Dimensional Descent

Leonel watched as the palm fell down from above, the intent in his eyes blazing. There was a dance that seemed to be occurring in his mind, one that flitted between wanting to unleash the fury in his heart and not doing so.

He had to set a good example, one that taught his children that sometimes controlling your emotions was the best outcome for you. Often, venting your frustration wasn’t really going to make you feel any better. That was something that Leonel had learned firsthand after his own father’s death.

But right now...

Leonel didn’t seem to care to be the bigger person.

This Regulator was the one who disrespected his father’s memory, plucking his soul out from whatever stream of consciousness it had been lost in and forcing it to appear here.

How could his father’s statue have appeared here when he had never been to the Idol Battlefield before? What the Regulator had done was worse than digging up his corpse.

The only way it could even succeed in doing something like that was by reversing the flow of time and plucking his father out from the stream the moment he died.

The more Leonel thought about it, the more infuriated he became.

While he was in a daze over his father’s death, this bastard had actually swooped in and desecrated his body in a way that he had been too weak to realize back then.

Back then, his father’s corpse had vanished into a rain of ash. There wasn’t even a body for him to go back and see.

An expert of his father’s caliber, under the laws of the Incomplete Worlds, should have been able to remain in pristine condition for thousands of years with ease, and that was without accounting for other preservation methods.

Back then, Leonel didn’t think much about it because he thought that his father had just expended every ounce of energy he had, eventually leading to the result.

But even if that was the case, didn’t his father practice his own form of Metal Body? How could his frame possibly be so fragile?

It was only after coming to this world and learning of what the Regulator had done that it truly settled in for Leonel what must have happened.

It wasn’t his father that had used up everything he had... it was this Regulator that had taken anything he had left away.

BADUM.

Leonel kept staring at the palm approaching him, his rage like a smoldering flame. It had taken his father’s body from him. It stole away Anastasia. It placed his pregnant. wife in direct way of harm, and then even tried to kill his unborn children.

Any one of these things could have truly sent Leonel over the edge. The smoldering sort of fury deep within him was bubbling forth and right then...

Tolliver seemed to have reached its limits as well.

A spiraling silver-gold form launched itself into the air, forming a pillar that upheld the skies.

Tolliver’s head began to morph into all sorts of creatures, each one different from the last, and each one feeling just as real.

Under the pressure of the palm descending from above, Leonel stood slowly... almost too slowly.

It didn’t seem to make any sense.

The palm was moving so fast that others couldn’t even react to it, and yet Leonel was moving as though he was on a leisurely stroll, as though his life wasn’t hanging in the balance just above his head.

And then... he pointed toward his Metal Spirit with his spear and all of a sudden, the rampaging tide of silver formed a line that rushed toward Leonel.

In a blink, Tolliver had wrapped around the spear and clutched Leonel’s wrist. It winded its way upward, spiraling around Leonel’s body and his robes until he was covered from head to toe in a silvery light that radiated a white-gold.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Time seemed to freeze to a complete stop.

The Regulator, the spectators, the world itself...

It looked as though Leonel was the only one moving at all, the calm cadence of his breath being the only sound that hung in the air.

And then he took a deep one as the last of the silvery flashes coated his skin.

BOOM!

Tolliver broke through to the Seventh Dimension and its power continued to skyrocket.

BOOM!

Tolliver broke into the Eighth Dimension, a soaring prowess pulsing as it became more furious. Leonel’s body looked as though bubbling masses had begun to explode along its surface, almost as though someone was blowing onto the surface of a lake of

mercury

mercury.

BOOM!

Tolliver shattered the barrier to the Ninth Dimension and a howl filled the skies. Everything overturned and an aura of creation that made one feel fear to the very depths of their souls spilled out and into the world.

Tolliver’s momentum continued to grow, becoming so swift and powerful that it had already reached Tier 9 of the Ninth Dimension before anyone could truly understand what was happening...

And how could they understand anything when the world around them had frozen

over?

Fear took over their hearts. Since when did Leonel have the ability to freeze time like

this?

What they couldn’t even notice was that even their thoughts were lagging behind. These thoughts that they thought they were having in real time...

Only fast forwarded after everything was already over.

Leonel slowly exhaled as Tolliver’s aura reached the peak of all there was.

And then his Metal Spirit pierced through his skin as though it wouldn’t be satisfied until it devoured even its owner.

Leonel felt Tolliver sinking into his bloodstream, ripping through his body, and commandeering the paths of his Innate Node before swallowing up even his heart. Leonel fell into a complete and calm silence as the last of Tolliver’s tendrils pierced into his brain, swallowing him up whole.

The world remained unmoving, and it felt like every second had become an eternity.