31 Just Because of You.

Lloyd looked meekly at Hannah and then lowered his head. At that moment, he had forgotten all about the emperor and what he had seen in the garden. Right now there was only one thing that could come to his mind, and that was how to make up to Hannah.

"I missed you, Jenny," he said after cowering for some time. He heard a deep and frustrated sigh in response.

"Stop talking nonsense and listen to what I am about to tell you," Hannah said after sitting down on her bed. Lloyd automatically took it as approval and immediately secured his spot near Hannah's legs and placed his head in her lap. He looked up at her, with sparkling eyes that were clearly demanding 'Pamper Me.'

Hannah gave a disgusted look down at his face while thinking whether she should just kill him.

"You can't kill me, Jenny," Lloyd said in a playful voice with his signature 'all-know' smile.

It ticked Hannah off for some reason and she yanked on his ear that was facing upward.

"Ouch!! Why?!?" Lloyd yelled.

"Of course, I can kill you. Even if my magic doesn't, magic scrolls still work on you. How do you think I teleported you here," Hannah muttered as she yanked his ear even harder.

"I'm sorry!!! Sorry!! Let go!! Please!!" Lloyd cried while whining, all the time never raising his head from her lap.

'Even when you could just shake my hand off,' Hannah thought in her mind while staring at Lloyd's face while he whined in pain. She released his ear and started patting it.

"Let's get to the point," she said without realizing that her hand was patting his head. "That brat, Frank, don't do anything to him for now."

"Why?" Lloyd asked closing his eyes.

"What should I say? Maybe that he is strange? After that lake incident, something changed with that brat." (Hannah answered)

"What changed?" (Lloyd asked, burrowing further in her lap)

"It's like... Think of it like this; if before that kid was like an endless empty pit, now he's like an endless pit that is filled to brim with mana." (Hannah)

"Wait, you mean he didn't have any mana before even when he have two mana cores?" (Lloyd)

"So you know. It's true though. An incident happened a while back, he made me leak magic. You know how the flow of magic works, right? You are an aura swordman."

"Yes, it's from higher concentration to lower concentration."

"But to do that, it always needs a medium. And that medium is a mana core if the magic is to be channelized between two human bodies. The fact that he made me leak magic into his body told me two things to me about that kid. One, he had a mana core. Second, he had too little mana compared to the size of his mana core. But now it makes sense since you say he has two mana cores."

"But why did he have so little mana, to begin with? Shouldn't he be having a fine amount of mana if he has not one but two mana cores? It's strange enough that he has two mana cores, in the first place."

"That's what changed now. Before he seemed as if he couldn't absorb mana through his cores, to the point that he had been running on his innate energy absorbed during his birth. That proved that his cores weren't originally unable to absorb mana. Something or someone tampered with it to make it unable to absorb mana. But now it seems like he is filled with mana. Like a seal has been released from him that was holding him back."

"That's all nice and good, but I don't see any reason why I should leave him alone when he did such a thing to Julia."

Hannah gazed at Lloyd's face and made him sit up. She looked somewhat troubled.

"That kid is strange, Marquis," Hannah said with an aloof but grim voice. "To the point that it's scary."

Lloyd looked into her eyes, prying for reasons, and asked, "Why? Why is he scary?"

"He is near eleven years old, let's say ten. All these ten years, he couldn't absorb a single speck of mana because of his previous condition. He had been running alive depending solely on the mana that he had absorbed between the span of his birth and until those seals were placed on him. Can you imagine, Marquis, how much mana he must have absorbed as an infant, that is unconsciously, that it lasted him ten whole years and was still yet to be completely depleted? And how much mana he must be absorbing right now, while conscious and having no restrictions in a full-grown body?" Hannah said.

Lloyd thought for a while, then a terrified expression took over his face and he looked down at the floor.

"We are raising a monster right now, aren't we?" he asked as his hands trembled.

"Not a monster, something even worse," Hannah said, her expression growing dark.

A dream-like reality flashed in front of her eyes and she saw the bloody battlefield. As she looked at her hands covered in blood, in front of her stood a girl of about nineteen. She smiled brightly as her blood-soaked dress fluttered in the wind under the dark clouds. She said, "Look, Miss Ilea, isn't it pretty? All those who despised you have become nothing but a pile of blood and flesh."

Hannah's hands trembled. The girl walked close to her, all covered in blood and with a bright smile on her face, crushing the remains of the soldiers below her feet. An unexplainable lack of remorse was clearly displayed in her eyes as if she had done nothing wrong.

The sky grew darker and darker as she approached Hannah.

"I can finally have what I want, Miss Ilea, he is mine now. And you will have what you want now as well. Ain't I the best, Miss Ilea? Your precious Sylvia," the girl smiled at Hannah like an innocent child as she placed Hannah's blood-dripping hand on her cheek. But that girl's eyes gave it all, about what wicked things she had just done.

"Ain't I?"

Hannah jolted awake from this reverie, startling Lloyd who had been calling her for while now.

"Did you remember something?" Lloyd asked as he wiped the tear that had appeared In Hannah's eyes suddenly.

Regaining her stoic voice and composure, Hannah sternly denied, "No, I didn't. Anyways, keep an eye on that Frank kid for now, and don't let him out of your sight if you want everyone to be safe. I'm going to take the class now."

Before Hannah could go, Lloyd playfully forced a kiss on her and she left, cussing at him.

Now alone in Hannah's room, he lay down on the bed. He looked at the ceiling with a dark expression.

Jennifer had remembered something, something from the past before her Oblivion. He could see it in how strongly she denied it. Frank, that pest-like kid, had triggered some of Hannah's previous memories, so Lloyd needed him now. He couldn't get rid of him anymore. Though it bugged him that his precious sister was being treated as such by that boy, he needed him to know how he was related to Hannah's memories.

"It's annoying, but I need to endure it, Jenny," he mumbled. "Just because of you. So you better compensate me well."