Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 1115 [The Third Perfect Embryo: Lionel]

Xia Xiu murmured something under his breath, his voice almost swallowed up by the cold wind of the gray wilderness.

"The twelve Olympian gods..."

Terra's records about the twelve Olympian gods began to surface in his mind.

"Between heaven and earth, there are twelve gods, each with their own duties, who rule over all things. They are collectively known as the Twelve Olympians, because they reside on Mount Olympus."

These twelve main gods are named:

Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Hermes.

These twelve gods are all descendants of Cronus and Gaia, hence they are called the Olympian race.

They always enjoy glory and are unaware of human suffering.

However, they also experience emotional turmoil, struggles of desire, conflicts of interest, and distinctions of right and wrong.

Therefore, there are times of harmonious coexistence, times of endless fighting, times of alliances and friendships, and times of betrayal and deception.

His deeds were so extraordinary and varied that they were truly astonishing.

These words, now appearing in Xia Xiu's mind, no longer carry the romance and awe that mythology should have, but are more like an old file that has been repeatedly read and annotated countless times.

"They just had to target Hermes..."

Xia Xiu murmured to himself, his eyes gradually becoming clear and calm.

From the perspective of capital and anomalies, the Edisi Federation's move was extremely accurate.

Hermes is the god of Olympus, who is also the messenger, merchant, road and border, and the symbolic core of "circulation", "transmission", "exchange" and "route".

For Financial Street, this is almost equivalent to a complete set of prototype powers for cross-dimensional liquidity.

Hunting Hermes was never just about killing a god; it was more like preparing for the Eighth Supernatural War, or rather, beginning to reap the fruits of what had long been coveted.

After all, the Edisi Federation knew where the shattered divine sparks of the twelve main gods were long ago, but it delayed taking action until now.

Once Hermes is liquidated, dismantled, and transformed into a controllable information asset, then the many "channels," "transfer points," and "mythical routes" originally controlled by Olympus will completely lose their monopolistic interpretive power.

Xia Xiu's thoughts continued along this line, and he soon realized that the Federation probably had a deeper intention—economic colonization.

Through the projection of Financial Street and conceptualized capital, the gray wilderness, which originally only produced "despair," "corruption," and "remnants of bloodshed," is transformed into an abnormal asset area that can be priced, circulated, and mortgaged; with the new Ether route as the fulcrum, the resource structure of the entire lower realm is leveraged, allowing the area that could only be maintained by myth and chaos to be incorporated into the framework of finance and order.

Of course, colonization is only one of their goals. Their real goal is to destroy the Olympian pantheon and ensure that they can never rise again!
This is also an opportunity for the Kingdom of Heaven.

What Heaven needs is political power and territorial sovereignty over its plane. Cooperating with the Federation and sharing a portion of the plane's economy is not out of the question. The key point is that he also wants to destroy the Olympian pantheon.

After a brief deliberation, Xia Xiu had already reached a conclusion.

In this matter, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

He looked up at John K. Hanks standing opposite him and slowly extended his hand.

"Pleasant to work with."

John paused for a moment, then gave a perfectly standard smile that was clearly sincere, and reached out to shake hands with him.

"Pleasant to work with."

Two hands clasped together in the chilly wind of the gray wilderness, and Xia Xiu and John reached an agreement.

The Federation intervened, with the Financial Street as its core, to design and promote three capital acquisitions for the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Guard, Vardason Broly.

Under the guise of market, debt, liquidity, and risk hedging, they systematically stripped the target of its value and dismantled its power until the "merger" was completely completed.

In exchange, Xia Xiu will personally join forces with the Federation to hunt down Hermes, one of the twelve Olympian gods, and in the process, push the entire Olympian pantheon into an abyss that is impossible to prove, impossible to recover, and impossible to reconstruct.

Together, they aim to bankrupt the Olympian pantheon—a shared goal of Heaven and the Edisi Federation.

After the agreement was reached, John made no excuses.

He raised his hand to access the Federation's financial network, and a series of intelligence streams, encrypted layer by layer and spanning multiple Ethereum nodes, were directly connected to Xia Xiu's perception—these were all the pieces that the Edis Federal Bureau of Investigation had secretly laid out in the Gray Wilderness over the years:
The distribution of forces on the front lines of the bloodbath, the activity patterns of the Olympian and Titan remnants, the infiltration points of the Yogg-Ros demons and the forces of Chaos, as well as multiple undisclosed secret etheric routes, and the military intervention forces of other realms in the Gray Wilderness, etc...

