Dimensional Descent

Leonel shot forward, his Divine Armor appearing on his body.

His palm flipped over, forming a claw with his fingers curled toward the sky. As though a wild beast, he sliced upward, the rupturing glass of space following his every movement. But, what was even more dangerous were the tendrils of destruction that filled in the cracks, layering Leonel’s strike with a violent abandon that shook the core.

BANG!

Leonel’s claw and the Rapax’s ax kick met, but it was the latter the found itself sprawling backward.

’That’s the first effect. Destruction cripples Force not much unlike Anarchic Force, burning it to ashes.’

Leonel’s steps shifted, his claw morphing as he pressed his fore and middle finger together into a short spear. He pierced forward as the Rapax stumbled back, its leg now thrown high into the sky.

After two battles with the Rapax, Leonel had already learned of their weaknesses. The race as a whole had poor posture. At first, it looked like a coincidence, but after three encounters, it most definitely wasn’t. For an entire race to share the same habit, there was clearly a reason for this.

When the Rapax hunched over, their spines coiled, the plates that covered their torsos were as tight and compact as possible, making the more fragile joints almost impossible to target. At best, one would be able to attack non-lethal areas like the arms and legs.

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However, when forced to open up, the joints went from non-existent and snapped closed to open by a sliver.

In truth, this couldn’t be said to be a ’weakness’ at all. Even when standing to their full height, the gaps in the Rapax’s plate armor was at most counted in millimeters. In addition, the skin of the Rapax was especially tough, albeit not nearly as tough as their steely carapace. Still, it could be said that the defenses of their exposed flesh was only two or three ticks below Leonel’s own when he activated his Bronze Runes. That alone was enough to make them impervious to lower Tier Bronze weapons.

Still, this slight and almost negligible flaw was more than enough for Leonel.

PCHU!

’No, I’m wrong. That’s too simple and doesn’t give Destruction enough credit. It’s not burning things to ash, it’s erasing it from existence. This is the reason why the Rapax, despite not emitting Force and keeping it circulating within its body, can still have its strength weakened by me.’

Leonel had yet to meet a Rapax that used an external source of Force. And, yet, his Destruction characteristic still had the effect of greatly weakening its attack. On the surface, this didn’t make much sense unless he was underestimating the effect of his Scarlet Star Force from the very beginning.

Leonel’s Spear Force pierced through the more fragile skin of the Rapax, slicingthrough its body and incinerating its inner organs to ash.

’More, this isn’t enough.’

The moment Leonel appeared outside once again, he had already leapt forward. This time, there was only a single platform to choose from, once again about two meters ahead of him. When he landed, he found himself in a new world once more, facing yet another Rapax.

Leonel wasn’t a fool. He had realized many things by now.

The rules and regulations of this True Selection seemed almost too loose. They didn’t limit who could group with who, they didn’t make any effort to separate allies and even threw them all in the same village without a care, and they made no attempt to regulate what might be seen as unfairness.

But… Was this entirely true?

Leonel felt differently. In fact, he believed that the Void Palace had a perfect pulse on everything that was happening.

All things considered, the appearance of the Sub-Dimensional Zone seemed completely random, especially if there was a trial like this one waiting not long after. That was unless one considered the one thing a Zone could do perfectly that anything else might slip up with: And that was counting them number of individuals in a party.

Leonel’s Segmented Cube could hide people from far too many methods of detection. And, Leonel wasn’t the only one with a treasure that could accomplish such a feat, especially with so many young geniuses with astonishing backgrounds around.

So, the Void Palace borrowed the power of the Regulator to shore up potential loop holes. Using the Zone, they saw threw any hidden trump cards a youth might have. Then, after doing this, they threw these simulations at the group one after another.

Leonel could feel that these weren’t real Rapax he was facing. The only real Rapax was the one whose corpse now hung in his Segmented Cube. These… Were nothing more than practice dummies set with he assumption that Leonel’s group had the support of six individuals total.

But, Leonel wouldn’t have it any other way. There was no better method the squeezing out every ounce of potential he had.

Leonel flickered and vanished, his body appearing atop the Rapax. With a strong punch downward, its head completely caved in. What once was an armor Leonel couldn’t leave even the slightest scratch on lost all of its structural integrity beneath a single vicious blow, crushing the skull of the Rapax and shattering its brain.

When Leonel appeared above the foggy lake once more, his gaze flickered, the vague image of a hidden rune dancing within his irises. He felt that he was faintly approaching his first watershed. His Innate Node thrummed with life, his body feeling as though it was alive.

Leonel had come to realize that so long as he didn’t actively call upon Scarlet Star Force and simply allowed his body to naturally regulate how much he could withstand, what could have been a lethal dose to anyone else became like a steroid pumping through his veins.

’This feeling… Is good.’

Leonel leapt forward, vanishing once more. The ire of his peers didn’t make him waver in the slightest. In fact, he very much hoped that he would run into one of them very soon. He wanted to see what the geniuses of the Human Domain had to offer.