Leon moved suddenly, as if someone had yanked him out of paralysis by the back of the neck, and almost ran into the bathroom. His hands trembled slightly as he grabbed the gloves and pulled them on, then reached for the sword, its cool hilt now far too familiar, far too easy to grasp.
[Equipment Equipped: Combat Gloves]
[+2 Agility | +1 Vitality]
[Equipment Equipped: Iron Short Sword]
[+3 Strength]
The system reacted instantly, indifferently as always, as if this moment were no different from any other decision. Leon simply tightened his grip on the hilt and left the bathroom with the sword in hand, wearing nothing but boxers, the towel discarded somewhere along the way.
He approached her slowly.
The very first step made him feel it again, that unsettling warmth in his stomach, the tension that had nothing to do with human arousal and everything to do with an instinctive urge to submit to something superior. Cold Mind responded immediately, cooling his thoughts, but even then the sensation didn't disappear completely. It lingered beneath the surface, like poison that could never be fully flushed out.
He stopped right beside her.
He looked at her face, defenseless, calm, almost innocent in unconsciousness, and bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. Her wings stirred faintly in a draft of air, feathers rustling softly, and for a split second he again felt that absurd desire to kneel.
He clenched his teeth.
"Forgive me," he said quietly, and there was a trace of sadness in his voice that surprised even him. "This world is starting to reward those who kill. And if I want to survive in it… I have to learn how."
He raised the sword.
The blade hovered above her neck, perfectly aligned, exactly as the last few brutal hours had taught him. His arms tensed, muscles ready to obey, his eyes hardening as if he were trying to sever himself from everything still human inside him.
And then he looked at her face one more time.
There was no aggression there. No malice. No threat.
Only a being lying wounded and unconscious, after something that looked like a hell worse than anything he himself had gone through that afternoon.
The sword trembled in his hands.
Leon held his breath, his entire body straining against his own arms, as if he were trying to stop not the blade but himself. The tension grew so intense it burned behind his eyes. The blade was a hair's breadth from her skin, and he stood there for a long, agonizing moment, his heart hammering wildly.
In the end, Leon couldn't bring the sword down.
A strangled, furious sound tore out of his chest, and the next second he flung the sword aside. The blade struck the floor with a dull clang.
"I can't…!" he shouted, his voice breaking. "Damn it, I know you're dangerous! I know this would be the rational choice! I know it would make me stronger!"
He stepped back, then another step, his hands now shaking visibly, a heavy, painful pressure rising in his throat.
"But I can't kill a defenseless being," he continued, louder now, as if trying to convince himself. "I can't kill someone just because they're lying in front of me and the system promises a reward!"
He clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into the gloves.
"If I do that…" he whispered, tears finally spilling down his cheeks, hot, full of frustration, "…then I stop being human. And if surviving in this world means becoming something I despise… maybe I don't want to survive like that at all."
He collapsed heavily to his knees, bowing his head. His shoulders shook with a silent sob, not loud, not theatrical, but raw and real, the sound of someone who had stood on the edge of his own morality and stepped back at the last moment.
The world had changed.
Its rules had changed.
But Leon, at least for now, had not allowed it to take what he considered his final line of defense.
His humanity.
Leon lay on his back on the cool floor panels, staring at the ceiling as if answers might be written there, answers he could no longer force out of himself. He wiped his face with one hand, smearing away the last of the tears, and let out a long, heavy sigh filled with pain, exhaustion, and an unwanted but undeniable sense of relief.
"…damn it," he muttered. "This is going to come back to bite me. One hundred percent."
He rose slowly, as if every movement cost more than it should have, and looked at the woman lying beside the couch again. This time there was no awe, no fear, only helplessness.
"So what am I supposed to do with you now…?" he said aloud, more to the empty apartment than to her.
Conflicting thoughts flooded his mind. The most sensible option was to stay as far away from her as possible, close the door, barricade the room, pretend she wasn't here. But immediately the other side of the equation followed: he couldn't kill her because she was defenseless and had done nothing to him, and leaving her like this, wings broken, wounds open, in a world full of monsters was, in practice, a delayed death sentence.
"Seriously…" he snorted, getting to his feet. "This is really going to bite me."
He went to his backpack and began pulling out bandages, gauze, ointments, everything that had been meant only for him a few minutes earlier. He arranged a makeshift medical kit on the table, then headed back toward her, deliberately keeping his eyes anywhere but her face and the line of her body. He knew a single lapse in attention was enough for his thoughts to slip somewhere dangerous again.
