Well, at least Mars was genuinely a victim. And Lencar supposed the people close to him—Rebecca, her siblings and his parents in Sosei—were victims of the nobles' indifference too. So the lie wasn't entirely baseless. It had just enough truth mixed in to make it fatally believable.
Lencar decided it was time for the next phase. He had laid the groundwork; now he needed to show a gesture of absolute, undeniable power and mercy.
Lencar stepped back, giving the boy a few feet of breathing room. He slowly, deliberately raised his right hand. He didn't chant an incantation. He simply focused his immense willpower on the rusted iron chains binding the Diamond General to the wet rock.
He snapped his fingers.
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, incredibly loud in the morning air.
Instantly, the heavy, suffocating, rusted magical chains binding Mars's arms, legs, and torso completely lost their structural integrity. The spell was violently canceled by Lencar's overriding command. The thick iron links didn't just fall away; they instantly dissolved into a fine, powdery brown dust that blew away in the mountain breeze, freeing the Diamond General from his physical and magical restraints in a single, effortless motion.
Mars gasped loudly, his eyes flying wide as he suddenly pitched forward, catching himself on his hands and knees on the slick obsidian.
The sensation was overwhelming. The moment the chains turned to dust, the absolute, suffocating blockade on his magical pathways was lifted. The feeling of his vast, oceanic mana immediately rushed back into his dried-out meridians. It was like a dam bursting. He could feel the cold, rigid, structured power of his Crystal Magic surging through his newly forged pink armor.
But there was something else, too.
He could feel a phantom, lingering warmth. Thanks to Lencar's incredibly delicate soul surgery and the invisible tether connecting them, Mars could feel the raw, explosive potential of the Fire Magic resting just beneath his consciousness, ready to be called upon, but no longer burning him from the inside out. He felt more stable, more balanced, than he had ever felt in his entire, agonizing life.
Mars slowly rubbed his armored wrists, staring down at his hands. He looked up at Lencar, completely bewildered by the sudden, unprompted release. Why would the enemy who just beat him half to death and told him a world-shattering truth suddenly unbind him? It defied all military logic.
Lencar didn't give him time to overthink it. He took a step forward and slowly, deliberately extended his right hand toward the kneeling boy.
His hand was a mess. The thick leather glove was heavily scorched and partially melted from when Mars had spontaneously combusted, and the skin beneath was bruised purple and black from shattering diamond-hard crystal. It was the hand of a fighter, a survivor, offering a lifeline.
"The kings, the nobles, and the scholars of this continent are playing a sick, twisted game with our lives," Lencar said, his voice dropping from the theatrical shout to an intense, deeply personal, and highly persuasive whisper. "They sit in their comfortable castles and move us around like disposable pawns on a chessboard. But I am tired of being a pawn."
Lencar leaned forward, his empty eye-slits staring directly into Mars's pale, confused eyes.
"I am going to flip the board, Mars," Lencar promised, and for once, he wasn't lying or acting at all. The absolute, unshakeable determination in his voice was chillingly real. He was going to derail the entire plot of this world. "I am going to tear down their tyranny. I am going to burn their ivory towers to the ground."
Lencar paused, letting his extended hand hover in the space between them.
"Are you willing to cooperate with me, General?" Lencar asked, issuing the ultimate invitation. "Are you willing to help me do something about the monsters who stole your past, who murdered your friends, and who turned you into a weapon?"
Mars just stared at the offered hand.
For a long, incredibly tense moment, the entire world seemed to hold its breath. The only sound on the Thunder-Crag plateau was the sharp, biting wind whipping across the wet obsidian and the rustling of Lencar's heavy black cloak.
Mars's mind was a chaotic, swirling hurricane of conflicting programming and newly surfaced emotions. The Diamond Kingdom conditioning, beaten into him over a decade of torture, screamed at him to summon a crystal blade and strike the masked man down. It demanded loyalty to Morris. It demanded obedience.
