Dimensional Descent

Thaela smiled a sweet smile as silence fell over the area, playing with the bottle in her hand.

"This is the blood you wanted, right? No need to answer, I already know that that's the case. But if you think this pitiful amount of strength is going to be enough, I would suggest that you obediently hand over your head to me. If you do so, I can take care of your Oliidark family while you're gone. If not, and you force me to fight this battle to the end and waste my time, then not only will I not lift a finger to help your Oliidark family, I'll also kill them to the last man, woman and child.

"Make your choice quickly, my time is limited."

Thaela obviously didn't want to fight this battle, if she could voluntarily get Leonel to give up his life, that was for the best.

Unfortunately, there was no simple way to exchange points in the Fiend Class Sector. Due to the top 10 rules, and in order to mitigate the use of teamwork, an exchange of points wasn't possible. That was why although there were two members of the Endless Twilight Pavilion in the top ten, Thaela still had to fight for her spot on her own instead of borrowing from two who should have been her teammates.

Due to this, the only way to take points from someone else was to kill them. This was also why Leonel hadn't gained Falen's Demon Points either.

If Thaela wanted Leonel's points, the only method was to kill him. But this fog domain and Leonel's abilities were far too troublesome, and if there was no chance at all, Leoenl could very well just run away despite the contingency plans she had made.

As such, she chose to immediately set down her requirements. If she threatened Leonel later, when she had less control over the situation, she would come off as the weaker party. If she did so immediately, though, especially after so easily dealing with his attack, even if he didn't immediately accept, a shadow would be cast over his heart and he would definitely hesitate.

What Thaela didn't know, though, was that the moment Leonel heard these words, the frostiness of his gaze went from purely due to him focusing on calculation, to him being infuritated.

What a vile woman.

Leonel didn't care about the Oliidark family or if they were wiped out. In fact, he assumed that once he vanished from thin air, they would suffer such a fate just for being associated with him. However, it was the principle of the matter that left him enraged.

The only reason Leonel didn't care about the fate of the Oliidark family was because they had harmed a great deal of individuals. In fact, if he was correct, that restaurant he had worked in when he first reached their city had likely been wiped out to the final person.

However, these weren't matters that Thaela was aware of. Leonel could tell by the look in her eyes and the curl of her lips that she wasn't bluffing in the slightest. She had every intention of doing what she said, and for what, exactly…?

Resources? Treasures? Glory?

If she knew who his true family was, wouldn't she target them? If she could find where his mother was, where his brothers and cousin were, where the people he cared about were hidden, would she even hesitate?

Leonel's gaze sparkled with a crimson light, dense golden Runes dancing within his irises.

He had already figured out what Force she was using, but it wasn't an easy one to handle at all despite the fact he had become very used to making Spatial Forces his own. In fact, from what Leonel could see, her cloning abilities and spatial affinity were actually linked as one, likely to form an odd Ability Index or Lineage Factor.

The Force it was based on was called Emulation Spatial Force. It was an exceptionally rare spatial Force ranked in the top five of Spatial Forces and it was an even rarer fusion of Dream Force and Spatial Force.

Among Dream Forces, it was actually quite weak, but among Spatial Forces, it had the greatest dexterity, flexibility and manipulability.

Essentially, using a combination of Spatial Force and Dream Force, Thaela was able to recreate all sorts of illusions that could interact with the world. The Spatial Force aspect applied real, tangible changes to the world, while the Dream Force aspect formed illusions that hid the involvement of Spatial Force.

This only confirmed Leonel's speculations. Thaela didn't need to fuse with her clones, they weren't technically real clones to begin with. But because they could move through space, she could put down a clone an impossibly far distance away because even in comparison to light, Spatial Force moved faster!

It was no wonder that Thaela was intelligent enough to force even Leonel into a trap. Those with Dream Force affinity all tended to be extremely intelligent in comparison to their peers.

And, due to the fact Thaela wasn't layering Dream Force atop of Spatial Force, and her Emulation Spatial Force was a perfect fusion of the two, despite Leonel's exceptionally high Dream Force affinity, he couldn't instantly form a counter to it.

In addition, since Thaela's "illusions" were actually real and capable of interacting with the world, being able to see through them was useless. After all, they weren't fake, they could truly hurt him.

The most fearsome part of this Emulation Spatial Force was the last ability Thaela had displayed just now.

In a mere instant, she had gone from "damsel", to copying his arrow with her Emulation Spatial Force and pasting it twice more, forcing Leonel to face not just one of his own attacks, but three of them.

Despite having come to understand this, Leonel's expression only became colder and colder.

He didn't care how powerful Thaela was.  It was fine that she had been clever enough to get him here. This was a competition after all, he couldn't be mad that she was trying her best for herself.

But now, she had taken it a step too far.

Two of Leonel's arms held up a bow, and of the remaining four, two held his spear and the other two hovered in the air, palms open… as though waiting for something to land in them. 

At the same time, a large twin pair of lotuses appeared hovering to his back, tilting forward from its base and forming an enormous disk behind Leonel.

And then, three vibrant blue Stars appeared, pulsing with a blinding light.

He didn't want to do this because it was too dangerous. But this caution was unwarranted.

He was a man with two Destruction Rune laden Innate Nodes in his body… A man who had spent years suppressing Anarchic Force within his body…

If there was anyone who could control the opposite of Vital Star Force, it was him.

Since Thaela liked to play with life and death so much, he would oblige. 

The vibrant blue energy began to crawl forward, entering the rotating formation of lotuses and beginning to seep into the ground with a deathly dark blue aura.