Chapter 64: Tales Of A Prideful Young Man And His Awakening Period [Song Recommendation: Preson2 by Gold]

Leo had expected the outcome to end in Yariel emerging as the victor. Now, it made Leo question whether it was training or just for Yariel to fulfill her nonsensical goals.

Like he cared. He would just train and one day defeat her. He had defeated her once; of course, doing it a second time wouldn’t be much of a big deal.

"But... why the hell is she giving me that look?" He frowned and got down from Shroud, watching with a side eye as Yariel gazed at him with a weird look.

Not interested in pressing further, he and Taren made their way into the tall silver spire, getting two bows from the guards flanking the large ark door.

Mirage, who had also noticed the look on Yariel’s face, raised an eyebrow and tapped their weird aunt.

Yariel turned to her with the same longing look.

"What is the matter, Mirage?"

"I should be asking you that instead. Why were you staring at Leo like that?"

Yariel’s lips curled into a mischievous smirk. "Ooh... jealous much?"

Mirage’s cheeks turned red. "Oh... no... tha-that’s not what I meant." She stammered and waved her hand dismissively, although her expression said otherwise.

"I’m just teasing you, calm down. Ah, young love is so cute. And yes, I’m looking at him because he’s my nephew. And you know why?"

Mirage’s expression turned into confusion. "Because he’s your nephew?"

"Ah yes..." Yariel smiled and glanced at the ark door Leo had passed through a few minutes ago. "Don’t you think Leo is handsome? We do have this tradition that makes sure a man from the Zahara clan makes a woman from the Zahara clan his wife. And since only me and Leo are left, there’s no one stopping me from eating him up. He looks so promising in the bedroom."

Yariel continued expressing her lewd thoughts, going out of control. But her voice dropped lower and lower until it disappeared, noticing Mirage’s expression.

Mirage’s eyes were swirling and her face looked pale.

"I guess I shouldn’t share my dreams with a thirteen-year-old."

Mirage nodded, staggering away with a bleeding nose, swirling eyesight, and an overloaded brain.

Yariel smiled and dashed to another part of the fortress like lightning.

---

After dinner, Leo left immediately for his room and was currently lying on his bed, staring at one of the golden chandeliers.

For some reason, he felt... nothing.

Leo lay flat on his back, his bandaged hands resting over his stomach, eyes locked on the steady, warm glow of the chandelier. He expected to feel the sting of defeat, or perhaps the familiar, burning itch of his [Shell Of Dread] knitting his bruised ribs back together.

Instead, there was just a vast, hollow quiet.

He felt... nothing. No anger toward Yariel’s overwhelming strength, no frustration at his own slow progress, not even the lingering embarrassment of the lap-pillow incident with the Demoness or the fall of the Great Sea Realm and his cursed awakening period at large.

It was as if the week of hibernation had drained the color out of his emotions, leaving him as clinical and cold as the fortress he called home.

He turned and rested on his side, his gaze catching the table with different writing materials on it.

With a grunted effort, he pushed himself up and walked to the table. The moon loomed in the far distance, casting its light all over the darkness and also contrasting with the crimson orb glow. The crimson orb glow was much more potent at night, thus turning the sky into a bruised red color, with only the moonlight blinking white out of its embrace.

Leo sat down and opened the drawer of the table. In it was only a single book with a brown cover. He brought it out and placed it on the table. The table wasn’t exactly filled up; it was almost scanty, in fact.

There was a cup, and in it were different colors of feather pens. To the right were different papers of study Leo had jotted down during a few meetings with Yariel and others to learn more about being an Aura Farmer. Those days, he was really eager.

Nowadays, things were different, considering he now knew a bit that being an Aura Farmer wasn’t the way he fantasized. He hadn’t even entered the Academy yet, and he had already faced a lot physically, emotionally, and mentally.

That fatigue was enough to make him hollow and reconcile.

He opened the brown book. It was his personal diary, and there were already different scribbles of words written on the first multiple pages. He didn’t write in it every day, as he only wrote after certain long-term goals had been accomplished.

For example, his awakening period.

He took a feather pen and began writing.

"On the day of my awakening, we left in a grand chariot with multiple escorts. We arrived at the Awakening City, which was a really cool place... it was like an enormous pier standing on top of flowing water. The water flowed upwards, then downwards. The city was really beautiful, especially the Awakening Cathedral. It was a glass dome, but guess what? The inside was stone and no glass was anywhere to be found. Cool, right? I watched people awaken different Volumes, including Mirage, who awakened an Advent Volume but then cried after seeing a snake in her vision. I felt she was overreacting until the vines of the Awakening Tree crawled around my hands..."

Leo paused, his hands shaking, meaning his emotions were slowly coming back to him. It was a good thing, but it came at the wrong time, or maybe him wanting to write about his experience triggered his emotions.

"I found myself as a large mad snake on an endless, empty obsidian desert. It wasn’t exactly empty when I dug out a large vessel named after Pisces though. In it was a vortex. I landed in the vortex and found myself in the past before the Great Sea Realm experienced the redact. I took the body of the Pisces named Aquarius, who built the ship and planned to escape with the people of the realm away from the Spirit of Madness. Everything that happened was still confusing to me, but it will make sense later on, I guess. At the end, I, Aquarius, failed."

"Everyone died. Lyra died. Elowen died. The realm fell."

A drop of tear fell on the book as he continued scribbling.

"I thought it was over when I also got killed and found myself in a mysterious castle made of light and its overextended shadows. I awakened a great power that actually shattered the tree. Then the Awakening City got invaded by Eldrath Vikings. I battled a young prodigy of the same rank and nearly lost, but humans emerged victorious in the end after losing countless soldiers and civilians. We traveled for a week on sea and came back to the fortress."

He paused, wanting to add something to the note but decided against it.

"After that, things went smoothly. I took a week off and also trained. Oh, the woman that breastfed me is now the world’s first Pisces and out of jail... illegally."

He sighed, wanting to close the novel, his face staring at the ceiling again with a contemplating look.

He then turned back to the book and wrote:

"And ooh, I cried and begged for death. I lost my pride once, but I dare not lose it again."