Dimensional Descent

Leonel urged his surfboard forward and entered the flagship before shooting off into the distance; He didn't have time to wait for what might come of the aftermath; He would deal with that when he returned; But for now; he had to set up his teleportation network;

…

It wasn't long before Leonel arrived at the first location; It was a barren moon that orbited a planet that was just as barren; He entered the cave he had decided on, chiseling out a few concealment Force Arts that could bewilder the mind before following down a network of tunnels and finding a spacious enough location;

He couldn't pick a spot that was too secluded or cramped because the teleportation network would work best if it could teleport at least a few dozen people at a time; Obviously, this needed not just a robust capacity on the part of the teleportation formation itself, but also on the space the teleportation platform was within;

The surroundings had to be large and sturdy enough to withstand the fluctuations of Force and, obviously, the appearance of so many people.

Once Leonel found a suitable location, he took out a disk;

After finding a method of escaping Zones, Leonel felt that the mode of deployment he had used back then could be applied to other things;

Back then; he had used a formation plate of sorts etched with runes; Originally; the reason he did that was twofold; First it allowed him to create a solid foundation for the teleportation; something that was very much needed if he was going to connect the Zone and the Human Domain together; And secondly; it allowed it to be portable;

This was very helpful because this meant that Leonel didn't need to waste time finding the perfect area which contained the fluctuations and densities of Force he needed, he could just make the area his own.

This concept worked exceptionally well with teleportation arrays like this one as it would allow Leonel to deploy a large network of them exceptionally quickly;

This disk that Leonel had created was just one of several thousand that he and the Segmented Cube had formed; All he needed to do was set it down; anchor it; and then activate it; It would take more time to travel between locations than it would take to create and set up these array plates;

The best part was that he could always expand the network in the future;

Leonel quickly left and continued to the next destination; and then the next; With the flagship; his speed of movement around the Human Domain could be considered to be as fast as it got; If not for the sheer number of stops; Leonel could have finished this matter even quicker; but he was insistent on having a teleportation array network that would allow him to reach any location within a few minutes at the worst;

…

Three days later, Leonel finally made it to the final location and tossed up the disk before exhaling a breath and releasing a large breath of Spatial Force; He raised up pillars of Emulation Spatial Force before he nodded and slowly walked out;

Stepping onto his surfboard; he shot into the air and returned to his flagship;

All that was left to do now was to assemble his team and there was only one group of men that he absolutely had to have by his side;

Leonel grinned; He wondered how his brothers were doing;

Quite frankly; he was worried for some of them; Arnold had probably ended up sucked into the Zone along with the rest and could only hope that he had survived; As for the others; they had been lucky enough to dodge that event;

If Arnold had survived. then he was probably still in the Void Palace and there wasn't much Leonel could do about that. The Void Palace was too large for Leonel to find a single person. so all he could do was make as much noise as he could. and even then. there was the possibility that Arnold had gone out on a mission. something that was very much possible.

The rest of his brothers. though. should be on Earth or at least within Earth's territory. He would return to Earth first and see if he could find their traces.

Leonel could only shake his head. He really did need an information network. but unfortunately. he didn't have one.

"Hm?"

Leonel looked off toward a certain direction with narrowed eyes. He currently stood at the bow of the flagship while his clones steered it toward his destinations. His main goal in doing this was to witness as much of the happenings of Earth's territory personally as he could so as to broaden his own horizons.

Leonel wasn't particularly close to Earth currently, in fact he was quite far. The final destination for his teleportation network had been near the edges of Earth's territory so it was only right.

With a thought, Leonel's gaze zoomed into the distance, skipping over thousands of kilometers at a time before he landed on what he was looking for.

'That woman… She…'

In the distance, on an asteroid that seemed to have a floating convenience station on its back, a woman dressed in a tight fitting black suit prowled forward like a cat.

If Leonel had been there when Heira had framed him and turned him into a fugitive of Shield Cross Stars, he would have recognized this floating convenience asteroid as a location one came to for more than just refueling one's spaceships and stocking up on food and snacks.

However, Leonel wasn't paying attention to that right now, he was rather paying attention to the woman who was about to kill the convenience station attendee.

In his life, Leonel had only personally invited two people to become one of his generals, both of whom happened to be women. Even now, he sometimes thought about them. Of course, not romantically, but rather in a faint understanding of how unfortunate it was that he didn't manage to bring them to his side.

One of them was Kira, but she could only reject him because she apparently had a connection with one of his other cousins.

The second one was this woman right here, a woman he had met during his final days in Valiant Heart Mountain, Emna.

The current Emna was still within the Fifth Dimension, but Leonel's gaze couldn't help but narrow watching her moving. He actually felt a hint of danger coming from her.

What Leonel didn't know was that a casual remark that he had made over 25 years ago now had led to the creation of one of the most fearsome intelligence networks of the Human Domain.

And this casual remark… hadn't been the one he made to Emna.

…

As Leonel was about to receive a pleasant surprise, there was something far less amicable brewing on the opposite side of Earth's territory.

News of the Prince of the Ascension Empire slaughtering an entire patrol unit of Brazingers spread like wildfire.

In their fury, the Brazingers descended upon Earth.

What Leonel didn't know was that this wouldn't be the first time.

And what the Brazingers wouldn't want him to know was that the first descent had cost Leonel the lives of his brothers.