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.

foolishness and was prepared to rush up

suddenly began to tremble, deep-seated and hidden imperfections began to be pushed out one after

speechless. He hadn't expected that things would actually end up like this. He had been thinking about how to help his body approach

calmed 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

Lineage. Or rather,

built upon the four components of the Metal Synergy Lineage

first component was the one all Morales had access to, and that was the ability to absorb the life of metals

the Radix family had received, was the reverse. To take one's life and bestow it upon

family, and that was the ability to swallow flames

family and it was ultimately the ability to

seen it, although these were separated into four more complex bits, they were ultimately two larger halves, one that could take life and make it one's own, and the second was to bestow it and grant power. One relied on refinement of external sources to

techniques that could branch from it. But what Leonel

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

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

Force, impeding those born with fused souls, was precisely what