This intelligence was incomplete, yet deadly enough.

Xia Xiu only glanced at it before completing a preliminary mental analysis. The Federation had indeed invested heavily, and in this level of negotiation, sincerity itself was the best bargaining chip.

After reading all this, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly:

"As expected of Aidi, who used to have his Central Alliance wiretapped. He has a wide network of connections and a wild way of doing things."

As the old saying goes, it's dangerous to be enemies with Eddie, but it's deadly to be friends with him.

BYD was also involved in a scandal involving wiretapping of its allies. Through its genealogy cooperation project, it left backdoors for its allies to monitor their every move.

So while we can cooperate, we can't treat Aidisi as a friend.

However, he did not choose to personally participate in the first phase of the operation.

The third perfect embryo has not yet been retrieved, and before that, he does not intend to focus all his attention on the bloody battle and financial hunt in the gray wilderness.

So, Xia Xiu immediately made a plan—to have Broly stay there and act with John.

Of the three hundred Imperial Guards currently stationed in the courtyard, Broly only took one hundred with him, but those one hundred were almost all veterans who had followed him the earliest; in addition, two mobile task forces accompanied him—Dragon and Assault Hand.

The former excels at precise sweeps in high-intensity, abnormal environments, while the latter is a sharp blade designed for decapitation and rapid suppression. Coupled with the FBI's long-established local network of undercover agents, such a configuration is considered a luxury of security in a place like the Gray Wilderness.

Xia Xiu said to John and Broly:

"I'll ring the bell after your side opens. I have other things to take care of right now, so you can go about your business for now."

John and Broly quickly left the area, taking with them the power of the Imperial Guard and the Federation, and officially stepped into the darker, more gloomy layers of the Gray Wilderness to complete their own capital hunt and crown trial.

After their figures completely disappeared into the etheric storm, it seemed that only the colossal statue kneeling on the wasteland and the mimic figure standing in front of it remained in the world.

Xia Xiu slowly closed his eyes.

In the next instant, great spirituality unfolded.

The black sun, suspended in the seventh layer of the ether, began to revolve once more. Its vast perception, like an invisible tide, spread outward from the gray wilderness, penetrating layers of narrative remnants and chaotic echoes, and began to search for that coordinate that had not yet returned to its place in all the heavens and myriad worlds.

The great spirituality, like a silent, rotating black star, began to scan the third gloomy layer of the gray wilderness.

The ether here does not flow, but is like a polluted swamp, layer upon layer of residual information from war, disease, despair and betrayal. Any normal perception here will be quickly worn down, distorted and misrepresented.

But for Xia Xiu, these were just background noise—at a higher level, what he captured was the structure, the coordinate that was deliberately buried under chaos yet still remained intact.

Soon, his consciousness paused slightly.

It was not a vague echo, but an extremely clear and stubborn presence, like a wedge driven into a corrupt world, stubbornly maintaining its integrity no matter how rotten the surroundings were.

The third perfect embryo has been found.

……

……

Oynos, First Floor: Desolate Bone Demon Tower.

Here, a colossal structure defying common sense pierces the sky.

It was a spiral cylinder that almost pierced through the heavens and the earth, nearly thirty-two kilometers high. From a distance, it looked like a giant bone nail that had been forcibly inserted into the world.

The tower is not made of rock or metal, but has a texture that is a mixture of gray and dark brown. The surface is covered with structural textures that resemble segments of a spine, and occasionally you can see dark lines that look like nerve bundles pulsating slightly deep in the tower wall.

This is not a man-made structure, but the remains of an ancient deity whose spine was forcibly pulled out and thrust upside down into the land of Oynos after being killed by the demon Yogros.

As deep as it pierces the sky, it takes root in the ground; the lower level of the tower extends for thirty-two kilometers, reaching the deeper, decaying matrix of the gray wilderness.

The air around the Desolate Bone Tower itself carries a sickly, heavy feel.

Gray fog churned in the low sky, and in the fog floated pathogens whose shapes were indistinct. They seemed to be endowed with semi-autonomous consciousness, and would actively attach, infiltrate and reproduce as long as life approached.

