Dimensional Descent

[ *Ping* ]

[ … ]

[ 30 923 Units ]

Leonel's eyes opened wide in shock. This little fish was 30 times more 'valuable' than Little Blackstar? At least the Little Blackstar before he ingested the Void Beast blood…

Leonel appeared around the halo of the golden scaled koi fish, his mind running in overdrive.

This fish was very unique. Even now, Leonel could feel the wild surges of Force that was coming from the ball of light that hung out from its mouth. However, to him, this was just the tip of the iceberg.

This koi fish had actually been able disrupt Leonel's mind for a moment, there was no doubt about that. For Leonel, who was very much used to being nearly infallible when it came to matters of his mind, this was both a scary and intriguing truth.

The reality of the matter was that the boundaries of Leonel's mind had had Fifth Dimensional protection ever since he was in the Third Dimension. In fact, back when Leonel was in the Third Dimension, he had even been able to ignore the mental coercion of a Fourth Dimensional Variant Invalid! But, now that he, himself, was in the Fifth Dimension and was also beginning to meet opponents at that level, those protections would slowly become less and less impressive.

Unless Leonel took steps to create mental protections for himself, he would only become more vulnerable as time went on. So, in a lot of ways, he had to thank this koi fish for revealing this weakness to him. On the other hand, he was curious.

This koi fish seemed to have the ability to gather up Force. Its affinity for Force was so great that it could even overrule a Force's natural tendency to bend it to its will.

The question, though, was what did this have to do with the mental coercion Leonel had experienced?

'It's not that large of a logical leap. With all the types of Forces that this koi fish can control, who's to say that there isn't one particularly good at mental coercion? I can't use my Dream Force to force people into illusions, but there are those with different abilities to my own that do rely on Dream Force to do exactly that. It's possible, then, that this koi fish made use of this branch of Dream Force to place me in a trance… But that only makes it more embarrassing that I actually almost fell for it…'

Leonel shook his head.

Every time he felt he had a grasp on the Dimensional Verse, he would get blindsided with something new. For a person like him who liked to be prepared for every possible variable, it was a bit frustrating. In the past, he used to blame his recklessness for this, but he had weeded much of that out of his system long ago. After all, he had so many Dream Counters in place to deal with things, that was evidence of his caution.

The main issue, though, was that it felt almost inevitable that there'd come a day where his Dream Counters wouldn't have an appropriate countermeasure. By then, it would be too late to regret.

Leonel sighed. He knew that worrying about this was useless, just like his fear of missing out was also useless. Simply put, he didn't know what he didn't know. But, for Leonel who liked to be in control of things and build a logical structure to his life, he found this particularly hard to accept.

Leonel reached a hand forward and scooped at the water the golden scaled koi fish lay in. Thanks to Vice basically freezing everything, he just had to manipulate his own spatial Force to form barriers. The result was a sphere of hovering water holding a frozen fish.

The golden scaled koi fish regained the ability to move thanks to Leonel's barrier blocking it from Vice's ability, but there was nowhere it could go. It continuously rammed against the barriers, but it quickly became obvious that it was just harming itself.

"Calm down, I'm not going to eat you." Leonel chuckled before immediately frowning.

This koi fish had really caused too many problems. Who knew how many had died because of its actions? Under normal circumstances, Leonel would be pissed off about it. And yet, he had actually chuckled and laughed.

The charisma of this koi fish was really too much. Leonel felt like he almost forgave it entirely.

'This must be some sort of evolutionary protective mechanism. It's pseudo symbiotic relationship with the tentacle womb isn't natural so it had to survive in other ways before it formed this co-dependency. Its ability to be likeable is probably what protected it…

'Thirty times… Thirty times…'

Leonel really couldn't wrap his head around it. The only explanation was that this koi fish's ability was beyond what Little Blackstar could match.

But, the reality was that Leonel felt this koi fish was no better than his Segmented Cube. Couldn't his Segmented Cube also gather up energy? In fact, not only could it gather it up, but it could even form Crystals and Pure Crystals out of this Force, making it far more valuable than this koi fish.

Unable to figure it out, Leonel chose to cover all of his bases.

"What is the ability of this koi fish?"

[ *Ping* ]

[ Energy Purification ]

'Wait…'

Leonel's Dreamscape sparked, something within his mind churning.

A flood of questions came from his mouth, each more pointed than the last as he zeroed in on the answers he wanted. As he spoke, a plan of action continuously formed in his mind and his gaze grew brighter. By the end of it all, he looked toward the koi fish as though it was a priceless treasure, his heart thumping madly.

Leonel carefully placed the golden scaled koi fish into the large lake of Cleansing Waters and sent the tentacle womb to be slowly healed back to its peak condition.

Then, he picked up Vice and Candle before shooting off into the distance, his intent blazing.