Dimensional Descent

Leonel and Aina stepped out into a stretch of desert. It was pretty easy for Leonel to hide himself and the others here, but the environment itself was quite annoying and oppressive. The heat was almost unbearable, and it seemed to sink into your body whether through the sand that hunkered your feet and ankles within, or in the perpetual mild sandstorm that pelted against their skin.

This sandstorm felt like droplets of piercing molten metal were colliding against you again and again. It was a horrible feeling without a doubt.

Leonel was especially quite uncomfortable with the situation, but Aina seemed fine, not even squinting her eyes in the midst of the gusting sand. In fact, to add insult to injury, Little Blackstar seemed to be just fine as well.

“Yip! Yip!”A condescending and yet adorable chirping came from Blackstar.

“Hey, hey. Do you see whose shoulder you’re standing on right now? Show me some-“Little Blackstar hopped off of Leonel’s shoulders and buried himself within Aina’s bosom. Leonel’s words could only be caught within his throat.

Little Blackstar stretched and yawned before waving a paw and starting his nap.

“Unbelievable,” Leonel shook his head.Aina smiled. This had always been Blackstar’s favorite spot; Leonel was just overestimating his importance in the human-transportation hierarchy.

“So, what do you want to do?” Aina asked.Leonel sighed, pushing the betrayal to the back of his mind. At the very least, Little Tolly hadn’t abandoned him.

“Well, I don’t think there’s much for us to do. I have a feeling that the first round will end very soon, we’ve spent quite a long time idle. So really, we’re just here to gather information if there is any. If not, we’ll just see if there’s anything we can conveniently pick up and benefit from.”

Aina nodded and they began to move.

Leonel conjured some Scarlet Star Force and began to use it like a shield, deflecting away the pellets of sand and rock from colliding against him.

He still had quite some way to go before he could bring it to the Impetus State, so he thought that he might as well work on using it.

What was interesting was that his control was actually… so weak.

With his Innate Node dormant, and now having the ability to directly compare and contrast it with his Weapon Forces, it was impossible for him to miss just how unruly this Force was in his hands.

Part of it was the gap between it being in the Third Layered State and the State of his Weapon Forces, another part of it was the fact his Innate Nodes were dormant, but he felt the largest reasons were the characteristics of the Force and his lack of familiarity with it.

Scarlet Star Force already casually listened to him when his Innate Node was present, but this had clearly masked his own lack of control.

There was something deeper, though. Leonel could just barely sense it.

His Scarlet Star Force was unsatisfied with his current character. He was too nice, too laid back-the version of him it wanted was the one that had almost cursed Aina for charging at the Shadow Tail.

‘… Interesting…’

It seemed that the change in personality was a two-way street. But he didn’t like it. If he would have to change himself just to learn to control a powerful Force, was it even worth it.

‘Be obedient.’

Leonel constricted the Scarlet Star Force to be more in tune with his will, but it lashed out, quickly draining his focus and placing more pressure on his mind. It felt less like he was slowly using up his stamina, and more like the Scarlet Star Force was actively eroding it away.

“Up ahead,” Aina suddenly said.

Leonel and Aina’s figures flashed and they landed amidst a sea of corpses. Or, more accurately, it would have been a sea had the dense sands not turned an eerie rusted color while absorbing all of the blood.

Even that color, though, was slowly fading as the sandstorm kicked up, moving and displacing the sand while covering up the scene that had been here.

“What interested you?” Leonel asked.

He had of course seen this scene, likely before even Aina had. She obviously also knew this. Despite the gap in their strength, the gap in their Dream Force remained firmly in Leonel’s favor.

The fact that she pointed it out meant that there was something special about it.

“The blood, it has no Life Force within it.”

Leonel frowned.

In a lot of ways, Blood Force was to the body what Soul Force was to the mind, though there were some differences.

Not everyone could make use of Life Force, so a vessel was needed to make it more manageable for the common person. The same was true of Dream Force, which was why Soul Force existed.

Of course, it wasn’t a one-to-one relationship and there were clear differences. For example, Soul Force could completely replace Dream Force, but Blood Force would always just be a vessel for Life Force.

This aside…

“Isn’t that normal?” Leonel asked. “They’re dead, after all.”

“They haven’t died for long enough. Blood Force is very good at retaining Life Force; it’s designed to be like a filter for your Life Force.

“At birth, and after every breakthrough, everyone is given a certain amount of Life Force. Without Blood Force, the Life Force would be used up almost instantly. Blood Force is like a limiter that allows you to only use as much Life Force as you need at a given time.

“Even after death, unless there’s a Blood Sovereign that acted or a curse or poison of some sort, blood will continue to act like this. For people as powerful as them, it would take months for their blood to be completely devoid of Life Force. But if I’m correct, they’ve only been dead for three days at most.”

“So is there a Blood Sovereign?” Leonel asked. “I don’t sense any poisons or curses.”

Aina fell into silence. “… It doesn’t look like a Blood Sovereign, but it’s definitely someone with a high Blood Force affinity.”

“Is that rare?”

“It’s hard to say; I don’t know how things work out here. But that’s not the main problem. The issue is that there’s a hint of a twisted nature in the Blood Force.

“This was done by a Demon.”

Aina had only just said these worlds when the world trembled.

The first round had come to an end.