Dimensional Descent

Leonel exhaled, his mind rolling. He slid through the half a million years' worth of laws and regulations as though he was flipping through the pages of a book, his mind assimilating it all with an ease that astonished even himself.

Most of it was completely useless, nonsensical laws that no longer meant anything in the current day and age. But others were far more interesting.

Leonel organized it all, crossing out what was useless and also throwing out rules made redundant or toothless by later amendments. And, eventually, he came to exactly what he wanted.

Leonel grinned, this was exactly what he needed. The Void Contract was one matter, however how he could take advantage of his limbo-like status was a different matter entirely. Since the Void Senate would likely try to play games with him, let them. He would enjoy his short period of free reign while they twittled their thumbs.

As for the matter of the Void Contract, it was surprisingly easy.

The rule was under a set of amendments put into place about 400 thousand years ago when the Void Palace's Anarchic Force concentration had weakened enough to allow lower level Dimensional beings in, the free for all rules began to weigh too heavily.

As of right now, the only rule seemed to be no killing. But, what would one do if a higher Dimensional being insisted on crippling you? There was really nothing much you could do at all.

That was, until these amendments were put into place.

There were many provisions put in place, but the only one Leonel really cared about right now was a clause related to Void Contracts.

According to the stipulations, so long as a contract involved a deal including a lower Ranked disciple, said disciple could use 3 Void Merits to remove themselves from responsibility.

One would think that Leonel was out of luck. He couldn't simultaneously try to use his limbo-like status and hope to get treatment as a lower Ranked disciple at the same time, that wouldn't make sense or be possible.

However, it had to be remembered that the contract wasn't signed between Leonel and Sceio. It was signed between Aina and Sceio! Leonel had been in a coma at the time, meaning he couldn't consent to a contract even if he wanted to.

Luckily, Sceio should be a Sector Ranked disciple, just like Leonel's mother, while Aina was a Galaxy Ranked disciple.

In addition, even if Sceio wasn't a Sector Ranked disciple, there were divisions among Ranks that could be used as well. There were nine divisions within each level, which was why climbing Ranks was so difficult. So long as Sceio wasn't a Level 1 Galaxy Ranked disciple, Aina would still be able to break free.

Now, the only question was one of getting Void Merits. If Leonel was lucky, he might be able to kill two birds with one stone and take advantage of his limbo status at the same time.

However, Leonel had also deduced days ago that Void Merits were far more valuable that Void Points. It likely wouldn't be easy to get them even if he went all out in the next month. And, according to the rules, while Void Points were transferable by anyone, only Factions, Parties and the Void Palace itself could hand out Void Merits.

This meant that if Leonel wanted to get Aina the merits she needed, they would either need to do a mission that paid them both equally, and was thus work a total of six Void Merits—a mission that would without a doubt be incredibly dangerous—or, Aina would need to somehow earn them on her own.

But, it was exactly then that a spark went off in Leonel's head.

'That's it! For every top three spot you have on the leaderboards, you gain an equivalent number of Void Merits.'

"Aina, how many leaderboards are you on right now?"

The young man's lip twitched when he heard this question. What the hell was going on here? First this kid flashed through the pendants like they were nothing, and now he was treating leaderboards as though they were nothing?

If he didn't know better, the young man would have checked these pendants personally to make sure they weren't broken, but even if he wouldn't get stuck here for a month like Leonel should have, it would have still been a day. He didn't feel like doing that.

Plus… All 527 couldn't possibly be broken… right?

"Um… I believe that I'm on 20."

The young man sputtered and coughed.

"Ten? Ten leaderboards?"

Aina and Leonel looked toward the young man as though he was the weird one. Eventually, they looked back toward one another as though he wasn't there.

"I assume that's ten current leaderboards and ten all time ones, right?"

Aina nodded.

"And what placement do you have on them? Only the top three matters."

"I'm second of three of the current leaderboards and first on the rest of them. Same for the all-time leaderboards."

Leonel grinned. "Sounds like my girlfriend is pretty amazing."

"Just a little bit." Aina smiled, her amber eyes glistening.

"The current leaderboards give 3 Void Merits for first place and minus one downward. The all-time leaderboards are more complicated. They give out a pool of 30 for top 10 and it ticks down by one for top 11-20 and so on. Either way, only top 10 matters for you. Depending on how many active members of the top 10 there are currently in the Void Palace, you'll split those 30 merit points with them.

"So you have 27 Void Merits from current leaderboards plus 300 Void Merits divided by however many people you're sharing them with. Do you know?"

Leonel thought the answer might be zero, initially, but after hearing her previous explanation, he knew that wouldn't be true

"There's one. Her name is Treanna Viror."

Leonel nodded. "In that case, you get 66% of the amount you're in first place for and 33% of the ones you're not.

"So 27 plus 150, so 177 Void Merits in the end. It looks like you'll have more than enough."

…

While Leonel and Aina were happy about this change, there was a young woman whose monthly Void Merit quota had taken an enormous plummet thanks to this change…

And her hair also happened to be green.