Dimensional Descent

Leonel spent some time with his brothers before returning to the Lab Setting. He didn't establish a connection with the outside world because that could lead to some issues, which was why he had taken so long to break the news to them and also why he hadn't really been communicating with Aina either.

The Force Arts the Gathering of Kingdoms worked on were far beyond what level King had been on, and before his recent breakthrough, King had practically been a suffocating influence to Leonel.

So, it wasn't Leonel's place to make large deductions about how everything worked. For all he knew, if he projected his voice to the outside world, then it would register Anastasia's world as part of the Gathering of Kingdoms and try to take hold of it.

While the Segmented Cube was the greatest treasure ever created by the best Crafting Race to ever exist, the Gathering of Kingdoms was literally created by the God Beasts of Creation. They still couldn't be compared.

This was to say that there was no guarantee that the Gathering of Kingdoms Stele couldn't integrate Anastasia if it wanted to. So Leonel had to tiptoe around the topic, at least for now.

As for Aina, he wasn't worried about her in the slightest. He didn't need to watch her battles to know that she was absolutely crushing it.

And crushing it Aina was. She made it into the Penultimate round without even breaking a sweat. This was a round if 100 of your world's people made it into, your world would survive.

To go from such a large percentage of a population of tens of billions at worst, to just 100 to meet a quota, one could imagine just how difficult it was to make it to this stage.

Now, there was just this final hurdle between Aina and the final round.

The Penultimate Round was scored differently from the others.

Everyone would fight ten battles. This battle would be scored on how long it took to finish and then weighted against how well your opponent did against others.

people in this round were far fewer, because the odds that one could make the Penultimate Round and not have a

clear. Just looking around the city, one could feel a sense of anxiety setting in for a

a different type of anxiety taking hold, one that

the Finals was a huge threshold. Many were working based not on an existential dread, but rather their desire

said that there was a small chance of something

since the Gathering of Kingdoms Stele rewarded anyone. Many believed that the treasures had run out and without the

Stele was just waiting, biding its time for someone worthy. There were a limited number of

for that last sliver of survival and on the

former side, she was extremely relaxed as continued

before her and she vanished soon

cleared, before her, there

with surprise before he smiled. He shook his head

was only a matter of time

losing the first round and potentially ending up heavily injured would end up impacting

Thorne wasn't very moved because the victories of he and the other

was a

very beginning, while Aina's had been near the bottom of the barrel. As the rest of the competition

a hand before his back, standing like a handsome prince. This wasn't a sign of

to