Dimensional Descent

Many minutes later, Leonel finally managed to calm down.

This matter was far more complex than he had expected and it felt like the world was playing a practical joke on him. So close and yet so far away, just a single step away and yet miles away.

He suddenly heard the echo of a familiar laughter in his mind. He didn't remember having laughed like this in the past, but for some reason he was certain that it was his own laughter. The laughter sounded quite heroic, and yet there was an undertone of sadness and helplessness hidden within, an echo that grew louder and louder until his vision suddenly went white.

When Leonel came to, he was still standing in the same spot. His body was drenched in sweat, but other than that, he seemed like the same person he had always been.

Taking a breath, he returned to the Living Setting and entered his and Aina's personal bath. He had already reached a state of cleanliness where he could spend months, even years, without a shower and still be fresh, but right now, he felt like he really needed one.

He slipped into the Cleansing Waters after stripping down his clothes and lowered himself into the water. The water slid around him until he had submerged even his head, sinking to the bottom of the large pool.

He breathed deeply, ignoring the waters around him. When the Cleansing Waters entered his lungs, rather than flooding them and leaving him gasping like one might expect, it immediately became vapor, dispersing into his body.

Leonel hadn't expected this. In truth, he had just made a mistake. He had wanted to do what he had recently begun to do in the water, filtering out Wind Force from the Water Force and inhaling that. But in his absentminded and somewhat fatigued state, he had forgotten that Cleansing Waters were the purest form of Water Force. There was no Wind Force within it at all to filter out and breathe.

he thought that he would be drowned by his own foolishness and was prepared to rush up to the surface

deep-seated and hidden imperfections began to be pushed out one

been thinking about how to help his body approach perfection, and he had actually stumbled into the method in

down and accessed some things. Only then did he realize that this wasn't a natural state of Cleansing Waters, or most accurately, not just anyone could inhale Cleansing Waters like this. If someone else tried, they might truly

sudden vaporization of the Cleansing Waters he inhaled was a result of his new Lineage. Or

Factor built upon the four components of the Metal Synergy Lineage Factor quite

and that was the ability to

was the reverse. To take one's life

Midas family, and that was the ability to swallow flames and gain endless

it was ultimately the ability to bestow life once

the second was to bestow it

and yang sort of balance and there were all sorts of techniques that could branch from it. But what Leonel benefited from the most was the nigh

evolution, Leonel had gained the ability to refine more than just metal and fire, even water seemed possible now, and he had gained the largest store of unrefined waters right before him. Even if he tried to refine all of these Cleansing Waters, he wasn't sure if it would truly be possible unless he reached the Nine Dimension,

dilated, Leonel found that his body had far more imperfections than he had thought. What was being expelled from him wasn't impurities, per se, but was rather like foul Force. This Force would be the kind that stopped normal Force Crystals from becoming

was precisely what stopped them from reaching the