Dimensional Descent

Leonel grilled Jian with several more questions then knocked him out and dragged him back into the Lab Setting. Without a word to his partner, he threw him into one of the snowglobes, causing no small shock to the square jawed man.

Not wanting to end up like Jian, how could he not go all out in an attempt to satisfy Leonel? But the truth remained the same. In the end, he too was knocked out once more and thrown into a snowglobe.

Leonel took a deep breath and sat down, his mind running.

Though he could have asked the two about Aina's past, he decided against it. This was something he wanted Aina to tell him herself. It just wouldn't feel the same if someone else had to tell him. Plus, he wanted to respect her boundaries.

That said, even aside from that, the heavy pressure Simeon brought him was beyond his imagination.

What a joke he was. He had a Tier 3 Bronze ability, but he was being pushed into a corner by a Tier 8 Black ability. He was sure that if his father knew he would never hear the end of it.

Leonel shook his head, staring blankly into space. After a while, his vacant eyes gained a steely coldness.

'I'm certain that Simeon's ability didn't originally have anything related to control. The reason he can now is because he's mastered his ability to the point of squeezing out all of its potential, eventually allowing him to gain this new branch ability. I don't believe for a second that he can do something that I can't.'

The 'branch' abilities of Leonel's main ability seemed to have awoken randomly. First it was Dream World, then it was Dream Sculpt.

On the surface, both appeared without rhyme or reason, but was this really the case?

World appeared to him when he really wanted to calculate the best orientation of his Force Nodes. This will eventually

to take

Dream Clone. That ability was birthed when he really wanted to learn the primitive man's combat style as quickly as possible. This allowed him to split his mind and learn

means, it felt as though he could produce it as

wakeup call to Leonel. He realized now that abilities weren't immutable things. They were made to grow and evolve along with their host. Why else would Leonel's ability still be growing even now? It was likely that it would still grow into the

'That's right, I need to open myself up to

To think that he really almost had

make this

a while,

to get out of this situation, I might as well not go and

already decided. There would be three keys to

find the path to the Force Eruption faster. There was most definitely an even greater treasure

and Eighth Node. Continually doubting himself wouldn't

abandon all of his Force Nodes. Though there was a massive taboo against doing so, the price was comparatively shallow for those in the lowest Third Dimension, only after stepping into the Fourth or higher would abandoning one's Force Nodes become akin to a death sentence without incredibly special

And third…

It seemed like a simple golden staff, missing its flag.

this staff to control humans. He had seen how badly Joan ended up with his own two eyes. And, back then, she

it would be foolish as well. Those beast kings had already awoken their intelligence and thus had strong wills of their own. If Leonel tried to take control of them, his ending would