Dimensional Descent

Leonel took his time. He wasn’t trying to torture Wise Star Order, but it was rather that he wouldn’t play games with his own life.

The technique that Wise Star Order passed on to him was unlike anything Leonel had ever seen before. It almost made all the Force Art languages that he had learned to this point seem like chicken scratch.

’Ancestor said that this technique came from the Spirituals Race, is the gap this large?’

His gaze couldn’t help but narrow. The difference was akin to going from a coding language filled with redundancies to one that was elegant and streamlined. In fact, what was particularly beautiful about this Force Art language was that it didn’t seem constrained in the same way the others Leonel had come to know were.

For example, the Morales family’s Force Art was best used for Crafting. The Luxnix family’s Force Art was best used to form beast constructs. However, the Force Art of the Spirituals seemed like it could do it all. It was so perfect that there wasn’t a single weakness.

After a while, though, Leonel realized that it was just an illusion.

It wasn’t that this Force Art language had no weaknesses, it was rather that the weaknesses weren’t visible from his perspective and weren’t nearly as glaring. It was likely that this Force Art worked perfectly for specific use cases related to the soul, but Leonel wouldn’t be surprised if the Spirituals had other languages to deal with other matters.

Leonel couldn’t help but be intrigued. He suddenly wanted to know a lot more about this race and how they built their understanding of Force Arts to this level.

Leonel had no intention of switching his Force Arts. Though this Force Art system seemed to have no weaknesses and it could perform all sorts of tasks, how well it could do them was a separate matter. It was this that made Leonel realize that the Spirituals must have other Force Arts.

’But to think that a Force Art not even created for those purposes could still fulfill them… What about those designed for Crafting? How much better are they?’

The only shame was that Leonel didn’t know enough about soul related matters to understand just how magical this Force Art language was. To have the ability to tether things as fragile as souls, while simultaneously not causing any harm to them was baffling. Just to understand how great of a feat this was, most humans couldn’t even grasp the concept of a soul, even Leonel didn’t know where his was or how to sense it.

Yet, just by observing this technique, Leonel could feel an odd emotion welling up within him. It was similar to that feeling one got when they stared into the mirror for too long, that feeling that told you that maybe the you that you were looking at wasn’t actually you. The more you stared, the more foreign the you, you had always known seemed and the more difficult it became to reconcile with the fact that nothing had changed from the moment you started to this moment here.

Something stirred within him.

First it felt as though he was gazing upon the formation with his eyes. And then it felt like he was gazing upon it with his mind. And then it suddenly felt as though he was gazing upon it with something even deeper than his mind.

Leonel’s Ethereal Glabella stirred, the rotation of his Seven Stars becoming faster and faster.

’Fuck!’ Wise Star Order felt like banging his head against a wall.

This was his last chance. This stupid fool had actually lost himself in meditation.

The Force Arts of the Spirituals were very unique and Leonel’s analysis of it could only, at best, be considered to be about 10 to 20% accurate with the rest of it being nonsense.

The Spirituals had a very unique way of protecting their intellectual property and their discoveries. Most outside their race that gaze upon their Force Arts would feel as though their souls were being ripped out from their bodies. Eventually, exactly that would happen. Then, the use of the Force Art would change and one’s soul would become entrapped.

Once this occurred, they would become nourishment for the Force Art and breathe life into it, causing a self destruction sequence of the intelligence to take place.

But, why was Leonel’s soul actually so sturdy?!

’Son of a bitch, who the hell has Dream Force affinity this high?!’

Wise Star Order suddenly realized that he really was out of luck this time, he didn’t have anymore tricks up his sleeve. In order to ensure that Leonel trusted him as much as possible, he had even been forced to give the real deal over.

Leonel had managed to sense his soul before the Force Art could rip it out. And, with his Dream Force affinity, he could take control of it before anything bad happened.

The Force Art of the Spirituals originally didn’t have any Force within it, it was just a drawing. Only by using the soul of the spectator as fuel could it then self destruct. Its main design was created to use a meditation trick to fool the ignorant into letting their souls free, but it didn’t actually have any strong suction force of its own.

’Fuck! Fuck! FUCK! I hate this kid!’

Once Leonel grasped the technique properly, he was finished. He wouldn’t be able to hide anything from Leonel and even all his lies would be seen right through. He would be a true slave and there was nothing he could do about it. It was all too infuriating.

A slow breath left Leonel’s lips. His mind felt so much clearer than it ever had before. Though his number of split minds hadn’t increased, his thinking speed felt like it had doubled, making the effectiveness of the split minds he already had increase by at least a fold.

His gaze sharpened and his understanding of Dream Force seemed to have jumped forward another measure. Leonel suddenly had little doubt that his simulations would be even more accurate than they had been in the past.

”Let’s begin, then.”