Dimensional Descent

Gervaise stood high in the skies, seemingly half dead. He was missing an arm, and even extended from that, large swaths of skin and flesh had been seared off from his body, making him look like half a skeleton. Even half of his face was gone, leaving nothing but a green eyeball on one side of him.

And that cycball continued to carry a cold light as it stared down at Leonel.

Leonel stared back at him, not moving as he took deep breaths. He could feel that there was still a very potent danger coming from Gervaise, as though the man was staring at him now only to try and figure out what method of murder he would like to choose.

However, Leonel wasn’t someone who would casually lose out in terms of momentum. He too was injured, but his injuries weren’t nearly as severe as his grandfather’s. The one that had come out on top was clear and obvious...

At least for now.

A flame suddenly flickered in Gervaise’s eyeball before it expanded and suddenly swallowed up the fleshless parts of his body.

The green flame danced and Leonel sensed pulses of Dream Force as one summon after another was silently killed.

In the next moment, the flames vanished, revealing an indifferent and perfectly healed Gervaise.

Leonel watched silently and still didn’t say or do much of anything. It was as though it didn’t matter to him whether the Emperor healed or not... or maybe he knew that there wasn’t much he could do to stop it in the first place.

Gervaise grabbed at the air and another scepter appeared.

”Is this necessary?” Leonel asked indifferently. This time, the amusement in his eyes had long vanished. Or maybe it had already vanished after he realized that Gervaise was truly doing his best to kill him.

He was accepting of that, it was fine enough. What he wasn’t accepting of was someone that didn’t know when to accept a loss.

The scepter Gervaise had just brought out was weaker than the last one. And it didn’t even matter that he had been able to heal himself, because the price for doing so was heavier than not.

Gervaise had definitely sacrificed those Summons. And in order to heal himself from that level of injury, they had to be powerful as well.

That meant that they had powerful Ability Indexes, which meant that Gervaise had

also lost a significant portion of his combat prowess as well.

Without those Ability Indexes, he would be more predictable. Though Leonel had been training all of his senses on his grandfather, he knew that his mental capacity had already surpassed that of Gervaise’s own. If Gervaise had fewer trump cards to pull from, then he would only continuously be outmaneuvered by Leonel.

To make matters worse, his main weakness, his lack of support from his weapons, would only be exacerbated now that he was being forced to use an inferior weapon. Leonel was already a league beyond him, but now it was even worse.

In a fight that Leonel had no intention of making life and death, he didn’t want his grandfather to do this.

This sort of effort, scraping at the bottom of the barrel for the slightest chance of survival when the battle was already decided, was something that you would only do if you felt like you were facing off against a real enemy.

Was it worth it?

”Even now... you are still so naive. I thought you would have grown up.”

Gervaise’s voice remained calm and indifferent.

”You’ve done enough.” Leonel said as the anger in his voice could no longer be hidden. ”Do you think I don’t have methods of restraining you without killing you? Do you think you have the ability to force me to make a martyr out of you?”

Leonel felt like he was being insulted. If he was still being treated like a child at this point, then what had he been fighting for all this time? Or could it be that he had just overestimated his grandfather and his mental fortitude?

Gervaise met Leonel’s gaze calmly, the reverberating beat of his heart still echoing with great force.

”You can’t always have everything you want in life. The hardest things to control don’t come from yourself”

Leonel’s pupils trembled.

As much control as Leonel liked to have, as much power and authority his Ability Index gave him over his own body, it was only that...

His own body.

This was the hardest thing for a leader to grasp. Juggling one’s own emotions was hard enough without also having to consider how everyone else felt.

Goggles had taught Leonel this intimately. Leonel had given him everything, trying to treat him like he was the same Goggles he was when he first met them...

But a person’s experience shaped as much of who they were as their natural dispositions.

The Goggles that Leonel knew died that day in the battle against King Alexandre. He was never going to come back.

The only way he could accept the things that happened back then was by also accepting that the Goggles he was forced to kill was a completely different person.

You could give a person the world, you could do everything for them, you could even have their best interest in mind every step of the way, but what you could never control was how they reacted to your love.

Gervaise was a man of great pride. He was an Emperor who had dedicated his life, given every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears he had to reach this stage.

What was he supposed to do now? Just accept things in stride?

Would Leonel have just casually accepted it if he had lost? Or would he have fought to his very last breath for the last chance to grasp the fate he wanted more than even his

own beating heart?

Leonel wanted to build a world for his family. He wanted his children to be able to frolic through the fields and for his wife to be able to pop out as many of those little munchkins as she wanted.

He wanted his grandfather and grandmother to live in harmony, for the Fawkes family to bloom the way his grandfather wanted, and for his grandmother to finally find the peace and security in herself that she had always been looking for.

He wanted his brothers to find the loves of their lives, or marry the ones they had already chosen... he wanted them to grow their own families, to feel what it was like to smile and laugh without a worry in the world.

He wanted Humans to have their place in the world again, for the Races to live in harmony, to form a world where one’s talent didn’t have to decide the quality of life you would live.

He had wanted all of these things for so long even though he had never said them in so many words... or maybe he had and they were just often marred by hatred, anger, or even his own insecurities.

If he thought about it... Would he allow his grandfather to stand in his way if he had lost this battle? Would he truly have been able to accept it in stride?

Naive, indeed...

The reality was that Leonel had never considered the possibility of losing, so he hadn’t spared a single thought of it. He could split his mind billions of ways, and yet not one had gone down this line of thought, and maybe neither had his grandfather until they were both forced to face this moment.

Leonel’s gaze never left his grandfather even as the man raised his scepter.

At that moment, he could see something that had always been there. The mountain of

weight that they both shared.

Large and looming, the mass pressed down onto Gervaise’s back, almost forcing his back to round over and collapse.

Gervaise seemed to barely be standing at all, but he continued to do so. Until the moment he breathed out his last, he wouldn’t allow this weight to fall.

Unshed tears accumulated in Leonel’s eyes as he seemed to see the world for the first

time. The last thin barrier of something he hadn’t even known was holding him back

broke apart, shattering to pieces.

The three Dharmas to Leonel’s back cracked apart, falling in a rain of violet.

The violet condensed, the aura of a forming Idol causing the world to shake and

rumble.

A tear fell from Leonel’s eyes as the violet condensed to his forehead. All three of his complex Dharmas formed an Idol so simple that it was hard to believe it had come

from them.

It was a single thin band of violet-gold across his forehead. It perfectly mirrored the now cracked green-gold band of his grandfather... except it was whole and complete.

Leonel raised his spear as his aura seemed to vanish.

The world could no longer seem to measure him.

”I understand.” He said calmly. ”Then, come.”