Dimensional Descent

Miel’s red hair danced in the wind like a flickering stream of magma...

And then his body burst apart.

Blood rained, flesh fell, bones tore the air apart like the shrapnel of a bomb.

Anselma’s pupils constricted. Unlike Aina, who was stuck in a state of shock, she knew exactly what was happening. Unfortunately, it was much too late to stop it.

In a silent corner of the world, a woman too weak to take action sat in silence. She looked up, tears falling from her eyes.

”In the end, you could never set your heart down to choose me... but I guess if you did choose me over your daughter, you wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with...”

She stood to her feet, hugging a sword to her chest.

Rippling golden light extended from her hair, cascading down her back. Her aura continued to grow as though something had been severed away forward.

Her tears continued to fall, but they had become akin to golden dew drops, falling from her cheeks and rippling against the tides of space like rain besieging a placid lake.

With a step, she became a beam of light, appearing high in the skies.

A great battle was taking place. Clouds shattered like brittle stone, raging air currents leveling mountains and denting worlds. Giants among men wielded plumes of fire and jets of water, bolts of lightning and entire moons of earth.

It was truly a battle that she was too weak to take part in.

Since the moment. Leonel took her out of the Slayer Legion and gave her the chance to hone and sharpen her Light Force, she had tried her best to improve.

But in the end, she didn’t have the talent.

In truth, she did...

What she really lacked was the time.

She wasn’t a monster like Leonel or Aina, nor did she receive the same benefits as those close to him as kin. And now, the only man she held on for, the man she hoped would forget his past life and start a new one with her...

Had made his decision.

In this case, what reason did she have to hold back any longer? To hopefully be protected by the efforts of everyone else?

10.00

Cidra looked down at the sword she held to her bosom, her clear tears falling faster. Then, she unsheathed it.

Like a moth to a flame, she charged into the battle.

She, like many others, would be nothing more than a drop in a vast ocean, drowned out by tsunami-like waves, bent and twisted to the whims of the push and pull of celestial bodies.

Her death was assured. But she hoped that in these last moments, she would find some use to the world.

Like the others, she was someone who had a life of her own. She had shed tears and blood, she had had hopes and aspirations, dreams and loves.

But in the grinding wheel of fate, it hardly held much weight or substance.

Here, on this battlefield, she chose to be another bit of fodder to their canon, a foot soldier who would throw themselves forward to push the line back just an inch.

In her last moments, she forgot about her love. Maybe in another life, she would find a man all to herself, a man who made her no less happy and hopeful than he did.

”Go now, Adam...” Cidra said softly, her sword blazing in a golden light. ”... Maybe in another life, I will be lucky enough to meet my Miel...”

In place of Miel’s body, a blazing soul stood, wreathed in gold and red light, a powerful, seething sort of intent coming from it.

”I owe... too many people...” Miel said lightly.

Although he didn’t put much force into his tone, it traveled far and wide. In those last moments, it felt as though he could hear Cidra’s last thoughts as clear as if they were whispered into his very ears.

In life, everyone was given a well of potential. It was up to them to slowly unearth it, pulling it out from the water and using it to irrigate their lives.

Miel had spent too long pulling from a sieve, wasting his own potential, chasing various matters due to his own insecurities, his own indecision, in his selfish, immature choices.

In the end, after chasing after those mistakes for so long, he realized that even if he could survive to the very end, even if he could win this battle for his daughter and help her achieve the happy ending she was looking for...

Would it ever be enough?

Aina felt her body shudder and her Manifestation forcefully took shape.

BOOM!

An enormous area was cleared out around her. Whether it was the Regentrix, the Dreadarch, or the Thronebearer, they were sent spiraling away even faster than they had come.

Her power shot up by hundreds of times, and in that moment, the four Heads seemed to understand just what it was Miel was speaking about earlier.

In that moment, Miel’s soul, as though mimicking the actions of an unrequited love, flew into its own flame...

His soul fused into his daughter’s Manifestation.

Impacting another’s Idol should have been impossible. But there were two reasons that Miel could do so. First because the Manifestation was rooted in the Lineage Factor of the Brazingers, something both he and his daughter shared. And second...

Both he and his daughter had Soul Clairvoyance.

Not only was he in the perfect position to understand and improve his daughter’s Idol, she was in the perfect position to accept those changes and integrate them.

At the same time, his flesh and blood began to snap back together, pouring toward his daughter and forcing her Blood Force to respond.

”I wish... you... your husband... your children... eternal happiness, my precious daughter, my little girl... Hopefully, on the other side, I can spend an eternity making it

up to your mother.

”Live well.”

Tears fell from Aina’s eyes, her wings turning a blinding shade of crimson.