Dimensional Descent

Leonel knew that it wasn't his ice control that had gotten Mistress Oliidark's attention. It might have caused her to perk up a bit, but it wasn't until he displayed his Spear Force that she decided against killing him and took him in.

For all Leonel knew, if he hadn't learned this way of the spear, he would have been killed on the spot, never to see the next day.

It was quite a sobering thought.

A part of Leonel still believed that he would have found a way to escape. But as a person who claimed to be so rational, these thoughts of his were wholly irrational. He didn't even realize that he had had such inner thoughts until Aina pointed them out to him, but now it felt so obvious.

It was no wonder his dad laughed at him when he talked about being a King.

A King, of course, needed confidence. But didn't that confidence need to be built on something?

Leonel thought that he was. After all, his mind was his most powerful asset. He believed that he could think and smart his way out of any situation even if he lacked the raw strength. Even his Dream Class Ratings were based on this.

But wasn't that all theoretical?

Leonel opened his eyes and looked out of the window. There was no sky, no clouds, hardly any sunlight… It was just a wall, a wall to what was probably another big house or mansion in the estate, an estate that was essentially nothing more than a cage to him.

Leonel suddenly remembered that day on the battlefield.

Heavy rain fell from the skies. One by one, friends that he had held so dear for two years fell, their blood mixing into the mud and returning to the earth. Every death was like an added weight on his shoulder, a deeper sort of promise that he swore to keep.

But what if that was the real world?

There would be no reviving them. It would be too late to regret his weakness.

Right now he was stuck in this world, stuck in this cage… His mother was out there. The woman he loved was out there. His brothers were out there. And he was here because he was too weak to leave to go to find them.

They said that the human mind was good at forgetting and glossing over tragedy. It was also pretty good at forgetting that one day we'd all die, something that quite a scary proposition, entering an unknown abyss on the other side, and yet people still managed to live day to day with a smile on their faces.

Leonel thought that he was different. He believed himself to be some logically superior being. Even his moral compass was kept dear to him as though he was blessing the world with his kindness. He couldn't find a reason to place the worth of his life above another, so he might as well consider himself their equals.

It made him sound like a prick when you put it like that. And maybe he was one.

Clearly he wasn't much different from anyone else.

That traumatic day he experienced in the Valiant Heart Zone, that day when all his thinking, all his planning, all his logic, all his intelligence, all his smarts was worth not a damn thing…

He seemed to have just casually forgotten it.

And why? All because he could just revive them with a Tablet?

It was quite funny when he thought about it. He couldn't find a reason to place one life above another, but didn't this Tablet that could revive the dead do so easily? Wasn't there a different energy requirement for reviving each person? If there was no intrinsic worth, then wouldn't they all be worth the same price?

Why did he still care then? His life was worth more than theirs and these High Class Demons were worth more than him. What was the point, anymore?

This Tablet could obviously accomplish something he could not, so clearly it knew better than him about the secrets of life. Wasn't that the logical conclusion? With his intelligence, shouldn't he have thought of that problem long ago?

So why had he rejected it?

Leonel turned his head away from the window and closed his eyes once more. He took deep and steady breaths.

He never really hesitated to give worth to people.

Most would hesitate to say which parent or child they loved more, and yet Leonel felt pretty clearly that he favored his dad.

Most would never sit idly by as the woman they loved was married off to another man, and yet he had, and he was even smiling in his own little world all the while.

Most wouldn't try to logically understand things that were clearly beyond their means, and yet he tried to do so all the time.

It was like he was also trying to fit puzzle pieces into places he knew they didn't fit, stubbornly and arrogantly jamming them in again and again, yet still being unsatisfied with the result.

What did all of this mean? What was the answer? Where had he gone wrong? Or was he even wrong at all?

Leonel… didn't have an answer.

It was all too complicated, even for him. He didn't even know where to start.

He suddenly felt the strong urge to see his father again, to see his mother, his uncle, his Aina. He felt lost, his previous feelings of eagerness vanishing.

Those words James spoke to him all those years ago, the same words Aina repeated without ever having heard them before. How right were they?

"Am I wrong?"

Leonel's soft whisper was like an eerie whistle in the wind, following the current and bouncing off the walls.

There was no response. However, something still seemed to echo in Leonel's ears.

'A King? What a joke! Your old man's still alive. At best, you can be a little Prince.'

The words echoed again and again like a flickering candlelight in Leonel's mind.

SNAP!

The sound shook the estate, the skies above rumbling with thunder.

But Leonel didn't even notice. It was as though everyone in the world was shaken but him. He only felt that his thoughts ran faster and his Ability Index seemed to have improved again, but he felt that that was only because he had just stepped into Tier 7.

He didn't have an answer, but he still had a path.

No one would stop him from getting out of here.

One month. In one month no one here would be able to stop him.