Dimensional Descent

Leonel took a breath and exhaled. He seemed to gain a deeper understanding of his Spear Force and the direction it was going in.

"You don't need to worry, Anastasia. I wasn't asking for myself; I already have too many things on my plate dealing with Forces I do have affinity for, let alone ones I don't. I was asking for someone else. I thought of the snowglobes and the pods and realized that you must have some comprehension of such things, and it seems that I was right."

Anastasia snorted. "Every World Spirit do-"

Anastasia, seemingly realizing that she had made a mistake, suddenly stopped talking.

Her not speaking much wasn't a mistake. Usually, she was quite talkative. It was just that she knew her own habits and thought to control herself using this path. But she had accidentally let something she had held close to her chest slip just like that.

She looked toward Leonel, hoping he hadn't heard anything, but before she could sigh a breath of relief, he was blinking in shock and she blushed with shame and embarrassment. She had really let such an important piece of information go in such a stupid way.

'Stupid Velasco, Idiot Velasco, this is all your fault! If I wasn't so agitated, I wouldn't have spoken so much and I wouldn't have made such a mistake!'

Leonel remained silent for a long time and didn't answer immediately. He was still processing what Anastasia's words could mean, but in the end he smiled bitterly. He didn't have enough information. He actually didn't know what this could mean at all.

"Alright, never mind that," Leonel said lightly. "I don't know why you want to hide that you're a World Spirit from me, but I assume it has something to do with the fact this is a fake, simulated world, huh? I would blame you for thinking I'm too fragile, but then again I did have a mental breakdown a couple of days ago."

Anastasia froze. "... What did you just say?"

Leonel waved a hand. "I'm what you would call a genius; deducing these things is child's play."

Leonel looked up and suddenly started, finding Anastasia right before him. She surprised him, but she didn't say anything for a long while.

"Indeed..." she finally mumbled. "A pair of monster father and son, makes no sense... Is this the miracle of the randomness of life?"

Leonel raised an eyebrow, but he let this little World Spirit sort out her own emotions. Finally, she retreated, floating into the air again.

"Fine, depending on how this matter goes, I might tell you other things..." she said lightly. "For now, sure, I can help this person you speak of. Time Force comes naturally to me."

"Does that mean my mother can use Time Force too?" Leonel asked. He wanted to ask Anastasia to help his mother as well, in that case. Although his mother already had a World Spirit, a complete one at that, something was telling him that Earth's World Spirit and Anastasia were on two completely different levels.

To his surprise, Anastasia shook her head.

"It's not that I don't want to help, but I truly had a slip of the tongue back then. World Spirits that are more than blobs of instinct are incredibly rare. In all of existence, there are probably fewer than 10 like me.

"While one can help you comprehend the Laws of your World, Time Force isn't something they can pass down. Even for me, such a thing is impossible."

"Even if you fused with someone?" Leonel asked.

"I have a mind of my own; although that makes me far more powerful than most World Spirits, it also limits me as well. I cannot fuse with someone for the benefit of my world; that would suppress me rather than helping me. What I need is someone to partner with me and help me find precious resources. Once I succeed in entering the Ninth Dimension, I'll finally mature, and my world will fully take shape; only then can I try to skirt some of the Regulator's rules by passing down such knowledge."

Leonel nodded slowly. "I see, I understand."

After a moment, he tossed over a snowglobe. "He's in here. We don't have much time, so I hope that you can train him in a time-dilated state. Try to see if you can make him obedient as well."

Anastasia nodded and her eyes lit up. Indeed, Elorin had a strong Time Force affinity; this was indeed perfect.

"Obedient?" Her head suddenly popped up.

"Let's just say he's a bit unruly. His parents were killed due to a decision of Old Man Fawkes. His own grandfather stood in his way, and he was enraged enough to cut him down. So maybe being unruly isn't exaggerated enough for this person."

"His parents died?"

"Indeed. They were likely to become Invalids, so they were killed before the Metamorphosis."

"I see..."

"What, you can do something about that?"

"Well, in the real world, no, but this world is more... pliable, and it's even easier when the people in question have weak causalities. Third Dimensional beings without even Ability Indexes are about as easy as it gets. It would be helpless if they had entered the God Path, or the Eighth Dimension of the Conventional Path, but this is too easy."

Leonel was stunned. He suddenly realized that maybe there were a lot more things Anastasia was hiding from him so that he wouldn't realize just how special she was too early. But now that he had exposed these matters, her misgivings were much less.

She directly spoke about resurrecting two people who had died more than 30 years ago as though it was a trip to brunch.

After a moment, Leonel grinned. After this, would Elorin still dare to disobey him?

Now that he thought about it, Hutch was in the Seventh Dimension of the Conventional Path at best, and his Ability Index was just as broken as his grandson's. If not for familial love, it was unlikely that Elorin would have had a chance to win at all.

"Since you're busy being a god anyway, Anastasia, how about someone else?"