Dimensional Descent

Aleck took deep breaths.

About half way through the fight, he had begun to wonder why it was that Leonel had chosen him out of everyone. Logically, his position was the most covert of them all, and the most difficult to pick out. If he could find out about his location, then finding the position of the Chaotic Water Sector and the Viola family would be even easier.

But that was just one aspect. Just as logically, the Skies family had been in the least compromising position. They were the most out of the way. The threat posed was the lowest.

Only now did Aleck understand that Leonel had done all of this on purpose. All of those points would only further count against him.

He could imagine it now, the questioning looks, questioning looks he wouldn’t have the answer for. He felt entirely helpless.

Who would believe that a Prince who had impulsively killed four of Earth’s strongest families could bide his time and scheme like this as well? Aleck almost believed that Leonel had actually killed off those families as a convenient veil for his true self.

There was even news that Leonel had just as impulsively charged into Viola territory. Although it had been exposed that that was a clone, everyone believed that only a clone of the highest quality would be so good. Considering the resources it would take to create such a clone, they still assigned impulsivity to that action although Leonel ultimately didn’t die.

Of course, they had no idea that that clone had cost Leonel nothing but the corpse of an enemy as they had no idea how his Lineage Factor worked, nor had the world learned of his Emulation Spatial Force Innate Node yet.

The more Aleck thought about it, the more he felt like he was stepping into an intricate web laid out by Leonel, a web that if he took just a single wrong step in, he would find himself trapped within and slowly bled until he simply had nothing left.

And the more Aleck thought like this, the more nigh mythical Leonel’s existence became in his mind and the more suffocated he felt. Suddenly, he felt like the only way to survive was to, indeed, do as Leonel had said.

**

Leonel exhaled his own breath, but it had little to do with nervousness, or even fatigue. He simply had some thoughts that he wanted to organize and a feeling deep within him that he felt that he clicked with.

Just now was the first time he had used his Dream Force since his sudden enlightenment, or more accurately, it was at least the first time he had done so to actively attack and not just passively within his own head. And the feeling had been quite… magical, despite the fact he had only used it as a secondary supposed Force to his Emulation Dream Force.

Those flood dragons he had formed back then had been constructed with the Luxnix family Force Art system, or more accurately, the Force Art system of the Northern Star Light-Star Elemental Lineage Factor. This was the very Force Art that could be comprehended through the tablets.

From Leonel’s comprehension, that Force Art system was exceptionally good at creating constructs, creations that felt almost like living, breathing existences. It gave the Force Arts more flexibility, but at the same time they tapped into the Artistic Conception of the beasts they embodied, pulling power from them.

The flood dragons that Leonel created mostly came from his mother. Leonel had chosen a humanoid construct for his King’s Might, but his mother had chosen a dragon for her Emperor’s Might. He hadn’t heard of dragons actually existing outside of myths and legends, and that was even after reading through everything within the Void Palace. In fact, dragons seemed to be a creation of Earth’s mythos in specific.

As Earth’s World Spirit holder, Leonel believed his mother likely had a special connection to the mythos of Earth in specific, which was why she was able to create such lifelike versions and even base her Emperor’s Might construct on it.

This aside, Leonel had only gotten an inkling from techniques his mother had left behind for him back when he first came to the Luxnix family, and he often liked creating attacks based on them although he was aware his conception would always be far off from his mother’s.

But this time, something had changed.

Rather than chasing after his mother’s conception of dragons, he veered from it and somewhat created his own, basing it not on some mythology of dragons, but rather upon what he personally thought they should embody.

As he was doing it, the Force Art system, which should have been formed entirely of his Scarlet Star Force at the time, naturally incorporated his Emulation Spatial Force and even his King’s Might at the same time.

His Emulation Spatial Force relied on his Dream Force to make the flood dragons more real than they had ever been, even to the point that they roared like real beasts. At the same time, they had gained violet eyes, violet eyes that looked almost exactly like Leonel’s own. He even vaguely felt that he could have seen through their perspective if he had really wanted.

When those eyes were formed, it was as though they were no longer constructs and had truly become beasts. The carnage they wrought was on a completely different level and the power output was maximized when the stamina requirements on his part for an equivalent level of devastation had been minimized.

It was an extremely magical feeling, almost as though he was truly breathing life, giving life, creating life. It was like he was a god forging the world into his image, and he had said let there be dragons!

The Northern Star Lineage Factors had always had an underlying reliance on the mind and thus Dream Force. No matter which evolution of the Lineage Factors you were at, there was always an aspect that influenced the mind directly, and now Leonel felt that he had found a connection between this and his Dream Force that allowed his comprehension of the Force Art system to soar.

And it was all because of a small improvement in his Force Manipulation standards…

Leonel had already known before, but now he knew better than ever just how important Force Manipulation was to personal strength.