The Infernal Legion roaming outside the tower did not clash with the Yoggros Demons. They tacitly acknowledged the ownership of this area and simply patrolled in formation, maintaining a strange balance.

The current ruler of the Desolate Bone Tower is a Supreme Prince named Medion Clerus.

In even older legends, some believe that the origin of the entire Yoggros demon race can be traced back to the deepest pit at the bottom of this demon tower—where the first diseases, the most primal corruption, and the first twisted souls completed their self-replication and spread throughout the gray wilderness.

Whether this claim is true or not, one thing is a generally accepted fact: since the birth of the Desolate Bone Tower, no non-plague race, the Yoggros Demons, has ever occupied this place for an extended period.

However, in theory, this tower is not unassailable.

At the very top of the Desolate Bone Demon Tower stands a throne formed from black bone and resentment—the Throne of Vengeance.

Anyone who successfully ascends to the top of the tower and defeats the current ruler is entitled to sit on this throne and claim dominion over the Oynos layer.

However, the price of the throne is equally clear and cruel.

The moment one sits on the throne, it begins to reshape a new demon king's body. The skin peels, regenerates, and twists in an unnatural way, ultimately forming the unique disfiguring marks of the Demon King Yoggros. This change is irreversible; unless one relinquishes the throne, no method can cure it.

In exchange, the new Demon King will gain absolute control over the diseases of the Oynos layer—to create, modify, discard, and even define the diseases themselves.

Plagues can be designed as weapons or packaged as blessings, and as long as they occur within the Gray Wilderness, this authority is unaffected.

As for the current Demon King—Medeen Clerus, he is no longer simply the Demon King Yoggros.

Long ago, in a nearly unknown abyssal ritual, he bowed his head to one of the four Lords of Chaos.

He offered up the plague sovereignty of Oynos, the incubation system of the Desolate Bone Tower, and the future of countless souls and diseases, all in exchange for a single glance from that supreme being.

That was a being that symbolized corruption, cycles, and decay.

From that moment on, the nature of the Desolate Bone Demon Tower underwent a fundamental change.

It is no longer just the origin of the Yoggros demons, nor just the vessel of the Vengeful Throne, but has become a true breeding ground.

Countless new pathogens are conceived here. They are no longer simple plagues or toxins, but rather beings with the attributes of chaotic plagues—they can learn, adapt, and reorganize and evolve in response to different life forms.

The air begins to deteriorate, and every breath inhaled leaves subtle but persistent traces of erosion in the body.

The water source is no longer clear, and even just touching the skin can cause subtle but incurable changes.

The soil itself becomes a petri dish, where the dead corpses do not decompose but continue to exist, rising again in a more vile form.

This is the mark of a loving father.

As a result, Yoggros was officially recognized as one of the Chaos Lords under that entity's command.

But Madison Clerus was not satisfied with this. His ambitions went far beyond that; he was unwilling to remain merely a tool for execution and dissemination.

He wanted to become a true servant of the Chaos God.

He wanted to be on par with those known as Great Demons, complete the Ascension Ritual, and become an Ascended Demon.

If possible, he even wanted to go further—to become a "famous general" personally named and bestowed a title by that being.

Because that would mean no longer just being a user of authority, but being part of the narrative, a concrete extension of the chaotic will in the present world.

It was this choice to plunge into chaos that caused an almost devastating impact on the largest human settlement in the gray wilderness.

Yes, even in the purely evil plane of the Gray Wilderness, humans still exist; they are known as the Order of Order.

They are not native to this place, but rather descendants of exiles, survivors, and the failures of the Terra Expedition.

The core members of the Knights originated from a Terran expeditionary force from long ago—a group of Terran knights, monks, and explorers who, driven by faith and honor, sought to explore worlds beyond their own.

They were swept into the gray wilderness during a failed cross-border expedition and could never return to their original world.

Amidst endless war and despair, they steadfastly upheld the virtues of chivalry, and this perseverance allowed them to survive.

But precisely because of this, when the plague began to change the ecology of the gray wilderness, they became the first group of people to be driven to the brink of despair.

The plague of the benevolent father is not just about killing; it distorts the environment and gives rise to a large number of deformed beings known as monsters. These creatures are not simply monsters, but rather a combination of disease and narrative. They occupy ruins, pollute water sources, cut off passages, and gradually compress the living space of human settlements.

