Dimensional Descent

Leonel slipped through the city gates completely invisible to the eyes of the guards. He didn’t feel like going through an inspection process nor did he have anything proving his status as a Prince outside of his face, so he felt that it wasn’t worth it.

After he was a distance away, he found a location to reappear and blended into the crowd. With just a few minutes of observation, though, Leonel realized that things weren’t so simple.

Whether it was the residents of Earth that lived here or the tourists from other worlds, each had their own identification cards. It only took Leonel a moment to realize that Earth had replaced its original monitoring system with another one. What was surprising, though, was that this monitoring system was both less intrucive, and most surprisingly, it revolved around the very same wrist watch the people of Earth had always had.

Of course, outsiders weren’t given their own wrist watches. Instead they were given badges they had to use to verify their purchases.

Essentially, without either a wristwatch or a tourist badge, one could only walk around the city aimlessly without benefitting from anything.

As Leonel continued to walk around, he picked up on more details. For example, outsiders had a higher sales tax to pay, they were restricted from certain regions, and they were only allowed to rent property but couldn’t own anything.

Everything from top to bottom was meticulously organized and despite searching for it, Leonel couldn’t find signs of corruption and, more shockingly, poverty. It was as though the people of Earth had all simultaneously been risen in status…

But, Leonel knew that this was far from the case. The cruel underbelly of this was that the poor had already been killed by his grandfather. All that were left were individuals with great connections, wealth and political affiliations.

Of course, no country or world could possibly function without labor workers or those that did less than lucrative jobs, and yet it seemed that this had been handled as well.

It seemed that Earth had either begun training Force Crafters of their own or had invited over Crafters to automate much of the labor process. And, where it was impossible to do this… There were the people of Terrain.

Leonel had already noted that there was no poverty, and this was true. But, this was only in the in your face, dirty slums and grimy streets sort of ways. The true underpinning of what allowed the people of Earth to continue living their lush lifestyles while everything in the city seemed to work on its own were the inconspicuous workers wearing grey tunics and pants, gliding through the city silently with their heads lowered and their gazes glued to the ground.

The invasion of Terrain didn’t just end with the war. After all, the cities themselves resulted in an influx of tens of millions of people who had been essentially uprooted from their homes by their City Lords.

After their City Lords died, they were left behind with nothing and no way to get back home, leaving them stranded on Earth without recourse or power to do anything.

In truth, Leonel had at some point assumed that his grandfather would have them all massacred. The image he had of his grandfather was that he was a cruel man willing to do anything to hold onto his power and take a step ahead. Ultimately, tens of millions of Terrain citizens, albeit far less talented than the people of Earth, were a threat to their forward progress.

And yet… They had been seamlessly integrated to the point where even Leonel had almost not noticed them at all.

With some more observation, Leonel came to understand this as well.

’I see… So he created a hierarchy system with the promise that those born five generations from now would become true citizens of Earth. With this promise in place, the current people of Terrain are living silent and peaceful lives and are even helping Earth to fix its clear population problem… As long as they don’t cause trouble, four generations from now they’ll be able to say that they birthed children who were true people of Earth.’

Just from an hour of walking around the city, Leonel had seen several of what he would classify as… ’sensual’ shops. Whether it was a small boutique that sold women’s lingerie or even something more in your face like outright sex toy shops, they were here in quite large number.

On top of that, Leonel had seen many parents walking about with toddlers and newborns. Such a thing would have been impossible to see right after the Metamorphosis and most children did not survive the calamity for obvious reasons.

Leonel could feel a clear push for the people of Earth to have children.

Despite there being so many sensual shops, there wasn’t a single brothel in sight. In addition, despite the fact a woman of Terrain could have a fifth generational baby so long as she slept with a man of Earth, there seemed to be an invisible barrier between the two groups.

Picking up on all of these subtleties, Leonel was astonished. This level of governance was far beyond his capabilities. He couldn’t help but feel a small bit of respect for his grandfather.

Leonel’s emotional intelligence worked best on a micro scale. Of course, he could impact things at a macro level too with how he almost destroyed the foundation of Valiant Heart Mountain with just a few actions, but he still felt like he lacked the nuance and grace his grandfather had.

However… With every step through the city Leonel took, he seemed to soak in something different, shifting his ideals and rebuilding them with new thoughts. To those who walked by him, it would almost seem like he was in a trance-like state of enlightenment.

Before Leonel realized it, he had reached the end of his journey and found himself at what must have once been the City Lord’s mansion, though now, the flag of the Dove family flew high and proud.

”Halt! The Grand Prime Minister’s Estate is closed off to outsiders!”

Leonel kept walking forward as though he hadn’t heard anything. Just when the guards wanted to take action, they found their legs rooted to the ground.