“The reaction you had when you thought I was dead just now, Brother—it was so cute.”
The words drifted through the ruined secret chamber.
They carried a sickening sweetness.
Cecilia lowered the hand she had been using to pat her stomach.
She took a step forward.
The moment her toes touched the ground.
Space folded.
She crossed the three-meter distance instantly.
She pressed herself right up against Bell.
Their noses were almost touching.
Bell's right foot instinctively retreated.
His sole scraped against the stone tiles, making a harsh, grating sound.
Whether he could actually retreat was one thing; the resistance of his muscle memory was another.
But before his heel could hit the ground.
The surrounding air instantly turned solid.
Extreme concentrations of wind and earth elements intertwined.
They formed an invisible full-body shackle.
It locked Bell's ankles, knees, waist, and shoulders.
He couldn't even bend a single finger.
Complete, absolute suppression.
Cecilia stood on her tiptoes.
She wrapped her arms around Bell's neck.
She leaned her head against Bell's chest.
Her long golden hair spilled over Bell's shoulders.
Her left hand slid along the edge of Bell's torn clothing.
It slipped inside.
Her slightly cool fingertips touched Bell's warm skin.
She caressed him, tracing the contours of his chest muscles, inch by inch, moving downward.
“Don't move, Brother.”
She closed her eyes.
Her cheek pressed against the spot where Bell's heart beat.
“Let me hold you for a while. Just for a little while.”
Fifty meters away.
A burst of blinding blue light erupted from the rubble.
Tia's etheric conduction lines were completely overloaded.
The hydraulic structure of her Mithril legs emitted a sharp roar.
She shattered the bedrock beneath her as she kicked off.
She turned into a silver line.
There was no tactical flanking.
There were no defensive preparations.
Only the purest killing intent and instinct.
Her target was the back of Cecilia's neck.
The Mithril rapier tore a vacuum through the air.
Cecilia didn't look back.
The head leaning against Bell's chest didn't even shift half an inch.
She simply raised her right hand.
She swung it backward.
A flicker of light, an intertwining of dark red and purple-blue, danced on her fingertips.
A composite spell of fire and lightning.
Compressed to the extreme.
The moment the light left her hand, it ballooned in the wind.
It collided head-on with the charging Tia.
BOOM.
The remaining stone walls of the chamber were completely pulverized by the shockwave of the explosion.
Tia's charge came to a dead halt.
The left side of her body.
From her shoulder to her hip.
Within the zero point zero one seconds of contact with the fire-lightning light ball.
It vaporized instantly.
The Mithril shell melted.
The internal etheric circuits snapped inch by inch.
Having lost half her body, Tia was sent flying by the massive kinetic energy.
She tumbled a dozen times in the air.
She slammed heavily into the pile of rubble on the right.
She carved out a two-meter-deep crater.
Liquid silver Mithril writhed frantically at the severed edges.
It pulled out countless ultra-fine metallic threads.
It tried to reweave the skeleton and muscles.
But the fire and lightning elements clinging to the wound continued their destruction.
The speed of repair was significantly slowed.
Bell's breath hitched for a beat.
His heart contracted violently.
That was the torso he had personally hammered out, piece by piece.
That was his partner, onto whom he had carved every single rune.
Fury surged from his tailbone straight to the crown of his head.
Mana ran wild in his veins.
He tried to detonate all the mana in his body to forcibly break through the elemental shackle.
The gate of logic slammed shut in the next second.
Detonating mana to break the restraint.
Time required: zero point five seconds.
Activating Earth Core Strike.
Hit rate: one hundred percent.
Damage assessment: Zero.
Cecilia possessed the Absolute Healing of the World Tree Heart.
She possessed the blood source essence of nine ancestors.
Any physical or magical attack would be smoothed over in an instant.
The consequence of fighting back was only one thing: provoking her.
Tia would be completely erased.
Leon and Lilian would die.
Bell forced the rampaging mana back into his dantian.
His teeth bit through the inner lining of his mouth.
The taste of blood spread through his mouth.
He endured it.
In the corner of the chamber.
Lilian's back left the rock wall.
Dark red mana gathered in her palm.
The edge of her Mithril dagger glinted with a bloodthirsty red light.
She was the Vampire Queen.
Her pride would not allow her to watch this absurd scene and do nothing.
She stepped forward with her left foot.
She lowered her center of gravity.
She prepared to launch a blood source thrust.
An arm barred her chest.
Leon's arm.
Leon's uniform had been reduced to rags.
His left arm hung at a twisted angle.
The broken end of the bone had pierced his skin and was exposed.
His right arm held Lilian back.
He turned his head.
Looking at the newly appointed Queen.
He shook his head.
“Are you going there to die?”
Five words.
No emotional fluctuation.
Only absolute logic and cold reality.
“Right now, we can't even touch a single hair of hers.”
Leon's gaze passed over Lilian's shoulder.
It landed on the girl surrounded by five-elemental and sickly green light.
The ice magic he took pride in.
The frigid domain he had cultivated for years.
Before that monster, it couldn't even stir a ripple.
