Damien’s abrupt action shocked every single person there.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Shouted Yin Jian. He and Qin Huo had a relationship akin to brothers, and seeing him die without suspense like this threw his logical thinking out the window.

“A foreign mana invaded his mind. He was already gone before I killed him,” Damien replied indifferently.

Just before Yin Jian could charge at Damien, Xiao Zhen stepped in. “Stop. I would have made the same call.”

“But…!”

“Don’t say anything and think clearly. You saw his eyes and you heard the guttural sounds that came out of his mouth. It’s clear that Qin Huo wasn’t himself anymore.”

“But we could have saved him!”

“No. You are aware of the kind of enemy we are facing. And this isn’t the first time this has happened. Recall the last time someone insisted on saving the person instead of killing them and then try to convince me.”

Yin Jian was immediately silenced. He knew exactly what Xiao Zhen was referring to. In truth, this kind of incident had happened more than once in the past, but it was always dealt with before any substantial damage could occur.

Besides a single instance. An instance where a benevolent person insisted on saving the person who had been infected by the Nox

And the result? A massacre that still sends shivers down the spines of those who heard of it; even hundreds of years after it happened.

Yin Jian couldn’t find the words to rebuke Damien’s decision. He knew that it was correct, but that didn’t change the fact that he had just lost a brother. Without another word, he flew away from the area.

Xiao Zhen watched him leave with a complicated look in his eyes before he sighed. “I will be going after him. Let us meet again in a few days time to discuss things further.”

Cupping his fist towards Damien in a show of respect, Xiao Zhen left as well. Now, all that was left in the area was Damien’s group.

Even the people within the Niflheim headquarters had fled in every direction. This had happened near the beginning of the fight.

Even if they didn’t cause much large-scale damage since most of the fight took place in the air, the shockwaves from their clash alone could wipe out those weaker beings.

Looking at the empty nearly empty headquarters in front of him, Damien made a decision. Those who stayed did so because they wanted to fight. Anyone innocent was already gone.

Utilizing his new bond with the earth, Damien took drastic action. He sent his awareness deep into the ground and first raised the earth to fill any passage leading to the world’s core. The most essential thing he could do was to make sure nobody could reach it.

After finishing, Damien decided to raze the Niflheim bunker. At this thought, the ground began to rumble. Damien took to the sky and even the girls were forced to follow after him. There was no stability in the tens of kilometers surrounding them.

The earthquake intensified, and Damien directly targeted the support beams holding the bunker in one piece. With them gone, it was simple to destroy things. The bunker collapsed in on itself as the earth swallowed it back into itself.

The dome-like structure above the ground cracked and shattered, while the floors of the bunker fell into each other. The abyss in the middle of the area was slowly filled with debris. Even the locked research areas were destroyed completely.

Damien made sure to be extra thorough with these, granting death to the ones who were unjustly kept alive and tortured in Niflheim’s experiments.

As for those who stayed to fight, they had either been crushed by the fallen pieces of the bunker or the earthquake that had just passed.

The marshy land slowly regained its peace.

“So, what now?” Rose questioned. There wasn’t anything left to do on earth now that Niflheim was no longer a threat.

“Hmm, how about we head back to Apeiron for a bit? I want to migrate my mother there and we can also get Elena a better weapon while we’re at it”

Elena’s ears perked up at the mention. She had long noticed the disparity between the artifacts Damien and Rose used compared to her own. Even in the battle they had just fought, her sword had cracked slightly and its edge had dulled.

“I don’t know if your mother will be okay with moving, though.” Elena suddenly said.

Damien’s brows furrowed slightly. It was true that the task of convincing his mother would be immense. She was basically still a normal human, not to mention that she actually cared about earth.

Damien could speculate that it had something to do with his father, but that was as far as he could get. No matter how he tried, there was no way for him to understand her thoughts on the matter.

He could only shake his head and rid himself of those thoughts. It’s not like his mother would ever tell him honestly. Ever since he was a child, she’d avoided the topic of his father. Even after the woke up from her coma she was the same.

‘How does she remain loyal to someone who disappeared on her and left her alone as a single mother?’

He truly couldn’t understand. Is that how love worked? It was scary to think about.

While on the topic of love, Damien couldn’t help but glance at Rose. He was still hesitant about their relationship even if they had already confirmed it.

Well, he wasn’t hesitant about having a relationship with Rose, rather he was hesitant about having such a bond with someone else. He didn’t understand the concept of love and seeing the way his mother was, he didn’t want to.

He felt that love could truly blind someone. It could turn people into different beings entirely. He didn’t want to become like this, but he didn’t want to end his relationship with Rose.

The problem was with him entirely. They hadn’t advanced past those small kisses they had shared, but just the slightest shows of intimacy when she cuddled into his chest or held his hand gave him endless satisfaction.

And this was his problem. He felt like he could drown in that feeling. He felt that he could submerge himself into it and never leave. And he didn’t like that one bit.

He felt confused about his inner thoughts. After all, who would dislike the fact that they were happy? Even he found it absurd, but it wasn’t something he could change.

As they flew back to Damien’s house, he stayed within his thoughts. He realized that it was worse than he originally expected. It only took some slight introspection to reach this conclusion.

The thing that worried him was simple. It wasn’t the old men rejecting him bringing companions that made him want to go to the Cloud Plane alone, it was himself. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, but he felt rejection towards this.

He felt that if he stayed with Rose during every moment and every adventure, he’d lose his capability to function without her by his side.

He had to admit it. He was scared.

He was someone who would show no fear even in the face of the strongest adversaries, but he was afraid of emotional intimacy.

‘What a joke. I was entertaining thoughts of a harem but I’m too scared to be intimate with the single girl I already care about.’

Maybe it was his inner weeb that drove his thoughts in the direction of a harem, or maybe it was his inherent desire for freedom. He didn’t know.

There was only one thing he was sure of. Whether it was a harem or only Rose, the key thing he needed to focus on was communication.

He decided that he’d sit down with Rose and have a proper talk about everything he was feeling right now.

Watching Damien, Rose felt a rush of complicated emotions. After spending years together as the best of friends and as the one he’d crossed that boundary with, she was the one who could understand his emotional state the best.

His hesitation in their relationship was clear to her. He hadn’t even tried to lay a hand on her yet. It was a weird feeling for her to be the one prepared to take the next step while her man was lagging behind, but at the same time, it was refreshing.

In the culture she had grown up in, women were always meant to submit to their men. They were supposed to support from behind, while some were just trophies.

She never felt like this with Damien. When they interacted, he’s always treated her as an equal, and even if she supported him, she did so by his side while he did the same for her.

She liked this kind of thing better. She wondered if they would stay this way if he ever added more women to their relationship, but she tried her best to suppress that thought.

She had seen both harem life and monogamous life in her travels through Apeiron, and she didn’t have a strong opinion towards either. In the first place, she never expected to fall in love before meeting Damien.

The unwittingly looked over at him to find him doing the same towards her. With both of them thinking about their relationship, their gazes ended up melting as they stared into each other’s eyes.

Only Elena was left watching from the side, her thoughts known only to her.