Chapter 484: Mike Stone

“You know I wouldn’t cheat,” Adrian said coldly. “And I am pretty sure you already have a guess about what is actually going on outside. So your games aren’t going to work on me. I am not going to tell you what I am doing just because you are accusing me of cheating.”

He gritted his teeth. He felt incredibly frustrated, angry, and utterly helpless all at the same time. He was trying to keep them alive and they were treating it like a personal attack.

“I won’t play these games,” Adrian said. His voice dropped to a low, serious tone. “This is the only way I see where I can keep you guys safe. And if you have a problem with the way I am doing things, you can break things off.”

The words hung in the air while everyone stared at him.

Aria looked up at him in terror.

Adrian ignored the silence and kept talking.

“This is the way I do things,” he said firmly. “I am not going to put you guys in danger along with me just because you are throwing a tantrum. I will not compromise on your safety.”

Claire opened her mouth to scream at him again, but Serena suddenly rushed forward and hugged her from the back. She locked her arms around Claire’s waist to hold her in place.

“Calm down,” Serena pleaded in her ear. “Claire, please. We need to understand his perspective too.”

Serena then looked up at Adrian. Her eyes were red but she kept her voice completely steady.

“I understand that you want to keep us safe,” Serena told him. “But it is not right to keep us in the dark too. You need to give us the confidence that you will at least be coming back. I understand that you want to keep us away from danger, but think about us too. Do you think that we would want you to be in danger alone? Obviously not, right?”

Adrian slowly nodded. He couldn’t argue with that logic.

“Exactly,” Serena said. “The least you can do for us right now is to tell us what is going on. And to promise us that you will come back safe. Promise us that you won’t die. That is literally all I am asking from you.”

Claire suddenly let out a broken scream.

“He is obviously going to be safe!” Claire cried out. “He is not going to die! He will never die as long as I am alive! He just won’t!”

She bit her lower lip so hard that it almost bled.

“But I don’t…” Claire choked on her words.

She suddenly collapsed. She fell to her knees right there on the grass and just started crying into her hands. Serena went down with her and kept her arms wrapped around her shaking shoulders.

“I don’t want to see you suffer,” Claire sobbed loudly. “I don’t want to imagine you in pain out there. I don’t want to see you in danger.”

She looked up at Adrian with a thoroughly broken expression.

“All my blessing can do is keep you away from death’s door,” Claire said, her voice cracking terribly. “That is all it can do. If you get crippled out there, if you get your mana veins shattered to the point of no repair again, then there is nothing that I will be able to do. You will just be a broken mess and I won’t be able to fix you. And I don’t want to see you like that.”

Adrian felt a massive lump form in his throat.

He just looked down at the army general who usually put on such a brave, unbothered front. Yet, she was completely unraveling right in front of him.

Claire took a deep, ragged breath and wiped her teary face.

“Yes, battle scars are seen as a prideful thing,” she continued. “And I find them attractive, but there is a limit to how much you can take. You have so much potential. You are growing so strong and at such a fast pace. Why do you have to put yourself in such danger? Why can’t you just wait?”

Adrian took a deep breath.

He opened his mouth, but he honestly just couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked at the three of them and he just exhaled a long breath.

“I just…” Adrian started. “I don’t know whether I will come back unharmed. I cannot promise that. That would be irresponsible of me to promise something I can’t guarantee.”

He looked away for a second before looking back at them.

“But I can tell you one thing,” Adrian said. “If I have you guys with me outside, then you will be the ones targeted first. You will be used against me.”

He then looked down directly at Aria.

“Even you won’t be able to do a single thing against him,” Adrian told her. “You have never won against him. All you have done is run away from him until now.”

Hearing this, Aria’s entire body stiffened. Her eyes widened and she frowned deeply. A dark, terrifying aura seemed to leak out from her small frame.

“Are you…” Aria paused and swallowed hard. “Is he here?”

She emphasized the word ‘he’ with such a heavy weight that both Claire and Serena stopped crying for a second.

Hearing the way Aria talked about this unknown person, almost like she knew who it was, the other two girls looked at her with a puzzled expression.

Aria looked at them while her hands shook.

“The person who hunted me down in my past life,” Aria explained quietly. “The true hero of the Crestwall Empire. Not the one we have right now, It is not Leo. In my last life, they summoned someone else who was much, much stronger.”

She looked down at the grass.

“His name was Mike Stone,” Aria whispered. “He gave up on his surname early on and everyone just called him Mike. Muscular Mike, Hero Mike, Warrior Mike, Bloody Mike…. he had many names.”