Dimensional Descent

Leonel lay on the starry road. He was a person very much used to being on top of everything. For the past several years, his mind had worked on such a high level that he could even tell how much time had passed without even being consciously aware of it; it was like there was a ticking clock in the back of his mind, constantly rolling forward with the seconds. After he had woken up from his coma just this past month, he had been aware of exactly how much time had passed without even having to double-check with anyone. But this time...?

He had no idea.

He didn’t know whether it had been a few days or weeks, for all he knew it could have just been a few seconds. It was as though everything around him had shut down, and when he came to, he had his dad’s dictionary in one hand and his glasses in the other. He wondered if he would have even been able to come to himself if not for these two things.

Even so, he didn’t quite feel like he had the energy to stand. Every cell of his body had been wiped clean, moving in what felt like slow motion. His high vitality had no ability whatsoever to help him recover, or at the very least, not any time soon. It was a feeling that he would have called suffocating, if not for the fact he couldn’t quite remember if he had breathed, or if he even needed to breathe.

He lay on his back, looking up at the endless depths. He wondered... no, it seemed that this trial world was actually an Incomplete World of its own. But it was completely devoid of life, well, outside of those that would come here from time to time.

It was quite fascinating. He wondered how the creator of [Dimensional Cleanse] had managed to make it so easy to cross from one world to another without an extraordinary power source. Although he could copy the method and rearrange the chemical structure as he saw fit, copying and understanding were two completely different things. It was so far beyond him that he couldn’t wrap his head around it, but it was also fascinating for exactly that reason.

What other discipline could allow a layman to copy a master so precisely and execute the same results with repeated certainty? It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Leonel’s head shifted, and he looked down at the pair of glasses in his hands.

He had squeezed them pretty hard, all of his strength, in fact. But they didn’t so much as creak. It was an odd feeling; he was sure that even if there was an Eighth Dimensional item in his hand, even if he couldn’t destroy it, it would at least have some give to it. But this had nothing of the sort.

He wondered how much effort his father had put into it, how many hours of work.

Leonel looked away. That was the thing with tears. If you let them go once, the second time would come even easier, and the third even easier than the second. Eventually, you would be as worthless as a crying baby, curled up on a starry road when there were treasures to be had not too far away.

He thought this, but he still didn’t move. ”Say something, old man,” he mumbled to himself.

[Ping]

Leonel’s gaze flashed, but he didn’t react as violently as one might expect. In fact, he didn’t even look toward the dictionary.

”Finally finished crying? I’m quite touched. What was that, 27 hours? Sheesh, not bad if I do say so myself.”

Leonel’s lip curled into a slight smile. He knew that it was a message. By now, he understood enough about Crafting to know how his father had done it. The usual mechanical voice of the dictionary, a version of his father’s voice without life in it, was done on purpose to lull Leonel into a certain belief. In reality, all of the dictionary’s messages could be in just as lifelike of a voice if his father had so chosen. But he preferred the chance at pranking his son instead.

That said, there were indeed many things within the dictionary that were pre-recorded, but there were even some pre-recordings within that presented themselves as such that were, in reality, just the dictionary speaking.

This was one such example. The ”Finally finished crying” part was pre-recorded. The ”27 hours” part was deduced by the dictionary on its own.

The dictionary was definitely a complex system that brought most AI to shame, and if not for his father’s pranks, Leonel would have noticed long ago. This dictionary was maybe the greatest invention of his father. It wasn’t casually cobbled together as Velasco had made it seem. In fact, if its intelligence were to be measured against Leonel’s, it would definitely be smarter, and not just by a small margin either.

If there was one item in the Dimensional Verse that was the equivalent to The Hourglass of the Pluto Race, it was definitely this small silver disk in his hands. Its abilities were simple, but it was in this simplicity that it was so shocking and amazing.

”Yeah, I’m done crying, old man,” Leonel muttered.

”Lame. I thought I could at least milk this out for a few more years. Who knew that my seed wouldn’t be as useless as I thought him to be.”

Leonel remained silent, still not answering.

”If you’re hearing this message, I’m dead.”

”Shut up,” Leonel almost rolled his eyes. ”You couldn’t come up with anything less cliché? All that brain power, wasted. You should have used it to at least leave me behind a few starships.”

”Bah, starships, what useless things. Even you managed to single-handedly down one, what good would they be to me?”

”Don’t talk big when you’re dead...”

The dictionary fell into silence.

”Some things have to be done. How far you go now will be up to you. Now stop moping, there’s only one thing I programmed this thing to tell you because I knew you would be too stupid to ask.

”Whatever you do, do not trust the Demoness. She only wants one thing, and that’s to see the world in chaos.”

”Why would I trust her in the first place, stupid old man.”

”You now have daddy issues, who knows? It might be easier for another member of your family to slip through the cracks. She’s your grandmother, after all.”