Dimensional Descent

The rhythmic clanging of metal echoed again and again.

After dealing with the city lord, Leonel seemed to have forgotten about the rest of the world as he went back to forging.

In truth, he wasn’t very interested in doing this back-and-forth with the experts of this world. Going around, conquering cities, and razing his enemies to the ground wasn’t interesting in the slightest.

This was the most obvious path to clearing this Zone, but Leonel also knew that it wouldn’t work for him for several reasons.

First, the Regulator would make it a living hell for him. Trying to follow the conventional path would just give it more chances to do exactly that.

And second, he already had a Valiant Heart. His goal wasn’t to form one like the others. His goal was to form his Weapon Force on his own.

These were the two requirements for clearing this Zone.

However, for obvious reasons, the second would also be a living hell thanks to the Regulator.

This ironically put Leonel right back at step one. He wasn’t going to succeed in forging his own Weapon Force by meditating in silence. He needed to battle. And that put him right back in the Regulator’s clutches.

It was a vicious cycle, to be sure. But that didn’t mean he had to follow everything to a tee.

If he was correct, his enemies should be making their way toward him right this moment, so he would use them as a nice whetstone.

**CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.**

Leonel stopped swinging his arm, shaking his head.

’Still not good enough!

He tossed the blade to the side.

Making a long-standing Weapon Force better was next to impossible. In order for it to be triggered in the first place, it already had to have reached perfection in some aspect. There was nothing to improve.

The creation of a Weapon Force shouldn’t be looked at like inventing an item. The creation of a Weapon Force was exactly the same as someone creating oxygen. How could you improve oxygen?

’No, it’s even more fundamental than oxygen, as I know it is two oxygen molecules

bonded together. Creating a Weapon Force is no different than piecing together a fundamental atom from its electrons, protons, and the basal elements even more fundamental than them...’

As stable as oxygen was on its own, trying to add to it or remove from it would immediately destabilize it.

Ironically, Leonel’s task was even more difficult than what he described precisely because of this.

It might be easier if he were trying to create an entirely new chemical. But he was trying to mess around with an already stable one, one that had been refined and perfected for countless generations. It was practically like trying to make a noble gas more stable than it already was. There was no room for improvement.

If not for the machinations of the Regulator, Leonel might not even think to go this route.

He had already created his own Force before in Violet Force; he didn’t need to do it again to stroke his ego. Even he, deep inside, felt that Spear and Bow Force were already perfect as they were.

He didn’t have any ideas for how to perfect them even further.

Leonel took a breath and exhaled.

To the side, Kammy couldn’t understand Leonel’s disappointment at all. He was practically like a child on Christmas Day, going through the blades Leonel created one after another.

Most of the militiamen used spears. There were a few swordsmen and archers among them, but seeing the quality of these blades, he thought about just forcing them to

abandon their weapons of choice.

Even a few casual, unpracticed jabs with these blades would skewer enemies before they knew what happened to them.

It might be worth the loss in skill.

Plus, this was a world without Force just yet, so the value of a mortal using a weapon they were familiar with wasn’t nearly as high as it would be otherwise.

”Can I give these to the militia?” Kammy asked, realizing that it wasn’t ultimately his decision to do this.

”Hm?” Leonel looked up, then waved a hand. ”Sure... but it’s not like they’ll need to use them.”

”What was that?”

”Nothing.” Leonel shook his head as he stood to his feet.

-

He randomly grabbed at the air, and a wooden shaft snapped into his palm.

’Well, at least I can do that now!

He hadn’t remembered the last time he cared about such a thing. With Spear Force came a natural control over spear weapons that could even be seen as a sort of telekinesis that could allow him to retrieve a weapon like this.

It was this same sort of innate connection with such weapons that had stopped him from forging spears for so long, and also what gave him Dominion over spears as a

Sovereign.

Leonel couldn’t remember the last time he had fought a Spear Force master seriously because spears had almost always been useless against him. This Idol Battlefield could very well count as the first time in his life that he had such a chance, the first time he could face off against enemies with Spear Sovereignty strong enough to resist his

own.

**DONG! DONG! DONG!**

Kammy’s expression changed. ”Enemy attack!”

Leonel pressed a hand to his shoulder. ”Calm down.”

With another wave of his hand, a random blade Leonel had forged shot up from the pile and onto the tip of his shaft. He took some twine and began to slowly bind the two

together.

It was so tight that the wooden shaft even seemed to compress beneath the pressure as veins bulged across Leonel’s forearm.

”Let’s go,” Leonel said calmly.

The militiamen were quickly gathering at the city’s entrance, but Leonel walked through them, hopping to the top of the city wall and then casually landing on the

other side.

Alone.

No one had the time to react to the shock of the matter before it was too late.