Chapter 99

"Mr. Blaine―! Uwaaah..." 

"Wha-, what?"

Leonardo Blaine was taken aback when the new squad member suddenly burst into tears and clung to his pant leg. Moreover, hearing the cringey, revolting way he was addressed as "Mr. Blaine" made his hair stand on end.

Leonardo furrowed his brow and shook his leg as if brushing him off, his expression clearly asking why the hell he was acting like this. 

"Are you crazy? Let go."

"Hic-, I'm sorry..."

Leonardo scowled deeply at the sight of him apologizing through tears. He had felt uneasy about leaving this clumsy kid alone, but he never imagined it would turn out this pathetic. It was a real mystery how this guy ended up in the 1st Battalion of the Council's Central Branch.

"Stop your blubbering and get up. We need to get out of here quickly."

"Sniff-, yes..."

The new member sat on the floor crying and snotting before getting up. Leonardo looked at him with distaste, then suddenly shifted his gaze to the man standing awkwardly behind him. 

The man was currently trapped with no exit, hesitating and trying to find the right timing to leave. While it was good that he had escaped the threat of the monsters, the strongman who had knocked them out in an instant seemed to know this Council guy.

When their eyes met, the man flinched in surprise. Leonardo realized he must be an outsider who had entered the Elder Millie Peninsula without permission and got caught. Both this newbie and that outsider looked rather disheveled, as if they had been caught up in the mysterious explosion that occurred earlier. 

Leonardo had heard the sudden blast from outside and had been circling the area when he found them. He had been speculating that the explosion might have been caused by these two fighting each other.

However, neither of them seemed to possess enough mana to cause that level of impact, which he found strange. Just then, a blue mineral the man was holding caught his eye.

Leonardo's eyes suddenly widened, then narrowed as he looked sharply between the mineral and the man. He approached the man and snatched the mineral, examining it closely with both eyes before asking:

"Where did you get this?"

"Huh, what?"

The man made a dumb sound, his mineral taken in the blink of an eye, alternately looking at his own hand and Leonardo. But he didn't answer, evading the question. Meanwhile, Leonardo's gaze fell on the bag the man was carrying.

Inside the slightly open bag were several blue minerals like the one the man had been holding. And it was the mineral Leonardo had been searching for under Flynn's surveillance on Hugo Agrizendro's orders.

He had traveled to many places since then, but what he found were small in size and only a few in number. But what this man had now looked at a glance to be much larger in size and easily 10 times the quantity.

Sensing a dangerous atmosphere, the man took a step back, clutching his bag. But he had barely taken a few steps when he felt the cave wall against his back. 

Realizing there was nowhere to run, the man suddenly changed his stance. He grabbed one of the minerals and thrust it in front of Leonardo's face.

"Don't come any closer. You know what this is? It's a bomb, a bomb."

The man gulped but forced a confident smile as he turned his head towards the new member, as if to confirm it with him.

"Kid, you saw it earlier, right? How terrifying this is. Just try coming closer. I'll throw it and blow you up."

The new member tugged lightly on Leonardo's collar with a tense look. 

"Mr. Blaine, as soon as that man threw that earlier, there was a huge explosion. I think it's dangerous."

Hearing the member's words, Leonardo narrowed his eyes and stared at the man. The cause of the earlier explosion was this bastard. And judging by him calling it a bomb, it seemed the guy knew well how it could be used.

As Leonardo just silently watched him, the man thought his momentum had worked. He waved the mineral in front of Leonardo and continued.

"Stay right there until I leave. Unless you want this to explode and kill us all."

The man slowly passed by them, keeping the mineral aimed at them.

The new member glared at the escaping man, but didn't dare try to catch him, thinking the impact would be greater if an explosion occurred this deep inside the cave. 

And the fleeing man thought the same. He also knew well that an explosion here could really kill him. But since he was the only one who knew how to make the mineral explode, he thought he had the upper hand and was taking a gamble.

The man looked between them and the side exit. If he could just get a little further away, he would run straight there and throw a small mineral at these guys to cause a minor explosion. 

'Better not to leave loose ends.'

He looked at Leonardo's face as he inched away crab-like. The blond-haired guy was staring at him expressionlessly with fierce eyes, but seeing no particular movement, it seemed there would be no problem escaping like this.

In the meantime, the man suddenly thought it would be a real shame for Leonardo to die here with that face.

With such a brazen thought, he was slowly getting further away when the corners of Leonardo's mouth, who had been watching him blankly, curved upward in an arc. The man abruptly stopped in his tracks.

As he faced that smiling face that was clearly directed at him, a chill ran down his spine for some reason.

Was this a situation to be smiling in?

Just like feeling an unknown fear when seeing someone act abnormally, his body was signaling that the current situation was extremely dangerous. And that guy had merely smiled...

Then, a sound like a sneer leaked out from Leonardo.

It was a small chuckle, but perhaps because the cave was so quiet, it sounded very loud to the man.

The man gulped and stiffly turned his head to glance sideways again. He felt like he would die if he didn't run now.

But even though the exit was right in front of him, the distance there suddenly felt very far.

Feeling a distant sensation, the man looked forward again, and the blond hair that had definitely been standing a little ways away was now suddenly right in front of him.

"Aaargh―!"

He reflexively tried to throw the mineral in surprise, but Leonardo firmly grasped his wrist. Then, lowering the corners of his mouth that had been raised diagonally, he muttered coldly.

"I'm so tired I could die, and now every little thing is pissing me off."

The man, his fluster evident, tried his hardest to break free from Leonardo's hand, but his strength was too much to overcome no matter how hard he tried. And the golden eyes right in front of him seemed to know that fact very well too. That he would not be able to escape.

Leonardo pointed his chin at the mineral in the man's hand.

"Throw it."

The man suddenly realized he had been holding his breath. He thought he had seen a lot of dangerous guys, but coming face-to-face with those luminous golden eyes up close, his mind warned him that he had seriously messed with the wrong person.

"Y-you, do you really want to die!? You think I won't throw it?"

"So throw it and see."

The man raised his voice, threatening him instead. But Leonardo provoked him further with an indifferent face, as if to see if he really could throw it. Then, as if discerning that he couldn't, instead of grabbing his other arm, he let go of the arm holding the mineral.

That action seemed to see through that he couldn't throw it, so the man raised his voice in fear.

"You bastard, you know who I am? In Bermuda, just saying my name, everyone―!"

Leonardo grabbed the man's arm that was going on and on and lightly twisted it behind his back. An anguished scream burst out from his wide open mouth. 

To muffle the sound reverberating through the cave, he grabbed the back of the man's head and slammed his face directly into the cave wall.

A pained groan leaked out, muffled as his nose was crushed and mouth smothered. The man thrashed nonstop as if he couldn't breathe.

Leonardo pressed his head hard against the wall with a cold face for a while, then pulled him back after some time passed. The face that peeled off the wall had blood streaming from his nose, which seemed to be broken, and he was panting open-mouthed.

Leonardo grabbed his hair and yanked harder.

"Hey."

The man looked with just his eyes rolled back at the brutal man holding his twisted arm and hair, breathing so irregularly it seemed he would pass out. As those white, rolling eyes looked right next to him, a terror of being on the very brink of death seeped into his bones.

Seeing the fear etched in that face, Leonardo twisted the corners of his mouth slightly and asked.

"You know who I am?"