Chapter 141: It’s Not Up to You to Decide

Chapter 141: Chapter 141: It’s Not Up to You to Decide

Leon suddenly realized something was wrong. He cautiously raised his head.

Then he saw that his teammates had long since gone about their own business.

Phoenix was squatting in a corner, holding an unknown dry branch in his hand, a dark-covered ancient book clamped under his right arm, busily practicing drawing magic arrays on the sand. After drawing one circle, he used the instep of his foot to erase it, then started drawing again from the beginning.

Lucius — who had been abnormally quiet over the past few days — was leaning against an ancient tree trunk not far away, eyes closed, resting his mind. Perhaps because he hadn’t had a proper rest recently, his condition these past few days had been terrible.

Evelyn, the one who had just mocked him, was sitting by a pile of corpses about ten steps away, studying god-knows-what.

As for Jeremy, his money-grubbing attribute had flared up, and he was continuing to clean out the storage artifacts on the surrounding corpses.

"..."

Leon admitted he hadn’t foreseen this scenario.

Look at these people.

...Is this right?

He remained silent for a long while, and finally truly couldn’t hold back, opening his mouth to mock: "There are no humans in this world more heartless than you guys."

After saying that, he resolutely added two words: "Truly."

Jeremy didn’t even bother to look up, his voice lazy: "If you’re free, come over here and help me collect them. Even if we’re temporarily stuck and can’t get out, we can’t return empty-handed."

"Haha..."

Leon’s mood at this moment was extremely uncomfortable.

Not uncomfortable with his teammates, but uncomfortable with his own ridiculous sentimentality just now.

He guessed it was because meeting Kathy had provoked him, coupled with being idle with nothing to do, that birthed this crazy syndrome of overthinking.

"Hurry up." Jeremy urged.

"...What’s the rush." Leon, expressionless, walked over and began flipping corpses to pick up items.

Seeing him cooperate so neatly, Jeremy was also a bit surprised.

He thought the other party would at least grumble a few sentences.

But this was good too. Saved him from sitting there overthinking, wearing a world-weary face like he wanted to isolate himself from the world.

Jeremy pushed his train of thought aside while storing the collected coins and treasures into his spatial bracelet.

Suddenly, Leon’s voice rang out beside him.

"Actually, I’ve always wanted to ask. After the Covenant Mark awakened, didn’t you feel resentful, Captain? Resenting the unfair fate, resenting the gods for not favoring you."

His expression and tone had both returned to normal, looking as if there was no trace of the emotional mess from earlier, merely mentioning it in passing:

"Clearly born into a family that shouldn’t have a low Spirit Covenant. Clearly bearing the expectations of everyone, yet the result didn’t meet their wishes. If it were someone with a personality like yours, Captain, they would probably take quite a hit, right."

But that sentence didn’t sound like he was insinuating Jeremy, rather it sounded more like he was talking about himself.

And what did "a personality like yours" mean?

He probably didn’t open his mouth just to be sarcastic, right.

Jeremy’s hand movements didn’t stop, his head didn’t even lift: "What good does resentment do? Can resentment change anything? Moreover, what the hell do other people’s expectations have to do with me."

He was human, and he had the full spectrum of emotions. Naturally, he also thought about a lot of things.

But to him, the most important thing was always the present.

Jeremy continued, his voice flat: "Pondering over meaningless things is a hindrance to me. And I won’t just let it grow and spread."

"..."

Since the day of enrollment, Leon had never been able to see through this person.

To be honest, his circumstances were somewhat similar to Jeremy’s.

Both born amidst expectations of being geniuses, then ultimately having the "trash" stamp branded on their foreheads.

But up until now, whether it was an ordinary day or times when his life hung by a thread, he had never seen half a trace of cowardice or breakdown in Jeremy.

He couldn’t hold back, asking further: "Knowing clearly that all the effort you put in is capped by your talent, knowing clearly that you can never touch the threshold people have set, aren’t you disappointed?"

Jeremy’s hand movements paused.

That question was inherently not something worth pondering for long to him.

But the feeling of self-abandonment in those words seemed too heavy.

He rarely exposed his inner thoughts normally. Today, probably figuring everything was already exposed anyway, he decisively let himself go?

He looked towards Leon: "My expectations are set by myself. What others think has nothing to do with me. Therefore, expectations can change at any time. Disappointment naturally still exists, but it can also dissipate instantly."

Jeremy calmly added: "But the expectations you are talking about, using the word ’shackles’ to replace it is more fitting. Talent is determined by heaven, cannot be changed, and no one can be blamed. But so-called expectations, regardless of whether assigned by others or set by oneself, if valued too highly, they are no longer expectations. They are shackles forged by one’s own hands to bind oneself."

Leon chuckled softly: "...The captain is truly miraculous."

Jeremy: "?"

"Are you praising me or taking a jab at me?"

Leon joked inappropriately: "Guess?"

"Move aside."

Jeremy intended to ignore him. But a moment later, he still said:

"Three years isn’t considered short. If you want to live, I’ll do my best to help you."

Leon: "What if I don’t want to?"

Hearing this, Evelyn and Phoenix standing not far away — who had been listening to the entire conversation — both looked up towards this direction.

Even Lucius slightly opened his eyes, somewhat curious about the answer, his gaze quietly pausing on Jeremy.

Under the gaze of all four, Jeremy gave a cold sneer, too lazy to continue acting:

"It’s not up to you to decide."

"You really..."

The corner of Leon’s mouth twitched. His words stopped midway, turning into a helpless sigh.

He avoided the others’ gazes, half-closing his eyelids.

For some reason, his mood... inexplicably felt alright.

Under the influence of these trivial incidents, Leon himself didn’t realize that the negative emotions brought about by his past being exposed and that death sentence had invisibly faded.

He stared at the pile of dry bones, his mind somewhat chaotic.

The insults and humiliations from the outside, or even the malice born for no reason, coupled with the internal infighting — all of it made one disgusted.

From the time he was young and began to have independent thought, he understood that he was nothing more than a tool used to stabilize power.

His mother died early. He couldn’t resist the control of his father and the council of elders. No matter what it was, he had to do it to the absolute best. Daring to resist even a fraction, refuting half a word, or failing to meet expectations, all resulted in bearing punishments that ordinary people would find hard to endure.

Right up until the day before the Covenant Mark inspection, he had always lived in a suffocating hell.

That thing called freedom, he had never dared to dream of even a fraction of it.

Sixteen years of strictly abiding by every rule, never once deviating from the trajectory even half a step.

But after the Covenant Mark awakened, everything changed.

The expectations of the past turned into indifference, then into endless malice.

His existence, overnight, became a humiliation that everyone loathed.

The blood pact?

It was nothing more than a trick to dispose of the trash that was him.

But he couldn’t resist. And he didn’t want to resist either.

The freedom he had never dared to expect descended in that form — could it also be considered a favor, no?

He originally intended to just live aimlessly like mud until the age of nineteen, then die under Kathy’s blade exactly as they wished.

But right now, he suddenly felt a bit unreconciled to just dying like that.

An impulse and a belated awakening?

Truly laughable.