Dimensional Descent

Leonel felt that his annoyance had yet to fade, but he still ended up exhaling a breath. He would much prefer to be the one fighting, but unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards for him this time around.

He made his way to the lab setting and sat at his workbench, his hands mindlessly roaming through its pits and valleys. Although he had a plan, he was still a little reckless today. He hadn’t exactly ruined that plan, but he didn’t help it much either.

At this point, though, his patience was very limited for such things. Seeing a man who had wiped out the Morales family made him feel that such a person shouldn’t have the right to continue living, so he killed him. It was really that simple.

In truth, he really had no intention of wasting time bending to their whims, sleeping outside the city in tents, and being unable to trade even for his own food… as “great” as that sounded.

His honeymoon just ended and he was already annoyed with the world, fantastic.

*Bloop

Little Tolly flashed around Leonel’s arm, pulsing with a gentle light that seemed to make him feel better.

“Yeah, we should Craft…”

Since he was feeling annoyed, why not focus on something that could help? The fact his Crafting was falling so far behind everything he was running into these days was another source of annoyance. If he could catch up and get rid of those bits of annoyance, then maybe he would feel better at least by a small margin.

Understanding Crafting better would also allow him to conjure up a stronger spear. Right now, he was relying too much on the strength of Scarlet Star Force and not enough on his own comprehension. Well, at least no comprehension of Crafting itself, that is.

The creation abilities of his Scarlet Star Force and Emulation Spatial Force were only as good as the projections from his mind. Given the strengths of his Ability Index, he could pretty much easily replicate his best Crafting with ease. The trouble was how good his best Crafting was.

He thought that he was pretty good. In fact, he was probably excellent even by the standards of wider Existence… if his age was taken into consideration.

Unfortunately, even the likes of King had been far better than he was.

There was good news, though. Now that his Dream Force was in the Life State, the road he had ahead of him was much clearer and wider than it had been in the past. Now it was just a matter of finishing the rest of his father’s lessons.

He took out the dictionary, rubbing his fingers over it.

Maybe he was just a bit reluctant. The videos that were left were the last messages he had from his father. Real messages. Not the cobbled-together words of an AI, but ones carefully selected by Velasco Morales himself.

Ryu took out a pair of crystal-framed glasses and put them on the desk. He hadn’t worn them since his mother forced him to do so, but something made him take them out this time.

He was a married man now. Soon, maybe, he would have his own family.

Was it smart to have a child in this sort of situation, probably not. But Leonel had honestly given up on trying to make the world perfect before he could finally settle down. His honeymoon with Aina was a testament to that.

How could the world ever be “perfect” if they were constantly speed running toward its end? There was nothing that could change the fact that Existence was heading toward a reset.

He thought about what it would feel like to have a child, and he wondered if he should do something similar to what his father had done for him, recording every waking moment just in case the worst… or maybe even the inevitable occurred.

His fingers ran over the crystal frames before he took out a silk cloth and carefully wiped them down.

He placed the glasses down where they could see his hands and then he turned back to the dictionary. Finally, his mind looked toward the final three lessons.

[The Value of Complexity]

[The Value of Simplicity]

[The Value of the Self]

He listened to each one of these lessons carefully, taking his time to meet the requirements they asked of him, checking every box, before finally moving on to the next.

He moved through them quickly, almost too quickly. Or rather, he felt that it was much too quick because he would have preferred to listen for just a little longer. It wasn’t that the lessons would disappear, they would still be there. It was instead that with his mind, the moment he went over something, it would practically cease to be.

It would become a perfect memory in his mind, one that was identical to the original in every way, shape, and form.

After he was finished, he would no longer be able to form new memories about his father. Unlike a normal human, he couldn’t just wait until enough time passed, hoping that he would forget enough of it that watching it again would feel new.

This was it. This was all that there would be left of his father in this world. The last impact he could make.

Leonel listened and watched as his father cracked jokes and doled out knowledge, alternating between a quirky man and an iron-fisted general seamlessly and without losing the slightest hint of his dignity all the while.

“… I only faintly touched this level, but I believe it exists as a whole all to itself. If the Life Grade represents giving a treasure life, then the Self Grade represents giving a treasure life rooted in not itself, but you.

“It sounds like a regression, but life is unpredictable. You cannot control what something you’ve created can become or what it chooses to be. What was once created can never truly be recreated, it can only exist as its own thing…”