Dimensional Descent

Leonel continued to watch, his mind calm. He didn't feel any sense of satisfaction killing Shan'Rae. He had long since forgotten his grievances with this woman as it seemed so very insignificant in the grand scheme.

But even if he had still taken such grievances seriously, he still wouldn't feel pride toward such a thing. He had never seen himself as beneath the Gods, so why would he feel pride about being on par or surpassing them?

In truth, he couldn't ever remember feeling pride after a victory. Maybe satisfaction, maybe he liked the feeling... but pride? The only person who could have made him feel pride after defeating him was already dead.

As for how he had defeated Shan'Rae, it was quite simple. After he learned of what the Lineage Factor and abilities of the Void Race were from the Life Tablet, he already understood exactly how to defeat them.

Their control over space was truly second to none. With a thought, they could cross worlds, shrink a city to the size of a palm, or even call the skies down to them. They could use it fluidly to attack, defend, or move. Space was akin to an extension of their very being, a resonance of their senses.

It could even be said that when a member of the Void Race stepped into a region, their bodies were already manipulating the space.

Their bodies were similar to planets but on another level entirely. Their weight was obscene, and they carried all the heft of every one of the worlds that they had ever absorbed.

Because of this, space naturally warped and bent around them. And from birth, the members of the Void Race were taught how to coddle this space and make it their own. That was why a world wasn't destroyed every time a member of the True Void Race took a step, and it was also why the space around them was so easily controlled as well. It might as well have been called weight manipulation rather than spatial manipulation.

All of that said, the difference didn't particularly matter to Leonel, because whether it was true spatial manipulation or not, the counter was the exact same.

Leonel didn't need to stifle or stop their spatial manipulation. In fact, he could allow them to enhance it as much as they wanted, and he wouldn't even bother to stop them or feel fear.

The reason for that was because this level of spatial manipulation required a great deal of control and expert fine-tuning. So, when something that required so much control was thrown in a land of chaos...

How could they still control it so well?

In Leonel's Destruction World, it fed on and basked in chaos and Destruction. When Shan'Rae split open space, it didn't grow weaker, it grew stronger. But when Shan'Rae tried to keep the Destruction to a limited level, she found her attacks quickly veering out of her control.

But that was only a small part of it.

At the same time she was fighting back against this, the volatile space became harder for her to read. The chaos was too much, and she didn't have the mental capacity to both consider her control and peer through what was fake to find what was real.

As though that wasn't bad enough, it was then that Leonel's Dream Force took shape as well, manipulating those lines of chaos and making her choose between paths that were favorable to him, and making it far more difficult to see through the paths that were unfavorable.

As a result of this, when Shan'Rae thought she was leaping through space to cut off Leonel's head, she was actually cutting across the space above Leonel's head instead.

All of this was already enough to play such a Spatial Force expert to death, and yet that still wasn't the last of Leonel's actions.

That was because the last line of defense was a Natural Force Art.

Constructing and creating teleportation platforms was notoriously difficult. That was because, once again, controlling space was a tall order, but controlling space across large distances, and even across Realms of different Grades, was even more difficult. There was a reason the Owlans couldn't just provide one teleportation platform that went from the Mortal Realms to the Demi-God Realms back during the Gathering of Minds. And there was also a reason most couldn't just teleport right to the Human Bubble now despite already having its coordinates.

But Leonel happened to also be one of the best Crafters in all of existence.

And that was where the true fearsomeness of his Destruction World began to show itself.

He had faintly noticed before that his Destruction Sovereignty didn't have to be tied to a particular Force, and he wondered why that was.

He was starting to get the picture now, but ironically, before he tried it out on his Forces, he tried it out on his Force Arts first.

He created a Natural Force Art aligned with the space of this region, and then baptized it in his Destruction Sovereignty. And that had had precisely the effects he thought it would.

The original Natural Force Art would have allowed him the ability to manipulate space freely and smoothly...

But his Chaotic Natural Force Art allowed him the ability to manipulate how others saw and interacted with the space.

He realized now that his Destruction Sovereignty was actually a path that was unprecedented.

If normal Force Manipulation tended toward Order, surging toward the First Dimension...

Then what about Force Manipulation tinted by Destruction Sovereignty?

Leonel rested his spear on his shoulder, and the muscles and veins of his body rippled.

At that moment, the bits and pieces of Shan'Rae's body shuddered, and her head, which had flown high into the skies, echoed out with a banshee-like screech.

This time, she was truly infuriated.

Her Ability Index activated, and to Leonel's slight surprise, he couldn't suppress it like he had with Willowyn's.

BOOM!

"DEATH COUNTER!"