Dimensional Descent

Gervaise’s attack came swift and heavy, but a flicker of Leonel’s wrist deflected the scepter.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The emperor stumbled backward, his wrist shaking beneath the impact, but his gaze remained firm.

Leonel’s senses picked up something beneath him as a Force Art suddenly appeared. It looked as though the maw of a green dragon had opened up beneath him, trying to swallow him from the bottom up. But this dragon was trapped in a mirror it was just about to soar out of.

With a single tap of his foot, a counter Force Art was drawn and the dragon’s nose smashed against the glass, shattering it apart.

The pieces of the mirror fell to the ground as Leonel took a step forward, stabbing out with his spear several times in quick succession.

Gervaise used a combination of Force Arts and his scepter to block, his stern eyes locked in concentration as streaks of blood began to appear across his body, caused by attacks he couldn’t perfectly block.

With a wave of his arm, Gervaise’s scepter rippled out with a dense energy and his body seemed to multiply into several mirror images. Each one held out their scepters, drawing a large circle in the air.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Leonel was swallowed up from all sides by strong beams of light, each one capable of seemingly wiping out a universe.

An image of Gervaise in the back tossed his scepter into the air, slamming his palms together and sending out a shockwave that caused space to crackle and bend.

It was as though he was already clear on the fact that this wouldn’t be enough to deal with Leonel.

The cracked crown on his forehead splintered more as he pushed, his aura skyrocketing. A rush of powerful might spread out as a shadow appeared behind Gervaise.

PUCHI!

The shadow ripped a hole through the Emperor’s chest, but this wasn’t Leonel at all. That much became clear as the shadow pulled its arm back, slowly unearthing a scythe from the depths of Gervaise’s heart.

Gervaise hacked up a mouthful of blood, the focus in his eyes only increasing as he unleashed a roar.

The shadow flickered before vanishing into Gervaise’s own shadow. There was a shudder as Gervaise grabbed his scepter out of the air.

BOOM!

At that moment, the beams of light that had assaulted Leonel from all sides shattered. CHI! CHI! CHI! CHI!

Arrows ripped through the air and pierced through each image, the last appearing before Gervaise who now had a hole bleeding black blood right in the middle of his chest.

However, by that point, Gervaise had already plucked his scepter out of the air. With a ripple, its size expanded, a blade jetting out from its large pearl.

This blade wasn’t connected to the scepter but instead seemed to hover near it as though they were one object.

With an arc of his arms, Gervaise split the arrow in two, his white-gold hair becoming a dark gold as tendrils of darkness began to pulse out from the corners of his eyes.

Death Sovereignty.

Leonel could feel it quite clearly. It seemed that his grandfather was far from running out of trump cards. But it only seemed natural. If he could steal Ability Indexes, there was no reason that he wouldn’t be able to steal other things as well.

This one seemed to be particularly special, though. He was so casual with how he had brought out the Pluto, but this Void Race member... he was especially cautious, even going as far as to hide it away in the depths of his very body.

Just summoning this construct required an act of self-mutilation almost on the same level as the time Leonel had been forced to allow himself to be eaten alive.

However...

It just wasn’t enough.

Gervaise was still in the motion of cutting the arrow when Leonel had already appeared before him.

To his credit, he reacted quickly, but the death aura of the blade was sliced through by Leonel as though it wasn’t even there.

A reverberating tempest of blows echoed through the region as Leonel and his grandfather crossed blades. Their tempo was fast and hard to follow, a cascade of sounds that should have been individual resonating and bleeding into one another until it sounded like nothing more than a continuous, long, drawn-out echo.

But what was clear was that Leonel firmly held the upper hand.

The scythe was parried and pushed aside at his will, his blade cutting into Gervaise’s

body again and again.

There was a fierce intent to kill that permeated both of their eyes, a bloodlust hanging in the air as they flickered and vanished time and time again.

