"Hey! Hey! Wake up!"

When my consciousness finally started coming back to me, I could hear the voice of my beloved Eve calling me forth even before any other senses could start working for me once again. At first, I realised that my head was lying on something incredibly soft and warm. Then, the sounds of distant battle also entered my ears, allowing me to recall just in what kind of scenario did I dare to lose consciousness.

And then, everything slammed me back into reality, as if subtlety was non-existent for me in this world!

"BART! WAKE UP!"

Opening my eyes, I saw Eve's face filled to the brim with distress. Outside of being twisted by extreme exhaustion, her eyes were signalling that she was on the verge of collapsing as well.

'Barrier…'

With this single thought, I jumped up, finishing my comfortable nap on her soft lap, taking a moment to orient myself in the surroundings and directing my eyes towards where the barriers were supposed to be.

"They are still here…"

With this single sentence escaping my mouth, I felt as if the weight of the entire world was taken away from my shoulders. I took it on myself to protect this village, so I would never be able to forgive myself if it were to be destroyed despite my promise!

"Bart! Help Celleria!"

Most likely realising that I had to go through an extensive list of checks and points before getting fully back into the shape, Eve instantly pointed her arm to the side, at her step-sister, profusely bleeding from all over her body.

"What…"

Directing my eyes towards this girl, I could not fail to notice the expression of extreme stress and pain written all over her face, yet still somehow overshadowed by her determination. Shaking my head to cast aside all useless thoughts, I switched to the energy vision in order to confirm my hunch born from Eve's hurrying me and the overall situation.;

'Oh boy…'

Rather than daring to linger on the spot any longer, I instantly jumped forward, placing my palm on Celleria's face, as if looking at her distressed expression turned so unbearable for me, that I had to cover it away. Yet rather than doing such a self-service, I closed my eyes before locating the anchors of the barriers that I created myself and taking them from her already collapsing body back on top of my shoulders.

Clasp.

This time, the burden wasn't something that required more of focus rather than energy, instantly forcing me to fall down on my knees. With the feeling of every single and last particle of my magical energy escaping from my veins, skin bones and the core itself, I realised what was causing the burden to increase exponentially.

"Bring me up the barricades…"

Squeezing those few words through my collapsed teeth, I put all my attention towards maintaining the barrier, not even daring to check what was causing them to be so strained right now, as I could feel it from the way they reacted to my touch alone.

"Right away!"

This time, it wasn't Eve or even Celleria that reacted to my words, not even Bonger's Avatar that from what I noticed during my first round of checkups, wasn't even around the area.

"Come on! It's not that far!"

With my eyes closed, I couldn't confirm my guess, but as long as my ears weren't cheating me out on this one, then the two sets of arms that grabbed one of my arms each would belong to Jelleria and her recently saved sister!

As my internal fight to maintain the integrity of the barriers continued, I could feel my body being dragged through the mud of the destroyed village, before the sensation on the exposed part of my legs changed, indicating that we were now climbing the makeshift ramp, leading to the top of the wooden ramparts that somehow managed to remain intact after the first wave turned most of the village into the flat ground.

"We are here!"

Hearing the message, I forced myself to open my eyes, not even bothering to use my normal vision but instantly looking around while basing on the energetical one.

"That point, with the protruding bail on the right."

With my body barely capable of holding itself together while trying to cope with the ongoing process of the barriers draining my energy, I wasn't even able to lift my finger, not to speak about moving my entire arm in order to point at something, forcing me to find another way to describe just where I had to go.

"Give us a moment."

In the next instant, as if realising just how dire the situation was, the two girls finally brought me to the spot, where all the strings that held the barriers together converged, allowing me to finally grasp the full control over their existence.

"BREAK!"

In one instant, rather than trying to repair what was already broken and was attempting to regenerate itself, I got rid of three out of five layers of the barriers, allowing their energy to cascadingly flow back into my body, only to instantly leave it like a passing wave. Yet with this outflow of the energy, the burden of maintaining the barriers lessened by nearly eight times, finally allowing my core to outpace the draining process and start filling my soul with energy once again.

"Just what the hell happened…"

Finally capable of standing up by myself, I raised my head and took around the place. For some reason, most of the monsters out of the entire stampede was nowhere to be seen, with not even a single corpse indicating the fate that those poor animals were met with.

"It's that strange, moving figurine…"

Once again, Eve's voice entered my ears. Taking a quick glance to the side, I could see that her complexity started to improve, slowly healing the wounds of exhaustion from both her body and her soul. Yet as happy and joyful as it made me, just the fact that there were some scars still appearing on her body, made me tighten my fists in fury.

In the end, I wasn't that surprised by the descriptive way in which Eve spoke about Bonger's Avatar. With how our relationship was quite ambiguous for the others, it was simply easier to just describe him like that, than daring to use a name to refer to him, indicating to others that there was some kind of relation between the cause of all this mess and the two of us, attempting to act like the saviours of this place.

"Just wait till I get my hands on him…"

Moving my sight back to the battlefield, it took me only a few seconds before I finally managed to locate just where that crafty and unruly system of mine was. And just like expected, I only had a short window of time to notice him, before the bodies of the monsters he was fighting with at this moment blocked my direct line of sight to him!

"Just what the hell happened to him…"

With everything that the two of us went through together, I always had this picture of Bonger being one of the calmest and most composed living beings I ever had the chance to meet in my life. Yet the picture of him fighting in a battle frenzy with those monsters just below the sage level, without a care in the world about the effects of his recklessness, finally put the last nail to the coffin of my suspicions towards him!