Dimensional Descent

Among the many blueprints Leonel’s father had left behind, there were even a few buildings among them. To this point, Leonel had mostly ignored them, focusing on the designs that could hone his skill in armor crafting. 

That said, this didn’t mean that he had never looked over them. In fact, he had memorized them all already. They were able to give Leonel a basic understanding of construction and the physics that went behind it. 

Most of it was quite simple in Leonel’s estimation, just understanding forces like tension, compression, shearing and the like. He had already learned about all these things in high school. 

Plus, even if he hadn’t, he could just test his design plans within his Dream World. If he did things like that, he would hardly need to think at all. 

After a few minutes of thought, an amount that was likely equivalent to several hours for even other sensory types and probably several days for normal individuals, Leonel had settled on everything. 

The first thing he did was completely shroud the small shop in a Light Elemental illusion, making it look like nothing but a blank space from the outside. 

Then, he burnt everything down to ashes. 

’Let’s reconstruct this foundation… Oh?’

Leonel chuckled. 

The formation that made up the foundation of the small shop had a few functions. The first was to mark the owner, the second was to mark which Union the owner was a part of, and the third was very clearly a monitoring function. 

Of course, this was only ’clear’ to Leonel. At most, this formation was on the level of a Tier 4 Force Art, it wasn’t anywhere near complex enough to throw Leonel off any scent. The only reason it took him so long to Dream Sculpt was because of its size. 

Leonel immediately began rearranging the formation. 

’Hm, an emblem…? Let’s go with some spears, maybe a bow, a touch of silver, and we need a mascot… Let’s give that honor to Little Blackstar and give him some wings made out of Little Tolly.’

Leonel chuckled to himself. With his ability, though he wouldn’t call himself an artist, he was most definitely able to perfectly replicate anything in his mind. Something like drawing an image he had in mind was as easy as breathing. 

He ended up creating an emblem that was one part valiant and another part adorable. How else would one describe a graveyard of spears with a little mink flying overhead with its little wings, pulling back the string of a bow? 

Leonel encased it all in an elaborate silver border that made it look particularly royal and put the finishing touches on the formation. 

’I guess we can call it the Blackstar Faction. Why not? … You should be happy little guy, even though you left me behind for… softer pastures.’

After Leonel was finished with amusing himself, he truly got to work. 

’We’ll do just two levels, no need to get too wild. The first will sell goods, the second will deal with repairs. 

’The structure needs to be eye popping, but what could be more eye popping than using Twice Refined Steel and Diamond on a small shop?’

Leonel grinned like a madman, not caring in the slightest that he was wasting what amounted to millions of kilograms of Urbe Ore. In fact, he relished in it. If he was going to make a bang, he was going to go all out. 

Leonel built up the frame of the small shop with Twice Refined Steel. This Ore was exceptionally good at forming heavy weapons. Not only did it have quite some heft to it, but it was also quite ductile while simultaneously being very sturdy. Let alone a two story building, it would easily be able to form the framework for a building several kilometers tall even in a Fifth Dimensional world. 

Working with large beams of metal wasn’t as difficult as Leonel had thought it would be, but the precision required was just as important. Thanks to Leonel’s metal affinity, though, he had senses almost too strong for this kind of matter. Even when he was moving around several tons of metal around, he hardly broke a sweat. 

Once Leonel was finished with this, he began to work with he Twice Refined Diamond. The material itself looked quite like the diamond of Earth. The main difference was that it radiated a gentle sky blue that could become a pale white depending on how you looked at it. 

Leonel had a plan. 

Building a shop of this material would almost make it tacky. As cool as it sounded to have bricks of diamond, it might look more ridiculous than anything else by the end of it all. 

But… what if he made use of the formation below? The transparency and high refraction index of the diamond made it very sensitive to light, especially when introduced at a certain angle. 

’Yes, this could work if I shift the design a bit and tweak the formation…’

Leonel got to work. His fingers were a blur as he practically fused with Little Tolly. 

He cut the Twice Refined Diamond into perfect pieces. Some times they would be prisms, at other times they would be perfect bricks, and there were even some others that had irregular shapes. 

Leonel mapped out exactly how all of these shapes would fit together. When it all came together, the outside of the building would almost look like a kaleidoscope of shapes. And then, when Leonel activated the formation and the black and silver lights shone through it…

The hours began to tick by. On the outside, all anyone saw was a vast blank space. They weren’t foolish enough to believe the shop had actually disappeared, but they were shocked that such a formation could actually be laid without issue. 

It was then, on the morning of the second day that the Light Illusion Force Art finally began to fade. What people saw, though, left them completely stunned to the point that many came to a grinding halt. 

The Blackstar Emblem hung in the skies, showing no signs of dissipating. It was so clear that it could be seen from every point within the city. 

Then… the doors opened.