Dimensional Descent

Truthfully, all of these thoughts were simply running in the back of Leonel's mind.

After two subsequent breakthroughs of the mind, Leonel's ability to split his attention had bloomed from just over a 1 010 000 to a number approaching 5 000 000. Such a thing could only be said to be both a blessing and a curse.

When he was battling, bathing in blood, bone and limbs, his mind was quite blank. All he cared about was calculating his next attack and making those before him suffer as much as possible. Rage colored his thoughts and took hold of his heart. There was only it and everything else was a sheet of white.

But, when he saw her gaze, it felt like years of buried thoughts and feelings had all resurfaced at once. Something within him snapped and whatever had been leashed within him was released, ravaging his body like a wild beast.

He could still see that gaze now. In fact, he could piece everything that made it up. No matter how much he tried to distract himself with just how much was going on in his body now, no matter how much he tried to focus on something else, to put his mind to something else, nothing worked.

He could feel her gaze almost as though he was still looking into it.

A hint of recognition, an odd curiosity, and then nothing.

Her gaze didn't have any sadness, no remorse, no happiness, no glee. It was as though she was looking at the face of an acquaintance she had known long ago, a classmate that she remembered the look of and was mildly curious about just what they might be doing here.

Leonel wished he didn't have the ability to analyze everything so thoroughly, he wished that he could believe that it was nonsense and that he had seen wrong, that his memory was fallible and maybe his brain was playing a trick on him, forcing him to see the worst.

he knew that none of this true. As many minds as he had turned toward focusing on his body, he still had too many more left over.

of her skin, the slant of her lips, the wrinkle of her nose. He could see

moment, he had gained a hundreds of snapshots of

too unmoved, her breathing to even, her heart too steady. Her hands didn't clench, her gaze didn't tremble, and her

not to bite those soft, pink lips of hers? And how many

So long as she was biting them, Leonel was certain that something

of the characteristics of Aina he

been forming his gaze was now in his heart. It was a

Even indifference wasn't as

skin. It glided off of him and

appeared upon Leonel's back before slowly

one that had felt that aura from earlier. There was nothing that had changed between then and now. He didn't believe that this hidden individual would suddenly

'.'

of white gold began to fall from

the point where only two could do it—Elody and Myghell—the same couldn't be said for

was a master of several Branches, something that made them all numb with