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.

prepared to

to tremble, deep-seated and hidden imperfections began to

actually end up like this. He had been thinking about how to help his body approach perfection, and he had actually stumbled into the method

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,

result of his new Lineage.

four components of the Metal Synergy

access to, and that was the ability to absorb

the reverse. To take one's

third was what was given to the Midas family, and that was the ability to swallow flames

to the Florer family and it was ultimately the ability

and make it one's own, and the second was to bestow it and grant power. One relied on refinement of external sources to grant oneself power, and the second relied on refinement of internal

of balance and there were all sorts of techniques that could branch from it. But what Leonel

to refine all of these Cleansing Waters, he wasn't sure

had thought. What was being expelled from him wasn't impurities, per se, but was rather like

born with fused souls, was precisely what stopped them from reaching the perfect state of body