Dimensional Descent

"Shit!"The female Divine Guard cursed. They were all Morales, and they were well aware of the existence of Metal Spirits. Though Divine Guards were part of the Spear Domain Faction, they had enough interaction with the Metal Synergy Faction to understand what they were seeing.

This was a textbook example of a rampaging Metal Spirit, just what was this young Patriarch of theirs doing?! Was he trying to get revenge on the Morales for something by destroying their resources?

No, this didn't make any sense. He was already caught after the first time. One mine wasn't enough to even put a dent into the Morales.

But then they remembered that shuttle that Leonel was using. It was so fast that they barely caught wind of it. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that Leonel had slowed to so that he could detect the flow of Force more clearly, they might not have been able to track him at all.

Even so, now that he had been found, did he really want to continue?

"Stop! Don't do this!"The female Divine Guard could only say this, it was happening too quickly to explain anything else.

Under normal circumstances, a Patriarch would be able to control something as insignificant as a single mine. But setting aside the fact that Leonel had yet to be coronated, the Morales were currently in their own state of Martial Law. Their alert state gave power over most decisions over to the Ancestors and it also made even petty crimes that would usually be dealt with a slap on the wrist far more severe.

These rules were put in place to control the population and to also keep bad apples from poisoning the well. It only made it worse that although this mine was fairly insignificant in the grand scheme, for it to have three Divine Guards guarding it, it wasn't too bad either.

Suddenly, a geyser shot into the air, overshadowing the Force Eruption. But very soon, it became clear that it wasn't a geyser, but rather the roaring form of a rampaging Metal Spirit.

The expressions of the guards changed once again.

"Run! Leonel!"

No matter the situation, they didn't want to see a young genius of the Morales to die just like that, but Leonel didn't move at all.

Leonel looked up, his gaze calm. Mother Nature didn't make mistakes, or more accurately, it couldn't. Given enough time, any existing creature would tend toward perfection. That was the simple fact of evolution. Those with defects, those that were inferior, would die off, while those that were strong would continue on.

For the Metal Spirit, one of the most ancient of creatures, for it to have such a tendency within it... could it really be a mistake? Or was this just how Metal Spirits should be?

The Cataclysm Zone gave Leonel the answer to that question. Or more accurately, it had given him the clues he needed to reach his own conclusion. He needed Little Tolly to be stronger, he needed a way to bridge the gap and deal with his own current weakness.

And this was that way.

Leonel was of course choosing the Jack of All Trades path for Little Tolly. However, being a jack of all, of course came with being a master of none. That was the catch, but he would also be able to improve upon these weaknesses, it would just require a great deal of effort and resources. Unless, of course... this worked.

The four paths of the Metal Spirit were straightforward. The first allowed the improvement of ores, helping them tend toward perfection. The second allowed the fusion of ores to create new ores that combined the abilities of both. The third allowed them to swallow Universal Force, supplementing their Crafter and helping their stamina while also increasing the chance of success. The fourth was, of course, what Leonel was choosing... but with a twist.

After reading the method of breaking through, Leonel got an inkling that something was missing, and he felt that intuition was very correct.

The original breakthrough method had a great deal of precaution around the potential rampaging of your Metal Spirit. In fact, most of the so-called method was actually a series of Force Arts that could suppress this wild ambition of a Metal Spirit.

However, the reason Leonel was standing here, arms crossed, doing absolutely nothing, was because he had cast away all of those methods. The only things he had prepared were what he needed to force Little Tolly onto the fourth path. And now, it was time to see if he was correct or not.

Maybe if he was in another state of mind, he might feel nervous, maybe feeling a bit of fear, or maybe a bit of hope. But the current him looked forward quite coldly, watching as Little Tolly got so big that the once little guy could be seen across the entire hemisphere.

The Divine Guards had already retreated a great deal, feeling like they "understood" Leonel all the more. They felt that this was his plan all along. If he allowed his Metal Spirit to rampage, then it would only be a matter of time to swallow up everything. Soon, there would be no one but the Ancestors that could stop it.

A Metal Spirit that had swallowed up such a large amount of condensed Eighth Dimensional Force, but swallowing up an entire Eighth Dimensional Mine on top of that, wasn't a level of existence that they could deal with confidently alone.

The commotion grew so large that the planet began to rock back and forth. Without a choice, the Divine Guards hurried to report this matter to the Ancestors. They had had some thoughts of maybe turning a blind eye so that this situation wouldn't become too complicated and they wouldn't get caught in a whirlwind of what seemed to be an internal conflict, but now they simply had no choice.