Dimensional Descent

Leonel could easily feel the gazes on him. There weren’t many who were still leaping the black log wall at this point and it could even be said that he was the only one. It was far too easy to spot him.

The moment he landed on the ground, he could feel several Internal Sight’s surge toward him, causing his brow to raise. These people were quite brazen. He had gone out of his way not to antagonize anyone with his own Internal Sight, but it was clear they had no intention of showing him the same courtesy.

”Piss off.”

BANG!

A muffled and invisible surge whipped about the surroundings. Leonel manipulated his Internal Sight with the Artistic Conception of the imploded Spatial Bristle Bush and laced it with concepts of Destruction.

The instant the wall of surging Internal Sights entered his range, they coiled back reflexively, a pained sort of retreat one would expect from touching a stove that was too hot ensuing.

Leonel swept a gaze through the village, his eyes suffused with a hardly hidden coldness. The perpetrators were nowhere to be found, but this was to be expected. They probably thought they didn’t even have to step outside their cabins in order to probe him.

Still, if it had been just a normal, casual prod, Leonel wouldn’t have cared so much. However, there was a very intentional sort of brazenness to it.

Ever since Wise Star Order had mentioned how good the soul was at revealing things the eyes otherwise couldn’t, Leonel had been paying more attention to these things. It was also much easier for him to do so considering the fact that he had managed to sense and awaken his own soul in a sense thanks to the Spirituals.

When he had fought with the Cursed wolf, he had been able to sense its overwhelming hunger. In fact, every Cursed Beast he had come across seemed to have a certain emotion amplified to an extreme degree as well. And now, when faced with all of those Internal Sights, he had grasped their emotions as well.

Disdain. Disregard. Contempt. Indifference. There was even some righteous indignation and real anger mixed in.

Leonel already had a few guesses as to why that was, but that didn’t mean he would just allow people to trample all over him because they felt like it. If he had allowed them to probe him, not only would he come off weak, but it would also reveal his gains from the last two hours. He had no intention of doing anything of the sort.

He began to walk forward, his expression not giving anything away. With a thought, he reached out to Little Blackstar and saw that the situation over there was basically the same. But, it also seemed that their clothing wouldn’t hold out for much longer either.

The current Leonel had used some of the tailoring skills he had learned form his father’s training program to weave together a beast skin skirt for himself. The beasts had survived just fine in this region, so their fur and coats were greatly resistant as well.

He looked out of place walking through the village like this, as anyone who could kill and defeat the beasts out there had long since traded for their own uniforms, but he didn’t care.

The first thing Leonel did was head to one of the storefronts. This place sold both beast meat and doubled as tailoring shop, likely because the materials that made up their uniforms came from the beast skins to begin with. It was also possible that they relied on some herbs as well, but Leonel didn’t really care about what the process was.

He found himself a place in line and fell into silence. Several gazes shifted toward him, but as usual, the store was most silent aside from shuffling and the occasional whisper. Everyone in this village seemed to take their words as golden and even the exchanges happened in silence. It could only be said that the Void Palace did almost too good of a job in knocking these geniuses down a peg.

Leonel remembered reading in a work of fiction that most armies worked this way, whittling down one’s sense of individuality and sense of self until all you dared to do was obediently follow orders. He had always thought that this was an exaggeration and that no good army could possibly be raised that way.

In his mind, the foundation of an army was a good leader and cool uniforms. But, there was clearly no leader here and even the uniforms they as rookies were left with were nowhere near as amazing as the ones those Sector Ranked disciples had worn. Instead, everyone looked like they were walking around in shirt and pants little better than rags.

If you removed context and told Leonel that this was a slave encampment, he would believe it.

The line continued to move slowly. Despite Leonel believing that the crafters were actually working quite quickly, it still took a minute or two per person. By the time it was finally Leonel’s turn, a little over ten minutes had passed, leaving him with 50 until his deadline.

Though everyone else hadn’t spoken, Leonel didn’t really have much of a choice but to speak. After all, he still didn’t know anything about the exchange rates or what he could even trade for here. That said, he was still fairly confident that he had enough to get what he needed, especially after seeing the poverty of everyone else.

”Hello, I have some resources to exchange. Might I know of what the rates are?”

Leonel smiled lightly, looking toward the young lady behind the counter. She looked like she was in her mid twenties and was only tall enough to come up to Leonel’s chest. Her hair was done up in a serious pony tail without a single strand out of place and she had piercing grey eyes that met Leonel’s own indifferently.

Leonel’s smile couldn’t help but fade a bit when he realized the young woman didn’t answer him.

She looked toward him for only a moment more before looking past him entirely, her gaze landing on the person to Leonel’s back.

Obviously, she was asking for the next in line.