Dimensional Descent

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Leonel understood. The reward was these paths. Using his placement in exchange, he had the ability to connect his Spear Domain to more paths. He wasn't sure what extra rewards would come with doing so, but he was sure that they couldn't be bad.

Leonel didn't hurry to establish any connections, instead scanning them one by one. He realized that they weren't all created equal. In fact, the vast majority of them were what he would call dormant, as though he could have established a connection with them whenever he wanted without having to worry about passing the tribulation first. Though, of course, he would have had to have the strength to walk to the top of this peak to begin with, something he was quite far from doing.

Suddenly, something sparked within Leonel's Dreamscape. Could this have something to do with the oddity that occurred in the Spear Domain Ring before? The one that brought the tribulation forward for him?

A flickering light couldn't help but dance in Leonel's eyes for a while until he eventually shook his head.

It would be a waste to use his rewards on these dormant paths. Leonel had a feeling that the point of his reward, and even maybe why Edrym had been so infuriated, was because of these rewards right here. What he should be targeting weren't the dormant ones, but the paths that had some resistance to them.

Leonel felt that there was a limited number that he could take under his wing. Given his performance, the amount that he could ignore the resistance of was quite high, but there were exactly six of them that had a great amount of resistance despite this. And beyond there, there were about a dozen others that Leonel felt that even with his rewards, it was absolutely impossible to budge them.

His eyes couldn't help but narrow. His performance was definitely the very best it could have been, he didn't think that it was possible to do anymore.

In fact, Leonel was actually understating his performance. Of the six most resistant, aside from the dozen or so he couldn't budge at all, he had defeated five of them directly. Compared to others in his field, his performance wasn't just excellent, it was beyond excellent. A Gold Grade evaluation simply wasn't able to cover it.

That was when Leonel remembered something Urah'Kai had called him, a Suppressor... That title seemed to make it quite obvious that those with different tiers of Spear Force were sent to different tribulations. If he had allowed his Spear Force to enter the Sixth Dimension, he would have faced off against others with Sixth Dimensional Spear Force and the hill he had to climb to reach this point would have been both steeper and taller.

That seemed to suggest that the paths he couldn't budge at all came from those taking higher tier tribulations...

Leonel's gaze narrowed and he ignored them, turning back to the strong six. These ones were hard to budge, but it was possible. These six would have to be his target, namely...

"This one.'

Leonel's gaze landed on the strongest of the six. It wasn't by a large margin, minimal, even. However, Leonel was confident in his senses. This was definitely the one, and there was a better than 80% chance that this one was Edrym's.

Leonel grinned. 'He's gonna be pissed. Good."

With a sudden sharp gaze, a radiant spear crown appeared around Leonel's head, wafting with billowing clouds of violet and sharp golden spear blades.

All at once, an enormous spear blade formed above Leonel's head and pierced forward with a blazing speed.

SHUUUUUU!

The rumbling thunder above seemed to react and surged forward as well.

At that moment, in the vast emptiness, the vague outline of another peak formed. What was especially odd was that Leonel had the feeling that he was looking in the mirror, but the main difference was that rather than looking at himself, he was looking at the malevolent gaze of Edrym. The latter looked as though he was trying to bore a hole through Leonel's forehead.

CRACK!

A small pane of glass separating the two cracked and the image of Edrym twisted.

'Not enough, one more," Leonel thought to himself, gearing up for another strike.

Right then, there was a sudden change. The cracked glass quickly reformed itself and Edrym's figure vanished. In his place, an older man that seemed to be about 40 or 50 years old appeared in his stead. At a single glance, Leonel could only describe him as a Greek god. The man was absolutely perfect in all aspects, even the infrequent strands of grey hair only seemed to make him look more noble.

"Child, I advise you to understand your limits."

Leonel blinked. This was possible too? Wasn't this cheating? If you just switched owners of the ring at the last moment to a stronger person, then wouldn't you always be able to protect your territory from being snatched? Where was the justice?

"Where's that old man when I need him..." Leonel mumbled.

'No, there shouldn't be such a blatant loophole, I don't believe it."

Leonel's gaze narrowed and an even large spear blade formed above his head, the rattling of the lightning above gathering momentum as well.

With a flash of his irises, it surged forward, completely ignoring the older gentleman.

The expression of the middle-aged man turned to one of fury as well, but interestingly enough, he didn't move a single inch, and soon Leonel understood why.

The Spear passed right through where the shattered glass should have been, appearing before the old man and passing right through him as well.

At first, Leonel thought that nothing had happened, but soon the peak the older man stood upon split into two, trembling and then collapsing entirely.

The man continued to look at Leonel, his expression as dark as could be.

"You will regret this," he said lightly.

"Doubt it," Leonel said with a smile and wave.