Dimensional Descent

After several minutes, the first page successfully formed, then the second, and finally the third. With each formation, Leonel’s face grew paler, but he still managed to hold on.

When the 17th page was formed, Leonel’s vision finally swam again, turning to blackness.

Leonel fell into another deep sleep, waiting up a couple of hours later to a familiar soft lap. Aina glared down at him, but he only grinned.

That was only 17 pages out of about half a thousand. However, the more pages he cleared, the faster he should be able to go through them. The time they had remaining should be just enough.

Leonel hurriedly stood up again, taking Aina’s hand and bringing her to the side of the tome. With a movement, he flipped open the cover, opening up to the first page.

In truth, he didn’t have to do this. Because he had already reconstructed it, the pages were seared into his mind. He wanted Aina to stop pouting, so he brought her over to show just how worth it the pain was. So long as they got something out of it, wasn’t it worth it?

”Look at this, this seems to be a floor plan for the castle. They probably had to keep records so certain officials could know where all the traps were and how best to take advantage of them.

”It’s a double edged sword in that way. They have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, but if their own aren’t prepared to deal with and handle all of them, then it’s all meaningless. If they end up harming themselves, then it would be counter productive.”

The first five or so pages were all floorplans marked with various labels. Each of these labels denoted a different trap and a trap category. But, this wasn’t the best part of the tome at all.

When Leonel flipped to the sixth page, his eyes lit up, and he squeezed Aina’s hand. He looked like a kid on Christmas day, finally receiving the present he had been asking for months.

As expected, the floorplan wasn’t enough. Not only did this tome note where the traps were, but they also noted what type of trap it was and how to maintain it. In addition, there were even logs for the frequency of maintenance needed and the last time such maintenance occurred!

”This is the first type of trap, it’s under the false wall label and is like that trap we ran into a year ago. It was really cleverly set up and could catch a person off guard. So this is the Force Art behind it…”

? Leonel’s eyes glowed.

Force Arts were a mysterious thing. Just being able to see through one and understand its function, didn’t mean you could understand how it was built and what foundation it relied upon.

One might wonder how Leonel was able to see through the truths of a formation he couldn’t personally construct, but those that thought this way had a misunderstanding about Force Arts.

You could consider Force Arts like code and their function to be the program or software that was being executed. There were hundreds of programming languages, many of which could perform the exact same task and result in the same product.

For a Force Art language he didn’t recognize, Leonel was able to ”surf” the constructed website or delve into the ”programmed” game, but he couldn’t see the source code or even begin to decipher it. At best, he would be able to tell what sort of general steps he might have to take with his own coding language to reproduce the same effects.

However, much like with coding languages, Force Art languages weren’t all created equal. Just because a language could do something, didn’t mean it should. Some were far more of a hassle to use for certain tasks than others would, and this was yet another example.

The Luxnix Force Art language was very good at giving life to Force Arts. In fact, this wasn’t just for the Snowy Star Owl. Leonel had learned long ago that this Force Art language originated from the Bronze Tablet, and it had many more secrets he had yet to uncover.

Likewise, the Dwarven Race Force Art language was exceptionally good at the formation of traps, deception, and defending.

Leonel could, somewhat, understand the underlying secrets of the Luxnix Force Art language. However, the Dwarven Force Art language was entirely foreign to him. So, when he finally laid eyes on it, he couldn’t help but lose himself in a trance.

Seeing Leonel like this, despite her earlier dissatisfaction, Aina couldn’t help but smile. She especially liked when Leonel became like this. Despite her having ”wasted” a year in that training room with him, she didn’t feel like it was a waste at all. Watching Leonel’s work was a guilty pleasure of hers.

”This…”

As Leonel flipped through the pages, his heart beat wildly, and his shock only increased.

Leonel had seen the Force Arts of the Spirituals Race. Well, he had seen bits and pieces of it. Still, he was absolutely certain that there was no Force Art that could surpass it, at least at the time. Their Force Art system was simply too perfect, too without flaw. Despite Leonel being certain that it had only been optimized for strengthening the soul, it could accomplish so much more. He could fathom what the language the Spirituals used for Crafting would look like, and he had even been eager to see it.

But, when Leonel laid eyes on the intricacies of the Dwarven Race’s Force Arts, he froze in place.

At first, he was just excited. But, as more time passed, the light in his eyes faded, and his mind became more and more focused. Eventually, a dense Auspicious Air began to waft from his body, building up like a cloud of dark gold.

Leonel’s finger rose up, and he drew a line across the air, a thin wire of Force following his movements.

When he stopped, a hum resonated through the silent vault.