Dimensional Descent

“That’s three.”

Leonel exhaled a heavy breath. That was difficult, but it was within his expectations. He didn’t have the strength to face these demons head on; it felt like he was in the midst of all those Fiend Demons again, bringing back memories of being eaten alive.

Facing these creatures that were so much stronger than him, he focused on hit and run tactics, using his bow and arrows. He was still trying to get his Bow Force back up to the level of True Sovereignty, and he felt that it would happen in due time.

In the meantime, using the lower ranked bows in the Bow Domain Ring was actually quite an eye-opening experience. Leonel had always practically been a Savant with Bow Force. It was the weapon he felt the highest inclination toward, and it was also the weapon he would have focused on had he not been born with the Spear Domain Lineage Factor.

As a result, he had never had to rely on others to help him improve. His path had been smooth and without blemish.

Seeing the thoughts of these experts though, he was intrigued. There was so much he hadn’t really thought of, not because he wasn’t intelligent enough, but because others simply had different experiences than himself.

For example, there was a primitive female archer born into a tribe where all of the bows were longbows used by hyper-masculine men. How could a petite woman like her pull a bow that would require 200 pounds of force to reach a full moon?

Rather than creating a smaller bow, which Leonel himself would have advised since it was objectively the smartest thing to do, she insisted on using the longbow, eventually gaining the ability to pull it to about half moon.

This experience reminded Leonel of when he first got his hands on a Black Grade Bow. He, too, had been unable to pull it to full moon. But it hadn’t been necessary for him to make up for this. After all, half moon of a Black Grade Bow was more than enough to kill his enemies at the time.

But with such a primitive bow, such a weak force would have a hard time penetrating armor at all.

So the woman swapped power for precision; she even learned to shift the arrow’s butt away from the middle of the bowstring, as was convention, and change the angle of attack.

All of her solutions were mind-numbingly stupid in Leonel’s view, but that was also why he would have never thought to use the bow in such a way. Because he had so much strength now, he practically always pulled his bow to the full moon. In fact, even when he wanted to use less force and rely on his skill instead, rather than pulling the bowstring less, he just downgraded to a weaker bow like this one.

Seeing the different philosophies amused him on one part and made him wonder what his complacency had caused him to miss on another.

The primitive female’s method of using the bow wasn’t interesting to him at all, but what about others? It would probably take some time to pick out some interesting pieces, though, as he felt most of them were silly.

“Alright, it’s been like a week. We should probably return.”

“You haven’t thought of escaping?” Aina asked.

“I have, but that woman was too confident.”

Aina nodded. It even felt like she expected them to die, but then all of this wouldn’t have made any sense at all. It was too hard to understand what they were planning.

Their haul wasn’t bad, honestly. Not only had they managed to kill and store quite a number of demons, but Leonel had managed to get some interesting Ability Indexes. Namely, he had found “Swiftness” to help Emna out further.

“Also, I want to understand what they are planning before we do.”

“So you have a way out?”

“Pretty sure,” Leonel grinned, earning him a pinch.

He had made it sound existential just now, but he just wants to play with fire.

Soon, they returned to the marked entrance and they waited.

It took an entire hour before the portal opened up, and Leonel’s gaze narrowed at that. But he immediately returned to normal as he stepped inside.

Mo”Lexi sized the two up, a hint of surprise in her eyes. It seemed like she really did expect them to die.

Leonel looked like death, and Aina, who he was carrying on his back, looked like an unblemished little doll.

Mo”Lexi didn’t know what to think about this young man. He seemed so smart, and yet he was so willing to be a guard dog for a woman who clearly didn’t care as much about him as he did her. She had heard that he didn’t even allow Aina to help him carry boxes around.

‘A man with such a golden heart is bound to die early,’ she thought with a sigh. ‘That little girl by his side is too beautiful.’

As Mo”Lexi was sizing them up, so too was Leonel doing the same, because Mo”Lexi had not come on her own. She had three young men by her side.

It seems that there was a uniform of the Cult after all, and Mo”Lexi just couldn’t be bothered to wear it because all three wore the very same thing.

Looking at the puffy, fabric-made shoulder guards that they wore, though, Leonel wanted to gag.

‘Very uncool uniforms. They look like they just stepped out of a renaissance painting.’

“I’ve completed my task, Goddess.”

One of the young men covered his mouth when he heard Leonel’s form of address, while the other two just had an amused light in their eyes. These three were quite inexperienced if they weren’t capable of controlling their emotions to this extent.

“Mm,” Mo”Lexi nodded. “You three, go on. That’s what you’re here for.”

The three young men unceremoniously snatched the corpses that Leonel had “painstakingly” gathered.

Then Leonel understood.

‘Was this just another errand? They sent us to gather resources for their young?’

His pupils constricted when the three young men unceremoniously bit into the corpses and began to suck their blood dry.