The dawn did not arrive with a triumphant, cinematic burst of golden warmth, nor did it paint the sky with the vibrant colors of a fresh start. It arrived, instead, with a slow, grudging, and utterly exhausted surrender.
The violent, apocalyptic storm that had relentlessly battered the jagged peaks of the Thunder-Crag range for the better part of the night was finally, inevitably wearing itself out. The heavy, bruised clouds overhead—swollen to bursting with the night's electrical fury and unending deluge—were beginning to tear apart at their seams. Their dark, heavy bellies shredded under the gradually shifting atmospheric pressure, allowing thin, fragile, and watery shafts of pale morning light to strike the slick obsidian plateau.
The howling, banshee wind that had threatened to physically throw them off the edge of the mountain just hours prior had finally died down. It no longer screamed in their ears; it merely blew as a sharp, biting breeze. It tugged uselessly at heavy, wet clothing now, rather than threatening to rip it away entirely. The freezing, horizontal rain that felt like thrown gravel had thinned out into a fine, persistent, miserable mist. It clung to everything it touched, turning the flat expanse of black volcanic rock into a deadly, frictionless mirror that perfectly, bleakly reflected the bruised purples, deep blues, and washed-out greys of the eastern horizon.
Lencar Abarame sat heavily on a jagged, uneven outcropping of obsidian a few yards away from the unconscious Diamond Kingdom General. He had his legs crossed, his posture severely slumped, his shoulders bowed forward under an invisible, crushing weight.
He looked entirely, fundamentally unlike the terrifying, omnipotent, masked Sovereign who had so effortlessly dismantled an elite Magic Knight squad and broken a human weapon just hours ago. Right now, stripped of the adrenaline and the frantic pace of combat, he was just a deeply, profoundly exhausted young man who had been pushed far past the absolute, ragged edge of his physical and spiritual limits.
His heavy wool tunic, which he had pulled from his dimensional storage mere hours ago, was soaked completely through. The thick fabric clung uncomfortably, almost claustrophobically, to his skin, aggressively leeching the vital core body heat he so desperately needed to conserve in this altitude. Every single, individual muscle in his body—from his calves to his neck—ached with a deep, throbbing, lactic-acid exhaustion that pulsed in perfect, agonizing time with his elevated, recovering heartbeat. His knuckles, hidden beneath wet, ruined, and partially melted leather gloves, were wrapped in bruised, swollen purple skin from the sheer, concussive physical force required to shatter diamond-hard magical constructs with his bare, anti-magic coated hands.
Yet, despite the overwhelming, siren-call urge to simply collapse backward onto the wet stone, curl into a tight ball, close his eyes, and sleep for a solid week, his gaze remained locked. It was unblinking and entirely focused on the unconscious boy lying motionless at his feet.
He was waiting for the Diamond General to wake up.
He had kept a thin, practically microscopic, gossamer thread of sensory magic wrapped securely around Mars for the past twenty minutes. Through it, he monitored the boy with the frantic, underlying anxiety of a battlefield surgeon waiting for a critically wounded patient to emerge from a high-risk, experimental operation. Through that invisible tether of mana, Lencar felt the boy's pulse steadying. He tracked it as it shifted from the thready, weak, terrifyingly slow flutter of the near-dead into the steady, powerful, rhythmic thumping of a living, breathing warrior.
He listened carefully to his breathing, watching the boy's chest rise and fall. It deepened from the shallow, desperate, wet gasps of a failing respiratory system into full, lung-expanding intakes of the thin, freezing mountain mist. Mars's mind was stirring. It was slowly, but surely, pulling itself up from the crushing, suffocating, dark depths of an unnatural unconsciousness.
Any second now, Lencar thought.
He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his sharp elbows heavily on his knees. He dropped his chin onto his bruised, gloved hand, wincing slightly as the pressure aggravated a tender spot on his jaw. He let out a long, slow, shuddering breath, watching the thick plume of white fog dissipate rapidly in the freezing morning air. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, attempting to ward off the biting morning chill, though he knew deep down that the cold he felt seeping into his bones wasn't entirely environmental. It was the chill of a massive adrenaline crash, combined with the terrifying realization of how close he had just come to accidentally murdering someone.
He looked down at the boy lying on the wet stone.
As the pale, unforgiving morning light finally hit Mars, illuminating the gruesome, scarred aftermath of the night's chaotic, violent events, Lencar realized an immediate, highly practical problem. It was a detail he hadn't fully considered during the frantic, panic-fueled medical intervention to stop the boy from spontaneously combusting.
Mars was completely, entirely, undeniably naked.
The catastrophic, terrifying spontaneous combustion that had nearly torn the boy apart from the inside out just twenty minutes ago had made incredibly short work of his Diamond Kingdom military uniform. The heavy, insulated fabrics, the thick leather tactical straps, the heavy combat boots, and the protective undergarments had all been entirely incinerated by the runaway, untethered thermal energy of Fana's fire magic. There was absolutely nothing left of the garments but a fine, depressing layer of grey carbon ash mixed into the shallow puddles of rainwater surrounding the boy's incredibly pale, deeply scarred body.
