Dimensional Descent

Leonel's gaze remained impassive, shifting down to the bow in his hand before he shook his head. He didn't really feel any sense of accomplishment. He had wanted to defeat Amery with his spear, but that had ended up with his own being cut in half. Not to mention his spear, even his body had almost suffered such a fate. If not for his spear taking much of the edge off, he would have been in two halves right now.

Of course, Leonel had progressed a lot. The first time he had fought Amery, the latter had his ability locked and he had dealt with several rounds of Vital Star Force weighing him down. At the same time, Leonel was not only not weighed down by the Star Force, it even made him several times stronger.

Even under those conditions, he had lost handily.

In this situation, though Leonel didn't quite know it, bowman had a decided advantage in Anarchic Force laced environments. It was for that reason that Cornelius was so shocked by Leonel's Bow Force earlier. Being able to use long ranged attacks in a place where gathering atmospheric Force was almost impossible gave one a huge leg up.

In fact, it was only because the Rapax Nest was relatively lighter on Anarchic Force in the first place that Amery's Sword Force was able to travel so far. But, even then, it weakened too much before it could slice Leonel in half.

None of this even mentioned the fact that Leonel had no ability to use his Enlightened Bow Force so many times in a row without the support of this Quasi Life Grade Bow. Even if he hadn't been teaching Amery a lesson and he went directly for the kill, Leonel believed that he would have still needed at least five arrows to claim Amery's life.

Under normal conditions, Leonel could shoot two, and if he realized pushed himself into a comatose state, three. After his mind broke into the Sixth Dimension, he could barely shoot four now. Unfortunately, since his body had yet to catch up, his breakthrough into the Sixth Dimension didn't give as large a boost as it might otherwise.

Regardless, it would leave him one short of victory.

Plus, none of this even mentioned what advantages just shooting with this bow alone gave. It was subtle, but Leonel felt that it had had a suppressive effect on Amery's Sword Force, likely something related to abilities of the bow he had no right to use just yet.

All of this made Leonel incredibly unsatisfied with this victory. If he had wanted to win like this, he could have done it ages ago. This True Selection would have been a joke if he used his bow from the beginning.

Leonel suddenly felt a dull thud thump against his chest. Looking down, he found Aina standing before him, a slightly annoyed look on her face.

"Less than four years," she suddenly said.

"Huh?"

"The Metamorphosis happened less than four years ago and he's been training since he was a toddler. If he saw your face right now, he'd probably die of rage."

Leonel raised an eyebrow before he eventually shook his head and chuckled.

He never cared to compare himself to others. When he told Conon to stop placing his limitations onto himself, he had meant it. He didn't care how many more years of experience, backing and knowledge Amery had than him, he still felt like he should be able to win his own way.

"You're also lazy."

Leonel blinked, snapping out of his own thoughts to look at Aina again.

"Don't look at me like that, I'm right. You can easily lose yourself in your work, giving the illusion that you're hard working, but you only like to focus on things that are interesting to you, or things that give you the thrill of deduction, like finding out something new.

"But, how often have you stripped things down to their bare bones and just swung a wooden spear ten thousand times in the same stance for days on end?"

Leonel opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly found that he had no answer. Was he really lazy?

Now that he thought about it, the only reason he was so fascinated with Force Crafting, at least in the beginning, was because his dad had challenged him. And now, just like Aina said, he loved it because every Craft was like a new challenge, a new puzzle to solve, a new world to jump into.

She was right… he had never really gotten to the nuts and bolts of things…

Aina sighed seeing Leonel's expression.

She remembered that at first, she didn't want Leonel to follow her because she cared about him and thought that his talent might not be great enough to stay by her side, not until she got her revenge, anyway. But, almost instantly, he had flipped that thought of hers on its head. He seemed to improve all the time with hardly any effort at all.

It was hard to tell someone like that they should be better and do better, especially when it worked so well.

Leonel had an embarrassment of riches, but eventually the well spring would come to an end. Eventually, a Quasi Life Grade bow wouldn't be enough. Eventually, he wouldn't be able to travel any further in Spear Domain. Eventually, he would have to travel to places he couldn't survive in with the Segmented Cube.

And then what? Would he hope another rage fueled tantrum would push him over the edge and give him the strength he needed?

"If you want to be a King, you should learn how to deal with boredom. Or else, when that peace you want finally comes, what are you going to do with yourself?"

Aina looked at Leonel seriously when she spoke these words. It was just a few short and simple sentences, and yet it hit Leonel like a truck.

She was right, when all the excitement was gone, what would he do?