Dimensional Descent

”Hold on.”

Leonel stopped Irolana just as she was about to release the flare. 

”Hand the flare to me.”

Irolana was confused but nodded in the end. 

Leonel rolled the flare in his palm, scanning it from top to bottom. 

”Let’s move.” Leonel said, gazing at the Titan Hyena’s corpse. 

The group quickly complied as Leonel continued to observe the flare. 

If the Oryx could only see in red, that would be fine. But, according to Irolana and the others, they could also see infrared. This was a problem for two reasons. 

For one, they’d be on a time crunch. Things would be fine as long as the sun was still in the sky. But, once it set, the Oryx would gain a decisive advantage. 

During the day, the Oryx’s red sight would interfere with tracking somewhat. But, at night, an Oryx might be able to pick out a human through hundreds of meters worth of foliage just based off their body heat. 

The second issue was tied to this issue of heat. The signal flares Leonel was aware of were essentially controlled bursts of combustion. Even if it was masked with color, it might be an issue. 

’Oh, so it’s not the same. It works with a Light Prism Ore…. In that case…’

Leonel’s fingers began to move at a blistering pace, leaving blurs in their wake. In the blink of an eye, he deconstructed the signal flare and put it back together. 

”Little Blackstar.”

”Yip! Yip!”

The little mink hopped down from Leonel’s head and snatched the newly made signal flare. He vanished into thin air before suddenly appearing a hundred meters up a thick tree. 

Quickly reaching the outer edges of the canopy, the little mink hid his body within the foliage and raised the signal flare up, his little paws swiping at the triggering mechanism. 

A muffled pop rang out. But, the dull nature of the sound was nothing compared to the tall light that suddenly pierced into the sky. 

It looked as though a laser had shot into the skies, only to be swallowed by the clouds above. The most shocking part, though, was the fact it didn’t disappear. It hung there like a beacon even long after the little mink hopped back down. 

”A blue flare?” Irolana was shocked. 

She found it hard to still call that pillar of light a flare. At most, it should have lasted two or three seconds. In addition, the color shot should have been red to blend in with the shades of red the Oryx saw in. What was going on?

”I don’t know enough about the Oryx to guess what shades they see in. Don’t you think it’s much easier then to just copy the sky’s color? In that case, no matter what shade they see in, it will blend in no matter what?”

Leonel explained off handedly, but he had already brought out the Titan Hyena skeleton. 

Little Tolly sprung into action, rapidly helping Leonel form arrow tip after arrow tip. 

Leonel didn’t seem to have any idea that his simple explanation had fried the minds of the freshmen who followed him. They looked up into the skies, only now realizing that after taking their eyes off of the beacon for a moment, it took them a moment to find it again and that was despite knowing that it was there!

For anyone who knew how Light Prism type Ores worked, even a subtle tweak could result in a completely different color. It was easy to hone in on a large group like ’red’ or ’blue’, but to nail down a specific shade required accuracy on the order of a fraction of a fraction of a degree. 

How Leonel had accomplished this without measuring tools or even a proper working environment was completely beyond them. 

”Is… Is it really alright to make it so difficult to find?” Ingkath couldn’t help but ask. 

At the moment, the three felt like lost sheep. They absentmindedly followed Leonel without even knowing why. Maybe it was because all of his actions seemed so confident, but they couldn’t really explain why themselves. 

Due to this, they had missed an obvious flaw. If it was so subtle even for them, was this really conducive to gathering more people? How many would actually recognize the signal for help? Not only had Leonel changed the usual color, he had changed its usual function and even made it difficult to spot. 

Leonel shook his head. ”Things will be even better this way. Even if only a few come, that’s even better. Soon, we’ll be setting out to find them so even if they don’t, it won’t be a big deal.”

The pupils of the three constricted. Could it be that Leonel only casually did this so that they wouldn’t be too idle while he completed his Craft?

Hold on, he was Crafting?!

Watching the liquid metal run through Leonel’s hand with such deftness left them in a state of shock. 

Aina shook her head watching Leonel, a light smile on her face. 

”It’s more than that.” She supplemented, clearly realizing that Leonel was focused on forming these arrows as quickly as possible. 

”The fact that the flare isn’t normal will help us. The first thing people will think when they see it isn’t that someone is asking for help. If they thought that, very few if any would come and some might even run in the opposite direction.”

The three blushed furiously when they heard this, still embarrassed about the actions of their teammates. 

”But, if it’s like this, it will make people curious instead. They might even think that there’s a hidden treasure here and that they were the only ones sharp enough to spot it. That will make many more come than what you might expect…”

Aina had hardly finished her words when the shuffling of grass and the soft words of a few groups reached their ears. 

It had hardly been ten minutes and the first few had already come.