Dimensional Descent

Leonel opened his eyes once more, a pool of calmness resting within their pale violet depths.

Funny enough, what he most struggled with wasn't the emotions themselves, but rather the decision to abandon them or not. With the balance having been even, the choice was left to him. The 'logical' decision was to leave things as status quo. After all, a tie was usually dealt with in that fashion. But, such a decision also meant that he would have to carry this around and he almost… didn't want to.

It was impeding his thought process too much, taking up too much of his time. In the end, Leonel was forced to compartmentalize his distracting thoughts. However, somehow, one mind didn't seem enough to do that. He was forced to assign over a hundred before they were satisfied, and that left him at a 10% deficit he wouldn't normally have.

Still, Leonel paid the price. Anything so that his mind would be clear and free. If he hadn't done this, the impact to his cognitive function would have been even worse.

At least now he could split his mind more than a thousand ways. Since he had gotten by with just a few dozen in the past, if he couldn't wreak havoc with over 900, then he might as well give up all his goals right this moment.

With that done, Leonel took out the piece of polished Memory Ore. It had been with him for years already, but this was only the second time he had it in his hands like this.

It had a gentle oval shape to it and it was such a shimmering silver that Leonel could see even his own reflection with astounding clarity. And yet, it felt rough to the touch.

Leonel was certain that the Memory Ore hadn't felt like this when he first got it. But, now something had changed… After eliminating several possibilities, Leonel realized that it must be that his own sensitivities had evolved.

far more sensitive to Ores and their refined metals, but the habit Leonel had built in splitting his minds to increase his

Sight wouldn't be enough to read this map. Even though he had entered the Fifth Dimension with his Dream Force, it was

for a moment longer, Leonel focused and

But, Leonel knew that Memory Ore was capable of housing so much information that the computer chips of even 25th century Earth would run out of space before even a dent could be put into it. And that was ALL the computer chips

hard to believe that a map would need so much space. And, if it did… How could he ever

this was really what was in here, Leonel might as well give up and choose a different

orient himself on such a large

Ore had such great capacity, only a fraction of it was being used. Maybe it was just a habit of large families and

actually found, though,

map… There's not even any information in here… What is this? A

at first. One had to remember how difficult it was to use Memory Ores. It required an incredibly subtle use of Soul Force to

with this, though, was that reading a Memory Ore was like wading through a mine field. If you were too forceful or not careful enough, you could disrupt the chemical structure and thus destroy the information you were trying to

Dream Force was still too weak to inspire grand changes in such a high level ore, which was ironically why it was still possible for him to do this with little experience. However, even if he caused a small shift… In a map that was meant to point to a position in the vastness of