By Zephyria The place where Nero, unable to resist Leonardo’s urging, set foot was the foot of a low rocky hill. It was a place that was relatively less likely to be hit by falling objects and was suitable for hiding in preparation for any possible threats.
After roughly kicking away the ash-covered bushes with his foot, Nero put Leonardo down on the flat ground and had him lean back against it. Then, he released the buckle that was fastened to his forearm and took out a small Artifact from his pocket.
“Where were you taking me? And where did you get that ridiculous combat uniform?”
Looking up at Nero like that, Leonardo began to question him one by one with his eyebrows furrowed.
“And when did you come into the peninsula? What about the tracker? You didn’t just come without thinking, did you?”
“Ask one question at a time. I’ll forget everything before that.”
Along with his perfunctory answer, Nero first released the doubly locked Artifact. Taking out a hemostatic agent and a compression bandage from inside, he shook the spray-type hemostatic agent two or three times and plopped down next to Leonardo.
He carefully lifted the other person’s blood-soaked left forearm and was about to spray the hemostatic agent on it right away, but he paused for a moment because the hot blood that touched his palm was strangely sticky.
Nero, taking his hand away with a puzzled look, quietly rubbed the blood that had stained on his finger. Then, his complexion gradually turned pale, and he asked Leonardo with a hurried look.
“This… is it poison by any chance? Illaptor?”
“…I’m not sure. The symptoms are the same, though.”
“Seriously, the person who told me to be so careful is now like this—!”
As if hearing something unbelievable, Nero was startled and briefly raised his voice. But he soon stopped, gritted his teeth, and frustratedly ruffled his hair, throwing the hemostatic agent to the ground. Because the Illaptor’s venom coagulates blood, applying a hemostatic agent to the affected area would only worsen the condition.
Instead, Nero quickly unwound the pressure bandage and tightly wrapped it around Leonardo’s upper shoulder.
Then, he rummaged through the Artifact again, finding a few strands of grass that looked more rotten than withered. It wasn’t Dregalianif.
“Did you pick up that slack mentality from being with the Council bastards for a while? What were you even doing until you got into this state?”
Nero, who was frowning and nagging, rolled the grass into a small, round ball with his fingers. The index and middle fingers holding the dark mass were brought close to Leonardo’s face.
Leonardo found it absurd that he was the one who was going to scold Nero until his ears bled, but instead, he was the one being lectured.
However, just as he was about to open his mouth to retort, feeling wronged for being silent, the smell of what Nero was offering brushed past his nose, and his expression instantly turned cold. As if a bad memory had suddenly surfaced, Leonardo’s eyes widened in disgust, and he turned his head away.
“Hey, don’t tell me you’re trying to feed me that—!”
He seemed to know what the dried-up root was, so he grimaced and pushed Nero’s shoulder away. But despite his desperate struggles, he couldn’t help but slightly open his distorted lips due to the iron grip forcibly clamping his jaw.
His tightly closed red lips wriggled and slowly opened, and the not-so-gentle touch spread his even teeth apart, both top and bottom. Nero swiftly inserted two fingers in between, rubbing Leonardo’s soft tongue root and shoving the clump of grass as close to his throat as possible.
Soon, before his fingers could be bitten off by the angry teeth, he hurriedly pulled them out, then covered the other’s mouth and nose with his palm, pressing down to prevent him from removing it. Leonardo’s gaze, as if asking if he wanted to die, sharply pierced his face, but Nero wore an awkward expression and preemptively replied as if he couldn’t help it.
“Sorry, Captain. But you wouldn’t eat it otherwise, would you?”
“Ughh!”
“Swallow it quickly. I’ll let you go when you swallow it all.”
Normally, knocking this guy down with just one arm would have been a piece of cake, but perhaps because he was losing strength, he couldn’t even push him away and instead felt increasingly suffocated. Because of that, Leonardo, whose eyes were blazing as if his eyelashes were on fire, resisted vomiting several times before finally forcing the rotten-smelling grass down his throat.
The white Adam’s apple, clearly crossed by a black line, moved up and down three or four times. Nero, unconcerned by Leonardo’s strength that seemed like it would break his forearm, quietly watched the loosening golden eyes.
When the movement of his Adam’s apple had mostly subsided, he slowly removed the palm that had been pressing down on his small face. As expected, a fist flew in from the left, but Nero raised his elbow to lightly block it.
“Ugh!”
However, he couldn’t avoid the kick to his abdomen.
An extreme pain spreading from his solar plexus caused Nero to involuntarily groan. Clutching his stomach where the footprint was imprinted, he staggered for a moment, then lowered his gas mask and looked up at Leonardo with a pitiful face, shouting, “Wait, just wait a minute, Captain!” But the furious Captain’s fierce kicks showed no signs of stopping.
“Agh! It hurts!”
“You bastard, how dare you, with force… Ugh.”
