Dimensional Descent

Leonel found himself feeling quite uncomfortable. Using his eyes and ears like a normal person, not to mention continuously turning his head from left to right was annoying him. He never had to put so much effort into paying attention to his surroundings. Ever since the Metamorphosis had descended, he had been able to escape such a "mundane" fate.

Unfortunately, he had no choice but to do so now. Without an understanding of where the danger may or may not be coming from, and while being in a completely unknown environment, not being at least this cautious would be a death wish.

Leonel's step suddenly came to a grinding halt and he ducked behind a tree for a moment before scampering up its side as though doing his best to impersonate a squirrel. He swung himself up and landed lightly, his eyes darting above before he suddenly froze in place.

Without hesitation, Leonel leapt onto a higher branch, moving as far up as it would allow him before swinging to a tree to its side that happened to be taller and moving up even further.

At that moment, what had been subtle rumbling became deep and resonating. As Leonel held his breath, the shaking of the ground became more pronounced and the tree he was perched within began to sway back and forth more fiercely, threatening to knock him off of his perch.

Even so, Leonel held on tightly, his lips sealed tight and his chest not moving in the slightest. At this moment, he didn't even dare to breathe as the creature passed below.

When it finally entered his sight, Leonel's pupils constricted.

The beast couldn't have been more generic. It was just a saber toothed tiger. But that wasn't the problem. This saber toothed tiger was five meters long and three meters tall. To make matters more astonishing, its every bound was several hundred meters, a distance that would definitely have been further if not for the thick trees around it. But even more astonishing than that was its weight.

With the way it moved, so quickly and so agilely, one would have never expected it to land with such force. The entire forest ground seemed to quake beneath its movement.

The saber toothed tiger zipped by Leonel, not noticing him. But its aura continued to linger in the air, coating Leonel's skin with a faint sheen of sweat.

Leonel's senses might have been dulled without his Ability Index, but his instincts were still there, instincts he had been honing ever since he unlocked the primitive man's life and experienced what he had experienced.

He knew with just a glance that in his current state, he didn't stand a chance against that saber toothed tiger. If he had allowed it to sense him, he would probably have lost his life right here and now.

Large beasts weren't something that Leonel had ever seen before. No, more accurately, he had never seen them outside of that Zone. In the Dimensional Verse, creatures, no matter how powerful they were, fell within a normal range of size. Little Blackstar was a prime example of this. It wasn't until that Zone he had seen a creature with a wingspan of dozens of meters.

Regardless of why this was, this place definitely had creatures that were not only extraordinarily powerful, but also exaggerated sizes. Battling them would be incredibly difficult, especially when restrained to this stick they called a spear.

At some point, if the creatures reached a size that was too large, even his most powerful of strikes would be nothing more than papercuts to them. To make matters worse, if they managed to keep the kind of speed that saber-toothed tiger had even as their sizes increased, he might as well pack his bags now and go home.

Leonel's gaze sharpened. After making sure that the tiger was gone, he leapt forward, moving from tree to tree. He hoped that it would be somewhat safer up here, but he had no way of knowing that for sure so he kept a sharp lookout. For all he knew, a bird with a 50-meter wingspan might swoop down at him at any moment.

Leonel had no idea where he was going, but he just kept moving forward. He assumed that the first thing he should do was gather information, but he had no idea where to start. In the end, he decided to keep moving until he at least found a water source. If his body was in this state, it likely wouldn't be long before he needed food and water, so he might as well get the hard stuff out of the way immediately.

Leonel came across several more behemoth-like creatures. Even the smallest of them would stand to his height of over two meters tall even while on all fours. The biggest of them were entire heads or two taller than the saber toothed tiger.

He unceremoniously dodged every single one, his expression becoming more and more solemn. He had yet to come across a creature he had any confidence in defeating, and he also hadn't seen the point of this trial yet, nor had he found a water source.

BANG!

Leonel suddenly crashed into what felt like an immovable wall. He had been scanning his surroundings with the utmost diligence, not missing a single thing, only for him to suddenly run into an invisible forcefield.

Leonel was so caught off guard that he fell out of the tree he was in, catching the attack of a creature below.

Leonel's brows jumped as his nose began to bleed from the collision. But that was the least of his worries as he fell toward a wolf that was over seven meters long and twice his height.

Quickly trying to regain his bearings as he fell through the air, Leonel threw a vicious kick at a nearby tree trunk, just barely managing to get a solid hit on it that sent him flying toward an adjacent tree.

He grabbed onto a tree branch and swung himself upward, a cold wind just barely nipping at his ankles.

Leonel didn't need to look to know that it was the wolf that had swiped a claw at him just now.

His heart leapt into his throat. He felt like someone was messing with him. How could a forcefield come out of nowhere? And what the hell was it doing in the middle of a forest?!

No, more importantly, how was he going to survive the blood thirsty wolf below him?