Dimensional Descent

The only way forward was practice. At least for most people.

But, Leonel had another potential option: optimization.

Right now, the definitions and parameters he had set for forcefulness were so deep and extensive that he had no mind left to worry about anything else. He realized now that even if he had just enough mental strength left to guide his hands as well, it still wouldn’t be good enough.

If his mind was entirely occupied with this move, how would he plan his next move? How could he react if someone sneak attacked him? How would he react if his opponent countered him?

If he got tunnel vision on a single attack, he would end up shooting himself in the foot.

Luckily, if the problem was optimization, Leonel had many methods to deal with it.

The first thing Leonel did was arrange the words into a Dreamscape of its own. With the parameters organized, he began to find connections and groups, organizing them further and simplifying.

The original layout was in a list. In order to match them perfectly, Leonel went through all of them one by one. But, when organized into a Dreamscape, it became a network, and as a network, each word, phrase, sentence and paragraph had more than just a single connection.

Using these multi-layered connections sounded like it would make things more complex, but in reality, it checked for an eliminated redundancies.

If one phrase implied another word, then the word could be glossed over and skipped. Likewise, if a sentence implied a phrase, then it could likewise be ignored.

The vice versa was also possible. If Leonel had a word like ’strong’, he didn’t need to write a phrase describing a lack of weakness.

After Leonel was finished, he found that the efficiency had increased by a factor. But, this wasn’t enough. Though it still left him with half his processing power, this wasn’t good enough in his estimation. He shouldn’t need to use this much of his mind for a task like this.

Plus, if he needed this much for just a single word, what about the others? Who knew if they were more complicated? Or, what if he began to string words together? Even if every word only took half, if he added a second, then he would suddenly find himself right back at square one.

When Leonel reached this conclusion, he confirmed that this still wasn’t good enough.

It was then it suddenly clicked. Didn’t he already create the perfect ability for this?!

Dream Class.

Dream Class was already the perfect program for this. It was like packaging all of this into a single existence. Swapping them, fusing them, and editing them was as easy as a thought for him.

The moment Leonel thought this, he created a new Dream Class and he called it Forceful.

He was so confident that he didn’t even test it out. He immediately moved onto Swift, and then to Subtle and then to Gentle.

Each time, he went through the same process. He built a list, organized it into Dreamscape, optimized it, then compiled it all into Dream Class, creating four total new classes. Forceful, Swiftness, Subtly and Gentleness.

It took a day and a half for Leonel to finish, Subtle surprisingly taking him the longest as it felt the most enigmatic and out of his reach. But, he finally managed to form a list he was happy with.

Shockingly enough, his mind wasn’t even strong enough to write Subtle after its optimization. Without Dream Class, he wouldn’t be capable of writing it at all.

The moment Leonel finished, though, it was like his entire demeanor had undergone a change.

His pen danced across the air, changing its form at his whims. He shifted between Classes with such speed that it didn’t seem like he was ’switching’ at all. That ultimate state of being able to shift and change as he pleased was reached by him.

Originally, Dream Class wouldn’t be able to work so freely without fully understanding all of the Classes. But, that was exactly what Leonel had done by compiling the list for individual words.

Ironically, though, Leonel’s other Dream Classes actually plummeted as his battle prowess increased, his Spearman Classes fell.

Leonel understood why this was, though.

Strong Spearman, for example, had been 0.13 before. After he was stuck in a dream, it fell to 0.06. And, after this process, it fell further to 0.04.

However, Leonel couldn’t have been more excited about this. This was because his strength had increased far more than he thought it had initially.

How had Strong Spearman gotten weaker? The simple answer was that Forcefulness wasn’t enough to encompass the word Strong. In addition, he had also comprehended three other words that had increased his strength holistically, which had also caused Strong Spearman to fall.

When Leonel had this thought, though, his appetite became insatiable. Didn’t this mean that he could replay this process for all his Dream Classes and perfect them?

The moment Leonel had the thought, he completely lost himself. What he didn’t realize as a dense Auspicious Air began to waft out from him was that he would suddenly enter such a state for an entire year.

When Aina awoke two days later and found that Leonel didn’t even notice her presence, lost in his own world, she only blinked and smiled, not disturbing him. She chose to remain by his side, silently watching him.

On the seventh day, she seemed to grasp what Leonel was doing, and she chose to follow him. But, her approach was entirely different.

Every time she wanted to comprehend something new, she simply picked up a new weapon, much the same way she always had.

If she wanted to learn swiftness, she picked up a flexible sword. If she wanted to learn forcefulness, she picked up a hammer. If she wanted to learn subtly, she picked up more niche weapons like threads. If she wanted to learn gentleness, she went the route of defensive weapons and even learned to use silk fabrics in combat.

Much like Montez had said, Leonel was a bit slow. Absolute geniuses had already found their own methods of doing such things.

When Leonel awoke though, the power he held within a stroke of his pen was unlike anything one could possibly imagine.