Chapter 80

Chapter 80

Leonhard knelt down, dripping with fresh blood.

He obviously tried to find some of Celine, who had been held in his arms a while ago, but all that was left of her was red blood.

“Celine…”

He muttered in a hoarse voice a name he had already called several times. Still, he found no answer. At the same time, he found no trace of the laboratory, and the vast swamp was silent.

This was too much.

However, Leonhard did not notice the strangeness around him as the fact that Celine was dead blinded him and bound his limbs.

‘…It’s my fault.’

If he hadn’t told her to break the crystal ball, she wouldn’t have died. However, he pushed the troubled Celine to break the crystal ball. As a result, she was shattered instead of the crystal ball.

Leonhard gritted his teeth.

Celine’s figure, who was contemplating while holding the crystal ball, came to mind clearly… what did he say then?

—Can’t you value your life?

It was his fault that Celine died.

The taste of the pungent blood was in his mouth.

In the end, it was all his own fault. In the first place, Celine came here to get the help she couldn’t get from him.

‘…I was completely wrong.’

He was wrong when he let her get help from someone other than him.

‘Never again… will she leave me.’

A strange impulse seized him.

If he were to see her again, he would have the urge to squeeze her slender hand and never let go again…

As he thought that, Leonhard put his hands on the ground and stood up slowly. It wasn’t the time for him to be like this. Celine must have come to life by now and was suffering from the visions. It may be why she couldn’t respond to his cries.

“….?”

Leonhard’s face contorted.

Not even the wizards were visible at all, let alone the laboratory. There was only a vast expanse of swamps, larger than any swamp he had ever seen.

Unlike ordinary swamps full of flora and fauna, it was a swamp full of black mud. He stepped into the swamp but took a step back in surprise at the mud that was sucking him up so hard that it was ready to absorb him.

He called Celine’s name in a slow, clear voice.

“Celine!”

There was still no answer.

Leonhard closed his eyes and cleared the situation for a moment.

Celine would have resurrected not too far from him. However, all he saw in front of her was a swamp. Even if he called her name, he couldn’t even hear her groans in the quiet environment, where he could hear his own breathing.

His mind drew a grim conclusion.

She must have sunk somewhere in this swamp… couldn’t get out without the help of others and repeated her death over and over again.

‘I have to find her…!’

Leonhard jumped into the swamp like a madman.

In an instant, his lower body was buried in mud with strong adsorption, and he made a small path while swinging Rashir in that state.

‘….?’

Suddenly, a big wave came up in the mud, and like a wave running up against a sandy beach, he was beaten to the shore.

Leonhard jumped into the swamp again.

The response from the swamp this time was even stronger. As soon as he put his foot in, he was slammed straight into the shore. He had tried more than ten times before he realized that he could not set foot in this swamp.

Despair gripped him and it wouldn’t let go.

In the midst of this, Celine would be dying… no, she must’ve already died and revived multiple times.

‘…Let’s stay calm.’

Taking a deep breath, he held his breath for a moment. He had to put away thoughts that were not helpful, wasn’t he already wasting his time stupidly in a panic? He had to somehow come to his senses and rescue Celine.

As Leonhard stuck Rashir into the mud with his feet firmly planted on the shore, blue flames sprang from Rashir like a fountain.

‘It works…’

The mud stirred up a lot, but unlike when Leonhard put his body into the mud, it didn’t throw Rashre out.

Leonhard closed his eyes tightly.

The blood on his face had long since been washed away with sweat.

After tens of minutes.

His hands trembled and his legs were already weak, and he knelt on the shore, but he did not relax. At first, the strength of the mud, which was powerless against Rashir, grew stronger and stronger. If his concentration were distracted for a moment, all of this would be in vain.

Still, Leonhard was also human, after all. He ended up coming to a limit to face an opponent he had never faced before.

‘Just a little more, a little more…’

He gritted his teeth even harder and muttered inwardly. Here, he was sustained by the thought that if he collapsed, he might never see Celine again.

“…Celine.”

Leonhard muttered Celine’s name out of his mouth.

Like a spell had been cast, a slender woman with radiant blond hair and ever-changing blue-grey eyes appeared clearly in his mind. At that moment, strength went into his hands, who had already lost all his strength.

The mud throbbed like it did when Rashir was first impaled, then lost its strength.

‘…It’s done.’

He had a hunch.

