Leonel was quite speechless for a long while.
Aina looked down at the ring in her hand before looking toward Leonel’s side profile. Though she could sense how surprised Leonel was as well, she also felt that this had to do more with him than her. It left her feeling quite curious.
But, when she suddenly remembered Leonel’s words from earlier, she blushed and looked away as though unwilling to acknowledge the fact that she had been curious in the first place.
“Oh right, I also forgot to mention the last thing. The ring also asks as a life saving treasure, but it won’t be activated quite yet. The first time it will activate is when the recruitment process is over. When that happens, the ring will glow.
“Once it begins to glow, you have a day to prepare. Within that day, you can activate the ring at any time and be transported directly to our Core World. That’s the place you will register.
“After the registration process is over, the ring will be able to function normally. As long as it’s charged, or depending on the level to which is has been charged, it can teleport its wearer to either a random location within range or to a set location.”
Leonel was still quite absentminded during this explanation, but he understood the gist of it.
Regardless, for now, the abilities of the ring were useless to him until the registration process ended. Only then would it activate and begin to work normally.
“Is there no set date for the registration process to be over?” Aina asked.
“Ah, about this…” Sael sounded somewhat embarrassed. “… I will be honest. Normally, a place like Terrain wouldn’t even be worthy of gaining one of our recruitment stations. But, we’ve been forced to widen our net recently due to various circumstances. It’s much easier on us if we bring everyone in at once… the cost is much less.
“So, until we meet a certain number of new recruits, we won’t activate the formation. It will probably take between one to three years before the next mass teleportation.”
Sael coughed slightly and looked toward Leonel. It was only after seeing that Leonel didn’t react much to this that she sighed a breath of relief.
‘It seems that he cares more about this Aina’s opinion than anything else. I should tell the higher ups to focus on pleasing her, then…’
“Oh!” Leonel’s eyes suddenly brightened. “Can you help me get rid of this thing? There must be certain privileges in being one of your members, right?”
Sael was stunned for a moment. When she focused on Leonel’s forehead, she finally noticed the monitoring brand hidden slightly behind his Emperor brand.
When she realized what Leonel was talking about, her expression became a bit weird.
They dared to mark a member of the Morales family? They overestimated themselves a bit too much, didn’t they…? If one of those behemoths became enraged, who would take responsibility for it, exactly?
Sael shook her head. ‘He probably got into a bit of trouble. But, it makes sense he couldn’t get rid of the brand, he’s still a bit too weak to do that.’
Leonel was right. Even members of the organization behind Brave City couldn’t be so casually branded without adequate reason, let alone a member of the Morales family.
But, Sael seemed to ‘understand’ that Leonel was hiding himself away, likely to appear ‘humble’ before Aina and not try to flaunt his status. So, she simply nodded and her Force surged.
Regardless, since he was practically one of them now, it shouldn’t be a problem. Since they only monitored Leonel to begin with, it shouldn’t be a matter of life and death anyway.
Leonel’s pupils constricted when he felt Sael’s strength. He was truly shocked for a while.
In the blink of an eye, Leonel felt invisible shackles that had been around him shatter. Leonel suddenly felt much lighter and better than he had in a very long time.
He took a deep breath. It felt as though all the Force in the surroundings surged toward him as he smiled brightly.
“Thank you.”
This had been a looming darkness over Leonel for a long while. He suddenly felt much freer.
Aina watched to the side with a puzzled expression. She wasn’t sure what the monitoring brand meant. She also wondered how Leonel managed to get into more trouble than she did.
Aina had quite literally slaughtered her way out of cities and hadn’t ended up with such a brand. It could only be said that Leonel was truly unlucky.
Leonel smiled cheerfully. “I only have one more request, can you help us leave this place secretly?”
…
Not long later, Leonel and Aina walked side by side out of Brave City. So many were focused on the proceedings that no one would notice until the preliminaries ended that two of the participants had disappeared. But, by then, several days would have passed.
“Do you have any plans until the ring activates?” Leonel asked Aina, his smile never leaving his face.
Aina shook her head lightly. Her main goal had been to join this organization. Now that she had, she planned to just wait patiently. Even if she did so on Terrain, it was unlikely anyone would bother her. After all, the status the two of them now had was quite high.
“Return to Earth with me.”
Aina’s steps paused for a moment. Her heart was a bit hesitant. Not only did she not like Earth very much, she also didn’t know how she felt about getting so close to Leonel again after she had just resolved herself not to.
Though she now knew that Leonel could hold his own and that maybe his background wasn’t so simple, this had never been the reason she tried to build a wall between them in the first place.
But, before she even went through a logical progression, she still found her head involuntarily nodding before she quickly shifted to shaking it.
“… I … I just broke into the Fourth Dimension. I can’t return to Earth by normal means.”
After saying this, she sighed a breath of relief. Yes, this was a very good reason.
Hearing this, Leonel was slightly disappointed. He needed to return to Earth to deal with the Royal Blue Fort. He couldn’t allow things to just continue like that without stepping in. He was still worried about what might be happening to his teammates…
Leonel looked down at his ring and slipped it onto his finger, walking aimlessly forward.
He couldn’t just ignore the lives of his teammates just to follow beside Aina. There was a limit to how much he could place her as his first priority.
Suddenly, Leonel froze.
He looked down at his ring. He remembered, when he looked inside of it, its space was much larger than his spatial bracelet.
When Leonel came to Terrain, he noticed that his bracelet went from having a two cubic meter space to one. But, this spatial ring had a ten cubic meter space.
‘… The Segmented Cube should be able to fit inside of it even if there’s a human inside.’
Leonel’s eyes glowed and he explained his idea to Aina.
“… How about it?”
Leonel looked toward Aina expectantly.
Aina’s heart trembled beneath Leonel’s gaze. For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to say no. In fact, she felt somewhat warm inside.
A treasure that could house a person? Just what level of secret was that? But, Leonel didn’t even hesitate to divulge it.
Looking down toward the ground, her head nodded ever so slightly. Even with Leonel’s senses, he almost missed it. But, when he confirmed what he had seen, his grin took up half his face.
“Okay, let’s go. We can pay them back for putting us in this mess to begin with.”
**
Leonel had no idea that while he was feeling the happiest, Shield Cross Stars had noticed the disappearance of his marking brand.