Dimensional Descent

Leonel lay on the starry road. He was a person very much used to being on top of everything. For the past several years, his mind had worked on such a high level that he could even tell how much time had passed without even being consciously aware of it; it was like there was a ticking clock in the back of his mind, constantly rolling forward with the seconds. After he had woken up from his coma just this past month, he had been aware of exactly how much time had passed without even having to double-check with anyone. But this time...?

He had no idea.

He didn't know whether it had been a few days or weeks, for all he knew it could have just been a few seconds. It was as though everything around him had shut down, and when he came to, he had his dad's dictionary in one hand and his glasses in the other. He wondered if he would have even been able to come to himself if not for these two things.

Even so, he didn't quite feel like he had the energy to stand. Every cell of his body had been wiped clean, moving in what felt like slow motion. His high vitality had no ability whatsoever to help him recover, or at the very least, not any time soon. It was a feeling that he would have called suffocating, if not for the fact he couldn't quite remember if he had breathed, or if he even needed to breathe.

He lay on his back, looking up at the endless depths. He wondered... no, it seemed that this trial world was actually an Incomplete World of its own. But it was completely devoid of life, well, outside of those that would come here from time to time.

It was quite fascinating. He wondered how the creator of [Dimensional Cleanse] had managed to make it so easy to cross from one world to another without an extraordinary power source. Although he could copy the method and rearrange the chemical structure as he saw fit, copying and understanding were two completely different things. It was so far beyond him that he couldn't wrap his head around it, but it was also fascinating for exactly that reason.

What other discipline could allow a layman to copy a master so precisely and execute the same results with repeated certainty? It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Leonel's head shifted, and he looked down at the pair of glasses in his hands.

was sure that even if there was an Eighth Dimensional item in his

his father had put into it, how many hours of

away. That was the thing with tears. If you let them go once, the second time would come even easier, and the third even easier than the second. Eventually, you would be as

this, but he still didn't move. "Say something, old

[Ping]

gaze flashed, but he didn't react as violently as one might

What was that, 27 hours? Sheesh, not

now, he understood enough about Crafting to know how his father had done it. The usual mechanical voice of the dictionary, a version of his father's voice without life in it, was done on purpose to lull Leonel into a certain belief. In reality, all of the dictionary's messages could be in just

were indeed many things within the dictionary that were pre-recorded, but there were even some pre-recordings within that presented themselves as such that were, in reality,

"Finally finished crying" part was pre-recorded. The "27

most AI to shame, and if not for his father's pranks, Leonel would have noticed long ago. This dictionary was maybe the greatest invention of his father. It wasn't casually cobbled together as Velasco had made it seem. In fact, if

definitely this small silver

done crying, old

could at least milk this out for a few more years. Who knew

remained silent, still

you're hearing this message,