Rushing forward would just be a one-sided slaughter.
Lilian stared fixedly ahead.
Her chest heaved violently.
The five fingers gripping her dagger tightened continuously.
Her nails cut into her palm.
Blood trickled down the handle of the blade.
It dripped onto the gray stone tiles.
She stopped her footsteps.
Not because of fear.
But because she knew Leon was right.
Bell was still in the other party's hands.
Acting recklessly would only destroy the stalemate Bell had traded his life for.
Cecilia's cheek rubbed against Bell's chest.
She looked up.
Her chin rested on Bell's chest muscles.
She looked up at Bell's face.
“Brother, do you remember?”
Her finger traced circles inside Bell's clothes.
Her nail lightly scraped his skin.
“You said that in a couple of years, you would marry me.”
Bell turned his face to the right.
He avoided the warm breath she exhaled.
His gaze fell on the rubble on the floor.
“You actually believed a lie?”
Six words.
Devoid of warmth.
Cecilia didn't get angry.
Instead, the curve of her lips pulled even wider.
“I believed it. I believe every word Brother says.”
She stood on her tiptoes.
She pulled her hands out from Bell's chest.
She cupped Bell's cheeks.
She forcibly straightened his head.
Aiming him at herself.
Then.
She pressed her lips against his.
Absolute power suppression.
Bell's teeth were forced open.
A warm, moist sensation entered with a powerful, aggressive momentum.
This wasn't a kiss.
This was a one-sided plunder.
Cecilia greedily claimed Bell's breath.
The pressure of the five-elemental mana held Bell's body down firmly throughout the process.
He was stripped of even the right to turn his neck.
He could only be forced to endure it.
After a long ten seconds.
Cecilia finally pulled back half an inch.
Their lips parted.
A glistening silver thread stretched between them.
It tightened.
It snapped.
Cecilia's breathing was somewhat rapid.
Two sickly red flushes appeared on her cheeks.
Her forehead rested against Bell's.
“Brother, do you know?”
Her breath hit Bell's nose.
“This is an experience I've never had before.”
“Living to this point with Brother.”
Her gaze lacked focus.
She looked past Bell, toward some point in the void.
“In the past, I was always working hard alone.”
A floor of corpses.
Ruined city walls.
Countless repeated images tumbled through her mind.
She withdrew her gaze and met Bell's eyes again.
“Brother, do you really not have any feelings for Cecilia at all?”
Bell didn't speak.
His heart was in turmoil.
Rationally, he knew clearly that he did not like the person before him.
This was a lunatic who had distorted reality, who treated the entire world as a playground and everyone as a toy.
He felt only wariness and fear toward her.
But.
Deep within his soul.
Memory fragments of the first loop were constantly surging up.
Fourteen-year-old Cecilia.
Sitting on the windowsill of the Lucas house.
Swinging her legs.
A strawberry in her mouth.
Sunlight falling on her profile.
That pure sister who relied on him with all her heart.
That throb of shared blood.
That protective instinct that had been deeply engraved into the very bottom of his soul by the version of himself from the first loop.
It had not been completely erased.
He hated this feeling.
This sense of losing control, of logic and instinct being torn apart.
Seeing Bell's silence.
A soft chuckle escaped Cecilia's throat.
She leaned in again.
Their lips met once more.
This time, it was even more intense.
Her hands moved down Bell's waistline.
She reached into his clothes again.
Her hands wandered over his back and waist.
Her fingers carried an extremely high temperature.
So hot that Bell's muscles tightened involuntarily.
After another ten seconds.
She pulled away.
The frequency of her chest's rising and falling was even faster.
“Brother, I know.”
She reached out her right hand.
Her index finger tapped Bell's nose.
“You don't want these people to get hurt, right?”
In the deep crater of the ruins.
Tia's liquid Mithril repair process was excruciatingly brutal.
Every time the Mithril threads connected, they would be snapped by electric arcs.
Tia's only remaining right eye stared fixedly at the center of the chamber.
Watching the woman who held Bell in her arms.
Her etheric conduction lines flickered unsteadily due to extreme emotional fluctuations.
She used her remaining right arm to prop herself up against the ground.
She tried to stand.
The severed portion of her waist could not provide support.
Her body had barely lifted halfway.
Before it slammed heavily back into the bottom of the pit.
Rubble stabbed into her ruined shell.
She did not stop.
She exerted force with her right arm again.
Her fingers carved five deep scratches into the bedrock.
She was Bell's wife.
Even if her body were blasted into powder.
As long as she wasn't dead.
She would not stop swinging her sword at those who harmed Bell.
Cecilia's right hand traced half a circle in the air.
She pointed toward the distant corner.
She pointed at Leon.
She pointed at the bleeding Lilian, who was gripping her dagger.
Finally, she pointed at Tia, who was struggling to reconstruct her Mithril body in the pit.
“As long as you stay by my side obediently.”
She pulled her hand back.
She wrapped it around Bell's neck again.
Her cheek pressed against Bell's ear.
Hot air blew into Bell's ear canal.
“I will let them go.”
“And I won't restart this world.”
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