Dimensional Descent

The WHOOSH sound of a formed portal caught everyone's attention. It swirled about with a radiant dark violet and looked like a rotating nebula.

Alienor cast a glance and released her hold on Leonel's forearm.

"It seems it is time to go."

Somewhat reluctantly, Leonel released his grip on Rychard's throat. The latter fell to the ground heavily, coughing and wheezing. It took several moments for the color to return to his face and several more for his light headedness to vanish.

Rychard grit his teeth hard but he restrained himself, relaxing his body in the next instant. If it wasn't for the somewhat vacant look in his eyes, one would have never guessed that something had happened. Well, that and the fact there was already a clear bruise in the shape of a hand around his throat.

He rose from the ground slowly, but steadily.

"Follow me." Alienor said lightly.

There was a certain heaviness in Alienor's tone right this moment. It wasn't because she feared for herself, but rather because she wasn't naïve enough to believe that her actions would have no effect on her son. In fact, she was certain that it would be the direct opposite.

As a mother, she couldn't help herself. Worrying was what she did. Even if her husband had been watching Leonel like a hawk right this moment, and even knowing the kind of strength he had, she would still be worrying.

The Void Palace had its rules that protected disciples, but there were too many ways around them and they could only be enforced within its territory. And… Velasco had many enemies that had more than enough leeway to ignore these rules all on their own.

Of course, whether they would dare to do so was a different matter entirely, but there were several more ways for them to make things difficult. They knew Val's personality well enough to know that they would get away with it too.

While Alienor looked like a reckless mother who had done as she pleased to save her son, the reality was that she had only gone so far because she needed to give her Little Lion every advantage he could get, because the truth was…

He was already lagging far behind.

The step through the portal was unlike anything Leonel had ever experienced before. It was far less subtle than his transportation to the Dimensional Cleanse Trial World and felt a lot like his body was being stretched into a thin string, as though all his nerve centers had been shut down and his limbs were being pulled into a tight tube.

When his vision cleared and he could finally feel his feet beneath him once again, the world around him was even more of a shock than the initial feeling.

Leonel had thought that he had seen a lot of the Dimensional Verse already. Or, more accurately, his talks with Wise Star Order over the past few months had made it feel like his horizons had been broadened beyond the scope of even his previous imagination. However, the scene he saw before him now still took his breath away.

There was no world, no planet, no moon… The Void Palace was just an enormous obsidian mountain range, floating in the depths of space and hanging upon a vast nothingness.

The sheer size alone was impossible for a normal human to fathom. The distance from its base to its lowest peak was taller than the diameter of three planets stacked on top of one another, and its highest was more than five. As for its width, it was as much as ten planets wide.

This alone was astonishing enough, enough that Leonel found it hard to wrap his brain around just how such a construct could even have been formed. But, that was when his breath was taken away by the Gates.

The Paifang were even more glorious than the mountain range itself. Of course, this was partly due to the fact that the obsidian mountain that made up the Void Palace's territory seemed to be covered by a thin veil of protection, stopping Leonel from observing it as deeply as he wanted.

[Author's Note: A Paifang is a Chinese style gate/archway]

They towered for thousands kilometers, the center piece of each one of their archways containing what looked like a miniature blazing white star, providing the only sort of contrast to the endless blackness in the surroundings.

While the mountain range seemed an almost infinite distance away, the Paifang were close, almost too close. They bore down with a haunting momentum that made the Valiant Heart Pillars Leonel had experienced before seem like nothing more than child's play.

It felt like these Gates were the linchpin that kept everything in place. They protected the Void Palace despite not having doorways and acted as passageways simultaneously.

It was only then the shocking question hit Leonel like a ton of bricks.

The mountain was over there, and the Gates were there, but they all hung in a vast and empty space. So, what the hell was he standing on?

Leonel looked down, his pupils constricting when he realized that he wasn't standing on anything at all. There was nothing between him and an endless abyss.

Usually, this wouldn't be a big deal. After all, in space like this, there shouldn't have been a need to worry about gravity inevitably leading him to a crushing death. But, he could very clearly tell which way was up and which way was down in this place. Just what was going on?

Before Leonel could think about it any further, the closest Paifang whirred to life, the shadow of several figures stepping outward. Leonel couldn't seem to see through any one of them, but he could tell that each one was unfathomable.

Orinik and the other envoys seemed to be snapped awake right that moment, hurriedly bowing in greeting. However, these figures didn't spare them a single glance as a woman at the center of them all frowned deeply, her gaze having been locked onto Alienor the entire time.

"What is the meaning of this, Alienor? Your Sector is several months late."