"Cholie!!!!! No!!!!! Cholie!!!!!!"
Maellan could only desperately call out to her as she plummeted from a height similar to falling down from an airplane. Without a parachute.
Not to mention that she was falling to absolute hell with monsters waiting to eat her mangled body.
Maellan took his Spear of Levin and called out desperately: "Blessed lightning, grant to me the full divine powers of the Levin. Give me the Striking Thunderbolt!"
The broken spear emitted so much energy that it reattached itself with blue crackles of lightning. It then changed form, becoming much sharper and glowing brighter at the tip, and growing as tall as 10 feet!
Ronin was almost blinded by the light of this transformation and closed his eyes. Once it was over, he can see dancing blue sparks all around the Edge.
He touched one and immediately felt a crackle of electricity strong enough to electrocute a small rat.
'Interesting.' He took out a stone laying around, carved out a rune with his fingernail, and tried something with these blue sparks.
The rune was a swirling circle. It means 'devour', 'whirlpool', or 'absorb'.
As he held out this stone to the blue sparks, it did absorb it, containing the electric energy!
'This might come in handy.' He thought as he ripped a piece of his clothes. He took the electrically-charged stone and wrapped it there, then put it in his pocket.
As he turned back to Maellan again, he saw his elder brother take a few steps back...
And then rush off to the edge of the cliff with the enhanced Spear of Levin!
This made Duke Taevas break out from his temporary petrification due to whatever PTSD-inducing trauma he was having, and grabbed his son just on time!
"What are you doing!? Are you just going to kill yourself for some pesky Commoner girl!?"
Mavretri was weeping at the side due to the loss of his daughter, incapable of doing anything since the start of the fight between the Zafeiris because he knows he will only get himself killed if he interfered.
Just like what happened to his dear Cholie.
"Let me go!" Maellan struggled from his grasp. He looked too deranged to think straight. "I could still save her!"
"She is dead! There is no way she could survive that fall---"
"But I could bring her back to life! This is exactly what Professor Vyrill and I have been working on our entire lives!" Maellan retorted, roughly pushing him back.
"Which you would never understand and do not even try to understand! You never even showed interest in our research! Even Ronin could understand it better than you!"
But Duke Taevas would not let go of him. "Your 'research' is insanity! The dead can never go back! You are just bringing yourself to ruin!"
"I would rather bring myself to ruin than believe that I can never see Cholie again! You murderer! It's all your fault! You killed her!"
Those words once again struck Duke Taevas the same way as before, but he had quickly gotten over it and only grappled Maellan tighter.
"I don't care if you call me a murderer or report to the King for my crimes! I am not letting you waste your life for something useless!"
Ronin was also on the side of not jumping like Duke Taevas, but he also knew there was no way of convincing Maellan. Love makes a fool of everyone, and he was willing to risk his life just for it.
He brought the shaft Spear of Levin down on Duke Taevas' foot, making father growl in pain. "Graaahhh!"
This allowed him to escape, and with no hesitation----
He jumped, twisting the spear to have the head face the ground several ten thousands of feet below!
"MAELLAN!!!!!!!!!!!!" Duke Taevas called out.
There he goes. The only person who could serve as Ronin's ticket to the Academy.
If he infiltrated the Academy now with only a small skill like Blinding Darkness... That's suicide.
If he tried to pass the Triannum test with his current state as a weak Coal boy..... That's suicide.
Follow after Maellan and hope that whatever was in the Abyssal Realm would make him stronger and be potentially saved by this 'lightning necromancy research' of his...
The result was most likely double suicide for both brothers.
He thought about several other plans, but all of them, as Duke Taevas puts it, were useless. It would be as suicidal as Maellan jumping off the Edge.
He needed to think. Unlike heroes, he was not impulsive. He must not be under any circumstances.
Some people may see it as too indecisive and callous..... but that's better than being dead meat.
As System #151044, he witnessed many transmigrators die of a single misstep. And they weren't even in the dangerous position he was in.
He does not have a fast-forward button to become a mega-villain that can massacre whoever he likes. He was a weak boy that must start with absolutely nothing.
Wait... Maybe not nothing.
He had often wondered what's the point of being in a family background like this. Why must he go through all this family drama? Why was this his origin story?
He had lived so realistically in this world that he sometimes forgot this was a story, and everything has its relevance. None of the details that draws him in and he paid attention to was just 'filler'.
Just like how that stupid food fight had to happen for Belladonna to be enraged, which then gave him the chance to gain his first V-points.
Or how he overheard her thinking about a visiting friend, and met Freja, learning about Fausforus and gaining levels, skill, and a clue.
How Duchess Akasa's death introduced him to the Edge, how studying that book with Maellan gave him his first rune, how Belladonna being born gave him a leverage as being the brother and sole trusted person of his sister in order to erase her from Cermin's harem list.....
These were all not mere coincidences. They were building blocks, dominoes that when toppled over will result in 'The End'.
Ronin now knew that he must pay more attention to them. The small dots were the ones that make the long lines when joined together.
Maellan mentioned his name too. That cannot be a coincidence.
"The papers...." His beady black eyes widened.
That's right, Maellan handed copies of those research papers to him.
If Maellan was gone, who would continue the research with Professor Vyrill?
"Guess it's time for me to apply as a research assistant." Ronin smirked.