Dimensional Descent

Leonel’s pupils constricted.

In that moment, it wasn’t just about sight. If it was that and that alone, he could take this ability to be nothing more than a parlor trick. With his Internal Sight, why would he care about a little darkness? This cave wasn’t exactly well lit to begin with, especially given the sheer size of the space.

However, it wasn’t just that.

Leonel felt his senses get cut off one after another. First it was sight, then hearing, then even his touch went. As a final cherry to top it all off, his proprioception was completely cut off.

Leonel’s first instinct was to release his Domain, but he restrained himself. This sort of uncomfortable feeling where he wasn’t even sure of the relation of his limbs to the other parts of his body even left him suffocating.

Proprioception was such a fundamental sense to the human body that those who lost it wouldn’t even be able to walk without watching their feet move.

It was the ability for one to subconsciously know where your body parts were in relation to one another. Even if one closed their eyes, they would be able to touch a finger to their nose without much difficulty or thought. Someone who had lost their proprioception would be completely unable to do such a thing.

Just living day to day life without proprioception was enough to drive someone mad, let alone having lost it in the middle of a battle. For Leonel, who was used to controlling each and every aspect of his movements, it was no wonder he felt so stifled and almost reacted on instinct rather than logic.

He couldn’t reveal his Domain so easily. While they should already have information on his Chain Domain, as far as they were concerned, all it could do was help restrain people, and if used a bit cleverly, it could give him some flexibility to his movements.

But, they wouldn’t understand the suppressive abilities of his Domain, nor would they know that it would mostly give him control of his body back. He had to save this for the perfect moment.

‘My senses are cut off, my proprioception is gone, and my Internal Sight has been restricted to an extreme… I can’t monitor the detection arrays l left behind anymore, but I have just enough range to cover this entire cave space.’

There was no way that the four teammates would guess that Leonel would still have such a long range and Leonel immediately made countermeasures to ensure that Manson couldn’t learn this through intuition.

‘I’ll lock onto the three men… Simulate where the woman will be and avoid allowing my Internal Sight to touch her… Only lock onto her when she enters a 10 meter range… That will be cutting it close, but it should be just enough to react….’

Leonel’s Internal Sight sprung into action. He wrapped it around his own body, replacing his lost senses with it. He locked onto Double Shot, Shadow Rat and Panda. And finally, he began to simulate Manson’s movements, using the shifts in the ground to avoid accidentally passing her by with his Internal Sight.

Leonel made all these decisions in a split moment. His drop of blood hadn’t even completely settled onto the ground when he finished.

“10 meters.”

The voice wasn’t meant for Leonel to hear, but he knew it was Manson’s. The moment it descended, he knew his plan had worked.

Manson’s voice traveled through this odd dark domain in such a way that made Leonel realize that it was meant to be a covert form a communication built into Panda’s ability. This was a huge plus, it made it even easier for Leonel to pinpoint Manson’s location, he just had to pay attention to these strings of conversation.

At that moment, Shadow Rat vanished. He seemed to sink into the ground, his short body disappearing without a trace. And yet, even after another split moment, he didn’t appear anywhere. However, that didn’t stop Double Shot from suddenly letting off another two rounds.

Leonel’s body shifted slightly to the side.

He thought about letting the rounds hit him, just so that he could continue to leave Manson in the dark. But in the end, he decided to test something. It was a calculated risk.

He realized that when he intercepted Manson’s voice, she hadn’t seemed to notice. At the very least, her Intuition hadn’t gone off.

There was a chance that Manson had realized and was simply hiding this fact, but Leonel believed that there was a 70% likelihood that she hadn’t noticed at all. If that was the case, that meant that the less involved with Manson herself the action was, the less likely it was that her ability would pick up on something odd.

Not only had her voice left her body, but it was being carried by an ability that wasn’t her own. This made it difficult for her to read Leonel.

‘Perfect.’

Leonel’s eyes narrowed. The more things he could take advantage of, the better. However, what he heard next made him realize that things would be difficult.

Leonel had managed to jump the hurdle of his lost proprioception by coating his body in his Internal Sight. That way, he could ‘watch’ his every movement and control it at the same time. Thanks to this, he was able to sway out of the way of the bullet.

But…

“He dodged.”

Panda’s voice traveled to Double Shot and Manson, making Leonel’s heart skip a beat. It seemed that he had still underestimated this ability. It could not only cut off his own senses, but despite being affected themselves, the four teammates had one of them who could ‘see’ just fine.

Panda might have not realized that he was listening in on their conversations, and he also couldn’t tell the range of Leonel’s Internal Sight, but he could still keep track of almost everything that happened within his ability’s range.

Just when Leonel’s mind was kicked into overdrive again, a shadow suddenly gained form to his back, melting into the darkness of Panda’s domain seamlessly.

Shadow Rat had appeared again, a glistening dagger in his hand.