Dimensional Descent

Amery's pupils constricted. This attack was one that he hadn't been able to sense the first time, but almost as soon as his heart skipped a beat, he regained his composure. His sword seemed to improve once again.

CLANG! He struck out without even looking, his blade parrying Leonel's strike.

Leonel's spear faltered and his Force Art flickered, threatening to collapse. The greatest weakness of his Spear Dance technique was that every stroke had to be perfect. If he made even a single mistake, he would need to start again from the beginning.

This was only the second time he had used such a technique, and it was even in a completely different situation than the first time, but Amery had actually reacted to it even quicker than he had the first time. Not only had he reacted faster, but he had not just blocked, but even parried it.

A sword blade entered Leonel's chest, just barely missing his heart but still tearing a hole right through his lungs.

Before the Sword Force could explode, Leonel's cold, indifferent gaze flickered with a slight violet light. He activated [Emperor's Edict], fusing it with his mother's bubble world technique. He had long since realized that these two techniques had the very same foundation.

He contained Amery's sword strike, and in an odd occurrence, the blade separated into two pieces almost as though the front of Leonel's body had become a portal to his back, but leaving his body itself entirely unscathed.

The explosion of Amery's Sword Force occurred to Leonel's back, a strong Spatial Force warping its location. Leonel's spear recovered quickly, his eyes flickering with a calculative light as he adjusted and made up for the mistake.

His body spun out of the way, his spear arching backward, sweeping down and then up once again, forming a gorgeous semi-circle of golden Spear Force that ascended right toward Amery's head.

Leonel's spear tip and Amery's sword tip met perfectly.

Leonel was forced into a strong retreat, but his spear seemed to use the momentum of Amery's retaliation to draw another elegant arc through the air.

Amery's gaze narrowed. He could feel the pressure of Leonel's spear strikes increasing. It had already been over 200 exchanges, and though Leonel was in a sorry state, Amery could feel that the accumulating power in his spear was only increasing.

Leonel himself felt that his understanding of Amery was quickly deepening. The two had both stopped using their Ability Indexes at once, and they had once again both started using them again at the same time.

He was certain. Amery's Ability Index was very much similar to Aina's, however it wasn't related to self-healing or Blood Sovereignty. Instead, he seemed capable of improving extremely quickly.

It hadn't been obvious before because he had been at the bottleneck of the Natural Light Realm, but the moment he crossed into the Cosmos Realm and gained so much room to improve, it was as though he was riding with jet fuel in his sword. Every time Leonel's Spear Dance improved, so too did Amery's, and in what was an absolutely shocking realization, it felt that Amery was improving even faster than his Spear Dance could.

Even so, a realization was just a realization.

The clash of their spear and sword didn't move Leonel in the slightest. In fact, his heartbeat became calmer. The lines that his spear drew across the air became firmer and less impacted by Amery's swords. His steps became lighter, his hands moving faster and the weight of his strikes heavier.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Suddenly, the space between the two erupted. The silence of their clashes seemed to have boiled over.

The planet rumbled, pits of carnage forming everywhere they went, but this time they were so deep that bubbling pools of magma rushed over their edges, snaking across the crevices of the ground and burning everything in their path.

The fierce glow of Leonel's gaze seemed to have reached its fever pitch.

Blood leaked from every inch of his body, it seemed that there wasn't a single location on him that didn't contain an injury, but every ounce of Force in his body seemed to have been focused on just this singular pursuit.

The twisting of Leonel's feet, the sway of his spear, the trembling tip of his blade, it seemed to fuse with the image of a dance that the spectators had seen all those weeks ago.

At that moment, the backdrop of Leonel's 10 Stars seemed to become a cosmos of their own. They separated, taking up points of Leonel's quickly forming Force Art as though they were anchors.

Lines of Force surged out of them. Dream Force. Scarlet Star Force. Void Force. Vital Star Force.

Within the shimmering ball of gold, they were the only other sources of light. Standing in the middle of it all, one Force Art below, and the other above, rotating like the complex inner workings of an ancient clock, Leonel's wrist stiffened as he took a single step forward.

With this step, the world around his sole rippled. It felt like the very fabric of the world itself was moving like the disturbed surface of a lake.

The sudden rush of danger hit Amery like a moving truck. The accumulation of Leonel's power had been so slow and incremental until this moment when it exploded forth like a geyser from the heart of mother earth.

His hair fluttered in the winds. At that moment, wrapped in colors of royal blue, gold, vibrant violet, deep blacks and hues of silver, Leonel looked to be no different from a guardian deity, unmatched and untouchable.

That danger that the Eighth Dimensional Ancestors had felt before assaulted their senses once again.

"332," Leonel said lightly.

The violet glow in his eyes had grown to the point that the whites of his eyes couldn't be seen any longer. As though two orbs of amethyst had replaced his eyes, he looked down upon the world, unmatched and untouchable.

Then, he pierced forward.