Dimensional Descent

The words were enough for Leonel to understand the sort of person the Demoness was.

Maybe in another life, he would have ended up the exact same way. He didn’t know what exactly her story was, or who she was so obsessed with bringing back, but what he did know was that it was a foolish pursuit.

If there was someone powerful enough to wave a hand and bring back life… then was it truly ever worth much of anything to begin with?

This was something that Leonel had accepted that the Demoness was entirely unable to.

And now, this woman, who once had the entire world in the palm of her hands, had begun to show some fluster for the very first time. That was because a key cog in her plan had been entirely crippled by Leonel.

Suggestion through Dream Force… it was something that the world feared greatly. Dream Force Masters were some of the most fearsome existences throughout Worlds, and until now, there were none more powerful than the Demoness.

The accents in the names of those with ’’ in their monikers had always been meant to convey pulses of Dream Force. Oddly enough, all Void Race and Pluto Race members had had these accents as well, but they were always muted, not carrying the same pulse of Dream Force.

They were easy to forget as a result, just a quirk of their languages. It was only natural that different cultures and dialects had their own way of doing things.

Even Leonel never second-guessed it. It was something hidden in plain sight that no one would give a second thought to.

Until Leonel did.

Those muted accents were there for a purpose. They were a suggestion cast over the entire Race. Both of them.

The power of them, and the scale, was on a level that was hard to even fathom. But what was even more important was what they represented…

The Void Race. The masters of space.

The Pluto Race. The masters of time.

Just what did it mean to have absolute control over both Races simultaneously?

Leonel just decided… that he would rather not find out.

In the entirety of Existence, if there was one person that could stand toe to toe with the Demoness in terms of Dream Force, it was Leonel. If Dream Force was separated into Dimensions of control, the two of them were the only ones standing on their plane.

And because of that, the Demoness couldn’t protect her plans from Leonel at all. The moment Leonel took action, he was able to exploit the vulnerability the Demoness left behind on purpose to kill every single member of the Void and Pluto Race.

The Demoness never thought that the backdoor she left behind to control the two Races would be used in this way. But her words also explained that well enough.

She ultimately thought that in the end… Leonel would be on her side.

How many iterations had the two of them been through together? Was it really possible that Leonel could never find her?

Impossible.

In the end, it seemed as though Leonel made the same choice every time: to allow the Demoness’ plans to continue unhindered.

What she never expected was for Leonel to make the complete opposite decision he had in the past.

Leonel had changed.

His rage-induced mistake in the Dimensional Verse had once weighed heavily on his heart. He was a man who treated all lives equally… for him to erupt with such anger that he wiped out entire Races just for the sake of venting his own frustrations was entirely unlike him.

That guilt had followed him for a very long time, and it was never quite resolved. It was the same reason even if he had been aware of this backdoor before, no matter the iteration, he never pulled the trigger.

But what shocked the Demoness even more was that Leonel had truly given up on his father. She had personally witnessed all of the things Leonel had done to try and bring Velasco back, the level of destruction he had wrought.

For him to change his mind like this all of a sudden was what floored her the absolute most.

She never realized, that all this time… she was actually on Leonel’s chessboard.

When Leonel was training with Nilrem, being forced to recall all of the methods of power he had created in previous iterations, he was also recalling every failure, every attempt, every bit of suffering he had caused, only for it all to end in the same exact way.

That moment when he finally gave up and allowed the Northern Star to take his life was symbolic in more ways than one…

He had already given up then.

He just needed to live one more life to be reminded of it all.

Maybe he could bring Velasco back. But he would never be able to bring his father back.

That… he had accepted.

Now, it was time to end this.

The Demoness stared into Leonel’s eyes for a long while before she flipped over a palm.

An elegant spear appeared, radiating a delicate purple light. But when Leonel saw the stinger on the end of it, his eyes widened, his pupils trembling heavily.

Sparks of lightning flew across his mind, connections he never thought he would make in his life overwhelming him to the point he nearly took a step back.

”You…”

It was the second spear that Leonel had ever gained from the Spear Domain Ring, the very one that made him realize that not all the spearmen depicted in the ring were men.

”I have always been by your side, Little Lion. A parent’s burden isn’t something that you can imagine. Whether you believe it or not, I love you. I love your father. I love your uncle…” she looked up from the spear. ”… I love your grandfather.”

She pointed her spear forward, her dress fluttering in the wind.

”The gap between us isn’t something that you can bridge. This chessboard, as you call it, is far larger than you can fathom.”

The Demoness’ spear tip trembled and a hole was ripped right through Leonel’s throat.