Dimensional Descent

Leonel looked down at his beaten and ragged spear, taking a breath and exhaling. As he had expected, his speed of clearing these hurdles had increased exponentially with the help of Pririna's treasure, but what he hadn't expected was to end up locked in such a battle not long after seemingly bright skies had opened up to him.

Before Leonel, a twin-horned demon stood before him. Well, it only had one horn remaining, the other having been cut off by Leonel and sent spiraling into a tree in the distance...

Well, several trees. Whatever that horn had been made out of, it was so sharp and sturdy that it wasn't satisfied until it had raised thousands of acres of land to the ground.

As best Leonel could tell, this person was probably a Fiend Class Demon, or close to it. Compared to the other geniuses Leonel had fought, this one was probably the most difficult up until this point because his body was so exceptional.

While the strength of Leonel's body came from his Lineage Factors and had been mostly stripped from him, the strength of a demon was innate to their flesh and blood. Facing this genius of the Demon Race, Leonel had no advantage despite having cleared hundreds more territories. Let alone not having an advantage, he was faintly losing and was somewhat inferior.

What was the most infuriating was that outside of his horn, every other part of this Fiend Demon's regeneration was top class, another very innate part of its being. Leonel had never felt the unfairness of the tribulation more clearly than he did now.

Even so, Leonel's skill with the spear was more than just one step above this demon that called himself Coldar. As such, he had been able to corner the latter several times, but to no avail. The demon hadn't spoken a single word, but his tenacity was all too clear and obvious, and his stamina was seemingly no weaker than Leonel's.

Leonel glided backward, taking one more deep breath before his body stabilized entirely. He met the eerie yellow gaze of the demon who stood an entire meter taller than himself without the slightest hint of fear. He looked down at his spear one more time before shaking his head and throwing it to the side and unsheathing the base spear that had already grown to the point of nearly crossing into the Gold Grade.

Unfortunately, while the basic spear could repair from damage, treasure spears and armors could not. Now that the lance spear had run its course, Leonel had no choice but to let it go, and with it, he lost access to Knight's Charge.

Leonel's wrist flexed, his forearm waving once. The strength of this brandishing was so fierce that the spear tip swayed wildly from side to side, the rigid polearm moving as though it was instead a wet noodle.

The spear blade moved almost hypnotically, swaying with a quick rhythm that made it quick and unpredictable.

Even so, the Fiend Demon didn't move a single inch. He had no way of knowing that Leonel's Knight's Charge ability came from the spear he had just thrown to the side. But what he did know was that even without Knight's Charge, Leonel's agility was beyond his own. In that case, he would stand in place and let Leonel come to him.

Leonel suddenly thrust forward, his spear whipping through the air and its blade vanishing into a cascade of blinding gold lights.

"I'll grind you down until you have nothing left to give," Leonel spoke resolutely.

The Fiend Demon once again didn't respond, but a hint of solemnness touched his yellow gaze as he brandished his own spear to block.

**

Aina might as well have been the mirror image of Leonel on the battlefield. Although one faced one enemy while the other faced many, their ferocity could only be said to be identical.

Many had thought that she would tire by now, but it eventually became quite obvious that she was far too confident in her own battle sense to make such a foolish mistake.

Near the back of the battlefield, Harmony fought as well. She was more of a reserve unit, prepared to act as a trump card when the situation dictated it, but she was beginning to feel as though she was entirely unneeded. At the same time, her internal fear for this woman was growing with every second.

It was easy to not notice just how brutal Aina was being. When lives were severed with just a single swing of her battle ax, it was easy to become numb to it.

However, the screams, the panic, the palpable fear that was slowly condensing in the air was quickly increasing to the point that it was suffocating.

As more and more powerful enemies faced off against Aina, the brutality only became more clear. Soon, they realized that maybe it would have been a blessing to be weaker. At least then, the torture would have ended immediately.

She severed arms, stomped through chests, crushed wind pipes, there was even a warrior who suffered the fate of having their rib cage pulled apart and their hearts ripped out from their chest. Aina had cut into this warrior's right shoulder with her battle axe, when she failed to go all the way through she punched into the left of the warrior's chest, ripping his chest open by pulling her hand and ax apart.

As though she wasn't satisfied with the result, before this warrior could even fall to the floor, she ripped his heart out, the spurt of blood coating her armor and droplets dotting across her cheeks and face.

The more the Brazinger family saw, the more shaken they became. It couldn't have been more obvious that her target from the very beginning was them, and very soon, the only one seperating them from severing their head was Galaeran and obviously Galaeron had no intention of stopping her Aina's golden gaze shone like two radiant stars as she slammed the butt of her polearm into the dirt. She passed by Little Nana without a single word, seemingly not worried that the latter would attack her.

She looked forward in silence, her aura climbing with every passing second. A long way to her back, dozens of rotating blood roses continued to shred a path through the battlefield almost without her input at all.

No one knew why Aina had stopped until her spatial ring glowed.

One after another, she took out stakes. Each one was carved of a blackened wood and stood at exactly nine meters tall and were just about two feet thick.

It wasn't obvious at first, but the Brazingers shuddered when they saw it. Every time Aina's palm touched this seemingly simple wood, another layer of her skin would be burnt off, droplets of blood falling and the smell of rotting flesh wafting into the air.