Dimensional Descent

Leonel and Aina looked toward another and Leonel eventually coughed. He walked over and patted Raj on the shoulder.

"Hey, at least she said something. It could be worse, she could have just disappeared without saying anything at all."

The moment Leonel said the words, he felt a hot gaze on the side of his face. However, he gathered up all the will power in the world and raised a thumbs-up. One could never say that he wouldn't take one for his brothers.

As expected, the moment Raj heard this, he burst into a fit of laughter.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," Leonel said before vanishing in a beam of light.

"Wait right there!" Aina called out from behind.

"Don't say I never did anything for you, Raj!" Leonel's voice echoed beneath the laughter of his brothers.

**

The Umbra family was quite an anomaly. Years ago, they had burst onto the scene, attacking Earth with a sweeping momentum, before they were suddenly repelled.

Back then, many had made the assumption that they wouldn't give up like this. After all, Earth had only been at the Fifth Dimension during their first attack, making it difficult for them to send their true fire power over. They could only rely on their young geniuses and older individuals who had no chance of breaking into the Sixth Dimension. Such a line up wasn't very conducive to success.

Due to the circumstances, they had only been able to send a single Sixth Dimensional existence in, their Patriarch Silam Umbra. But after his return, he made no movements to attempt a second attack, even after Earth became a Sixth Dimensional existence and swallowed up their territory.

This was odd to many observing the situation. Although the Umbra family wasn't exactly supremely powerful, they weren't weak either. Back then, beneath the Luxnix, Montex and Viola families, they were probably near first place. In addition, having your territory swallowed by the influence of another World Spirit was nothing but bad, this was actually why Rychard was fighting so hard to maintain control over a certain radius.

When one World Spirit overwhelms another, it's only a matter of time before the weaker World Spirit loses all power. Once that happens, the generations birthed by the weaker World Spirit will cease to exist and the newborns will begin the cycle of becoming Earthlings.

If this continued, in five generations, everything your ancestors had built up would vanish and your people would become the people of the stronger World Spirit.

This wasn't necessarily a bad thing if your lineage was weak. After all, wouldn't you prefer to be a talent of Earth than a middling talent of a Sixth Dimensional world?

But everyone had their own ambitions, and that was especially since there was another option, and that was to swallow up the stronger World Spirit yourself.

If a weaker world overwhelmed an evolving world, it was possible to snatch the talent away and take it for yourself. In this way, not only would you be able to keep your lineage, you would also give it a great boost in strength.

And yet, when Earth underwent a point of great vulnerability during its expansion into the Sixth Dimension, and was even compromised in a war against four now eradicated families, the Umbra family which had been in the best position to strike, controlling a galaxy right outside of the Milky Way, actually did nothing.

No, it wasn't accurate to say that they did nothing, and was far more accurate to say that they did nothing to Earth, because it was thanks to the Umbra family that many who wanted to take advantage of the situation found themselves absolutely stonewalled.

The Umbra family, which was always known as one of decent strength, displayed a great amount of strength that felt well beyond its own and even played a key role alongside other mysterious figures in stopping others from taking advantage of Earth's greatest period of weakness.

What others didn't know was that this was all because of a single young man, a young man who stood high in the skies and he looked down toward the shadowy planet.

"You're finally here."

The voice appeared in a wisp of smoke as a figure suddenly manifested by Leonel's side. This was none other than Radlis, a young man that Leonel had known since his days at Valiant Heart Mountain. It could be said that they were good friends for a while, though their relationship had ended up being a bit strained when Leonel learned that he was from the Umbra family and had only come to the Milky Way to prepare for an attack on Earth, and, of course, target the Silver Tablet.

Leonel smiled, seemingly not surprised by Radlis' sudden appearance at all.

"Sorry it took so long, apparently I was stuck in a Zone for over 20 years."

Radlis' expression flickered. He had heard about the Zone as well. In fact, he knew a bit more about it than most considering his Umbra family's former connections with the Three Finger Cult. He was shocked that Leonel had made it out at all.

"Oh? So you do know a little something about that Zone. I was hoping you all would."

"… You might be disappointed with how much we know, but I guess you can say that we're aware of a small bit. You can follow me, everyone has been waiting for a while."

In truth, after knowing that Leonel would enter the Void Palace, they had already been ready to wait more than just a few decades. After all, one wasn't supposed to be able to leave the Void Palace casually after entering it.

The trade off in time should have been worth it, but it was just unfortunate that Leonel didn't gain the boost in strength they were expecting from him in this time period. As a result, though they had been willing to wait, the situation was a bit more strained now than it would have been otherwise.

Even so, what could they do? Just the fact Leonel knew of their connection to the Three Finger Cult meant that he had them by the balls. No matter how dissatisfied some of them might be, it was all useless.

Leonel was in control.

"Mm, let's go," Leonel nodded.