The land outside the city walls was no longer suitable for cultivation, supply lines were frequently interrupted, and the return rate of patrol teams continued to decline.

Every victory only delays the inevitable demise.

The Order of Order has finally reached a critical juncture where they must make a decision: to reorganize the now defunct Hero Squad.

That was the oldest and most brutal organizational structure of the Knights—selecting members only from the best, most steadfast, and most aware that this journey would be a one-way trip.

Their goal is singular: to defeat the Demon King of the Desolate Bone Tower and cut off the source of the plague.

……

……

And it was on the eve of this brave team's regrouping.

Beside the campfire in the Knights' camp, a young man sat quietly. He had blond hair that gleamed with a warm yet restrained light in the firelight; his deep, calm emerald eyes seemed to be scrutinizing the world itself, rather than a single enemy.

His face didn't appear sharp, but it carried an undeniable sense of fortitude, as if he had already weighed the situation in his heart no matter what darkness he faced.

Lionel looked down at the knight's sword lying across his lap.

The blade was polished to an impeccable shine; the firelight danced across the metal, revealing not a single impurity. It was not a decorative weapon, but a sword that had truly endured countless battles, tempered by blood and oaths.

Just then, footsteps came from behind.

It was not rushed, but exceptionally steady.

A middle-aged man wearing an old-fashioned knight's cloak sat down beside Lionel. His armor was covered in repair marks, and his sword hilt gleamed from being gripped so tightly—the marks of long campaigns. His gaze lingered on Lionel for a moment, his voice low and gentle.

"Thinking about the expedition?"

Lionel didn't look up immediately, but gently stroked the hilt of his sword. After a moment, he slowly spoke.

“Mentor,” his voice was steady, but carried a hint of hesitation that he didn’t try to hide, “Do you think… we can really succeed?”

This knight was none other than his mentor, Luther.

Luther didn't answer immediately. He simply stared at the campfire, the firelight reflecting in his eyes as if revealing many long-forgotten memories. After a long while, he said softly, "Success or failure is never a knight's first consideration."

He turned his head and looked at Lionel.

"Are you scared?"

Lionel paused for a moment, then shook his head.

“It’s not fear.” He raised his head, his emerald green eyes appearing exceptionally clear in the firelight. “It’s just… I have a feeling that many things will be different after this battle.”

Luther was slightly taken aback.

Looking at the young man before him, he suddenly felt a strange, indescribable emotion.

He was unaware that Lionel's premonition was not unfounded.

Before becoming a knight and part of the order, Lionel's life had already been deeply intertwined with darkness.

As the third perfect embryo, like the Firstborn Son and the Wolf Child, while the chaotic conspiracy was still unfolding in the shadows and the vortex of narrative had not yet been noticed by Heaven, an out-of-control projection threw the still-infant Lionel into the dead world on the edge of the Garden of Joseph.

That was the edge of the Desolate Bone Demon Tower, a world covered by an endless primeval jungle.

The trees towered into the clouds, their canopies blocking out the sun, almost completely obscuring the sky; the vines were like snakes, the roots like claws, and the whole world resembled a sleeping giant beast that could awaken at any moment.

Giant monsters, twisted by etheric energy and plague, roam the jungle. Their bones are exposed, their flesh deformed, and their roars can echo for miles. The air itself carries a faint stench of decay. Ordinary people cannot survive here for more than a few hours before their minds are corrupted, and they eventually become part of the jungle.

Lionel crashed in the deepest part of the jungle.

No one knows how he survived in that environment, but one thing is certain;
—From the day he was born, he possessed the talent to fight against darkness.

For the next decade, Lionel made the jungle his home.

He belongs to no tribe, nor is he protected by any civilization.

He walked naked among thorns and vines, his skin repeatedly cut and calloused over the years; he ate raw flesh and blood of monsters to fill his stomach, his teeth and nails gradually becoming sharp and hardened by the instinct for survival, enough to tear through the fur and bones of his prey; he learned to listen to the direction of the wind, to discern danger from the trembling of leaves, to track prey by the faint light and shadow in the forest, and even to fight giant monsters several times his size with his bare hands, relying on his wisdom and patience.

That was not a reckless fight.

