Dimensional Descent

Leonel woke up again much later, his mind still in a bit of a fog. He chose to keep his eyes closed, lying there and letting a steady sort of peace overcome him. 

Within the depths of his mind, the Emperor's Might tablet floated about. Ever since Leonel had gotten it, he hadn't gotten much out of it. This wasn't necessarily for lack of trying, but the tablet simply didn't respond much to him. 

Part of this was probably because he wasn't entirely compatible with him. His own King's Might was a mutated version of the Emperor's Might of this tablet so it wasn't entirely certain that he could make use of it to begin with. 

It had to be remembered that the Bronze Tablet had been with the Luxnix family for centuries but their main Lineage Factor was still the Snowy Star Owl. Just having a tablet wasn't enough to demand its secrets from it. It required compatibility and talent, two things of which Leonel was entirely sure he had for the Emperor's Might Tablet. 

Leonel couldn't help but think of the conflict between himself and his grandfather. The root cause of it was a difference in how they saw the world. Back then, Leonel was quite certain that there would come a time where he and his grandfather would be on such polar opposite sides that battle would be the only way to settle things. 

Leonel wasn't sure how that moment would come about, or even when it would, he just felt that it was nigh inevitable. 

In recent times, though, the way he looked at the world had also begun to shift and so had his mentality. He still felt far more like a King than he did an Emperor, but it was nowhere near as firm as it had been in the past. In fact, now that he thought about it, what situation had he been in when he forced the Emperor's Might tablet to come to him in the first place? 

Back then, he had been infuriated, furious that the world was forcing him to make such a choice. But in the end, he had still made it without hesitation. 

He chose Aina over the world.

That was the mental state he had been in when he forced the tablet to come to him, and following that, there had been a slight shift in the way that he viewed things, even becoming more unrestrained and unfettered in his actions. 

The way Leonel had seen things, a King was a man of the people. He curated the loyalty of his closest noblemen, he ate with his generals and shed blood with them on the battlefield, he could see things from both his perspective and that of others, formulating a world for everyone under his strength. 

An Emperor however… he was lofty, untouchable. He schemed and pulled at the puppet strings of his ministers and noble court, seeking balance not through understanding but through power. He sat on a throne and looked down on the people, there were simply too many of them for him to care about their individual plights, all that matters was that he would maintain his strength. 

There was an air of selflessness to being a King that an Emperor didn't have… that they almost couldn't have. 

But then the question was that if by virtue of the job at hand an Emperor couldn't be a King, then how exactly would it be possible for Leonel to be a King if his goal was to subdue the whole of the Dimensional Verse? 

Wouldn't the vastness of an Emperor's territory then become his problem? How could he be a King if the territory he governed was so abnormally large? How could he still be selfless? 

Emperors struggled to maintain their humanity even when their subjects were all human. The Dimensional Verse had the Human Race, the Rapax Race, the Spirituals Race, the Cloud Race, the Dwarven Race… The list felt almost endless and each of them had their own cultures, their own perspectives and philosophies… 

Was his dream even possible to achieve while maintaining the air of a King? 

In truth, subconsciously, Leonel already felt that he had lost such a right. How could he continue to claim to be selfless, to be a man of the people, when he had chosen his woman over trillions of lives? Did he even still have the heart to be a King? Or, more importantly, would a King always have to sacrifice his Queen for victory? 

'If that was true, I don't want to be a King.'

It was a simple decision, but it was one that Leonel was unwavering on. No matter what the situation, no matter the circumstances, he would never choose to sacrifice Aina. 

Simply put, in the face of Aina, he didn't give a damn about the world. 

There were very few things that Leonel was so certain of, but it was only upon realizing this so firmly that he chose to truly open his heart to Aina again. All of the other things they had gone through didn't seem to matter anymore. 

There was a time that he had almost given her up for the sake of this dream. But there was also ironically a point in his life that nothing mattered to him outside of her happiness. 

It was funny, he had once again become that very same lovesick boy who confessed his feelings over 500 times. But somehow, it felt different than it had before. Less superficial, more weighty, greater in substance. 

Sometimes how you acted or what you knew mattered less than how you had come to know them. The difference between Leonel of back and the Leonel of now was that the Leonel of then didn't have any goals or aspirations… but the Leonel of now was willing to give those goals and aspirations up without a second thought. 

If you compared the two, which love was worth more?