Dimensional Descent

James' clenched his jaw, taking a strong gulp as though he was forcing his heart back down.

"... He's still the same, directing everyone around like he already knows what they'll do," James mumbled.

Aina smiled in understanding. Let alone James and the others, there were too many things that Leonel didn't explain even to her. If James took offense to this, there wasn't really much she could do, she would just have to reveal their other trump cards ahead of time. The trouble with that, though, was that it would make the Heir Wars far more difficult.

However, at that moment, James smiled.

"Do you know what they call a quarterback's tight end in football?" James looked Aina in the eyes, his tears somewhat glistening but quickly evaporating away beneath a fiery blaze.

Aina blinked before her smile brightened. "The ultimate safety blanket."

She had been following Leonel's games for years and had never missed a single one. Not only did she know all the rules of the game, when it came to the intricacies and the culture around it, she probably dwarfed even some of the players themselves.

When James heard this his head raised to the skies and he erupted with a laughter that drowned out even the cries of the Brazingers. It boomed with a vibrant carefreeness, surging like a rising ocean tide and drowning out everything.

With a leap, he soared into the skies, his foot landing on an energy shield platform that he shot like a canon off of, soaring over the battle between Maia and Galaeron with the confidence of a man who felt he could have participated in it if he so chose.

Aina watched this with a smile. It was a little white lie, and considering how well James knew Leonel, he probably knew this as well. But as Leonel's Queen, there were some things that she felt she had to do for him.

friend, and there was a reason for that. Some relationships couldn't be forced, and some were

the probability of James making an appearance at 30%. He felt that the Cloud Race would be a bar that he wouldn't allow himself to cross, and he

be much higher, not for any other reason than that was what he

detached, more indifferent. Even when his brothers had returned to his side, they had been separated for so many years that it was difficult to reaffirm that connection to the same level, and that was honestly because they were missing the glue

brain in him, but he was probably the person who understood Leonel the most outside of Aina herself, and maybe even in comparison to Aina, he knew

fathers... with how much Leonel loved his own, if Velasco had the same approach to life that Governor Duke Bennett had, how far would Leonel

that meant the most, the more dissimilar in, ironically,

their relationship

to herself, watching James dive into the battle and almost immediately force Elorin into

**

but at the moment

random treasure or beast territories were spawning, and even after a lot of

come across such a thing before, so he just assumed correctly that there was likely a battle

had finally found another, and it was once

to only be one conclusion: there were just three contestants left, while he had been fighting Coldar everyone else but