Dimensional Descent

Leonel sat on his heels by Elorin, his sigh painted in the depth of his eyes. Seeing Elorin here like this, beaten unconscious by James, he already knew that Old Hutch was dead.

If it was anyone else who had killed Old Hutch, Leonel would have already flown into a rage. He hadn't seen Hutch for a very long time, and during their interactions a few months ago, it hadn't been for very long. However, Leonel still felt that he owed a lot to this man.

As a man of the Fawkes Imperial Family, he owed Hutch due to his sacrifices. This man had given up so much for his duty, and he deserved nothing short of respect, he had done things that even Leonel wouldn't claim himself able to do.

As a man who lived for himself, though, he owed Hutch even more. This man was someone who had mentored him, and although they had never seen eye to eye, he was the one who laid the foundation for Leonel's spearmanship.

Now seeing the man who had killed him, Leonel would have thought that he would be infuriated to the point of killing him outright. But knowing that this was Hutch's grandson, he found it difficult to do so. Although Hutch would never ask him to spare Elorin out of his own duty, that didn't mean that he wouldn't hope for this to happen.

Leonel thought for a moment, not entirely sure of what to do.

A shadow passed by him and James appeared. "He was a tough one."

"From what it sounds like, he went down pretty easily," Leonel said with a raised eyebrow.

becoming serious. "His Ability Index is very powerful, if not for the fact that I can completely counter it, things wouldn't have ended so simply. It seems to me that he placed a lot of effort on learning to control his Ability Index mostly because it

his Ability

could. Most of it came from his own instincts so the details were fuzzy, but this alone was enough for Leonel's eyes to narrow

aspect. James had done quite well to take his own Ability Index to the extreme, but

fairly alone, the amount of information he could find on the Energy Shield Ability Index was practically endless. Just for context, even within their

Tiers of his Ability Index was. Usually, Tiers were created after observing

Elorin probably didn't even know which of the Tiers he fell into, and he likewise wouldn't know how to improve his Ability Index without fumbling around on his own, and even then it

knew, he was improving his

he have time to hone other abilities? Outside of his blade, he

of many who could defeat James, but he could think of many that would have

obvious: he could sap away atmospheric Force, but that did nothing to the Force inside of your body. Unfortunately for Elorin, his Ability Index was entirely reliant on observing outside Forces and then executing his next steps based on

he perfectly countered Elorin, he

finger forward, pushing it down onto Elorin's forehead. At that moment, Elorin suddenly reacted and his blade shot out with a great amount of speed. He didn't