Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

"What is this, out in the distance?" Layn asked, breaking the long period of silence.

"Huh? Isn't that just a mountain?" Irea attempted to answer, even though she could only make a guess.

"Doesn't seem like it," Layn said, shaking his head. "The amount of mana coiling at its bottom… It wouldn't be a lie to claim it's comparable to that barrier we saw before," he added after a moment.

"Wait, what?" Irea froze in place, taking her sweet time to digest the meaning of what Layn just said.

"Is this a source of the monsters or something? An automated facility to produce guardians of the place?" Layn voiced out his thoughts, rubbing his chin in deep thought.

"You are now saying some pretty revolting things, you know that?" Irea asked, staring wide-eyed at her partner.

"Does it matter? We are all alone here," Layn shook his head, returning to his senses before looking around. "Right, how many do you think will return?" he asked, dropping the previous topic just as rapidly as he started it a moment ago.

"Half?" Irea leaned her head to the side before making a guess. "Maybe two-thirds? One-third?" She then shrugged her arms. "It all depends on how strong they really are. And let me remind you…"

"I didn't pick anyone with strenght sufficient to deal with the monsters on their own. I'm aware of that," Layn said before the girl could finish her words. "Still, I want to believe they learned something over the past few days."

Just as one could expect from the desert, even after traveling for over a week already, the landscape has yet to change. Surrounded by nothing but sand, sandhills, and sand dunes, Layn felt as if he was in the middle of an ocean, unable to even look to the stars to navigate his way out.

"I doubt they did," Irea suddenly stated. "It's not like people can easily uproot something they believed in since their childhood years,  don't you think so as well?" she asked.

"Didn't you do it though?" Layn rebuked with a small smile.

"If you want to go this way, let me ask you another question instead," Irea rolled her eyes. "How many of those men did you fuck?" she asked while raising one of her eyebrows.

"Excuse me?" Layn wasn't angry but startled. 'Just where did this question come from?' he asked himself in his thoughts before looking sharply at the girl. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Everything," she answered, lowering her arms and her head. "Look," Irea took a step forward, wrapping her arms on Layn's chest before hugging herself to his back, "ever since we turned intimate, I started paying a lot more attention to everything you say and you do. What's more, we started spending all the time we have together, so I had no other choice but to see all the other exploits of yours that constantly break everything I believed to be an absolute truth so far." Irea explained while rubbing her cheek against Layn's back.

"Still, what does that have to do with fucking others?" Layn asked, unable to understand this point of the girl. "If you mentioned just the time we spent together if you brought all the things that you saw me do, I would understand, but fucking?" Layn asked once again, before taking Irea's arms off his chest, turning around and hugging her himself. "Please, don't you ever mention something so sad. It makes me feel as if the only reason you are so close with me are my powers. And I don't like that any bit."

For a moment, Layn's aura changed. For this single moment, all the grief, pain, and sadness of his days right after he learned about Ortensia's true colors, returned. Even though he long accepted the adventures in this world as a form of therapy for himself, Irea's innocent suggestion now brought the horrors of his past back.

"What? Wait, no, that's not what I meant!" Irea protested. Then, her face suddenly lit up as she pushed Layn's chest away so that she could look him in the eyes. "If you think all the way back, to the first time I got affectionate with you… Did I know how special you are back then?" She asked, staring right down Layn's eyes.

"Well…" For a moment, the archmage scoured his memory to see whether what Irea said was true. And sure enough, the moment when his cultivation spiked for the first time. The time when he felt pleasure from the closeness of a girl for the first time since Ortensia broke this part of him, was indeed way before he revealed any part of his real strenght to this girl! "Well, I can't deny that. I'm sorry." Layn apologized truthfully.

"Why does it feels like you are just trying to avoid the topic?" Irea pressed the issue, clearly unhappy with how Layn attempted to deal with it.

"Oh, come on. I'm not trying to avoid it. I'm really sorry for what I said and suggested," Layn lowered his head, bowing to the girl as he apologized. "It's just that…" his words got stuck in his throat.

"It's just what?" Still fuming with anger, Irea asked.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to speak about this yet," Layn replied, turning his face away from Irea's prying eyes. As great as he felt spending his days with her on his side, opening the can of worms from his past was still something he didn't dare to do.

"Oh, I'm sorry, " Irea suddenly apologized, managing to take Layn by a surprise.

"Huh? What are you apologizing for?" he asked before turning his head to the other side, checking the distance of the closest group of monsters that continued to charge right towards them.

"It's simple, I never asked you about your past, because I wanted to learn about it only once you will be ready to share it with me," Irea's said as her face turned red. This time, it was she who averted her eyes, but not in order to avoid the topic, just to hide her embarrassment instead. "And here I am, trying to press you into speaking about something that was clearly painful… Pretty bad conduct for a girlfriend, isn't it?" she then asked, raising her guilt-filled eyes on Layn's face.

"Don't worry about it," the archmage replied, bringing her back into his arms. Then, just by releasing a small amount of mana that was trying to escape his control, the legs of the approaching monsters all snapped. "Wait, give me a minute."

Freeing himself from the girl's arms, Layn walked towards the group of monsters before sucking all of their energy one by one. With their limbs, all shattered by the outburst of mana he created a moment earlier, not a single of the monsters had any way to go back at the man sucking their existence out.

A moment later, Layn released a huge solar flare into the skies to get rid of all the excess energy that neither his cultivation nor his aura could hold.

"Hey, I have one request for you," Irea suddenly said as soon as Layn returned to her side. 

"What it is, dear?" Layn forced all his sad memories down the drain, before focusing on the cute face of his current girlfriend. Between reminiscing his pitiful past and living the most out of his new life, the choice was obvious.

"Whenever you will recall those things that happened to you in your past… Can you just come to me?" Striking at a topic Layn didn't expect her to, Irea managed to catch him for the second time today.

"And what good would that do?" Layn asked before shaking his head. "What's in the past,  is in the past. I don't want you to see me in a pitiful state either, so I will have to…" Layn attempted to refuse, only for the girl to wrap her arms around his chest once again, before squeezing so strongly, that all the air escaped from his lungs, making it impossible for the archmage to finish his sentence.

"I don't care if you are pitiful or not as manly as usual," Irea stated, holding Layn close. Then, her hands started to move up and down his back, as if she wanted to encourage him to something. "I don't want to just share your good moments. In those good moments, I will always have to rely on you. No matter how much I try to chase after you, I feel like I'm always too late to even try." Irea suddenly broke into tears, wetting Layn's robe. Her entire body started to tremble.

'It's better not to say anything right now,' Layn thought, limiting himself to patting the girl's back. 'I might not be a super social person, but that's something even I can realize.'

"I know it's selfish of me, but I want to be of use to you. I want to help you whenever I can. I want you to rely on me as well." Irea continued to whimper on Layn's chest, fully opening her heart to the archmage.

"Irea, I know…" before Layn could finish, the girl's arms once again squeezed his lungs dry.

"Don't you 'I know' me now!" She shouted, pressing her teary face against Layn's chest even stronger. "Can you do that for me or not?" Apparently managing to find the courage in herself, Irea pushed Layn's chest back before posing the question while looking deep into Layn's eyes.

"Well…" For a moment, Layn didn't know how he was supposed to reply. Then, as if he was getting the flashbacks of a dying person, all the time he spent with Irea suddenly flashed before his eyes. "Rather than that, would you like to hear my true story instead?" He suddenly asked, deciding to take a leap of faith himself.. "It won't be a short story, that I can promise."