I'm the strongest in the world. And you, Aurora? How far can you go without magic?"
"At most… stomp on them with my high heels."
Seeing Aurora crush a zombie soldier under her heel, Leon nodded in satisfaction: "Good work, but don't reward the enemy."
"It's fine. Just kill her and it will all end."
Aurora pointed at her younger self, who had just been rescued by Leon. This was her memory. As long as the core was destroyed, the zombie soldiers would disappear as well.
But just as she was about to do it—
Snap!
"Ouch, that hurts!"
Leon frowned and flicked the witch on the forehead.
He hadn't saved the girl just to kill her. He was as arrogant as ever — how could he kill a pitiful, crying child who hadn't done anything wrong?
"Leave it to me. Aurora, stay here with yourself. I'll take care of everything."
"Don't joke around! Even without magic, you're still very strong, but there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers here. It's impossible to deal with them all by yourself."
Aurora spoke in panic. She grabbed Leon's clothes, unwilling to let him do something so reckless.
She was just a memory. Even if she died, she would only return to the space where she was originally confined. But Leon was a living person — if he died here, he would really die.
As the first person to come to her side in thousands of years, Aurora didn't want anything to happen to him.
But she was wrong.
"If I say I can, then I can."
Leon pulled away Aurora's hand clutching his clothes.
Under the witch's extremely shocked gaze, Leon unleashed his vast ocean of magic power, and the blades of the twin swords in his hands instantly extended to over ten meters long.
"I just want to experience the feeling of charging across a battlefield. Stay here — I won't let a single enemy touch you."
Leon turned to Aurora with a smile.
"Now then~ Let's play a zombie battlefield game."
The next second, Leon rushed into the horde of zombie soldiers and immediately entered massacre mode.
All enemies before him were cut down in an instant.
Aurora stared blankly at the bloody battle. The witch's violet eyes grew complicated. She bit her lip and whispered, almost moaning:
"If only… if only you had been born in my time… This is the first time I've ever been protected by someone."
She had once been a feared witch.
She was the demon who almost destroyed the world.
But in that moment, she became a princess protected by a prince. Aurora clutched her heart and gazed at the young man fighting for her against hundreds of thousands of enemies.
There was obviously an easier way.
He could have ended everything by simply killing himself, but instead he chose to fight hundreds of thousands of enemies alone, refusing to bow to the memory.
This man was clearly very intelligent,
and yet he was a fool.
Aurora took a deep breath and wiped the crystalline tears from her eyes. She wondered why this man couldn't have been born a thousand years earlier, or why she hadn't been born a thousand years later.
If he had been born in her time, all those tragedies would never have happened.
…One hour later…
"This feels so good, so damn good."
Leon cut down the last dozen enemies with his sword. He felt he now understood why Esdeath had been so obsessed with the battlefield.
Slaughtering countless enemies in succession was so exhilarating it left him dizzy!
Hundreds of thousands of enemies had been killed by his twin swords.
"I'm back. Are you alright?"
The boy, drenched in blood, walked up to the witch.
Only then did Leon realize that, even though he wore black clothes, the thick stench of blood was suffocating.
But Aurora didn't care at all.
She rushed into his arms like a baby swallow, wrapping her arms around Leon's neck.
"I'm fine. Thank you for protecting me."
"...What's with you all of a sudden?"
"It's nothing. I just want to be with you."
Leon raised his brows. That didn't sound like a joke… or was it just a misunderstanding on his part?
---
(End of Chapter)
"Hmph. If you really want to be useful, then entertain me, try to throw those pathetic power stones at me. Let's see if even your insolence can amuse a king."