Dimensional Descent

“How’d you manage to use the Convention Path in the Void Palace?”

“You think I went to the Void Palace for their help? I went to chase skirt-I mean I went to be an instructor. I never joined that shitstain of an organization as a student, I had better things to do. Plus, they paid me a hefty sum. Probably thought that if I was in their sights, they could learn about what made me so powerful. Jokes on them, I’m one of a kind.”

Leonel smiled. This old man never explained things so clearly, but because his AI was strapped to the rules of the dictionary, it was like he was finally learning more about his father’s life.

“So basically the Conventional Path is very malleable. Are there any limitations?”

“There are limitations to everything, but the Conventional Path is a bit… unique. You essentially undergo two body tempering stages. To the outside world you seem to be in the Sixth, then Seventh, then Eighth Dimension. But in reality, you just repeated the Third, Fourth and Fifth Dimensions. You never really stepped into the Sixth.”

Leonel frowned. That sounded… wrong.

“If it sounds wrong, that’s because it is. The Conventional Path is theoretically supposed to work like this, but it doesn’t. Rather than staying in the Fifth Dimension, or better yet, backtracking to the Third with the same strength and power, you instead get what I call… Quasi Dimensions.”

“Quasi Dimensions? What’s the difference?”

Leonel was suddenly very interested. He had concluded recently that Dimensions were highly important, but they didn’t quite work the way explained in Earth’s physics textbooks. He had a feeling that this was the piece he was looking for.

“Dimensions represent an elevated state of being. The higher your state, the closer you are to the foundations of life itself, and thus the more powerful you are.

“This elevated state of being is mostly reflected in an abstract sense to most who go about their day to day lives. However, it’s more tangible than just existing in the abstract, and it’s as real as the Dream Plane is. I just don’t believe that there’s someone in existence you can touch upon that Plane.

“Well, I would have given enough time. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk.

“What’s important is that this state of being is like an anchor that holds everyone in place, and I believe that it’s related to the Regulator.

“The Regulator isn’t the physical manifestation of a being. It has no will, no consciousness, it only exists as an arbitrator of rules. More accurately, it IS the rules.

“My hypothesis is that if anyone actually ever came face to face with a Regulator one day, it would just be a Force Art, just like everything else is.”

“And it’s the structure laid out by the Regulators that gatekeep states of being?” Leonel asked.

“Yes. I would explain more but your little mind would probably implode.

“To keep a complicated matter simple. When you cross a Dimension, you gain greater access to these layers of reality. The more access to these layers of reality you gain, the more you can impose your will onto the world and ignore the rules of the Regulators.”

Leonel’s eyes narrowed. He thought back to that Void Race Ancestor who was so large he seemed to encompass the entire Incomplete World. The Regulator had tried to stop him as well, much like it had tried and succeeded in stopping his father, but it had all been useless.

Was this what his dad meant by ignoring the rules of the Regulators?

“Then what about Forces? This explanation sounds a lot like one I received for Force Manipulation.”

The dictionary fell into silence, but Leonel could feel it calculating something. In fact, he could vaguely tell that what it was doing was translating.

Leonel’s Crafting was on an entirely new level now, and though he was far from his father, he had at least clipped the edge of Velasco’s cloak. He could feel what the dictionary was doing now with much more clarity.

When the dictionary was doing this, it was converting the terms his father used into ones he used.

Force Manipulation was a term Leonel had coined, it was unlikely his father would use the same words. And his father had never stepped out of the Dimensional Verse, so how could he know what terms the Four Great Families used either?

But somehow, the dictionary was able to convert everything into vocabulary only he could understand.

Then it spoke.

“Yes, the concept is the same. But the distinction is in body and in soul.

“An increase in Dimension, regardless of what caused it, or path you follow, is fundamentally a change in body.

“A comprehension of Force will fundamentally cause changes in the soul.

“This is why separating the two is so important. The soul’s natural state is in the Second Dimension, as is that of every other Force, but the body’s natural state is in the Third.

“When you’re fused into one, it’s impossible to give both the care and attention they need. Both need their own approaches. If you keep them together, as the body progresses, it will pull the soul along, forcing it to stretch itself across several Dimensions so that it won’t be left behind.

“This weakens your soul overall, and it likewise weakens its connection to Forces.”

Leonel frowned.

He… somewhat? Understood this.

The Layered State of Force Manipulation represented folded your Forces until they could return and be used naturally as close to the Third Dimension as possible. Then, stepping into the Impetus State allowed you to finally take that step, while the Life Step would allow you to return to the Second Dimension.

But it was interesting. It seemed that the body’s task was to rise through the Dimensions, and the soul’s task was to return.

It was this push and pull that made the powerful truly powerful.

“Then what’s wrong with the Conventional Path?”

“It’s unable to make you stronger without pushing your body forward somewhat. Every step up in Dimension in the Conventional Path is about… a Half-Step up in reality, rather than a full step.

“Stepping into the Seventh Dimension means you still have the flexibility of someone in the Sixth. So on and so forth.

“It’s not perfect, and this adds some rigidity to the Path, but it’s still far more flexible than most because so long as you haven’t stepped into the Eighth of the Conventional Path, there’s still a lot you can do. It’s part of the reason I spent decades in the Seventh Dimension, looking for my path.”

Leonel’s eyes glowed. This gave his brothers far more of a chance than he originally thought.

Plus, Aina never followed the God Path either. Or, rather, she seemed to have only used it as a skeleton. She relied on her Clairvoyance to make her own path.

As for him, he obviously used [Dimensional Cleanse]. Not that it mattered since he had somehow returned to the Third Dimension anyway.

“Then for someone in the Seventh Dimension of the Conventional Path, what would you suggest?” Leonel asked.

This was the main reason he had come here.

“Not everyone can follow my Path, and I assume you’re not talking about yourself because you clearly didn’t follow that Path either.

“It ultimately comes down to a few things. Raise your Forces as high as you can. Raise your Ability Index to the highest level you can. Raise your Universal Forces to the highest level you can. And since you’re not as amazing as me, find a Path most suited to your growth.

“Only after doing those three things first will you be able to understand best what Path suits you.”