Dimensional Descent

Displaying the abilities of a domain, displaying speed it shouldn't have, poisonous abilities it shouldn't have, outpacing his mind at the same Dimension, and now even displaying the effects of a completely different Force entirely?

Leonel dove out of the wave, but he was still too slow. While he managed to avoid the cobra demon's punch, it was as though it had managed to predict exactly where he was going.

It was a stupid choice, maybe the most idiotic choice Leonel had ever made.

He had been thrust against one wall and then slapped to the side until he hit another one. With the cobra demon now coming straight at him, there was only one way to dodge, and that was to his right.

To his left there was a barrier, coming straight at him was the cobra demon, and the only open space was right there. But if he could realize this, how could the cobra demon not?

The demon's tail whipped across Leonel's face.

At that moment, Leonel smelled the scent of death closer than he ever had before. There was no instant recovery to rely upon, there was no chance at clearing this Zone, and there was no escape.

His head snapped back and his spine cracked. His skull fractured, his brain rattling about and tearing under strong G-forces that it wasn't equipped to handle even in the Sixth Dimension. His jaw, nose, and teeth all cracked at once, leaving his face in an unrecognizable, bloody mess.

Leonel entered a dazed-like state and the fraction of a moment this took seemed to be stretched into infinity. He could practically feel his body shutting down, the reserves of his Life Force speeding out of his pores and back into the universe that had gifted it all to him.

The pain came all at once and so forcefully that he actually didn't feel a thing. It was hard to tell if it was because his spine had entered an unrepairable state or if this was just the numbing that came with such a lingering scent of death.

In those moments, Leonel's thinking speed which had felt like it was running through sludge all this time finally picked back up. But that only made him more aware of his impending demise.

'Shit, shit, shit…'

He couldn't understand how he made such a stupid mistake in battle. But it was even worse that he couldn't even think of an alternative. Meeting the cobra demon head on was impossible, the gap between them was far too large. Every time it attacked him, its strength seemed to increase. But Leonel knew that the truth was that the cobra demon hadn't attacked all out from the very beginning. It was just toying with him.

And now… It was bored. It simply didn't feel the need to hold back anymore.

Leonel was furious. Furious with Thaela, furious with the bastards that had forced the Void Palace into such a situation, furious with himself.

The one time he didn't overestimate himself, the one time he wanted to obediently accept a loss, take what he could get and go home, the one time he pressed his own desires down and didn't pursue the position of number one, he had actually ended up in such a state.

He didn't want to fight this battle, he never wanted to fight this battle. He wanted to protect the life of his mother, of Aina, of his brothers, and he had felt that the only way to do that was to lay down his pride and focus on maximizing his chances at survival.

But even when he did this, he had somehow ended up like this.

BANG!

Time seemed to finally catch up with Leonel's speed of thought and his body was slapped back to the corner he had tried to roll out from. His head rebounded against the barrier and his fractured skull directly shattered on impact.

Leonel slid down the barrier, his eyes half open to reveal nothing but their whites. His limbs went limp and his body ceased movement.

His face was nothing more than a rain of mangled flesh and blood, his limbs were twisted into odd angles and he seemed to have not the slightest sign of life left.

Like a candle that had been snuffed out beneath a harsh, cold and suffocating wind, he sat dully, his head hanging, his legs spread and his arms limp.

The frosty cold of the cobra demon latched onto his skin and blood. With nothing to fight back against it, he quickly gained patches of frost here and there, some on his face, some on his limbs, others on his torso, but each of them spreading like a blooming flower.

The cobra demon gripped Leonel's neck and pulled him upward. An odd crunching sound followed as the shifting of Leonel weight forced his cracked spine to crack once again.

The tongue of the cobra demon slithered out, a hint of surprise coloring its snake-like face. It wasn't very interested in Leonel's corpse, at least not originally. But when the scent of Leonel's blood permeated the air, it made it feel quite intoxicated.

Saliva dripped down from the cobra demon's teeth. What a boon. It hadn't expected such a weakling to have such tasty blood. Maybe if he might gain a small change at evolving to become a Chaos Demon…

The cobra demon's mouth opened wide, its excitement palpable. Its saliva overflowed, but when it hit the ground, it froze into a puddle of ice. And then, the demon chomped down.

A sickening crunch resounded.

The cobra demon took a bite right out of Leonel's skull, swallowing half of it in a single gulp.

It chewed slowly, its body trembling with delight as it savored every bite and swallowed.

Once it did, completely beside itself, it roared with excitement, feeling as though every cell in its body had completely come alive.

Its eyes turned red with excitement. When it lowered its head to take another bite, its saliva falling even faster, its gaze flashed.

There, where Leonel's frontal cortex should be, a glimmer of a gem lay.

Leonel's Ethereal Glabella.