Dimensional Descent

1840 Slow and Steady?

Leonel’s progress was like a gentle tide, his aura like the warm embrace of the first rays of sun in the morning.

The way Leonel looked at his Divine Armor and Metal Body felt different now. They didn’t feel like extensions of himself granted by his Lineage Factor, rather they felt more like fundamental aspects of his being and he even somewhat regretted how he had constructed them now. If he had this knowledge before, his approach would have been slightly different.

However, unlike how he might have reacted to this in the past, Leonel didn’t panic now and his usual feelings of missing out weren’t there. That was because due to his new mindset, he was extraordinarily confident that he would be able to fix it.

His Divine Armor and Metal Body weren’t rigid, immovable constructs. They were him just as he was them. If one wanted to change the composition of metals in their body, there were all sorts of methods even a Third Dimensional human could use, let alone Leonel who was now in Tier 4 of the Sixth Dimension and had a Lineage Factor specifically tailored for this.

Now, Leonel was even more certain that the Lineage Factor of the Morales family was tied with the Lineage Factor of the Silver Empire.

He felt that Anastasia was correct. The Lineage Factor was preparing a person’s body for something... and that something was the Metal Synergy Lineage Factor. He was over 70%

certain of this.

The only questions that remained were related to how things had come about like this. Why was the preparation Lineage Factor not in the hands of the Morales? With it, they would have the only Ninth Dimensional Lineage Factor in the Human Domain, that was guaranteed, no one could convince otherwise.

Even if by some anomaly Leonel was wrong and this inheritance wasn’t designed to help the Metal Synergy Lineage Factor, the truth of the matter was that it would still raise the latter to the standard of a Ninth Dimensional Lineage Factor whether they were related or not. The two were simply far too compatible!

Then there were the other obvious questions. What was the relationship of the Morales with the Silver Empire? And no, even deeper than that, the Three Finger Cult? Was this related to the death of his grandfather?

He could feel that the demoness could sense him whenever he thought about her. It was the uncomfortable feeling of someone looking over his shoulder while he was trying to do work, scrutinizing his every action.

If she wanted, Leonel felt that she could learn everything she wanted to learn about him in an instant, so why hadn’t she done anything yet? Could it be that she wanted this inheritance to fall into his hands? Could she be indifferent to it all? Could it be that she was afraid to take action because of his father?

Even for Leonel, he felt like he was getting a headache thinking about it, nothing felt like it made sense. The jumbled mess of enemies, friends... frenemies? All seemed far too complex for even him to untangle.

Leonel opened his eyes and exhaled. However, he was surprised to find that Anastasia was looking at him with a weird look in her eyes.

”What’s wrong?” Leonel asked.

”... People aren’t supposed to be able to break through like that.”

”Like what? Isn’t this how the Sixth Dimension works? My path isn’t exactly like the God Path, but it works similarly enough. So long as I comprehend my Forces, I progress.”

”Yes, but it’s not like that. You’re making massive leaps in logic, accepting them easily, integrating them, and then breaking through in the blink of an eye. Normally, one needs to have an idea, affirm it, test it, then meditate on it for a few weeks to months before consolidating and then finally breaking through. The only person I’ve seen breakthrough like you is...

that annoying man.”

Leonel grinned, already knowing she was talking about his old man.

”What’s even weirder is that you don’t seem to be using the same Forces to break through, and you also aren’t using a cultivation method of any kind. You did the same thing through the Fifth Dimension too, you didn’t even use [Dimensional Cleanse] until you needed to redo the Fifth Dimension and break through.”

Leonel raised an eyebrow. ”How did you know that? You weren’t there for that.”

”My vessel is an extension of me. Although I wasn’t there, my vessel was still on your finger the whole time. After I fused with it again, its memories also fused with me.”

”I see...” Leonel said lightly. ”... Is there something wrong with what I’m doing?”

”Not really, but it relies a lot on spontaneity, something that can’t be relied on. If you don’t learn to do things the slow way, it might come back to bite you... or you could be like that annoying man and never need the slow way anyway.

”Just now, if your comprehension of Earth Force didn’t leapfrog your comprehension of Dream Force, you wouldn’t have seen much movement. And because it relied on a spontaneous comprehension, your Forces are imbalanced again.

”It works for you, for now at least, because you have high affinity in a number of Forces so those spontaneous comprehensions have more potential paths to take. But when you reach a state whether your affinities start lagging behind your Dimensional Tier, it’ll be hard to tell what will happen. You may fall behind those who took slower and steadier steps.”

Leonel nodded. ”I understand. But there is one thing you’re missing: my Ability Index.”

Anastasia fell into her thoughts and nodded once. Indeed, so called ”slower and steadier steps” look a lot faster for Leonel simply by virtue of how his mind worked and the speeds it functioned at.

”Still, keep this in mind,” Anastasia said.

”Mm,” Leonel nodded. ”I’ll be going now. I was wondering if it was worth it to put in the effort to gain this full inheritance, but I feel that there’s no doubt now. I have to have it.”