Instead, it is like a true lone lion, calmly hunting in the dark.

This period of survival in the wilderness not only endowed Lionel with a physique and fighting instincts far beyond that of ordinary people, but also gave his soul an almost instinctive resistance to the corruption of evil. No evil, including chaos, could corrupt him.

He was able to keenly detect any anomalies lurking in the jungle, distinguishing which areas had been polluted and which remained clean.

At that time, this talent was simply for survival.

Lionel's fate took a turn when the Knights went on a hunting expedition.

That encounter became the starting point for a true turning point in Lionel's fate.

That was not an uncommon operation.

The Order of Order's hunting party ventured deep into the primeval forests on the edge of the Gray Wilderness to eradicate the mutated monsters that had recently appeared frequently. Far from human settlements, the dense canopy of trees blocked out the sun, and a pervasive, corrupting stench lingered in the air; even the most experienced knights dared not let their guard down.

Just as the team was about to finish the mopping-up operation and prepare to leave, the young knight Luther, who was walking at the front, suddenly stopped.

He raised his hand to signal his troops to be on alert, his gaze falling on a clearing in the woods ahead, trampled and mangled. Several monster carcasses lay scattered there, their blood not yet fully congealed, emitting a pungent, foul stench. But what truly alarmed Luther was not these corpses.

It's the scent in the air.

It wasn't the frenzy of a monster, nor the sticky malice unique to Chaos Corruption, but a kind of life force mixed with wildness and extreme purity—sharp and alert, yet not twisted, like a beast that had not yet been corrupted by the world.

“Someone’s here,” Luther said in a low voice.

Following the scent, the knights parted the vines and stepped into the depths of the clearing, where they soon spotted the figure.

It was a humanoid beast.

He was tall, his bare upper body covered with old wounds and new scars, his muscles taut like a bowstring, his skin stained with dirt and dried blood, and rough animal hides draped over his shoulders and back.

Her long, golden hair was tangled and fell over her shoulders. Her emerald eyes stared intently at the intruder from the shadows, wary and fierce, like a lone beast ready to pounce at any moment.

In his hand, he was clutching a huge fang still covered in flesh and blood—belonging to a terrifyingly large reptilian beast.

Almost instinctively, the knights raised their lances, pushed their shields forward, and aimed the sharp lance tips at him.

At that moment, the air seemed to freeze; a single breath would unleash a bloody conflict.

"Don't move!" someone whispered.

But just as everyone was preparing to eliminate it as a new monster, Luther did not immediately give the order.

He looked into those eyes.

That wasn't the look in a monster's eyes.

There was no chaotic madness, nor pure bloodlust, only extreme repression of vigilance and wariness, and a kind of... rational outline belonging to humanity.

It was a soul forced to live like a beast, yet still retaining its own identity.

"Put down your weapons." Luther raised his hand, stopping his companion.

He slowly stepped forward, planted his longsword in the ground, removed his hands from the hilt, and showed the other party that he was not hostile.

“You are not a monster.” Luther’s voice was unusually clear in the forest. “You are a human being just like us.”

The young man did not respond.

He just stared intently at Luther, his fangs clenching slightly in his palms, his muscles tense, as if he were about to pounce. But as time passed, he seemed to see no deception or malice in Luther's eyes.

Finally, he slowly let go of her hand.

The fangs fell to the ground with a dull thud.

At that moment, Luther breathed a sigh of relief.

He brought the still-wild youth back to the Order of Order's monastery fortress—one of the few strongholds in the gray wilderness that still maintained order and a form of human civilization.

With the help of knights and scholars, this lone beast of the jungle was given a name—Lionel.

The name comes from an ancient chivalric language and means: a man with a lion's heart.

What followed was astonishing to everyone.

Lionel learned everything at an astonishing speed.

In just a few days, he mastered basic human language; half a month later, he was able to read the basic texts of the Knights; in less than three months, he mastered the basic structure of swordsmanship and understood the meaning of knightly etiquette and oaths of order.

He has shed the pure wildness of the jungle, but he has not lost his sharpness.

On the contrary, the intuition, patience, and composure honed on the brink of death made him like a silent hunting lion on the training field. Every swing of his sword was precise and efficient, and every judgment was devoid of superfluous emotion.

Luther was both his mentor and his guide in human society.