But the newly formed crack in the purple rune was bleeding out a different truth. The lingering warmth of Fana's fire magic, humming stably through the tether Lencar had provided, whispered a different story. The masked man had beaten him, yes. The masked man had stolen his soul gem. But the masked man had also stopped him from burning alive. The masked man had given him back his memories. The masked man understood the pain of being a monster.
Slowly, hesitantly, as if his arm weighed a thousand pounds, Mars lifted his right hand.
His fingers, clad in the sleek pink crystal armor Lencar had forged for him, reached upward toward Lencar's bruised, leather-clad palm.
Lencar waited. He didn't push his hand forward to meet the boy halfway. He kept his arm perfectly, completely steady, offering the choice but refusing to force it. Come on, kid, Lencar thought, a surge of adrenaline pumping through his tired veins. Take the hand. Step off the tracks.
Their hands grew closer. The distance between them shrank to mere inches.
But just as their fingers were about to brush... just as the alliance was about to be sealed...
Mars's hand suddenly blurred with superhuman speed.
SMACK!
The sound was sharp, crisp, and incredibly loud, echoing aggressively across the empty plateau.
Mars didn't take Lencar's hand. He violently, forcefully slapped Lencar's extended hand away.
The sheer physical force behind the Diamond General's slap knocked Lencar's arm to the side. Mars didn't hesitate. He planted his boots on the wet rock and stood up incredibly quickly, putting a safe, tactical distance of at least ten feet between himself and the masked phantom.
As he stood, the vulnerability, the confusion, and the overwhelming grief that had dominated his features completely vanished. His face smoothed out into a perfect, impenetrable mask of hardened, defensive stoicism. His pale eyes narrowed into dangerous, icy slits. He looked every inch the God of War once more.
"Although what you say might be true," Mars said.
His voice was hoarse from screaming earlier, and it lacked its usual robotic drone. It was entirely human, but it was steady, cautious, and intensely guarded. He stood in a relaxed but ready combat stance, prepared to summon a crystal shield at a moment's notice.
"And although I know... I can feel... that my mind is fractured," Mars continued, his jaw tightening slightly as he acknowledged the horrible truth Lencar had forced upon him. "I do not trust you."
Mars pointed a single, armored finger at Lencar's masked face.
"You wear a mask," Mars stated, his tone accusing and cold. "You hide your face. You are a ghost, fighting a shadow war. I refuse to be a puppet for the Diamond Kingdom anymore, but I will absolutely not be your weapon either."
Mars lowered his hand, his posture radiating a stubborn, unbreakable pride that had somehow survived the laboratory.
"I will not take your hand based on the words of a masked thief," Mars declared, his voice rising in volume, echoing off the mountainside. "I will find my own path. And I will see it for myself, with my own eyes, if what you said about my kingdom and my past is true or not."
Lencar stood there in the freezing mist, his arm still slightly raised, suspended in the empty air where it had been so violently slapped away. The rejection was absolute. The grand, dramatic offer of alliance had been firmly, physically shot down.
For a few seconds, Lencar didn't move. He just stared at the defiant Diamond General.
And then, slowly, beneath the cracked, splintered wood of his mask, a wide, massive, utterly genuine smile began to spread across Lencar Abarame's exhausted face.
He wasn't angry. He wasn't insulted in the slightest. His ego wasn't bruised by the rejection.
In fact, he was absolutely, euphorically thrilled.
Mars had said it out loud. 'Although what you say might be true.' He had openly, verbally accepted the premise of Lencar's argument. He had acknowledged the crack in his own psychological conditioning. He had recognized that his mind was compromised and that his kingdom was lying to him.
Lencar didn't need immediate, undying friendship. He wasn't looking for a loyal sidekick to follow him around like a lost puppy. He didn't need a formal, dramatic alliance signed in blood right here on the mountaintop. He was a realistic manipulator playing a long game against individuals who could literally see the future.
He had just needed to plant the wedge. He had needed to insert a fatal line of malicious seed of doubt into the Diamond Kingdom's perfect biological machine. He needed to give Mars a profound, deeply personal reason to question his orders when the time eventually came for the Diamond Kingdom to invade the Witches' Forest.