Dimensional Descent

Leonel frowned and shook his head. He couldn't think straight until he, ironically, stopped thinking entirely. He could only barely manage to split up his deductions into several Dreamscapes, only when they were separate did the odd influence on his mind disappear.

By the time he was finished, his heart was beating erratically. He couldn't imagine the kind of power it would take to influence someone's thoughts about you. This was beyond just power, it was quite literally the means of a God.

Leonel was almost 100% certain that this person was aware every time their likeness was mentioned. Was this the true power of Dream Force? To not only be hyper aware of your own stream of consciousness, but that of everyone else's as well?

Years ago, Leonel had had a thought about this, but it was so far away from him that he couldn't even fathom it. Even now, he was in a similar situation. Despite how far he had grown, he felt like he hadn't even taken half a step toward such a goal.

'This person… this person is dangerous…'

Leonel's jaw set.

He realized almost immediately just how poor his mindset had been. This wasn't someone that he could casually catch up to with a few years of effort, and it most definitely wasn't someone he could out scheme. This was beyond Wise Star Order reading his mind, this person could sense his learning about them from an infinite distance away.

To say that such an individual could crush him with a single finger was an exaggeration… of himself. This person wouldn't even need to lift a finger. If Leonel was correct, if this person wanted to kill him, the moment they sensed him learning about them, they could directly snuff out his consciousness, and he wouldn't even be able to do anything about it.

This was why Leonel had no choice but to stop trying to deduce. If he kept thinking about this person, he might very well offend them. By then, he wouldn't even know how he died, his life would just be forfeit.

Unbeknownst to him, Leonel had broken out into a cold sweat, his face becoming somewhat pale.

This was a feeling that he had never experienced before. What he didn't even have the presence of mind to realize was that most people who spoke of this person wouldn't even notice that they were being observed. It was precisely because Leonel's Dream Force affinity was so high that he could feel this fear to begin with.

As the saying went, ignorance was bliss. Seltin and the others had no idea why Leonel was reacting like this, but Leonel himself felt that he had just barely escaped with his life.

The problem was that losing his life was just one potential aspect. Someone with such a great control over Dream Force could take over his mind, alter his thoughts, and twist his personality without him even realizing.

Such a thing would be a far worse fate than death.

Leonel took slow and deep breaths, doing his best to slow his heart rate. The glow in his eye slowly returned.

It took him a while, but Leonel realized that even his overwhelming feeling of fear just now didn't even come from himself, it was rather this person influencing him. For them to be able to force him to react like this after what he experienced with the Emperor's Might Tablet, it was clear that they were an existence no less powerful.

Leonel lightly flexed his fists, the aura around him shifting.

At that moment, Leonel's Dream Force broke through a barrier as he exhaled. His irises reflected a glassy color, almost as though one could spot a microcosm of the world within him.

A silvery crystal-like energy rained down around Leonel and his three Stars rotated.

BOOM! BOOM!

In an instant, Leonel's aura flourished, his strength soaring from Tier 1 of the Sixth Dimension to Tier 3. Wild fluctuations of Force wafted from his body like the echoes of a roar, causing cracks to race along the ground and forcing Radlis, who was the closest to him, into a retreat.

Leonel's hair danced and his clothing fluttered. The pale violet color in his eyes seemed to solidify for a moment before it receded once more.

The expressions of Seltin and the others couldn't help but widen. The moment Leonel made his first breakthrough, it was clear and obvious that he wasn't on the Conventional Path. A breakthrough in the Conventional Path after the Fifth Dimension required a large amount of resources, but Leonel hadn't absorbed anything, in fact his body seemed to spontaneously produce Force of its own.

This meant that Leonel had to be on the God Path, but if he really was on the God Path, just what were they witnessing?

Even a single breakthrough along the God Path was worthy of celebration. Even for the Cataclysm Generation, the greatest geniuses of the Human Domain, supposedly, a single breakthrough took over a year. Many of them had already been back for over a decade but very few had entered the Seventh Dimension.

This made the issue obvious. Just a single breakthrough should be hard to come by, how the hell had Leonel undergone two right before their eyes? And the oddest part was that just a moment ago, he looked as though he had contracted some sort of sickness.

The flourishing aura around Leonel slowly came to a pause and he exhaled a final breath and everything seemed to settle down properly.

…

In an unknown location, a demoness sat on a throne of bones. Every part of her was endlessly alluring, and yet it also felt as though one couldn't see any part of her clearly. She was somehow both the most perfect representation of woman, and yet somehow very forgettable.

At that moment, this demoness chuckled, even her voice causing those that heard it to go entirely soft all over.

"Not bad," she said lightly. "Much better than those other two."