Dimensional Descent

Leonel turned his gaze away from the youths before him. He couldn’t just leave them here, but it seemed he would have to if he wanted to find out what was going on in this place. There was no way he could trust these people who had a vested interest in having as little competition as possible with the wellbeing of his people.

”Blackstar, you stay here and protect them.”

”Yip! Yip!”

”If anything goes wrong, you can just reach out to me. I will return immediately.”

”Yip!”

Little Blackstar leapt out of Leonel’s arms and softly landed on Aina’s lap. The little guy scurried around in a state of half familiarity and half hesitation.

Though Little Blackstar couldn’t speak like a human, his thoughts were no less complex and his connection with Leonel was very deep. Because of this, the little guy was aware of a great many things though its summation couldn’t be articulated.

In the end, though, Little Blackstar’s tense body relaxed and his hesitation drifted away. Scurrying up Aina’s arm, he found a resting spot on her shoulder before giving Leonel a reassuring twitch of his long whiskers.

Leonel immediately got the gist of Little Blackstar’s thoughts. They were something to the effect of ’I won’t let anyone touch a single hair on her head.’

Toward such a thing, he could only speechlessly shake his head. He had said to protect everyone, how had this little runt interpreted things that way?

’Forget it, Little Blackstar wouldn’t sit idly by if any one of them was attacked.’

Leonel tapped his foot on the ground, causing several beast constructs to slowly take form.

’Interesting. It feels a bit sluggish manipulating Force here. I’m still a bit too used to snatching energy from the atmosphere, though. It would have been much faster if I relied on my internal Force instead.’

Habits built over several years took time to break and the few days Leonel had had weren’t enough. Luckily, with the Control Tier of his ability slowly coming under his wing more and more everyday, Leonel was better suited to breaking bad habits than almost anyone else in existence.

The beast constructed Leonel formed were practically invisible to the naked eye and relied on a lot of the concepts he had used in forming the spider beast construct he had prepared for Aina’s father. But, now, they only had a small amount of spatial properties but were mostly designed to be Leonel’s eyes and ears.

Once this was finished, Leonel turned toward the village once more, strolling forward. However, he had only made it to the line of the outer borders when he suddenly found that his road forward was block by a singular young man.

Nothing in particular stood out about this person. He had normal black hair and he wasn’t too tall, being a head shorter than Leonel himself. He had a broad and stocky build and made his shoulders appear to be quite strong and his irises seemed a bit blacker than would be natural, but considering the low light of the surroundings, it could have just as easily been an illusion of the eye.

Still, he stood before Leonel quite confidently, his expression not really giving much away.

Leonel towered over him, his hands carelessly loose within his pockets. Despite the three hour time limit, he didn’t seem to be in a rush at all, standing in place and meeting the gaze of this young man without much difficulty.

As silent as the space between the two of them was, the gravel and rocks that surrounded them shifted ever so slightly from time to time. Under such pressure, it was very much possible that the ground of a Fifth Dimensional world would have long been grinded into fine sand.

Leonel shifted his gaze away from the young man, looking past him and seeing that many of the youths who had stepped out of their cabins had yet to return. Their purpose wasn’t entirely clear, but if there was a simple method to get rid of competition and variables, why wouldn’t they take it?

They had all come with support systems of their own, but it was very obvious that Leonel was alone. Taking him out would only be a matter of a small effort. Once he was dealt with, dealing with the rest while they were so vulnerable would be as easy as breathing.

Leonel fell into thought for a moment.

On the one hand, he didn’t particularly want to start off his days in this place on the wrong foot. But, on the other…

Orinik had already silently vanished into the village and though he hadn’t said anything to Leonel, there were too many oddities about his appearance here.

’Between our entering the gates and his appearance with that lady, there were three minutes that passed. It’s an odd time dilation if there was always a plan to be here. Even if it was a last minute addition, three minutes is a bit on the longer side… Though, not long enough that it’s too suspicious either.

’Plus, is being the nice guy here even possible. I already tried with that lady and yet the first thing she did when she faced me again was try to pressure me once more. There’s also that guy in the skies, but he’s probably only here to make sure that things actually follow the rules since mom didn’t tell me anything about him.

’In that case…’

Leonel sighed. Bringing a hand out of his pockets, he ran his fingers through his hair.

Of their three hour timer, half a minute had already passed and even more was only ticking by. He couldn’t very well have to fight everyone in this village, right? No, that wasn’t the proper way to think of things.

He would just have to make sure that that thought never even crossed their minds.

The pupils of the young man before Leonel’s suddenly constricted, but it was already too late. A claw-like hand had appeared hovering above his head, Leonel’s gaze down toward him now having become a frightening cold.

”I’m a bit ignorant of the rules here. Can I kill this ant?”

The words seemed spoken at nobody, and yet the figure in the sky knew quite well they were for him.