They wielded their swords side by side in the training grounds, hunted monsters deep in the forests, and told him stories of knights, of their homeland Terra, of order, and of the meaning of humanity's perseverance in this dark world by the campfire at night.

For Lionel, it was the first time in over a decade that he truly felt a sense of belonging.

As time went on, his strength began to rise at an alarming rate. Soon, his swordsmanship surpassed that of knights his age, and eventually, even Luther himself found it increasingly difficult to suppress him in direct combat.

Luther reminisced about the past as the campfire crackled in the night wind, sparks rising and quickly dying out against the low-hanging sky over the gray wilderness.

He stared at Lionel sitting opposite him, his expression momentarily dazed, as if he were seeing the young lion that had emerged from the jungle many years ago.

After a long silence, he finally spoke, his voice low and filled with emotion.

"Do you know that in the ancient chivalric epics, the true hero is never because of his illustrious lineage or because of a destiny bestowed upon him?"

He looked at Lionel, his gaze gentle yet heavy. “A true knight is one who chooses to uphold order even in despair, one who is willing to draw his sword even when no one is watching.”

The firelight illuminated Lionel's profile, outlining a calm and resolute silhouette.

“You’ve become that kind of person, Lionel,” Luther sighed. “Not because of how many battles you’ve won, but because you’re still standing at the forefront when everyone else starts to back down.”

He paused, as if he had made up his mind, with a hint of undisguised pride in his expression.

"You are now recognized by the Knights as the best swordsman. Your skill, judgment, and willpower have all reached the limits of what we can imagine."

At this point, Luther's tone suddenly lowered.

“If I could… I would really like you to return to faraway Terra. A knight like you should not be buried in this decaying wasteland.”

Lionel looked up at his mentor, his azure eyes appearing exceptionally clear in the firelight.

"I will defeat the Demon King... Once all this is over, I will find a way."

Lionel said slowly:

"I will take those who are still alive, and the last embers of the Knights, and return to Terra—by whatever means necessary."

As Luther listened, his eyes gradually dimmed.

"The list of the dead... has grown so long that I can hardly remember all the names."

His voice was a little hoarse, "The front-line camp has been able to stand until now because of you. If it weren't for you standing at the forefront, we would have been devoured by the plague and monsters long ago."

He looked up at Lionel, his gaze complex.

"I know you are very strong now, so strong that you are no longer in the realm of mortals."

"The power that has awakened within you... scholars have discussed it privately. It is the legendary incarnation of a sovereign, a being that only appears in ancient knight myths."

"—The Avatar of the Overlord, Lancelot."

"That is the legendary knight who has awakened within you, but even so, it is still too difficult to defeat the current Demon King."

Luther slowly shook his head, his tone heavy.

“We don’t know his limits, but from the infected monsters, scholars have deduced that the ruler of the Desolate Bone Tower has pledged allegiance to the Plague King, one of the Four Lords of Chaos.”

Luther stared at the flames, seemingly avoiding Lionel's gaze.

"If it weren't for the fact that we had reached the very last moment of life and death, the Order of Knights... would never have restarted the Heroic Order."

“But we really have no other choice… I’m sorry, child, to ask you to fight alongside us against an enemy that is impossible to defeat, a battle that is impossible to win.”

Finally, as if summoning his courage, the mentor, preferring to defy chivalry rather than face death like the child he had raised, pleaded:

"When I first saw you, I knew you were different from others, and like the legendary King Arthur, you possess all the virtues and strength that a knight should have."

I always thought you could bring the Knights back to Terra, but... it seems that's not the case. Our enemies are getting stronger, and we only have you..."

“But Lionel, my child, my student.”

"You know... you have no obligation to fight an enemy you can't win against, you should understand, right..."

Yes, Luther was urging Lionel to run away; he didn't want his beloved student to face an enemy he couldn't defeat.

Lionel simply stared at the sword in his hand, then silently stood up, sheathed the sword, and faced with his mentor's despair, he simply repeated a sentence with a low gaze.

"I can't win at all?"

He gripped his longsword tightly, then looked up at his mentor, his eyes seeming to hold the stubbornness of a lion that refused to succumb to despair.

Lionel gazed at his mentor, his eyes gleaming with unyielding spirit, and spoke to him:
"I...don't understand."

This was his answer.

(End of this chapter)