Chapter 2390: Just Now...

Leonel could practically feel the laughter in his bones. He frowned and looked back up to find that the old woman was still looking at him, her eyes were far brighter than before, her irises practically taking her even her sclera.

"Brat, my name is Mo''Lexi. If you can manage to remember it-"

That was all Leonel heard. In fact, he didn't hear anything after "Mo". His eyes dulled and his mind seemed to shut down. He felt a trembling in his very soul and when his vision finally cleared, all he saw was death and destruction.

The blood came up to his shins, and yet it didn't feel like liquid. Rather, the flesh was so numerous, so minced and blended within that it felt like he had stepped into pudding, as though much of the liquid of the blood had been evaporated, leaving behind a dense glob of death.

He stood frozen in place. It wasn't that he couldn't move-though that might very well have been the case-but rather that he couldn't even muster up the intention to do so.

He could feel the very psyches of each one that had died. The sludge that wrapped around his ankles and calves, seeping into his toes and clawing into his flesh, feeling like the bony hands of those the dead.

Then the clawing began at his very soul, ripping him to shreds, piece by piece.

Had he known destruction? Had he known death? Had he known the heaviness that came with it? The pain, the horror, the sick and disgusting smells that twisted your gut?

These people had probably sacrificed themselves for what they felt was a worthy cause. Maybe they had hoped that once they were gone, they would be remembered as heroes, that their tales would be sung across the generations and that their will would impact the future into forever.

And yet this was the reality. There was nothing beautiful about this dense land of rotting flesh. Not the sight, not the smell, the feeling...

This was what true Destruction was. There was no beauty to pull out from this, even the skies above were dim and the sun was painted in red.

Leonel suddenly snapped out of it. When he awoke, he found plumes of smoke and ash coming from his feet and eyes, his Innate Nodes, one in each of his kidney, thrumming with a searing pain that threatened to burn even him to ash.

But hardly any of the participants noticed this, not because it wasn't obvious, but because so many of them had keeled over.

The weakest of them were dead. They lay in a pool of their own vomit, their eyes rolled back, their skin pale and the last vestiges of life slowly leaking from them. They released their bowels and the last relaxation of life grabbed hold of them.

This was the vast majority. Tens of millions died in fat swarms.

And then there was the second group, the group that had collapsed to the ground unconscious. Many of them may never wake up again, and those that could would find themselves chained to their beds for the rest of their lives, whether as vegetables or mad men and women.

The third group was incapacitated. They fell to the ground, also unconscious. They frothed at the mouth, and tears and snot streamed down their faces, but they were still alive, and given some time, they might be able to return to a normal life.

And then there was the fourth group. Some of them kneeled to the ground, clutching their chests, some of them kneeled and prayed to Gods they had maybe not even thought of in the last year, and some of them hyperventilated.

Among this number, there was Aina. She kneeled by his side, holding Blackstar in one hand and grabbing at her chest and rubbing it with the other. It was as though she was hoping that the pain would go away as though it was a stubbed toe rather than a scar on her mind.

And then there was Leonel. He was the only one standing, the only one that seemed to be clear-headed, and the only one radiating an aura of death and destruction all too similar to the echo of Mo''Lexi's name.

But he was shocked by something else entirely.

'Half a day. It's been half a day and they're still all in this state.'

What Leonel didn't know was that it had indeed been half a day, but what had happened in that half a day was unlike his original thoughts.

He believed that everyone had come out of the illusion at the same time, then collapsed like this.

In reality, he was the only one that had experienced the illusion so clearly and for so long. For everyone else, they received just a brief flash before collapsing. For the vast majority, and those of the first and second group, they hadn't even seen the illusion. Just the name alone had caused their deaths.

"Aina!"

"Don't touch her!" A voice boomed in his mind.

At that moment, he couldn't move even if he wanted to. When his head barely managed to turn back up toward the sky box, he found that every one of those over-dozen gazes were on him.

In half of their eyes, there was a dense killing intent. In the other half, there was intrigue and interest. In Mo''Lexi's eyes, there was nothing but shock.

She wasn't the adorable old lady Leonel thought her to be at all.

Usually, Leonel was exceptionally good at reading people, but what about when the target was a Dream Force user leagues beyond him? It was impossible for him to pick up on his normal cues and he had to take said person at face value.

Just now, Mo''Lexi had, indeed, said her name aloud. But she had only allowed it to simultaneously reverberate in the mind of a single person. And that person was Leonel.

To make a complicated matter simple... Just now...

She had tried to kill Leonel.