But he stopped mid-step.
He looked down.
At his bare legs. His naked torso. The boxers that were his only clothing, gloves aside.
For a second he stared at the scene as if from the outside, a man in nothing but boxers standing over an unconscious woman.
"Oh no. No, no, no," he blurted out, then raised his voice. "This looks like a damn sexual assault!"
He straightened abruptly, as if he'd caught himself doing something deeply suspicious, and waved a hand in irritation.
"I'm getting dressed first. Definitely getting dressed first."
He headed toward the bathroom, but stopped at the door, grimacing at the smell of his old clothes lying somewhere inside, still soaked with the day, even after the shower.
"No way," he muttered.
Instead, he went into the bedroom. He searched the former residents' closet and after a moment found plain gray sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, slightly too big for him, but clean and dry. He pulled them on quickly, relieved that at least one part of this situation no longer looked… wrong.
Only then did he return to the living room.
Leon knelt beside the unconscious woman slowly, medical supplies spread out on the floor. For a brief moment he simply looked at her, trying to frame the situation as something purely technical, task-focused, emotionless, a wounded being in need of help, nothing more.
It was an illusion.
The very first touch of his fingers against her skin sent a violent, unwanted shiver through his entire body, so intense he nearly held his breath. Her skin was warm, impossibly smooth, too… alive. The contact triggered a reaction he couldn't control, as if every nerve responded in excess, with some primal, instinctive awe.
Cold Mind reacted instantly.
Cold slammed into his thoughts like a wave, restoring clarity and suppressing the chaos, but not erasing the stimuli completely. It held them in check by force rather than letting them fade naturally. Leon clenched his jaw and forced himself to focus.
"Focus," he whispered.
He cleaned her wounds carefully, slowly, avoiding unnecessary contact, but it was impossible to eliminate it entirely. Every brush against her arm, every moment he had to pull aside torn fabric to reach another cut, triggered short, terrifying spikes of arousal, like something inside him reacted against reason and will alike. Cold Mind worked without pause, sending one freezing impulse after another, and Leon felt as if his mind were clamped in an icy vice.
He breathed shallow and fast, his hands trembling, but he didn't stop, bandaging wound after wound, applying ointment, securing the worst areas. He worked more like an automaton than a man. Finally, after long minutes of tension and internal struggle, he stepped back and looked at the result.
Most of her body was bandaged.
Then his gaze shifted to the wings.
He frowned.
"…and how the hell am I supposed to treat wings?" he muttered, completely serious.
He gently turned one of them, and instantly regretted it as another overwhelming wave of sensation slammed into him. He pulled his hands back quickly. Broken feathers, unnatural angles, places that looked like severe structural damage, bandages and ointment were clearly not enough.
After a moment of helpless silence, he did the only thing he could.
Carefully, crudely, he bandaged the wings as if they were… very large, very delicate limbs. He tried not to compress them, not to cause further damage, but to stabilize them as best he could. When he finished, he stepped back and looked at the whole thing.
It looked bad.
Really bad.
"Not my fault," he snorted, shaking his head. "Nobody trained me in how to treat human wings."
He looked at her one more time, fully bandaged, motionless, and gave a small nod, as if acknowledging to himself that he'd done what he could. Only then did he feel his stomach growl loudly, and he grimaced.
"Great…" he muttered. "Barely one energy bar all day. No wonder my stomach's complaining."
He stood and headed toward his backpack, thinking only of food, anything to give him some energy...
...and suddenly his legs gave out and the world spun.
Leon staggered and crashed heavily to the floor with a dull thud, trying to grab onto something, but his arms felt like cotton and his thoughts scattered uncontrollably.
"What…?" he murmured, trying to understand what was happening.
Leon had no idea that Cold Mind, running at full capacity for so long, constantly fighting the charm she emitted even unconsciously, had been draining his mana at a rate he'd never experienced before. Every cooling impulse, every moment his mind was saved from collapse, consumed more mana than the skill was meant to spend.
And when he touched her… when he was that close to her body… the skill had to operate far beyond its standard parameters.
His mana was completely depleted.
Mana: 0 / 100
Leon tried to stand, to push through it, but his body refused. Exhaustion hit him like a wall. He took one last, unsteady step toward her…
…and the world went dark.
He collapsed a few steps away, losing consciousness.
And in the silence of the apartment, amid the ruins of the world and makeshift bandages, two beings from entirely different realities now lay unconscious in the same small room.