Their speed caused the world to warp around them, even to the point that the laws of time seemed to cease to make sense.

Images of less-injured versions of Gervaise began to meld in with more-injured versions. Sometimes, attacks that should have reverberated several seconds ago were delayed by a minute in both sound and image. And sometimes, clashes from the future would flicker around the duo as they were locked in the present.

Each time this happened, it was like Gervaise was getting a peek into the inevitability of it all, but his gaze remained firm and unbothered, the chilly coldness hidden in the depths of them neither warming up nor chilling any further.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The two separated and a haggard breath came from Gervaise, contrasting the smooth casualness of Leonel’s own.

Leonel took a step forward and his bow appeared in his hand. A kilometer separated him and his grandfather, but this sort of distance might as well have been nose to

nose at their level.

His arrows began to rain down again as Gervaise struggled to parry them.

An arrow ripped through Gervaise’s shoulder, but he didn’t so much as flinch, slashing out to destroy a follow-up arrow only to suffer a similar wound from a third.

Leonel’s rain of arrows was relentless, each one aiming for a vital spot. His arm blurred in the air and the images of the past, present, and future began to bleed into

one another.

The flicker of his fingers seemed to carry the cadence of a Crafter, his Finger Designation having reached unfathomable levels.

As though he were drawing his fingers across the keys of a piano, he moved with a careless elegance, and once again, his Bow Force seemed to reach a new height

entirely.

A Force Art was quickly forming before Leonel’s bow, and every time an arrow went through the incomplete Force Art, it seemed to become stronger.

The more complete the Force Art became, the more trouble Gervaise had in protecting his own life.

Arrows ripped through Gervaise’s legs and limbs, but in a relentless bid, Gervaise activated another Ability Index and an illusory hand appeared high above his head. The hand flexed and puppet strings attached themselves to Gervaise’s body.

At that moment, the weakness of Gervaise’s body after tanking so many injuries no

longer seemed to matter.

He slashed down with great might, roaring as a cascade of arrows were ripped to shreds, splintering like wood in a hurricane.

But then Leonel’s Force Art completed itself.

Staring at the Force Art, Gervaise found himself frozen.

It wasn’t out of fear, but rather because he physically couldn’t move. The Force Art seemed to claim dominion over all Dream Force, ripping his puppeteering Ability Index to shreds and leaving behind nothing more than a weak body that could no

longer hold up to this sort of pressure.

But it was deeper than even that...

His very soul was frozen, unable to think properly, unable to formulate a new solution

for the trouble he was dealing with now.

The gazes of King and Emperor met.

The world fell to silence, the oceans below becoming as calm as the surface of the lake even as the rubberbanding of past and present slowly fused together into one just in time for Gervaise to see one final glance of the future...

One where his body was torn apart, his soul ripped to shreds, and the last vestiges of his will being eliminated under the might of the arrow.

There was no suspense, there was not even a corpse left. The powerful will of Gervaise

didn’t even allow Leonel to show this bit of mercy. When facing a man who was willing to give up everything for his hopes and dreams, there was only one way to deal with him... and if that man happened to be an all-powerful existence who would continue to battle so long as there was the slightest shred of him left, there was truly only one

path forward to take.

Leonel had no choice but to destroy everything this Emperor had been, once was, or

could become.

Gervaise didn’t waver in the slightest, the light in his eyes making one thing clear... if Leonel gave him even the slightest opportunity... he would take it.

The last light of hope in Leonel’s eyes dimmed as his fingers trembled, releasing the

arrow.

It appeared before the Emperor in a final sweeping might.

PUCHI!

It ripped through Gervaise’s forehead, shattering his Ethereal Glabella.

The remaining force was so powerful that

it ruptured the rest of his body, sending him blasting out in a rain of blood and gore.

At that moment, the aftershocks of the future and the present melded into one, the

layers fusing and combining into one final, undeniable conclusion.

The death of an Emperor.