Dimensional Descent

Flaura slowly closed the book in her hand. Her cherry lips shone particularly bright in the dim lights, and her expression was entirely unreadable. Not many knew Flaura intimately, but it could be said that it was quite rare for her to not be smiling, and even rarer for minutes to tick by without her taking a sip of wine.

A miscalculation.

She never told Leonel to lose on purpose, much like she didn’t tell him to win or lose against the Ma’at Bubble.

For the challenge against the Ma’at Bubble, who won or lost didn’t matter. She had thought that regardless of the situation, the end result would be the same. If she went too far in giving direction, she would just end up exposing her plans, and that was something she didn’t want to do.

What she didn’t know was that even before she told Leonel to challenge the Khafra Bubble, he had already known that she would.

But that was exactly why the current situation was so perfect. Flaura had no idea that Leonel had already seen through her. All she could tell was that Leonel’s improvement speed was far too fast, and that he had more cards up his sleeves than logic would dictate to be possible.

Flaura waved a hand and the images of Aina’s combat appeared.

As expected, every use of Dream Force was so crude and unrefined. It seemed that Aina had a large Dream Force affinity, maybe one she had only recently come into contact with. This made sense considering the two were from an Incomplete World, she couldn’t find any flaws, at least not without being there to witness it personally. Ultimately, these were just projections, they couldn’t grasp the whole picture.

“Some of this is still salvageable. This Aina killed a child in full view of the public, it would only make it easier to demonize them. A few will be able to tell that Little Fox isn’t really a toddler, but the vast majority won’t think so far.”

Flaura organized her thoughts and slotted many other things into place. Even so, she couldn’t quite feel satisfied, as though she was missing something.

Should she take action personally?

No, that was far too dangerous. The tradeoff wouldn’t be worth it, and it would leave too much of a trial for those with sinister intentions to follow.

Plus, now that the Khafra Bubble had been dealt such a blow, things would be even more troublesome now.

They had fallen out of the top 200, and it would be a great deal of effort to get them to climb back up without…

“No, not necessarily. We can use Little Fox’s death again. It will be of great use…”

If Patriarch Khafra played the role of grieving Pavilion Head, it would be very easy to make up for the losses.

When Flaura thought to this point, some of her annoyance had finally ebbed away.

The tradeoff was that the Khafra Pavilion wouldn’t really be able to remain beneath the radar anymore, but that was fine. So long as she was strategic about it, this could maybe be an even better outcome.

“Leonel Morales…” She said slowly as though she was rolling the syllables across her tongue.

A sharp killing intent flashed in her eyes.

She had enough information to bury Leonel right now, but where would the benefit be? A Dream Asura didn’t work based on emotion, they worked based on benefits. Even betraying their own family members was a common and acceptable practice.

She didn’t just want to crush Leonel for the sake of crushing Leonel, that wouldn’t further her goals.

She wanted something more.

She leaned back, tapping her finger on her armrest and finally taking another swig of wine. A sigh of satisfaction that sounded a lot more like a moan came from her lips as she reclined.

“That little boy, he should be looking for his reward, huh?” Flaura chuckled.

With another flick of her finger, the projection before her changed. However, to her surprise, there was nothing but a blank screen looking back.

“Hohoho…” her laughter deepened, but the dangerous light in her eyes had returned.

That was two now. Two slippery fish had escaped from her palms.

Leonel appeared in the Dwarven Bubble with Aina by his side.

Of course, he knew that Aina killing Little Fox was terrible optics, but there wasn’t another choice. The only way to ensure victory was to not only complete the maze very quickly, but to also ensure that Little Fox could not.

It could be said that while he had won, he had paid the price. Not only was Aina stuck in the Fourth Dimension for the foreseeable future, but now there were very troublesome problems lurking in the wing.

But he didn’t plan on just sitting on his hands and hoping for the best either. He would have to make his own opportunities, starting with what was going on here.

The Dwarven Bubble wasn’t open to outsiders. So, in order to step into it, Leonel actually had to make use of a very special method. It could be said that this was repayment for saving Aerin.

Aerin was precisely the key he had used to enter. Or, more accurately, Leonel had replicated a special key that Aerin had on his person.

This special key needed to be used for any teleportation platform connected to the Dwarven Bubble to work, and Leonel wondered if this was also part of what the Dream Asura wanted to gain by killing Aerin.

These keys were, obviously, only in the hands of a select few, and Aerin happened to be one of them.

Of course, appearing using this key had its own share of problems because what did it mean for a teleportation platform that was rarely used to suddenly be used by two people at once?

But Leonel was already prepared.

When they were just about to touch down, his Dream Force spread and his Emulation Spatial Force acted.

By the time the Dwarven warriors rushed to the teleportation pad, there was no one there.