Dimensional Descent

"Yip! Yip!"

Little Blackstar suddenly shot up, springing off of Silam's head and into Leonel's arms.

Leonel smiled lightly, chuckling at the little guy's antics. Even after absorbing all of that blood, Little Blackstar appeared to be the exact same with no change to his size or his demeanor. But, Leonel had a feeling that this was all due to the Silver Tablet.

A few days ago, Leonel realized that if the root of the Silver Tablet's abilities was to break convention, then didn't that mean it could also shorten the 13 months Little Blackstar needed down as well?

But, Leonel realized then that he had underestimated the Silver Tablet a bit too much. Not only was it able to cut down the time to a mere fraction of a fraction of the original 13 month period, but it was also able to help Little Blackstar reach a state of perfect integration.

What did this mean? It meant that the current Little Blackstar wasn't a mutated beast. Even if the foremost experts of the Dimensional Verse examined the little guy now, they would conclude that he had been born with all the talent he currently had now. This sort of integration was far beyond what even the Segmented Cube could accomplish with its original 13 month span.

This also made Leonel realize another important thing: If the Silver Tablet could do this for Little Blackstar, it meant that it could also do so for himself. His path toward upgrading his Snowy Star Owl Lineage Factor wasn't as far away as he thought it was initially.

Of course, it took Leonel giving up a lot of the resources he traded to the Eight Eye Branch to accomplish this, but it was more than worth it. Not only would Little Blackstar's future be far brighter, but the little guy was now the bane of the Umbra family's existence.

The suppression Silam faced was twofold. Not only was his Shadow Fox Bloodline suppressed in the face of a stronger beast, but his Darkness affinity was practically useless.

Then, on top of that, he actually had to face two Savants at the same time, one which could reflect all of his clearly weakened attacks and another that could lock him in place or make it near impossible to move with any sort of freedom.

Just like that, maybe the most powerful Head after Belize fell.

The most baffling part was that Leonel hardly raised a hand and ended up killing them both with ease. Even now, Silam could only shake his head.

They knew from the beginning that Earth had a high chance of producing Savants, but their reports showed that there weren't any. A high chance didn't mean a guarantee, so they had moved forward with that reassurance.

Little did they know that Earth had simply hidden it too well.

When Terrain attack Dark Cloud Prison, they hadn't done it with Savants in mind, they had only wanted to release talented people with a vendetta against Earth. They were even more clueless about it all than the Umbra and the other families were.

The simple truth was that they had underestimated and looked down on Earth too much. Even to the final moment, he had actually jumped head first into a trap and delivered himself directly to Leonel. Toward such a thing, he could only feel embarrassed.

"I don't have anything to tell you, just kill me."

Leonel almost couldn't refrain from rolling his eyes.

"Is this some sort of third rate movie? Can't you say something more original than that?"

Silam's brow furrowed. Movie? What the hell was that? And why did he feel the sudden need to punch Leonel in the nose?

"Killing you would probably give me the least trouble, but I have a small friendship with Radlis so I thought I would at least try to speak with you first."

"We have nothing to speak about." Silam said coldly.

"Oh? Nothing? So you don't care about this little mink in my arms that could probably eradicate your entire family on his own just by virtue of his suppressive effect on you all?"

Silam's brow furrowed.

"I think I would be fairly justified in going to your Umbra Galaxy and wreaking some havoc. After all, your people saw it fit to do that with Earth, right?"

Silam remained silent, there was simply nothing to say. The two of them simply had vastly different perspectives on things and Silam didn't feel that any one of them was wrong. He would just have to trust those who remained to find a way to survive.

"Well, I could do that. Or, I could release you."

Silam's expression warped.

If he could survive, he would very much like to. Who wouldn't? But right now he just felt like Leonel was just playing with him.

"Don't be so quick to think I'm lying. In truth, I have dreams that are quite big and I'm trying to look into the future. A family like your Umbra family, already well versed in the art of assassination, would be greatly useful to me."

"My Umbra family doesn't work for others."

"Mm, I know you don't work for others. Ever since your split from the Three Finger Cult, right?"

Silam's expression changed violently, his gaze snapping up to meet Leonel's.

"How the hell do you know that?!"

"Well, I didn't. Until just now, anyway," Leonel smiled and shook his head. "Now look, your cliché lines are rubbing off on me."

"You…"

Silam wasn't a fool. He couldn't be goaded into admitting such a thing. The issue was that there shouldn't be anyone who could even take a guess at this to begin with. It was similar to someone being so shockingly and overly specific that it couldn't possibly be that they weren't already certain of the answer. The mere fact that Leonel had asked such a thing meant that he was already at least 90% sure of its possibility.

The issue was obvious, though… How the hell did Leonel know something like this?!