Dimensional Descent

Weeks more went by before Leonel finally felt alright to swing himself out of bed. In retrospect, he probably should have had someone help him because he crashed onto the floor.

Luckily, his migraine had receded and the pain in his body had become more of a dull soreness, or else he felt like he might have relapsed right then and there.

At first, Leonel thought his muscles had atrophied. It was a pretty common symptom that happened to people that spent long amounts of time injured and bed ridden. However, he found that conclusion to be weird, the main reason being because he wasn't a normal human. It had been about two months, yes, but this shouldn't have been enough to ruin him like this. Unless…

Leonel felt a small panic cause his heart to skip a beat. His Scarlet Star Force Innate Node was now connected to a circuit around his body. Even though he wasn't actively using it, he wasn't actively restricting it anymore either. Could it be that his muscles were being eaten away by its properties?

That day, Leonel had a quarterlife crisis staring at the luxury carpets of his hotel room. Considering his thinking speed, those few seconds would have felt like months to anyone else. Luckily, though, he managed to get a grip on himself.

There were positives to this that he could take away.

For one, he didn't feel any pain, which meant that even if his Scarlet Star Force was causing this, it was more than tolerable.

Secondly, if his body was truly being eaten away at like this, if he fed it with enough nutrients and made up for its deficiencies, he might be able to grow some passive immunity. In that case, maybe the day he could use his own Innate Node freely would come.

With these two pillars of support for his almost broken psyche, Leonel managed to pick himself up. But, that was when something he hadn't expected to happen, happened.

Leonel had fallen to a single knee, so when he went to stand up, he was obviously pushing off of just one leg. He tried to test to see just how bad his muscle weakness had gotten, so he was measuring how much strength he had to push when he suddenly found himself flying sideways.

CRASH!

The sprinkle of glass and the suddenness of open air hit Leonel before he was suddenly freefalling hundreds of meters.

Many who had been outside the hotel at that moment looked up all at once to find a man falling through the skies in nothing more than his underwear. It definitely wasn't the sort of thing you saw everyday.

'…'

Leonel was so stunned that he didn't even react in time.

BOOM!

An enormous dust cloud launched itself into the air, the earth rumbling as though a stone of unfathomable weight had suddenly been dropped onto it.

"Leo?!"

"Cap?!"

A rush of people converged toward the hole on all sides. But, when the dust cleared, they only found a human sized hole and a confused Leonel looking up into the skies as though he couldn't understand what had just happened.

'… Shouldn't that have hurt?' Leonel thought to himself.

Leonel didn't get to finished this thought before the earth suddenly began to raise him up. He didn't need to guess to know that it was Raj who was acting.

"Son of a bitch, Cap. Why are you so heavy?!"

"Why are you asking about useless things?! He could be dead!"

At that moment, a worried Aina came over as Milan's voice cried out to reprimand. In her presence, the boys seemed to become very obedient for some reason. Or, more accurately, reserved, as though they were in the presence of someone they greatly respected.

Leonel, despite his absentmindedness, immediately picked up on this. It was definitely something he found weird, his brothers had never reacted like this to Aina before. Though, now that he thought about it, they didn't really have many opportunities to interact to begin with.

Raj ended up pulling Leonel up all the way out of the five meter deep hole, complaining to himself as he seemed to no longer dare to speak out loud.

When everyone got a good look at Leonel, they were rendered speechless. There wasn't even a single scratch on him. In fact, for some reason, the dirt didn't cling to his body at all. It was whisked away with the slightest of wind or fell of its own accord, leaving him completely spotless. It was as though Leonel's skin wasn't something they dared to blaspheme.

"Uh, I'm fine. I don't really know how this happened, honestly. One minute I was in the suite, and in the next I was falling through the skies."

Leonel chuckled and tried to use the ground to pull himself up. But, at that moment, the location where his hand had been compressed, violent and raging cracks spreading out in all directions as the ground splintered as though an abyss had opened up beneath it.

Leonel blinked. "… It might be best if you guys didn't touch me right now…"

An awkward silence fell over the group as they nodded slowly, taking a step back. That was just a casual pat to the ground but Raj and the others had almost fallen flat on their faces. Only Aina seemed to have been able to keep her balance without trying very hard.

Leonel's brow furrowed. He had thought his body had experienced atrophy, but this was clearly not the case. If this was atrophy, there wouldn't be any diseases in this world remaining. He wasn't even quite sure how to even go about doing normal things.

This change was a bit too large, even his high class coordination abilities didn't adjust immediately. It seems he would still need a few more days.

"Hey, Cap… About the shirt and pictures… You're not mad, right?"

Raj looked from the destroyed ground, to Leonel, and then back, laughing nervously.