Manaless Mage-Chapter 280: The truth about the voice

"We can be sure of one thing, though... it has a will of its own," Leon said, his brows knitting into a deep frown.

The weight of his words hung in the air, and after a moment of silence, he continued in his explanation, making sure Harry fully understood all he was saying.

It all traced back to when he was erased from time by Kronos, a moment which would forever be unforgettable to him.

Back then, in the void of existence, he found himself in a strange white room, very similar to the one they stood in presently.

However, the room wasn’t the most shocking aspect of it all. Instead, the true shock came from the voice which spoke out to him in that space, as well as the ethereal hand that stretched out to him.

Leon could still remember everything vividly, as if it happened just yesterday.

Taking the hand had been the first step, the first act of rejection against the cruel fate Kronos had forced upon him.

With that simple choice, his body surged with an overwhelming amount of energy, giving him greater power than he had ever imagined.

If he had ignored the hand, the fate of the world would have been long sealed in stone.

According to the voice, it wanted to help him take back what he had lost... or rather, it needed to help him.

And it did exactly just that, giving him the chance to undo everything that had happened and to set things right.

However, even with all that power, he failed to restore all the people he had lost... and also the world he loved so much.

Rather than save them, all he did was make everything worse.

Ever since that day, the voice had gone silent, never speaking to him again.

It simply vanished from existence, leaving him alone with the crushing weight of his failure.

The last two hundred years he had spent roaming around the world, he spent in complete silence, without even a whisper from the voice that once saved his life.

At first, he thought it abandoned him, but after giving it a lot of thought, he realised it only vanished due to his actions.

While he might have been able to escape the cruel hands of time, slipping into a new timeline, the voice wasn’t so lucky, and it was erased along with the timeline.

That realisation hurt him deeply, as his failures were the only reason the voice no longer existed.

However, as the years passed, he decided to find out the truth about the matter... pondering deeply about it day and night.

Without his physical body, his mental strength became very weak, rendering him helpless when it came to making quick deductions.

Yet, after many years, he was able to uncover the truth... at least, a tiny portion of it.

"That voice... was my energy speaking to me," Leon revealed, his gaze shifting to Harry, who had been listening intently to every word.

"Your energy... speaking to you?" Harry asked, his face twisting into a frown.

Since he had been in Leon’s consciousness all that time, he also recalled the strange connection with the voice.

But not once did it cross his mind that the voice might be Leon’s energy speaking directly with him.

That’s... just...’ Harry thought, casting his gaze to the ground as he evaluated the situation from the top all over again.

He couldn’t count how many times he had done that just today alone, especially with the amount of mind-boggling information being dropped by Leon each time.

He wanted to doubt what Leon just told him, but with everything he had discovered today... there was no reason to doubt it.

After all, the world he had been living in, the reality he thought he knew all his life, was nothing more than a tiny fragment of something greater, far more complex than he could ever imagine.

The more truths he found out, the more questions rose in their place, each one even more confusing than the last.

"Then where is the voice of my energy...?" Harry asked suddenly, snapping his head at Leon.

"Do I even have one?" He mumbled, placing his hand on his chin as he pondered the possibility.

He and Leon were similar in some ways, especially in the sense that they were both manaless mages—anomalies in their respective worlds.

Nonetheless, they were also very different, not just in their personalities, but also in their existences.

They both came from district timelines, different realities which shaped them into who they were today.

Harry couldn’t help but wonder if that difference extended to their raw energies as well, after all, Leon never possessed a manaless mage system.

So... did he possess a voice of his own, which was just waiting to be heard? Or... was his case different, and he didn’t have one?

"The voice of your energy?" Leon muttered, his lips curving into a smug smirk as he looked at Harry.

The boy’s confusion was understandable, and even he could understand it.

"Well... you’re looking at it!" Leon suddenly revealed, pointing his thumb at himself in arrogance.

Harry’s eyes immediately widened in shock, taking a step back to look at Leon all over again, like he had never seen him before.

"Ehh...? Ehhh?!" He exclaimed, his mouth parting slightly in surprise.

Leon simply stood there, relishing the look of pure shock in Harry’s eyes.

"Hehehe!" He grinned, proudly running one hand through his hair.

"What’s wrong? You surprised?" He asked, snorting with pride.

"N-no... it’s just..." Harry’s words trailed as he took another look at Leon.

"Wait... why are you acting so smug about this?" He asked, raising his brows slightly.

"Cause it’s fun... you should see the look on your face right now." Leon said, chucking to himself.

"W-what..." Harry muttered, veins slowly bulging around his forehead.

However, he soon brushed Leon’s words off his line, focusing more on what he said before.

"But how... are you the voice of my energy?" He asked, his eyes narrowing in confusion.

"You should have pieced it together by now," Leon said, sighing under his breath.

His expression suddenly turned serious, and he went on to explain everything to Harry.

"You seem to have forgotten that you’re very different from me... even if we’re both manaless mages." He said, folding his arms behind him.

"Unlike me, the system is what awakened your power as a manaless mage." He continued, letting his words hang in the air for a few seconds.

"The system was created with my energy... and with the ’original voice’ of my energy gone, I just kind of replaced it."

"Don’t you get... the only reason I was able to roam in this world even without a body... why I was able to merge with your soul... I ’became’ my energy itself." He said, causing Harry’s eyes to widen in shock.

"You became your energy... itself..." Harry muttered, his face frozen in shock.

Despite how absurd what he just heard was, strangely enough, it still made sense to him.

However, it didn’t make it any less shocking.

After all, he had been talking to the ’other voice’ from the very first day he got the system, he never expected that he was actually speaking to the supposed ’voice’ of his energy!

The more he thought about it, the more it all started to make sense. Why else would he have a strange voice within his mind, if it wasn’t that it was connected to his energy?

There was also the fact that his energy was practically Leon’s energy from the start, which had simply merged with him through the system.

However, his expression suddenly changed, and his gaze soon snapped back at Leon.

"Doesn’t that mean... you can directly increase my energy?" He asked, remembering how the ’voice’ in the old timeline was able to drastically boost Leon’s energy.

Even if it didn’t give a huge leap in power like the original one did, it would still be something that mattered.

"No... I can’t do that." Leon said, his lips curling into a wry smile.

"I’m different from the one that reached out to me, and that is because your power is very different from mine."

"The system is like a representation of your energy, while I’m just a voice within it." He continued, letting out a low sigh.

"It’s just like I told you before Harry, I can’t influence you in any way, neither can I control the system."

"Yeah... you did mention that before," Harry said, his brows furrowing slightly.

For a few seconds, silence reigned between them, bringing about an awkward tension.

"You know..." Harry suddenly said, his voice breaking through the solemn atmosphere. "You’re not ’just a voice’ to me, you’ve helped me so many times, and I’m indeed grateful for all of that."

A warm smile broke on Leon’s lips at those words, and a low chuckle escaped his lips.

"I can’t help but wonder though..." Harry spoke once again, his tone a lot more serious than before.

"Watching me... having the same face as your best friend... how did you feel about that all this time?"

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