Dimensional Descent

When Leonel entered the village, he felt a shift in the Force. He could feel its density and its heaviness, but he could also feel the difficulty in grasping and forcing this Force to bend to your will. It was yet another great change from the region he had just been in.

The realization made Leonel wonder a few things. Could it be that the Void Palace was split into tiers like this with ever progressing density of energy? If that was the case, how far did it go? It was very possible that Leonel hadn't truly experienced the truth bulk of strength a world at the Pinnacle of the Seventh Dimension could exude.

Many still silently observe Leonel as he walked through the village and the density of people only grew as he got closer to the village center. Leonel stuck out not only because of what he had done to the previous young man, but also because he was the only one who seemed to be walking alone.

Likely as a sign of caution, most of the youths here moved in pairs at a minimum, but many more walked in groups of three or four, with four seeming to be the cap. There was a tense quiet that hung over the village and Leonel could imagine that it had been like this for a long while. None of these people would relax until they had confirmed their entry into the Void Palace.

Little did they know, though, that the true nightmare only began once this threshold was crossed.

Of course, Leonel was oblivious to all of this as well, but he could understand these people. 99% of them were Nominal disciples who had barely been able to scrape by and gain a position. There was only one Amethyst Token and three Golden Tokens to be given out, and even if you were the top four strongest in your Sector, you weren't guaranteed any one of them if you didn't meet a certain standard.

Knowing this, it was no wonder so many of them were nervous and on guard.

This year seemed to have far more participants than usual and that meant far more enemies. They all had to keep their heads on a swivel, especially when it came to new comers and unknown variables like Leonel and the others.

Leonel, though, was observing them for a vastly different reason. He wanted to see which of them were actually threats and which weren't. He also wanted to see which of them were just hiding themselves and playing the long con and which of them were truly wary of him.

His interaction with the young man previously told him that just an outward showing of confidence wasn't enough to show strength. But, that also meant that the vice versa was true as well.

Tier level had suddenly become an absolutely useless metric for Leonel. Everyone here was either Tier 8 or Tier 9 of the Fifth Dimension. This was the case across the board. However, the strength level and variations among those who shared these Tier levels was astronomical.

At this point, Leonel almost felt that the lower Tier a person was in this place, the stronger they were overall, something that was completely counter intuitive anywhere else.

But, this was the result you got when you gathered so many geniuses together. Leonel's own mother was still in the Sixth Dimension, just like the Luxnix family elders were, but wasn't the gap between them all still ridiculously enormous? And these were the very same Sixth Dimensional elders that had wiped the floor with the elders of the Viola family just days earlier.

In the beginning of Leonel's journey, he had had a nice and succinct power level calculator. But, he had been forced to abandon it long ago… Now, though, he almost felt he would have to bring it back in some form or fashion or else he would really be going into all of these interactions blind.

Leonel shook his head. He had already gone down that rabbit hole once before and it was nothing more than a headache. There were simply too many variables to account for, it was better to rely on an instinctual feeling, ironically enough.

'What do you think, old man? How do you tell how much power a person wields?'

'Isn't that simple? Just look at their souls.'

Leonel's expression became weird. 'There's a huge taboo around using Internal Sight to just probe people like that and mine is no longer strong enough to just get away with it. Aren't you asking me to form enemies everywhere I went?'

'It's not my fault you're unskilled. I've already given you the answer you wanted, now leave me alone. I have to care for my real disciples.'

Leonel shook his head before completely ignoring the old man's request.

'Would that really work?'

'Obviously. People say eyes are the window to the soul, but the soul is literally the soul itself, it can't get anymore important. Humans can't even sense and manipulate their own, so they have no ability to hide its secrets from those more skilled than them outside of using special treasures.

'Observing a soul won't give you a direct number you can translate to strength output, but reading the disposition of a soul will tell you a lot about a person. How much confidence they have, if it's false bravado or real, how much work they put in to earn such a thing, so on and so forth.

'A soul can't lie.'

Leonel laughed inwardly. 'You could have fooled me.'

Wise Star Order snorted and proceeded to ignore Leonel. The latter didn't have time to mind this, though, as he had made it to the very doors of the Smithy he had been aiming for.

Unsurprisingly, there were many who could be found here as well, but the atmosphere was even more tense.

Despite there only being three hours until the trial began, many huddled near the counters of the Smithy or corners all to their own, silently clutching something within their palms they didn't want to allow anyone else to see.

The opening of the door caused several to shoot glances toward Leonel, their gazes becoming more serious when they realized they couldn't recognize him at all.