Dimensional Descent

Leonel sat in silence as he watched his friends lose one after another, realizing that he was quite helpless to do anything about it.

In truth, he blamed himself. He spent so long away from all of them that he never truly helped them to grow like he should have. He buried his head away, chasing a woman he couldn't even explain his attraction to and leaving them to fend against the Dimensional Verse on their own.

He spoke of helping people, but he couldn't even properly help those closest to him. In fact, he had only made things harder on them.

The mountain they would have had to climb to earn a spot to enter the Void Palace was tall to begin with, but now with this target painted onto their backs, and their number disparity, an improbable cause had instantly become an impossible one.

There was not the slightest hint of remorse. Without fail, the geniuses of Earth were the first to be cut down every time. If not for Leonel wising up and giving them some protection before they went up, it was likely that each one would have died.

Leonel's brothers didn't fair any better than the rest. They, too, found themselves on the losing end of their battles.

"Fuck!"

Franco kicked his chair over. It flew out with such speed that it shattered into wood splinters the instant it hit a wall. But, that didn't seem to make him feel any better.

Losing wasn't something Leonel and his brothers were used to. They had been a team for so long and could count on two hands the number of games they had lost in that more than decade span. Yet, each one of them, no matter how far apart they were, hit just as bad.

There was a heavy silence, a fury… a subtle feeling of inadequacy…

All the confidence Elthor had helped them build up deflated like a balloon. A gloominess that Leonel didn't know how to fix took hold, but with it came an underlying determination.

Leonel knew well how his brothers responded to adversity. Giving them words of encouragement now would only undermine and insult them. He was certain that this sort of humiliation wasn't something that would happen again… At least not for a very long time.

The billboard flickered once more and this time, Noah stood, his gaze having long since turned from indifferent to cold.

His gaze shifted over and met Leonel's. Though the two didn't exchange any words, their meaning was already clear.

Noah's crystalline blue saber appeared long before he made it to the stage. His steps were even and measured while the sun seemed to dance off the edge of his blade. Every reflective light seemed to make those that saw it reflexively recoil, worried that one of these 'sharp' rays might slice their neck clean off.

Among those that had failed already, Jessica was among them. Her beast taming ability was useless against these enemies as her pets were simply too weak and hadn't grown. On top of that, the wilderness of Planet Luxnix was far too dangerous for even Leonel to travel through casually, let alone her.

Without a choice, she chose to not even summon her partners, resulting in her losing even faster than the others before her had.

Though she returned gracefully and unwounded, without the same gloominess the others seemed to display, every time Noah sent a glance toward her he only seemed to become more infuriated.

Jessica wasn't weak, nor were her beast partners. The reason she didn't dare to summon them was because she knew well that she would be ganged up on. It simply wasn't worth risking the help of her pets just to lose anyway…

For as long as Noah could remember, Jessica had always followed by his side, a silent help and a right hand woman that was simply irreplaceable. He had long since learned how to read the different shades of her placid expression.

She looked indifferent now, but everything from the sway of her short cut hair to the way she crossed her legs screamed to Noah that she was feeling sadness and guilt to the depths of her soul…

Sadness because she had failed… Guilt because she couldn't follow in his steps…

And it was all the fault of these people.

"Oh? Another one of you? Are you all still stepping up to get embarrassed?"

Noah slowly walked up the steps of the arena, seemingly having not heard the jeers of the Montex family member. His steps were silent and his blade lightly bobbed just above the hard stone flooring. Everything from his breathing to the beat of his heart was steady.

"Begin."

Orinik's voice still fell indifferently. He didn't originally care enough about these proceedings to become invested, but he still found himself watching every time a person of Earth stood up. He told himself that this was to ensure that Leonel could never interfere again, but if he was honest with him, he got a sick sort of satisfaction watching them be wiped out one after another.

The instant his voice fell this time, though… He felt that something was different.

BANG!

It was a sound the audience had heard many times before. But, this time, it was so strong and cacophonous that the sturdy stone platform themselves shattered, sprinkling into the air like shards of glass.

Each one of Noah's steps were heavy and there was nothing remotely elegant about his movement. His body grew to three meters in height, his saber became as large as a door and his skin shimmered like diamond beneath the sunlight.

He was like a rampaging titan, his limbs becoming like locomotives, crushing everything in his path.

The soles of his feet shattered skulls, his blade bisected bodies, his fists crushed souls.

Every heart rending cry and spine tingling snap of the bone resounded through the arena, painting a sensory image that would never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.