Dimensional Descent

Keiza placed a hand to her chest, pouting slightly at Leonel's rudeness. If one didn't know better, you would have truly thought that she had been wronged by Leonel.

"… It's not impossible for you to buy me off. But, the hit to my reputation will be a very heavy burden to take on."

Leonel's brows furrowed. Why was this woman constantly lacing her words in double entendres? It might have worked had Leonel been susceptible to her coercion, but obviously he wasn't. The only explanation, then, was that she was wasting time. She had no intention of allowing Leonel to 'buy her'.

The moment Leonel reached this conclusion, his mind's focus shifted, locking onto the group led by the Libra brothers. His mind spun, sifting through one plan after another.

The distances were too short, but the beast tide gave them a buffer. The main issue was that this beast tide was getting thinner as they approached the safe zone, which was exactly why their enemies had waited until right this moment to target them in earnest.

In a moment, Leonel had made a decision.

"HA!"

A roar left his lips, a surge of Universal Force erupting from him.

In that instant, Keiza went through three rapid changes of expression. The first was shock that Leonel hadn't bothered to continue negotiating with her an instantly entered a higher battle state. The second was disdain after realizing Leonel's Universal Force was only at the Four Seasons Realm. And, the third and final reaction was once again shock after she suddenly grasped that this wasn't normal comprehension, this was True State Universal Force!

She had forgotten one very important thing. In a density of Anarchic Force like this, regular Universal Force below a certain level couldn't be called down upon. Only those who had master True State Universal Force could manifest this strength at any level!

'Summer… Radiant Core!'

Leonel abandoned spring, winter and fall, putting everything he had into his Artistic Conception of summer. A flurry of Radiant Cores began to appear, dozens of them hovering before the daggers held up by Leonel's tendrils.

In that moment, it was as though the ends of Leonel's tendrils had become volatile drill bits, spinning wildly with violent circulations of Bow Force. The strong rotational, electromagnetic and gravitational abilities of Leonel's Radiant Core bloomed.

Keiza's mind trembled, a towering sense of danger overwhelming her. Leonel's Four Seasons Realm comprehension was too low level to provide any large boost to his Force, and especially not his Bow Force, any longer. However, it didn't need to.

In this environment, Universal Force had a countering force to Anarchic Force. In fact, it could be said that Universal and Anarchic Force were two sides of the same coin, one representing the light and the other touching upon darkness.

As a result of this, the impact Anarchic Force had on Leonel's attacks fell by a large measure. To anyone else, this might be a negligible matter. However… To a bowman like Leonel, it essentially meant that he had suddenly become the Apex Predator of this battlefield.

Leonel's gaze flashed, realizing the change immediately. As expected, his Dream Simulation had been correct.

His dozens of tendrils flexed.

Keiza wasn't a pushover by any stretch of the imagination. The moment she realized the situation had turned unfavorable, she shot backward, her body lifting up into the air and over the beasts as she kept her eyes trained on Leonel.

However, from the very beginning, she had never been Leonel's target.

In a single smooth motion, Leonel's tendrils rocketed forward before rebounding in the opposite direction, spinning about themselves and sending out dozens of red-gold, spinning drills of Bow Force rocketing toward the Libra group.

Keiza's expression changed.

That was ridiculous. The distance between the two groups following Leonel and the others had been just over a hundred meters initially, just within the abilities of their communication devices. The distance had been cut to about 60-70 meters as they made their way toward Little Blackstar and the others, but sending an attack out from that distance should have been impossible in this environment!

Under any other circumstances, Keiza would be correct. Her deductions were perfect, her mind was quick and her calculations were accurate. Unfortunately… Her opponent was Leonel Morales.

…

Huon and Droet blazed a path toward Leonel's group, feeling that they were on a time crunch. They had been able to lay back and relax most of this time because they had forced those around them to do the brunt of the work and, also, following behind Leonel had been like following a safe zone. The beasts behind their group had been much sparser and, though not to an exaggerated extent, most beasts tended to aim for Leonel as most of their comrades fell in that direction.

This had allowed the brothers to maintain themselves at near peak condition, just enough for them to go all out now. In just a few more seconds, they would make it.

However, what neither of them could have expected was for the foggy skies to sudden light up as though several red suns were boring down on them, each splicing through the air as though they had minds of their own and falling down from above with lethal intentions.

The eyes of the brothers widened.

"Enemy attack!"

The assumption that both Huon and Droet made was that they had accidentally offended a powerful beast. One that could attack them from outside their range of site had to be at least Tier 7, if not higher. In fact, they even believed that this might have been the final hurdle they had to cross to be allowed into the safe zone.

However, caught off guard, and being attacked from a direction completely opposing to the destination they were facing… The results were devastating.

Screams of horror and cacophonic booms resounded. Leonel's timing was all too perfect and the Libra group found themselves in shambles. The two brothers could only brandish their rope darts with dark expressions, turning to face the direction of their attackers.