If you stay, I stay

'What the hell is she...' 

Leo took a deep breath, trying to calm his thoughts rather than asking himself the very same question for the second time. 

The appearance of his brothers and childhood friend greatly complicated things. 

'I guess I no longer can allow those two bastards to die, can I?' he thought, watching how Millie stepped away from Mark in disgust while Rob... 

Rob spared his younger brother a mere fleeting glance before quickly scanning the surroundings. 

It wasn't what he did that made Leo flinch, though, as much as it was the perfectly calm look on his face he did it with. 

'Is he that naive... Or does he have some reason to be so calm?'

Rob's eyes quickly zeroed in on Leo's face. And as if by a touch of a magic wand, his brother's expression relaxed, relief taking the place of tense anxiety. 

"You are here..." Rob muttered, his face quickly regaining the same cues of anxiety as before. 

"And where else would I be?" Leo asked, standing up from his knees only to then lean down and swat the dust off his pants. He then took a slow look around, "it's not like there's anywhere for me to hide here."

Rob's face tensed up even further, only for the young man to properly stand up and then take a careful step forward. 

And then another. 

"You... You are still here..." he muttered, a parade of all sorts of emotions flashing in his eyes. 

'Did he really expect me to vanish again?' Leo thought, squinting his eyes as he pushed his mind to figure out the reason behind Rob's anxiety. 

Still, as much as he would love to focus on nothing else but reassuring his brother and making up for all the years he was gone from his brother's life... 

The insides of the portal weren't the best place for them to have their reunion. And even though he bought everyone some time by decimating the second wave of the monsters, they were still far from achieving whatever goal of this portal could be. 

'At the very least, it's good that we can now retreat back home,' Leo thought, taking a glance over to where the exit portal formed properly, only to then turn his attention right back to Rob when he finally closed the distance with his extremely careful and hesitant pace and reached out with his hand for Leo's shoulder. 

"You are here..." Rob whispered, repeating the very same words that he had spoken before. 

Tears appeared in his eyes while his fingers gripped hard at Leo's shoulder. 

"You really, really are here!" 

The budding tears turned into two streams that trickled down Rob's cheeks. 

His other hand landed on Leo's other shoulder... Only for the young man's knees to give in, forcing Leo to follow along and rush to soften Rob's fall. 

"You are still here!" Rob screamed out through his tears, shaking as if he was having a seizure. 

"Yes, I'm here," Leo changed the way he approached the topic, "I really, really am here and have no plans of going anywhere else." 

Falling back to his knees to stay on the same level as his crying brother, Leo didn't hesitate to push forward and wrap his arms around Rob's shaking shoulders. 

"I'm here. And while I never wanted to leave, it wasn't my choice to begin with. But now that I'm back, I have no plans of going anywhere else."

Holding his crying brother in his arms, Leo closed his eyes. 

'Was he somehow blaming himself for my disappearance?' he thought, struggling to crack the issue while constantly maintaining a proper level of vigilance required in this hostile place. 

"You really are back..." This time, it wasn't Rob but Millie who uttered those words. 

Looking up, Leo froze. 

Even though he already saw Millie in her new, extremely clothes-lacking form, with the teary and extremely emotional look on her face... 

He just couldn't help but see her as the cute, playful neighbor he remembered her as rather than the outgoing sexbomb she styled herself in the present. 

"Yeah, I'm back. It's been a while, kiddo."

Hearing Leo's words, Millie fell down to her knees, forcing Leo to notice that while her clothes were still extremely skimpy, she at least covered herself with an oversized hoodie that hid all of the parts she rushed to cover with her hands during their initial reunion. 

"Disgusting..." 

No good thing could last forever. Yet, rather than the third wave of fiends acting as the stop to this teary reunion, it was Mark who took the role. 

By now, he has stopped retching and even managed to wipe most of his vomit off his face and clothes. Yet, judging by the vicious look of hate mixing with poorly concealed uncertainty, his words did not refer to the state of his sullied clothes. 

"A bunch of sentimental pussies," he cursed, raising his chin as he looked at the teary trio with open disgust before turning his eyes first to the smaller pile and then to the bigger field of burning corpses. 

"At least the oldest doesn't seem to be as useless as the middle," he muttered, the look of disgust fading from his face in favor of the uncertainty Leo had long since noticed. 

'Should I even address his behavior now?' Leo asked himself, struggling to juggle all the things that he currently had going. 

How was he supposed to deal with his crybaby of a middle brother? How was he supposed to deal with an equally as tearful childhood friend of his? 

Or rather, how could he push them aside to focus on the third wave of fiends forming out in the distance and later how was he supposed to deal with the wave itself without revealing too much about his powers?

'Why did things have to get so damn complicated?' Leo cried out in his soul. 

But he couldn't just stay down and keep wailing internally. 

Not with the third wave already coalescing into a united front, a horde that consisted pretty much of brown-cap goblins and fiends of threat rank above that. 

"For now, it would be the best if you guys..." Leo started, only to bite down on his tongue. 

'Can I really discourage them from using the system to their advantage?'

On one hand, he still had some doubts if this alien circuit was any good. It appeared to be simply too good to be true! 

But it was here and from all that Leo could tell... it was here to stay. 

'With how the world's going to change with this circuit... Is it really the best for them to avoid it like fire?' 

Leo blinked to clear his vision before taking a good, long look at both of his brothers. 

"Let me guess, you want us to leave so that you can monopolize this farm spot?" Mark perfectly called out Leo's initial intention, even if his understanding of Leo's reasons couldn't be any further away from the truth. 

"I thought about making you leave so that you won't die like a dog," Leo countered, patting Rob on his shoulder before standing up and giving his youngest brother an annoyed look. "Those fiends tend to fight back, you know?"

"I'm not leaving," Rob announced, using his forearm to wipe the tears off his face before following Leo's example and standing up, all for the sake of looking his older brother directly in the face. "If you stay, I stay. I won't let you disappear on us again."

Hearing his brother say those words while looking at him with absolute and unwavering determination, even Leo couldn't help but form a small smile. 

"It's okay, I'm not going to chase you away," he replied only to pat Rob on his shoulder again before turning his eyes over to Millie. "As for you..."

"I'm the same," Millie, still sitting down on her heels, only shook her head without as much as attempting to clear her face of her tears. "If you two are staying, then so am I."

"Are you here to shoot a tearjerker or to get stronger?" Mark offhandedly commented while already moving ahead and positioning himself toward the charging horde in the distance. 

"Ehh..." Leo sighed before taking a step away from his brother and reaching out with his hand towards the field of burning fiends' corpses. 

A surge of mana into the first layer of his second legacy core later, the corpses of the fiends exploded, releasing the cores hidden within their insides and sending them flying directly toward his palm. 

"I can see the value of you three raising your levels a bit, so..." Leo turned back to face the two while also giving Mark a fleeting glance. 

Even if he was a spoiled piece of shit from what he could tell so far... he was still his brother!

"So, show me what you can do against this horde," Leo requested only to take a step back and rest his hands on his hips. "But keep in mind, I will only step in once things get actually dangerous."