Dimensional Descent

2041 Abhorred

How could Leonel not feel the way he did?

When he first entered the Dimensional Verse, he absolutely abhorred killing. He felt that every life was worth the same. He had always thought himself to be a logical person, and because he couldn't deduce the value of a life, he felt that he had no right to dictate the life and death of others. There wasn't any objective measure of a person's life, this had always been his reality.

The first time he entered a Zone, he felt so guilt-stricken by what he had done that he almost allowed someone to take his life. No, it wasn't almost, he had already given up at that point. He had already turned 18 by then, and what he thought were his final thoughts were toward his father, telling him to not mind his death because he had already succeeded as a parent, raising him to be an adult.

After he left the Zone, he practically had a mental breakdown after witnessing Aina's sheer disregard for the life that he held so sacred.

Up until that point, the only person other than his father that he truly loved was her. To him, even though they had never been in a relationship, and even if she never accepted him, she was his family.

Maybe even until now, Aina wasn't aware of just how cruel that moment had been.

She wanted to wake him up to the reality of the world, to allow him to realize in a single stroke that she wasn't the idealized woman in his mind and that the world they were in now was far crueler than he had ever known. But back then, he had just allowed himself to die at the hands of another, he had been in an incredibly fragile state, that sort of shock wasn't something that he should have been able to handle.

And quite frankly, he didn't handle it very well.

he forgot his own morals to rage. He met an A-grade Invalid and beat it to death with the metal rod of his bicycle, completely forgetting his humanity in

someone who couldn't objectively tell the value of a person's life, now he was so mercilessly beating something to

fact that the people in these Zones weren't real. It was fine to

the situation, and now he didn't even think much of his kills, although he always kept count at the back of his mind, he would be lying if he said

But what now?

no different from the people in those Zones, maybe no different from an Invalid's. That sounded like an exaggeration, but to

measurement of a life if people could create

of a life even

matter what sort of secret of the universe you chose to prescribe to, whether it was religion, whether it was science, whether it was the new world order than Leonel had just been enlightened with, in which of those cases had life not been formed by the hands of another, whether that

worth, then? There had to be an answer, and he felt that the only conclusion was that it was worth very little, an insignificant amount, a total so infinitesimally small compared to the grand scheme of reality that it would be laughable to even care to

been chasing

unite the Human Domain, to help them face off against the aggression of

smiling and chuckling, without a goal and without a care. He hadn't known what he was missing, the kind of life he was living if he wasn't without purpose and without meaning, until he actually gained himself such

watching it crumble before his eyes, he was so infuriated that he couldn't even properly put it into words, so enraged that he simply wanted