Dimensional Descent

Aphestus sat on a meditation pillar that stood five meters tall. One leg dangled over the edge while he brought his other knee to his chest. His gaze peered over the ledge, gazing upon the few that had come to report matters to him.

This seemingly ordinary pillar was actually one of the resources that youths of Valiant Heart pined over. Yet, Aphestus was using it as a casual sitting stool, not even practicing Force as one would expect.

However, at this moment, the few beneath him didn't have the luxury of thinking about how wasteful their vice leader was being.

Seeing that crooked smile that hung on Aphestus' face, with their experience, they could tell that he was just a step away from blowing his lid.

"… We… We tried our best to cut them down, vice leader. But, for some reason, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't. There's some weird space distortion around the tree… As best as we can tell… If someone more powerful than us doesn't go…"

The words of the young man were cut off by Aphestus' laughter.

"You want someone more powerful to go? Someone recognizable maybe? Somewhat of a genius that everyone has seen before?"

Aphestus laughed even more.

He felt as though he was getting out of character in just this past day. Often times, humans fell into the trap of doing something they never would. But, instead of backtracking after they realized they had made a mistake, they rather chose to double down, causing them to continue down a rabbit hole of doing things they wouldn't ever usually do.

Maybe Aphestus had fallen into this very hole.

on a rookie? What

in, he wouldn't have even been sent to personally recruit anyone. Even though Aina had activated the pillars on her first try, Hero Peak wasn't short of individuals who had done exactly

the mountain pass that had been nerfed under the presence of the elders, there were no shortage of people on Hero Peak who had succeeded under the full brunt of

actually landed himself in such a situation. It was

matter would be over as easily as him taking action personally, but that

as though he had tried to squash an ant, only for it to survive and shit into his food

trembling as his muscles ripple like they had a

up there for all I care. They can bleed to

of meditation. Hidden patterns on the pillar he sat upon began to glow, causing a

do. But in the end,

anything any longer. Speaking the name of Hero Peak so casually was already enough to seal your

…

only growing as more and more people attempted and failed to take the trio down from the tree, Leonel had entered his home for the next

for rookies weren't exactly lavish. And, since Leonel had given the Segmented Cube to Aina, he could only make do

taken with him out of the Cube were his feather pen and Little

be barred from seeing Aina. Even if he was, he didn't plan on taking it lying down.

time to focus on those things. As for him, his goal here wasn't

because he believed that she would likely have a better training environment than he did. Only in a

'Resources, resources, resources…'