Unrequited Love, Lost for the Better - Chapter 32

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

He had broken through wall after wall to advance. Shadow Puppeteers attacked without warning, but he paid them no mind—he’d just sweep them all away.

Thwack!

His mana-charged sword cut down a lunging beast with a sound of solid matter being severed. Black blood sprayed with sparks. Valerian blocked the blood with his forearm and shouted.

“Collette! Are you there? Answer me if you can hear me!”

No answer came. Not here either. Biting his cracked, bloodied lip, he moved on.

I need to find her fast.

Collette was a child who couldn’t even easily kill a bug. Though she acted tough, her heart was soft. Thinking of her being dragged into this wretched Labyrinth, terrified, made his chest burn.

Just then—crackle—his mana, synced with his emotions, turned dark red and sparked. The dark purple veins visible through his sleeve grew darker. Mana poisoning.

He had always possessed immense mana. But when that power met the Labyrinth’s curse and boiled over, it threatened to consume him the moment he let his guard down.

Now, with his rational grip thin as a spider’s web, it was especially eager to devour him.

There had been eccentrics who coveted his mana and tried to extract it. They had all failed to withstand the mana incompatibility and the Labyrinth’s curse, and taken their own lives. After that, absorbing another’s mana was deemed illegal.

In any case, he had no other choice now. If he could only find Collette, he would gladly drink poison. Even if his mana poisoning worsened, he had to keep channeling mana into his sword and smashing through the tunnels.

Fools who didn’t understand envied and admired him as befitting a “Labyrinth Destroyer”—but his immense power was nothing but a double-edged sword.

Uncontrolled power was a disaster. Because of this power, he could no longer hold Collette—the child—freely in his arms.

Moreover, the more he explored the Labyrinth using the power he had gained from destroying it, the more the mana—which had never truly been his—sought to kill him. Like the dark purple veins spreading across his body, it was turning him into a monster no different from the magical beasts.

But without this power, he wouldn’t have been able to search for Collette inside this sealed Labyrinth at all.

Crash—!

Every time he broke into a new space, the damned beasts swarmed him like flies. Dealing with them wasn’t difficult. But thinking that the more he wandered, the more Collette’s life hung in the balance—that was unbearable. His gut twisted, his spine turned cold.

I should have stopped her until the very end.

Before this damned Labyrinth swallowed us, I should have spotted Collette by the barracks and shoved her straight into the warp.

If I had, I wouldn’t be trembling at the thought of never seeing her again.

Shred—!

Valerian grabbed the mouth of a beast that had bitten his shoulder and tore it apart. After ripping its jaws open, he seared the wound to stop the bleeding. He could feel his boiling mana burning even his veins—but he didn’t hesitate to swing his sword.

Please.

“…Collette!”

Please answer me.

“Collette Lowell Verna!”

Let me know you’re alive.

“If you’re alive, answer me!”

If something happened to Collette, he wouldn’t be able to face Leonhardt. And not just that—the version of himself from the past, who had been saved by her, would never forgive his own existence if he lost her.

Afraid of being despised, he had known Collette’s heart yet pushed her away half-heartedly. He couldn’t bear that version of himself anymore.

Perhaps that was why. Regret came too late. Regret that he should have made the things he gave her feel more natural. Regret that he should have acted thoroughly so she wouldn’t feel even a speck of being treated like a child…

Should he never have feared being hated or despised in the first place?

“You’re only twenty-two, Collette.”

“So what? You’re only twenty-nine yourself. What’s the big difference that you keep bringing up age, age, age!”

Rather than wounding her by playing an indecisive guardian, shouldn’t he have shared everything with her—so completely that she couldn’t feel even a moment’s gap?