Dimensional Descent

2046 Are You?

Aina didn't have the words to describe what she was thinking about or how she was feeling. Any other person would have probably thought that their boyfriend had entirely lost his mind. He spoke about himself practically in the third person just now, as though the him she was looking at wasn't him at all.

But also, just now, Leonel's mind had been connected with her own. And yet, despite that connection, he had never felt farther away from her than he had in that moment. It was as though she was a small water spout and he was a vast, endless ocean. Although she was feeding into him, she was hardly helping or changing anything at all, and what he had to offer was far too vast for him to be able to share anything without risking her destruction.

Aina trembled.

Something similar had happened before, although not exactly in this way. Maybe, in fact, it had happened two times before, once when Leonel suddenly cleared more than 70 floors of the Void Tower when he should have had no capability of doing so, and second when his father had appeared suddenly in the Rapax Nest and undid some kind of seal.

But how were those two things related at all?

This sort of unfathomable feeling… Aina hadn't sensed it when she met Leonel's father. In her opinion, Leonel's father wasn't even half as strong as the Leonel who just spoke with her, and maybe even that wasn't anywhere near exaggerated enough.

So how could Velasco be the one who had sealed Leonel? It had seemed as though, back then, that he had done something for Leonel's own good, but the Leonel that she had seen just now was beyond the capability of anyone to seal.

And setting that matter aside, why did it sound like he had come from a far off land? Why did it feel like he had experienced so much, hurt so much...

But what she was most interested in knowing was why was it that he was so happy about his failure… It felt like she was looking through a mirror… On one side, there was the Leonel who was still looking for his answers, and on the other side, it seemed that there was another Leonel who had finally gained his answer.

Both were the same man, maybe weak in their own ways, strong in others, but still pursuing after the same matter. Aina couldn't fathom just how much hardship this elder Leonel had to go through to finally find the answer, but she had never heard Leonel laugh so heartily and happily, as though he was finally free, finally resolute in his path.

Aina held Leonel up, her palm gently resting on his cheek, her mind unreadable. Although there was worry between her brows, there was still a light smile on her lips. She felt that even this older Leonel was an idiot too. How could she ever leave him?

Leonel's gaze suddenly snapped opened minutes later. He sat up so quickly that his head almost smashed into Aina's, but he managed to weave out of the way just in time.

His breathing was slightly labored and he looked around in confusion. He distinctly remembered the last time he had felt a similar feeling, but there was something odd. The situation wasn't exactly the same. He couldn't remember anything that had happened in the Void Tower, but this time he felt like he could vaguely recall something.

Leonel looked down at his hands, his pupils constricting.

His Dream Force was nothing like he remembered it. A tenfold increase wasn't enough to describe it. Although his Force Manipulation remained the same, his Ethereal Glabella had become like its own Innate Node, so large that it had basically replaced the entirety of his frontal lobe, and it even looked as though it was eager to replace his entire brain.

If his Dream Force output was one unit before, it was over a thousand now. It had gone from a drop of water, to an overflowing bucket, but he couldn't quite understand why.

It didn't feel like his affinity had changed much, it was still outstanding. Or maybe it had grown to a point where he couldn't even differentiate any longer.

The most obvious change was that his number of split minds had gone from a factor of millions to billions. In fact, it was even approaching 10 digits rather than just nine.

Leonel realized all of this looking at his hands because right now he wasn't observing his hands at all, rather it felt like he was looking at the individual cells that made it up.

It was akin to the difference between observing a planet through a telescope, and then zooming in to see the peaks and valleys, not to mention the populations that called it home.

He was having a hard time wrapping his head around this matter and he couldn't help but think back to what had happened in the Rapax Nest. Back then, his Dream Force affinity had gotten a huge boost, this time his Dream Force quantity had gotten its own huge boost.

If he had had this much Dream Force when he was creating his army of stingrays, rather than an entire three days to outfit them, even a quarter of a day might be overexaggerating the time he would need, and that was only taking into account Little Tolly's own limitations. The gap was simply as vast as an ocean.

When this was simultaneously matched with the improvement of his Dream Force before this odd change, then the gap was overwhelming. In fact, Leonel wondered if this change was triggered by the improvement to his Force Manipulation or not, but it seemed unlikely… This hadn't happened with his Scarlet Star Force when he had improved it, so why now?

"How do you feel? Are you okay?" Aina's questions suddenly snapped Leonel out of his thoughts.

When he looked toward her this time, he couldn't help but feel she was even more beautiful now than he remembered.