Dimensional Descent

The current Aina didn't have the presence of maturity and elegance that a woman slowly reaching her prime should have. Her current mindset was quite infantile and she still hadn't quite grasped concepts of her own feminine wiles and charms. In addition, she had already learned to perfectly control her own mental coercion. After the shackles on her talent were released, she improved by leaps and bounds everyday. And yet…

None of it seemed to matter.

For those here, this was the greatest beauty they had ever laid eyes on. Despite her indifference to the world, it only added to her charms, making her seem as though she had descended from another world entirely.

The current Aina wore a flexible armor that wrapped around her curves almost too well, an enormous battle ax of red-gold hovering to her back. Her every step carried its own explosive power and the depth of black her armor and hair shared seemed to give her the tinge of a devilish vibe.

Leonel fell into silence when his gaze landed on her again for the second time in a month. His expression didn't flicker and his arms remained crossed about his chest. He could tell with a single glance that she had improved vastly since he last saw her, even after all his own improvements, he had next to no certainty of defeating her. In fact, he faintly felt that he might very well lose.

It was a surprising conclusion for Leonel to come to, but it hardly moved the needle for him one way or another.

After a month of rest, Leonel felt that he finally understood what bothered him so much about all of this.

Objectively, he knew how he had hurt Aina. She was in a vulnerable point in her life and she was heavily reliant on him. That moment hadn't been the first time she got mad at him for risking his life for the sake of others, he had lost count of the number of times she had insisted that he should put himself first.

He and Aina had been clashing in this way even long before they made their relationship official. That day, when Leonel excitedly left the Mayan Zone, eager to see her again, and she pierced a hand through Conrad's heart… Leonel knew that that had been her way of waking him up to reality.

only was she not solely that shy and timid girl he had known, but she was precisely the kind

almost died because he was too soft with how he used his blade, even so far back they had

had he reacted the way he had? The answer was so obvious that Leonel felt that he had been running away from it as opposed to chasing it like

how she wanted to do them. He never batted an eye, never complained, and always followed along, happy just to be by

him to pretend like it had been would be nothing more than revisionist history. He had been happy to do it. She was the woman he loved, the only woman he loved. To him, doing things for her wasn't a sacrifice, it was

a goal he wanted to aspire toward and chase…

have her by his side as his queen, he didn't receive the eagerness and support he had been expecting. Instead, he received a questioning

received the words of a

felt, he truly did. She had gone through so much trauma in her life and didn't deserve any more. But, in his eyes, the fundamental root of

believe in him, he would just kill them. When he met a mountain no one believed he could climb, he

he absolutely hated to lose. Maybe why he was so good at following his father's mantras of Respect and Persistence was exactly because of this. This was such a core part of who he was that he exceled in everything he did, even when it was something he didn't

this was Leonel's own brand of arrogance, that deep seeded belief in himself that couldn't accept the speculation and

who didn't believe in him was someone he

her? How could he defeat her? How could

didn't know the answer to

life wowed the crowd, her skills and movements