Leonardo, who had been beating Nero in rhythm, suddenly couldn’t finish his sentence and lowered his head. He knelt on the ground with both hands and knees, retching repeatedly to vomit up the nauseating contents of his stomach.
But only saliva stretched out, and what he had just swallowed wouldn’t come up at all. Seeing this, Nero reached out from behind again and covered Leonardo’s mouth. Then, he crossed his forearm over his chest and shoulders, hugging him tightly and forcibly raising his upper body, urgently shouting.
“Captain, you can’t throw it up! Do you know how hard it was for me to get it!”
What Nero had fed Leonardo was a mysterious Antidote Herb secretly known among back-alley pharmacists. Not only was it incredibly difficult to obtain, but it was also so precious that it was priceless, because this Antidote Herb was a nearly omnipotent grass that could neutralize almost all kinds of poisons.
Unfortunately, its drawback was that it was far less effective than the designated Antidote Herb, Dregalianif, for specific toxins such as Illaptor’s venom. Still, in a tense situation like this, it was better to eat anything that could be expected to have an effect.
Nevertheless, the reason Leonardo wanted to vomit so badly was different. It was because he had seen with his own eyes how terribly it grew.
Perhaps anyone who had witnessed that scene would not easily put this Antidote Herb in their mouth. Moreover, the side effects were not insignificant, so it was honestly a gamble with his body.
Because of that, a scuffle broke out near the low rocky hill between the one trying to vomit and the one trying to feed him. The fight quickly ended due to the vomiter’s declining stamina, but since the opponent was who he was, the feeder’s condition wasn’t great either.
The two of them, who had been sprawled on the ground for a while, catching their breath, glared at each other as if they were disgusted.
Among them, the one who first got up and stood on two feet, extending a hand to the other, was Nero. Leonardo stared at him with sharp eyes, then, without a word, grabbed Nero’s hand and stood up.
“The person who would have died twice if it weren’t for me is making a fuss even when I help…”
“Shut up. I’m grateful, but I have a lot to say too, since I might be executed alongside you.”
As Leonardo, who was dusting off his dirt-covered clothes, muttered lowly, Nero quickly shut his grumbling mouth. There was obvious resentment in his narrowly opened eyes, but as he approached Leonardo’s side, he lightly brushed the dirt off the Captain’s back with his hand.
The childish yet affectionate bickering between the two who had met after a long time ended when the wind pressure spreading from the distant sky drew closer.
Rumble, boom— Crash!
Instinctively raising his head to look at the sky, Leonardo witnessed the bizarre and overwhelming power that moved the entire cloud, which he had seen just a short while ago. A truly admirable amount of magic was unfolding before his eyes, but even so, he couldn’t shake his worry for Hugo, who was confronting the monster alone.
‘His internal injuries must be severe… and he can’t even heal them himself. Besides, as time passes, his abdomen will fill with fluid, and his movements will become increasingly sluggish. I have to go support him quickly.’
Originally, in all battles, offense was more advantageous than defense. But the Council’s Legion Commander was only threatening the monster even when casting large-scale magic that could involve his subordinates, and he wasn’t using it properly. Meanwhile, he was dangerously close to the target, confronting it with a body suffering from internal injuries.
In front of a monster trying to destroy everything, regardless of what happened to the demon beasts born from its womb, the human will to protect was a weak and precarious heart that had to overcome the fear of death. No matter how strong a person was.
Therefore, Leonardo, who couldn’t place all that burden on him alone, bit his lip and steeled his heart, even though he knew his condition well. Then, he suddenly turned his head towards Nero with a determined look.
“Nero, I need you to—”
“Captain.”
But just then, Nero, who had approached, grabbed Leonardo’s hand first. Then, in a more serious voice than he had ever used before, he met his golden eyes and slowly opened his mouth.
“You asked me earlier where I was going, right?”
Leonardo blinked and stared at him, taken aback by Nero’s sudden change in atmosphere. Then, he suddenly looked down at the other’s hand, which was gripping his own with tremendous force.
On the back of that hand, which was holding on as if not wanting to let go, thick veins bulged with earnestness.
“I was going to go outside the peninsula. With you, Captain.”
“…”
“Originally, I just came to see if you were doing well… ”
Nero hesitated to continue, knowing what kind of reaction Leonardo would have.
But seeing his face, which was pale and white as if soaked in rain, his still red but subtly purplish chapped lips, and his upper body half covered in blood, he couldn’t hold back any longer.
His lips, which had been reluctant to open, moved on their own at some point.
“It doesn’t seem like you’re doing well, and that’s not going to be enough.”
Nero, who had briefly lowered his head to the innocent ground, met Leonardo’s gaze again. Then, with a contorted look, he gently stroked the face of the Captain he had wanted to see.
Finally, having made up his mind, he desperately blurted out, with the determination not to back down no matter what answer came from those red lips.
“Let’s run away from here together.”