Dimensional Descent

The metal beneath Leonel’s feet crumbled as he vanished. His spear spun in his hands, wild lines of silver, white and blue following its arcs. It felt as though it was both everywhere and nowhere at the same time, touching upon a realm of speed, dexterity and skill that made the pupils of the five Heads constrict.

When Leonel appeared once again, the lines of his blade became less important than the shimmering mark of the golden spear that hung before his forehead. The world fell into a calm silence as every stroke of his blade suddenly gained the ever so slightest golden hue.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to the five Heads just exactly which of them he was attacking. The current Leonel felt like the center of a budding rose, his blades outlining each petal one by one. Before the five realized it, his blade had appeared before Belize, descending with every intention of splitting her skull in two.

“Is this a joke?”

Belize’s rage filled eyes hardly fluctuated as she reached out a finger. But, before she could counter, her expression slightly changed.

A swarm of ash snowfall disrupted her flow of Force, shocking her and causing her reaction to be slightly slow.

A spray of blood shot into the air as her finger was severed. The line of blood played beneath the whites, silvers and blues, looking especially striking in contrast.

Belize didn’t feel pain or rage for just a moment, her expression colored in shock. She turned her gaze toward Leonel, but the latter had already vanished, appearing to her back.

Leonel figure seemed to be enveloped by a shadow as his spear pierced forward. His technique shifted, his demeanor morphing and his artistic conception became several times more layered.

A Radiant Core appeared before his piercing blade, a spiraling Spear Force beginning to spin wildly about it. The Force became so fast that the core itself vanished, as did the spear blade. All that was left was a drill of pulsing energy, carrying the momentum to pierce all things with it.

Belize, who had still not quite begun to take Leonel seriously despite Silam’s reaction was in a daze. She had just had her finger cut off by a Fifth Dimensional ant. Her world spun about her and she couldn’t quite regain her bearings. By the time she realized that her back was about to be skewered, it felt like it was all too late.

Unfortunately… There were four others.

At that moment, Siris Midas’ hand reached down like a clamp. Without a care for the spinning blades or the Radiant Core, his finger scraped through the air as though grating against metal. The sheer force of his strike left tears in the artificial atmosphere, leaving a trail of true space for just a moment.

BANG!

The sight was enough to shake one to their core. It was like watching a mortal stop a drill the size of their body with nothing more than a hand.

Motes of shattered blade lights spun about wildly, some cutting into Belize’s back and some even slicing into Leonel himself. And yet for Siris, his hand remained completely unscathed. It was as though he had just stopped spinning cotton. But somehow…

“Retreat!” Silam’s voice boomed.

Unfortunately, it was already too late. Level Two Spear Force might have been a Fifth Dimensional equivalent, but much like Domains, it existed in a categorization of its own, allowing it to affect those of higher Dimensions. Even for Siris who had an extraordinarily powerful body, such Spear Force would at least leave shallow marks on his skin. The fact it left nothing at all smelled of a conspiracy. And a conspiracy…

Was exactly what it was.

BANG!

The Radiant Core imploded on contact, attaching to Siris’ arm and Belize’s back like leaches.

On the surface, Radiant Core looked like a bundle of flames, but it was fundamentally very different from this. Radiant Core was Leonel’s artistic conception for Summer, an artistic conception built on the core of a Disaster World. The core of a planet wasn’t a ball of flames…

It was a ball of molten metal.

Belize shrieked, feeling as though her body was being burnt from the inside out. She and Deloris had, by far, the weakest defenses of the five, making them easy first targets. It wasn’t long before the smell of cooked skin and fat rose into the air.

It would be one thing if Leonel had formed his Radiant Cores normally this time around. But, what if he had formed them with the very same Shearing Ore he had taken from Avarone’s younger brother? The radiation of the Radiant Core wasn’t potent enough to affect Sixth Dimensional existences, but this heat and metal most definitely would be.

Plants sprung up around Belize’s feet as Siris’ clawed hand changed angles and swung for Leonel.

However, Leonel had long since retreated, his figure blinking several times, jumping a meter or two backward every moment. But, when the four Heads expected Leonel to take another meter or two step back with his fourth blink, he suddenly vanished.

Deloris’ pupils constricted, feeling danger bearing down on her. Beneath the ash snowfall, she couldn’t seem to accumulate her rain clouds. To make matters worse, even if it hadn’t been for Leonel’s artistic conception, the odd environment they were in made it difficult to deploy area of effect abilities, especially ones that relied on atmospheric Force.

That said, after watching Belize suffer and seeing that Siris had taken serious damage as well, Deloris would never be caught off guard in the same way. During the Fifth Dimension, one’s mind would be raised to another state. Deloris’ speed of thought and the pace at which she processed information was far beyond the enemies that Leonel was used to dealing with.

In a single exchange, she had already adapted and taken note of Leonel’s propensity to scheme.

Her dress fluttered and her palm struck out. The air rippled like the waves of a disrupted lake.

Without waiting for the result, her palm flipped over, revealing a sapphire blue whip that instantly arched through the air right for Leonel.