Dimensional Descent

Leonel slowly opened his eyes. As he did so, there was a knock at his door before it opened. Aina walked in with a tall bundle of paper and handed them to him. They seemed to carry the recipes that he had asked her for. He nodded lightly and accepted it before he waved a hand, and it vanished, likely off to whomever he had tasked with doing such things.

”It’s also about time to return,” Aina said.

Leonel stood, understanding her meaning. ”What are the details?”

”Alienor says that it’s a four-person entry. The name of the Sub-Dimensional Zone is: Merlin’s Prophecy. Earth’s Ancient History.”

Leonel frowned. Earth’s Ancient History? What was that supposed to mean? It didn’t pin down any sort of era, nor did it mention a myth. He assumed that this would be a Mythological Zone, but maybe that had been an incorrect assumption in the first place. After all, there had also been Joan’s Zone which had such a prefix, but it was a normal Zone that went back in time to an obvious era of history just like one might expect. Just because Camelot’s Zone was Mythological in nature didn’t mean that the next would be.

It was impossible to establish a pattern with just two, but maybe this Zone would be purposely unlike the first two. But all of this was questionable and uncertain.

Earth’s Ancient History could mean too many things, and many of the matters that had occurred prior to the establishment of the American Empire were far too blurry, and it only got worse after the Ascension Empire took over the world.

Emperor Fawkes had a very tight rein on information, but there was very little about how the Ascension Empire had come about, and also what the world was like before the war began, at least not much beyond the immediate past of the situation. On top of that, because the tectonic plates had been moved and manipulated, forging a large Pangea-like supercontinent that brought everyone together, whether it was former historical sites or even regions that could have been used for carbon dating, it was all thrown away.

It could be said that matters before around 1000 CE, and certainly anything before, was far more blurred than anyone wanted to admit; the profession of archaeology and history was mostly dead, although still taught in some lesser form.

Emperor Fawkes probably had his reasons for doing so. He had truly come out of nowhere, and he likely wasn’t even a true native of Earth, at least not in the sense that could be widely accepted by everyone, so doing things like this was obvious.

Just to put matters into perspective, monuments like the pyramids or the Sphinx, or anything of the like, had long since been destroyed, removed, and replaced by monuments of the Ascension Empire instead. As for archaeology, whereas it had once been a profession of field study, language, and deduction, it had mostly become one of deduction and theory, not much different from the field of cutting-edge physics, and yet much less useful.

There were many on Earth who still speculated that the pyramids were built by ancient beings, or that Atlantis had truly once existed, or even that the Library of Alexandria held secrets that they as humans of the mortal world couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Leonel had learned all of this at Royal Blue Academy, from a bit of a cooky professor who went by Teacher Midnight. That wasn’t even his real name; he just insisted on calling himself that as he felt that the world of archaeology was in a dark age. He found this to be very lamentable and changed his name in solidarity.

He was quite well-known as the crazy teacher, and Leonel had only taken one of his classes. Funny enough, it was that very class that he had learned the history of Joan of Arc that helped him quite a bit during the Joan Zone.

Teacher Midnight had been a Five-Star Archaeologist, a shame considering he could never put his profession to use. He was actually the only one on the whole of Earth with that title, but he taught at the third-ranked school instead of the first. One could see just how little the title was valued from that alone.

That man was probably dead by now. Leonel hadn’t bothered to check, but the situation in the school wasn’t good at the time, and the World Spirit’s portals would have only picked up the youths. That meant he would have been stuck in a maze of Invalids without any fighting experience.

On top of that, even if he had been alive, Leonel wouldn’t have bothered to go and find him. He was likely too weak, for one. And everything he knew was mostly theory. Leonel could read more and know more than him in a single sitting; it wasn’t worth his time.

Plus... the way he would approach Zones now was very much different.

”Let’s go, then,” Leonel said lightly.

”Who are you taking?”

”You, mother, and as for the last... it will have to be Little Tolly.”

Aina’s gaze flickered. Indeed, Tolliver counted as a living existence; it wasn’t possible to casually take others. But she had a feeling that Anastasia might have a work around for that. If she could think of it, Leonel definitely could. It was just that he couldn’t be bothered to deal with anyone else. That made her feel both grateful, but also worried. How far down this path would he go, exactly?

Leonel left the Morales territory with more confidence than one should have expected. He had barely taken control of the situation, and yet he had directly left for a period that may very well be a very long time.

Days later, he stepped foot onto Earth once again with his mother and Aina by his side, directly appearing before the massive portal. It was the largest that he had seen outside of the Cataclysm Zone’s descent, and he could also smell a keen sense of danger from it. Although his gaze sharpened, he didn’t say anything else, entering with confident steps.