Dimensional Descent

Leonel lightly held onto the dull Aina’s hand, his expression unchanged. He held no weapons in his hands at all. Standing there, still completely in the nude, one would have thought that he was in an embarrassing situation he had just been walked in on.

But the calmness in his eyes painted a completely different picture.

The momentum of the Demoness now was far more like her real strength, her power pouring out in all directions.

She towered over Leonel, her presence even larger. It felt like he was facing off against a Star, a luminescent being that made the Void Race look like nothing more than empty bags of air.

This was a woman that truly embodied the vastness of the universe, the endlessness of the abyss, the depth of nothingness.

The Demoness’ gaze never shifted to Aina a single time. It might as well have been that this granddaughter-in-law of his didn’t exist. There was a calmness to her, but…

Leonel’s mind expanded.

In that moment, his Dream Force spread out, blanketing the same region as the Demoness’ own.

He picked them out one after another—stray, dispersed, and diluted to such an extent that she couldn’t even arrange them all properly.

Maybe… he too would be like this if he didn’t have the Control Ability Index.

All of his thoughts, all of his memories, were arranged in the prism that was his Dreamscape. He accessed them all with ease, feeling them as much and as purely as he could.

But he still remembered almost slipping down a road.

Back when Aina left him, he weighed their memories on a scale, placing one memory after another as though to see if he could measure her worth in his life.

Luckily, in the end, whatever ridiculous calculation scheme or method he came up with ended up just barely allowing her another chance. But sometimes… he thought about the man he would have become had he not given her that chance.

Would he be like this? Empty to everything? Endlessly calculating? Chasing after something so fervently, and yet not being in the state of mind to even remotely enjoy it should he ever successfully grasp it?

This was the greatest tragedy of the Demoness, the one thing she didn’t seem smart enough to realize.

Even if she found the man that was her husband in every aspect, in every way…

Was she still the woman he would remember? Would she still be the woman he chased after, pined after, gave up everything for?

The Demoness’ pupils trembled, the whispers of Leonel’s thoughts crashing into her in waves.

Maybe Nilrem loved the Demoness far too much to put things to her in this way. But this current version of the Demoness... was truly just that.

When she embraced this title, she had long left behind what it meant to be Ophelia.

That version of herself had died with her husband.

”My wife made me a better man. It’s unfortunate you didn’t notice or understand until it was too late.”

The violent trembling of the Demoness’ pupils only grew more feverish, until it vanished.

Her Dream Force expanded just as violently, exploding out in all directions as she chased something.

And then she found it.

Peace… there it was… she could finally feel peace.

A hint of sadness flashed through Leonel’s eyes, something he never thought he would feel for this woman he had hated almost all his life; she had given up long ago; she just didn’t know it.

Leonel let go of his wife’s hand, grasping her waist lightly and kissing the side of her forehead.

”Together,” he said softly.

She didn’t reply, her eyes still dull, her body unmoving.

Leonel released her. Raising his hand, a spear swirled into being, a tempest of King Force rising through the air as a violet-gold band appeared across his forehead.

He wanted to do this with his spear. It just felt… right.

He raised his blade, feeling the hand of his father land on his, and then his grandfather before him… and then, in a far-off distant land, he felt his grandmother’s.

The grandmother his grandfather would remember.

Ophelia Morales.

A woman he may have once been happy to call grandma.

The Demoness’ eyes were calm, but the beating of her heart returned. She tried to expand her Dream Force further, but she had suddenly run into a limit.

A limit?

That was impossible.

She was a Goddess.

A Demoness.

How could she have a limit?

”It won’t make a difference,” she spoke. ”How can you work together? Can’t you see that she’s too weak to follow you? You, Little Lion, you’re perfect. You can help your grandfather return; you’ve passed my final test. No, you passed it twice over already… Now I’m certain… Now I’m sure there won’t be any mistakes…”

Her words were so calm. They looked like they came from a woman that couldn’t have been more measured and level-headed. But the more she spoke, the more insane she sounded.

How could a woman who wanted to use her grandson to reforge her husband possibly be in her right mind?

It was suddenly all too obvious to Leonel why she had needed his Dream Asura Heart.

She was treating the lives of her descendants as pawns to move on a chess board, and the reason she could do so was just as obvious to him.

A mother’s love for her children, and her children’s children, was unconditional. She didn’t care what sort of tweaks Velasco’s or Leonel’s personality might have undergone after forcing them to reincarnate… or, at the very least, the Demoness had been twisted so much that she didn’t.

But her husband… that was a man she chose with her own hands… he had to be perfect, he had to be the man she envisioned, the man she had always pined after.

He could only be one way; he could only be the very best.

And Leonel was that.

”You’re wrong,” Leonel replied lightly, pity overwhelming his other emotions. ”It’s because we lean on one another that we are strong. I can only stand here because of her.

”She is my Queen.”

The dull Aina’s lips parted as though on instinct.

”And he is my King.”

The Demoness’ pupils stopped trembling, constricting into pinholes.

The pair of husband and wife moved at the same time, rushing into battle side by side in earnest for the very first time.