Dimensional Descent

The Pluto Race youth was in a sorry state. It was already odd seeing someone so heavily injured not bleed even a drop of blood, but that was maybe the constant state of the Pluto race.. on the rare occasion that they were actually hurt, that is.

”You... you... what happened?”

Leonel walked by the El’Rion, ignoring him. He could spare a few words for his mother, but El’Rion wasn’t such a person to him. In fact, if he could kill El’Rion and take The Hourglass, he would do so. Unfortunately, he would have to waste his best opportunity to get his hands on that item until he could figure out a method to take it away without it ripping his arm from his shoulder.

El’Rion’s gaze flickered, but he didn’t say anything. Leonel had already been in a bad state when he met him, but this...

Leonel continued to walk, the further he got out of the range of the original battlefield, the further he could blink ahead.

Eventually, he made it.

In the depths of space, there was no wind, no resistance, and the forces in action were so weak that once something started flying in a certain direction, getting it to stop was just hoping that it crashed into a planet. But in the vastness of this emptiness, that was like hoping a sewing line would thread itself into a needle cast into the ocean off the back of a wave. There was too much darkness, too much emptiness...

But that also meant that if something flew in a single direction, you would almost always find it continuing in that said direction... at the same speed, at the same pace...

The first thing Leonel saw was red. A blob of rouge that surged through the skies, scattered like a smear of paint. There wasn’t even the semblance of a body remaining, there was nothing body blood, even the flesh was minced so fine that it looked not much different. The fact there was anything at all remaining, though, was quite surprising. Leonel had begun his journey, thinking that he wouldn’t find anything at all. Maybe he would walk in this direction to the ends of the universe and never find the remains of Aina.

He felt his heart lurch as he stood there. He didn’t even know why he had come, it was just as foolish as his actions had been previously. He knew that if he found anything, it would be exactly this, a spattering of blood, drawn across the endless darkness of space, a ghastly gore that even the twinkling stars in the distance couldn’t seem to brighten.

There was no breath, no life, nothing. And why would there be? There wasn’t even a body to hold it.

That rage that Leonel thought he had vented, watching the Shadow Tail writhe and squirm in its last moments, came back even more furious.

They should have grown old together. They should have had a school of children. He should have crowned each one of them little princes and princesses, allowing them to live a life of freedom and leisure.

He gripped his fists so hard that the small bones in his hands cracked one after another, his nails splintering, but he couldn’t seem to feel it at all.

He knew it was all useless. He had allowed Aina to separate her soul, the destruction of her body shouldn’t have been the end of her, but how could such a blow not shatter any semblance of an Ethereal Glabella that she had? And even if it hadn’t, this Zone would have forced her soul to fuse with the body of the Silver Emperor, there was no telling if the benefits would still be the same.

Without an Ethereal Glabella, her soul would have dissipated from her body even quicker. After he had spent hours battling the Shadow Tail, it was impossible that there would still be a soul here for him to awaken.

He gripped his fists harder. The Shadow Tail was targeting everyone, it targeted him immediately after dealing with Aina. He didn’t have the strength to ignore it and go after Aina immediately. He could only sit and wait for it to die, dancing on the edge of life and death until he could finally return. But he knew it was useless.

Even if he had been able to go after Aina immediately, the speed of the blow was so great, and she was moving so fast, that by the time he finally caught up, her soul would have already dissipated. The only reason she had even slowed down enough for him to catch up at all was because her body had dispersed into countless pieces and the force was distributed across them. Ironically, the reason he could see her again, even in this case, was because she was nothing more than a mist of blood.

Leonel closed his eyes, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest.

Suddenly, his eyes opened wide. His actions seemed to be a step ahead of his thoughts as he opened a palm, a golden tablet appearing within. He had taken it out of Aina’s room, or rather their room. Aina had stopped staying in her own room a long time ago.

Something clicked for Leonel.

He reached forward, his Vital Star Force blazing to life and it sparked like blue lightning, jumping from his finger and toward the first blob of blood. At the same time, his hand that held the tablet pulsed.

As though a magnet, the globules of blood, connected by Vital Star Force, roared to life and surged into the tablet.

Leonel frowned. He had acted practically on instinct, as though his body wasn’t his own. He knew that Vital Star Force was the Life Force of the body, but what good was it if there was no soul or Ethereal Glabella? The root of one’s life was one’s Soul Force and Dream Force. He had seen many examples already of people living with their bodies destroyed but their souls intact, it didn’t even make sense to him that the vice versa could happen.

What did it mean to have a body without a soul? Wouldn’t it just be an empty carcass?

What good would it be to regain Aina’s corpse? In fact, it might not even look like Aina, it would just be... a middle-aged man’s naked body...