Camelot suffered a great blow on the first day. White City's assault was swift and didn't contain the slightest hint of mercy.
By the time Leonel and Aina made it to the city, it was already under siege by those over thousand gliders. Realizing it was a lost cause, rather than trying to fight a losing battle, Lancelot focused all his efforts on retreat, evacuating as many as he could
Leonel and Aina of course spent their time helping these efforts.
Though Leonel had the crossbows now, he could at most shoot a single one at a time. This was the limitation of his Chain Domain.
Even when he wasn't in the skies, he realized that the trouble loading the crossbows was greater than he originally thought. The amount of strength it took was astronomical and beyond him.
One solution to this was to rely on Aina to do this, but then came the problem of aiming. Only Leonel could make a siege weapon like those massive crossbows accurate enough to target single individuals.
Even if Aina loaded the crossbows for him, he would still need to aim them. And, he could obviously only aim a single one at a time due to the limitations of his Chain Domain.
A target was always changing and shifting their position. Leonel couldn't possibly expect to aim so many crossbows at once with such a blatant weakness. And, aiming just one and firing a single bolt at a time couldn't possibly allow him to stop an army of over a thousand, especially with how dauntless they were.
It was better to keep the crossbows as a trump card for the future. Leonel even thought it might be nice to spend some time modifying them to make them easier to use.
With his current strength, his imprint on this war definitely wouldn't be made by his fists. If he wanted to have an impact, it would definitely have to be with his Crafts.
**
Leonel returned to Camelot to find the dark atmosphere he had originally seen had become even heavier.
What no one could have possibly expected was for a new enemy to appear before they even finished dealing with The Empire. Not only was this enemy more cruel than The Empire, but they even seemed to be more powerful.
Leonel and Aina were eventually led to their rooms. But, who knows if Mordred got to the organizers or not, but it was once again just a singular room.
Leonel swept a glance around. Though the room was just as if not more luxurious than the one Mordred had given them, it was levels lower in romantic hues. In such a situation, it felt difficult not to read more into this than one should.
Rather than warm lavender, red and violet colors, it had a bland whiteness to it. And, instead of a refreshing, soothing scent, the room didn't have a particular smell to it at all.
The neutrality of it all hung with an odd heaviness.
Well, this was the case to Aina. For Leonel, he didn't feel any particular way as though he had already disconnected himself from it all.
With a flip of his palm the Segmented Cube appeared and expanded to its five by five by five meter size. Despite its size, it only took up about 20% of the large room.
"If you want to use the cleansing waters, you can. It should be easy for you to enter, just reach out with your Internal Sight.
"I'm going to go and see if I can gather any materials from Camelot's warehouses. If I can't, I'll also speak to Em to see if the Demon Empire has the things I need."
"Materials?" Aina asked softly.
"Mhm." Leonel nodded. "I'm not very powerful now so all I can do is make things with my hands. If there's an opportunity, I'll make a replacement for the headpiece you lost."
"You're a… Force Crafter?" Aina's soft voice carried a hint of surprise.
Leonel grinned. "How is it, I'm pretty amazing, right?"
Leonel's smile seemed to light up the room. Though this space already had plenty of sunlight rebounding off its white walls, it lacked the same warmth…
Aina didn't move even a long while after Leonel had left.
Eventually, she walked slowly to the bed, crawling onto its head and pulling her knees into her chest.
A touch of redness crept onto her nose as her eyes watered. She stared off into empty space, seemingly looking at nothing and thinking of nothing. But, the emotions threatening to spill over were undeniable.
She squeezed her knees tighter.
At first it seemed as though she was simply in an emotional state, but soon, it reached beyond that.
The crackling of bones sounded in the quiet room. It took only a moment for one to realize that the bones that were breaking were Aina's own.
As quickly as she broke them, she healed them, only for her to fracture them once more.
In any other context, this was just training taken to an extreme. Breaking down one's body and reforming it was the simplest form of training. However, within context, it felt like something much darker, like a heavy fog hanging over a young woman's life.
A person's worst enemy could often be themselves. In the beginning, it might have seemed that Leonel was the only one who needed to grow and to mature, but it was easy to forget that Aina, too, was just an 18-year-old girl.
Aina grew up alone. Under the welfare of The Empire, most in thanks to her Five Star Professional evaluation, she was never homeless nor starving. But, regardless, she was alone.
She didn't meet Yuri until the later years of her middle school days and always had trouble connecting with her or anyone, for that matter.
She was stuck in a quagmire of her own thoughts. Even if she wanted to connect with someone, she had no idea how to.
Aina continued to stare off into blank space, her tears half fallen, but not quite, her emotions half spoken, but not quite, her heart half broken… but not quite.