The swamp in front of him did not change at all outwardly, but he knew he had won. When he stood up slowly and stepped into the swamp, his feet sank into plain mud, where he felt no strength. Leonhard began to cut the mud in front of his eyes with Rashir.

He hoped to find Celine as soon as possible.

Celine couldn’t scream.

Even when she screamed, her mouth, vocal cords, and lungs to scream with were torn to shreds in an instant. If that didn’t happen, she would have let out endless screams of pain more intense than any death.

When she came back to life, Celine found herself shedding tears as she sat in pitch darkness.

‘It hurts, it hurts…’

She had no time to think about where she was or why she had died, for she was overcome by an illusion of reliving her death, which she had just suffered. After dozens of minutes just writhing on the floor, Celine lay idly on the floor for a while, even after the illusions had gone.

She was exhausted and didn’t want to lift one finger.

Suddenly, a familiar name popped into his mind.

‘…It’s so hard for me to go through the illusions without Leonhard.’

The corners of her eyes reddened.

She just wanted to see him. Leonhard, whom she seemed to have glimpsed just before her death, must be an illusion created by her head.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing…’

Maybe Leonhard was still staying at the hotel.

Celine slowly raised her body.

This was not a situation where she could lean on anyone. If she wanted to see him again, she had to move herself. Fortunately, she felt that this darkness was ordinary darkness so she lit a light with a little gesture.

It seemed that she was in a narrow passageway.

‘That’s the entrance.’

Even though she couldn’t see the light, she could feel the cool air. Celine made her way to the entrance, barely moving her legs that kept collapsing. After a while, as soon as she left the entrance, her blue-gray eyes opened wide.

‘A swamp…’

Celine collapsed onto the floor. The swamp, which looked as vast as the sea, stretched endlessly.

It was the beginning of the stage.

If things had been just a little bit better, she would have been delighted because the wait was finally over. However, Celine knew all too well that she was no longer in just a game.

‘The wizards, Rose…….’

Her lips trembled.

The sudden death after she fought the darkness and won, and a swamp that suddenly appeared instead of Flua… she would have known if she had been forced to move. Still, she only got out of a small underground passage that was created as if to protect her.

Then, it would be said that this place was near Flua.

Celine involuntarily looked up at the sky.

‘Ah…’

The Milky Way, which seemed to pour over her head at any moment, refracted once on the glass, shining its light. Her eyes reddened, having already shed so many tears that her tear ducts were drying up.

This was a beautiful flower garden.

Celine called out loudly to Rose, but there was no answer, understandably. As hot tears dripped down to her feet, she hastily wiped the tears with the back of her hand.

‘…I’ve cried enough.’

She slowly approached the swamp.

All she could do now was clear this stage.

Suddenly, extreme loneliness overtook her. Celine’s body trembled once, and when she realized the cause, she smiled bitterly. Before she knew it, whenever she cleared her stage, she took it for granted as she was with Leonhard.

‘…Let’s get ourselves together.’

She wet her bruised lips with her tongue. She could clear the stage well enough by herself. Rather, when she got too much help from Leonhard, she was recognized as cheating and she was not rewarded.

Thinking so, Celine gulped and stepped into the dark mud.

“….?”

Blinking her eyes, she vaguely remembered what the swamp was like in the game.

Players had to fight their way through the mud. But this mud, though deep, felt no threat. Rather, it was as easy as water when passed through.

‘What…?’

Maybe because it was the true ending route, the stage might have changed a lot. Celine gripped Ringzor tightly and moved forward cautiously. Since it was a true ending route, if the stage had been changed, it would have been much more difficult.

“….?”

Though the more she struggled through the mud, the more she became bewildered. Obviously, she didn’t feel a single attack the player received on this stage.

For an instant, her body stiffened.

It was because she found traces of familiar magic in the mud… traces of offensive magic that never belonged to wizards. To her knowledge, there was only one person in this empire who could use such offensive magic.

Leonhard’s whole body, which had been stained red with Celine’s blood, became muddy before he knew it, but he continued to clear the mud without getting tired. It took quite a while because he removed all the mud one by one rather than making a straight path.

“Gasp…”

Even Leonhard was tired. He sat down on the floor for a moment.

By now, dawn was breaking.

‘The night… is over.’

His chest tightened.

…Tonight, he would pay the price for not protecting Celine.

—Clink!

Suddenly, Rashir fell from his hand.

In the distance, someone was creeping up through the mud in his direction. Her blonde hair glistened in the morning sun.

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