"Oh, it seems that your rival is acting just as wildly as usual."

An old man chuckled after hearing the news. He leaned back in his chair, taking a swig of alcohol and seemingly uncaring about Amery's feelings on the topic. He was quite sloppy for a man of his stature, but he didn't seem to care about that either.

"Rival?" Amery said lightly.

The old man's gaze flashed with a hint of coldness that was completely different from his usual demeanor.

"What did I say about excuses?"

The coldness in the man's words seemed to cause the temperature to drop by several degree. However, Amery was unmoved. He continued to squeeze and open his hand, wanting to make sure that everything was perfect. He didn't plan on picking up a sword with this hand again until it was absolutely health. To a swordsman, the hands were far too important. He would rather only use a single hand until these lingering issues were gone than to risk aggravating it again.

Hands were among one of the most difficult non-lethal injuries to heal. There were so many bones, so many fragile ligaments, and so many potential variables. Amery refused to take any risks with his future.

He was the man who would stand atop the Human Race and repel their enemies with a single sword. He wouldn't do anything that compromised that.

"When did I make any excuses?" Amery replied. "I only questioned your choice of words. I don't see him as a rival. That is all."

The old man leaned back into his chair, the coldness dissipating as he took another swig.

After Amery finished saying this, he rose up.

"I will be back for more treatment tomorrow. My hand is still not ready."

With that, he turned and left.

"What an annoying brat." The old man chuckled.

In truth, he knew the truth. Right now, most of Amery's Sword Force was directed toward suppressing the tribulation of Sword Domain. It wasn't even a tenth as powerful as it was usually.

In addition, during his battle with Leonel, he had refrained from using his Lineage Factor as it sometimes impacted his psyche. If he lost control of himself in battle and used more of his Sword Force than he should and the tribulation was released, it would be too late for regret.

Amery felt no need to fear Leonel at his full strength even if the latter had that bow. But, he knew that if Leonel hadn't had that bow, the victor of their battle would have been him.

Knowing this, how could Amery see Leonel as a rival? At most, he was just annoyed he lost to someone he saw as inferior to himself and that was a loss he would remember. He would use it to fuel him so that he could make sure that such a thing never happened to him again.

As for challenging Leonel again to clear himself of humiliation, he didn't care to do it. As far as he was concerned, it was nothing more than a waste of his time.

"You know that he never even wanted the Shadow Sovereign Ability Index to begin with."

A second voice, this one clearly feminine, rang through the room.

"He's stubborn. Controlling that Lineage Factor would be difficult without the Shadow Sovereign Ability Index, but he thinks that his sword is all he needs. If he had listened to me to begin with and spent more time learning to control it instead of swinging that sword of his all the time, this wouldn't have been that large of an issue."

"You talk about his stubbornness like you're not worse. You dare to get mad at my grandson when you, too, lost to Ishmael Morales. Now you're trying to project a rivalry of two generations ago onto my baby boy. You'd better stop before I teach you a lesson, old man."

The old man snorted but didn't say anything in response.

"Also, you better heal my grandson well until he's satisfied. If not for you old fogies, he wouldn't have gone to the Rapax Nest to begin with and he wouldn't have suffered that injury. Let him do things the way he wants to."

**

Leonel's breathing was even. He found that his stamina was on a completely different level now. But, that didn't stop his body from being drenched in blood that was both his and not his own.

Though his wounds had healed, he could feel his Healing Factor getting slower and slower. However, his eyes still maintained the same coldness, his body zipping around as it basked in a special sort of feeling.

Leonel was encircled from all sides. He couldn't even see a clear line to Aina. In fact, their Internal Sight connection had been severed by whatever interference the Dwarven Race had concocted. However, he could just barely see her through the flashes of crimson she unleashed.

There was no escaping this place, that much Leonel could tell. The door to the throne room was only marginally weaker in defense than the barrier protecting the King and Queen. If they could destroy it, they already wouldn't be very far from destroying the mythical beast barrier anyway.

'It's close.'

Leonel focused his Starry Spirit Domain on his spear. Every time he pierced outward, he changed something a small bit.

The two meter radius around him became like a no man's land. He didn't kill with a single strike, but he could force them away, keeping his distance.

At the same time, he could limit the number of enemies he had to face at once.

Every time the beam would fire, though, his no man's land would shrink, causing a suffocating sort of pressure to press down on him again before he fought it off once again, pushing the Pixies and Sparrows back.

An arrow whizzed through the encirclement and appeared before Leonel's brows.

He tilted his head to the side, spinning back with a swift speed and catching the tip of the arrow with his spear blade.

The arrow glided along the movement of Leonel's spear, drawing an elegant curve in the arc.

Leonel acted with the grace of a dancer but the imposing air of general.

His spear whipped back, taking the arrow with it and causing it to streak outward even faster than it had come.

At that moment, the fierce glowing light of Leonel's spear seemed to have become a towering, unmatched gold as the spear crown on his forehead grew another size.