Given the sub-zero temperatures of the Thunder-Crag mountain peak, and the biting wind chill that was currently making Lencar's own teeth chatter audibly behind his splintered wooden mask, leaving the boy exposed to the elements after just moving heaven and earth to save his life would be a profoundly stupid, tragic irony. If Mars stayed like this, he wouldn't burn to death; he would simply succumb to severe, irreversible hypothermia in less than twenty minutes. The cold would stop his heart just as surely as the fire would have.
"Well, that's just fantastic," Lencar muttered bitterly to the empty mountain, his voice raspy, dry, and hoarse from the cold and the sheer strain of his magical exertions. "I can't have you freezing to death before we even get to have our little chat. Morris would probably laugh his ass off from his sterile laboratory if he knew his ultimate, unstoppable chimera weapon was ultimately defeated by a brisk morning breeze and a lack of trousers."
Lencar looked down at his own attire. He certainly didn't have any spare clothes packed in his Void Vault that would properly fit the boy's broader, heavily muscled, unnaturally developed frame. And, pragmatic to a fault, Lencar was absolutely not going to offer up his own damp wool tunic.
But as he sat there on the rock, feeling the new, terrifyingly dense, incredibly heavy weight of his Stage 3 Peak mana humming and vibrating beneath his own skin, he realized he had something far better, and far more fitting, than a simple wool blanket.
He had the boy's own magic.
Lencar closed his eyes, shutting out the dreary, grey morning light, and reached inward. He bypassed the swirling, familiar, comforting currents of his stolen Wind and Earth magic. He navigated the newly expanded, cavernous, almost overwhelming architecture of his own spiritual repository, moving past the core of his being until he found the quarantined, locked-down section where he had stored the spoils of his nocturnal surgery.
He tapped into the newly acquired, impossibly dense Pink Soul Gem.
The physical and spiritual sensation of accessing it was incredibly jarring. Having wielded Wind magic as his primary offensive tool for so long, Lencar was intimately used to magic that felt light, evasive, sharp, and fiercely independent. Wind wanted to move; it wanted to scatter. Earth magic, which he used for grounding and defense, felt stubborn, immovable, and heavy, like trying to lift a boulder with his mind.
But this? This Crystal Magic felt uniquely, fundamentally different from anything he had ever touched or replicated.
It felt impossibly dense, almost suffocatingly so. It was rigidly structured, lacking any of the chaotic flow of wind or the organic roughness of earth. It felt meticulously, beautifully, terrifyingly mathematical. It didn't flow like water or blow like the wind; it locked together like perfectly machined, interlocking gears. It demanded absolute geometric precision and an unyielding will from its wielder. It was the magic of a fortress, cold, unyielding, and absolute.
Lencar opened his eyes. He didn't bother standing up from his rocky perch. He simply uncrossed his arms, remaining seated, and raised his right hand, pointing his bruised, leather-clad fingers casually toward the naked, shivering boy on the ground.
He didn't use a spoken incantation. He didn't need to open a grimoire for this. With the pure, unadulterated essence of the Crystal attribute now fully integrated into the fabric of his own soul, he simply willed the ambient mana in the freezing, mist-filled mountain air to forcibly align with the complex, geometric algorithms he had downloaded directly from the boy's extracted soul.
A soft, pale, almost ethereal pink light began to gather in the air immediately above Mars's unconscious form, pushing back the grey gloom of the morning.
Lencar didn't form the massive, lumbering, twelve-foot Nemean Armor that Mars so heavily preferred in active combat. That massive construct was incredibly mana-intensive, terribly inefficient for basic movement, and entirely unnecessary for the simple task of keeping a comatose teenager warm. Lencar, guided by his own pragmatic, highly modern sensibilities from his past life, opted for something far more elegant, functional, and form-fitting.
He guided the pink mana with the delicate, exacting precision of a master tailor working with the finest silk.
The pink crystal materialized out of thin air, cascading downward over the boy's pale, shivering skin like a sheet of glowing, highly viscous liquid glass. It flowed smoothly around his broad chest, ran down his muscular arms, and wrapped securely around his legs. The moment it covered the skin, it rapidly began cooling and hardening, transforming from a liquid state into a sleek, highly articulated suit of solid armor.
Lencar paid special, meticulous attention to the joints. He didn't want the boy trapped in a rigid, unmoving crystalline cast when he woke up. He carefully wove intricate, overlapping, diamond-hard plates across Mars's shoulders, his elbows, his hips, and his knees, mathematically ensuring a full, completely unimpeded range of kinetic motion. He thinned the crystal out over the chest cavity—making it incredibly flexible to allow for deep, unhindered breathing—while heavily thickening and reinforcing it around the vital organs like the heart and lungs.
Within ten seconds, the liquid mana completely solidified, locking into its geometric absolute.
Mars was now clad in a beautiful, highly functional, translucent suit of pale pink armor that shimmered softly, catching and refracting the fragile morning light. It covered him entirely from the neck down, acting as a perfect, impenetrable thermal insulator against the freezing mountain air, trapping his body heat inside, while simultaneously preserving the boy's modesty.
"Not a bad fit, if I do say so myself," Lencar mused aloud, tilting his head to the side to critically admire his own handiwork. "Sleek. Highly functional. Very avant-garde. He look less like a walking mountain and more like an elite knight."
He let his concentrated magic settle, cleanly severing the active flow of mana from his core to the construct. The bright, radiating pink glow of the newly forged crystal slowly faded into a dull, unassuming, translucent sheen. It was perfect.