Dimensional Descent

Leonel exhaled a long breath, ruffling his hair. But, it didn't carry its familiar volume and softness. Rather, it was heavy and wet, soaked through with his sweat. Even for him and Aina, taking on so many missions at once was definitely quite a challenge, especially since they had a time period to complete them all.

Of course, they could have done it leisurely, but what would have been the point of that? Not only would they not gain the benefits of training without pushing themselves, but they'd also probably have to deal with more of Treanna's nonsense during their break periods.

The final two missions were the most challenging of the bunch. They had originally been Level 5 and 6 Galaxy Ranked missions respectively before they became Void Missions, and now they were both Three Star. One was related to goblins again while the second was related to Rapax.

Leonel realized that most Galaxy Ranked missions seemed to be related to goblins and this probably wasn't a coincidence. The Dwarven Race probably had the greatest variety in strength and, likewise, had the largest concentration of weaker groups and organizations to take advantage of.

One shouldn't be fooled by the fact that Leonel and the others were sent into a Rapax Nest, if not for the severe weakening of the race, not to mention the interference of the Three Finger Cult, even the Suiard family would have never taken such a risk. And yet, even then, they had to break the rules to do so.

The Dwarven Race was probably the only one with similar average strength to humans. However, they were still above humans in the pecking order purely because they had an Eighth Dimensional world and humans did not.

One might wonder, then, why other races weren't planning to target the Dwarven Race like they would the Human Domain, and the answer to that was they had. In fact, they did so all the time. It was just that the Dwarven Race was exceptionally good at defense.

When it came to guerilla tactics, extending battles and schemes, the Dwarven Race was unmatched. Battling on their home field was like asking for death.

When Leonel and Aina began tackling higher level missions, they would no doubt include other high level races. Just the fact that Spirituals had a 'drawing dead' level in the Void Tower already spoke volumes.

Stepping over a final corpse, Leonel pushed through the vault of Dwarven Race.

A year ago, Leonel and Aina had exited their first Void Mission on the fourth day, but why was that? They had already finished scouting after the first day and should have wrapped up the mission during the second, so why did they take an extra two days to leave?

The reason was simple: because you could take things out of a Unique Zone.

The small shield that covered his privates wasn't the only thing Leonel had gotten out of that Zone. In fact, he had spent the next two days trying to decode some of the Dwarven Race's Force Arts to see what he could glean from them.

Unfortunately, the answer was not much.

While you could take things out of this kind of Unique Zone, things could also easily become distorted. Information was among the worst things to pull out of a Zone like this as it could easily lead you astray.

However, Leonel was a hyper-analytical person. Finding faults and flaws was what he was best at, these distortions didn't bother him at all.

Still, he hadn't been able to get much out of the first Zone. If anything, the only benefit was that he got to spend more time teasing Aina, but there was nothing else aside from a small tidbit here and there. There was definitely nothing that could help him draw anything near as powerful as the formation that had kept him and Aina trapped.

Leonel, though, didn't choose to give up.

Every time they finished a Dwarven Race mission, he would take a look around to see if there was anything he could find, slowly cobbling together bits and pieces of a new language.

He was sure that others had tried to do this before, he had even seen research papers in the Void Library about it. But, there was nothing conclusive or holistic enough. Much like the Spirituals could protect their intellectual secrets, so too could the goblins. In fact, they were even better at it.

While Spirituals were powerful purely because they were talented as a race overall, the goblins were different. They couldn't afford for their secrets to come out as it would have a huge impact on their whole race and even lead to their extinction.

Everything they left behind was designed to destroy itself, and anything that was left was designed to mislead.

Knowing this, it was unsurprising that even after going through over a dozen goblin Void Missions, Leonel still didn't find much of anything.

'Nothing again, huh… They're quite good at this…'

Leonel smiled, looking into the vault to find nothing but nonsense. What was left behind might as well have been a picture of the goblins mooning him, they were quite a funny and snarky race of people. Leonel couldn't help but laugh.

"If you really want to study this stuff, you'll probably have to go to their territory," Aina walked to his side, scanning the vault.

"Maybe if it was someone else, but your hubby is a special case."

Aina rolled her eyes and ignored Leonel, just waiting for him to show off like he usually did.

"I realized something in the Void Tower while we were climbing. Don't you feel that it was a lot like a Zone?"

Aina blinked before her brows furrowed.

"It's too different. Our bodies don't go in, but…" Aina's irises flashed. "… It did feel a lot like a Zone now that you say it."

Leonel nodded. The feeling was vague because he hadn't been awake, but his Dream Force affinity was simply too high not to pick up on the similarities.

"It's just a theory for now, but I wonder if Zones are projections of Dream Force. Just think about Mythological Zones for a second. How is it that Fairy Tales can become real? And why is it only that the most popular Fairy Tales manifest despite the fact that there are so many variations of them?

"What if it's a collective projection of a collective Dream Force of everyone who's ever read or told the story? After reaching a certain concentration, the Zone is formed. After all, isn't Dream Force just consciousness?"

Aina's eyes glowed with a fiercer and fiercer light. Something about Leonel's words made her heart skip several beats, as though they were stumbling onto something they had no business touching at their current level.

Aina had no idea just how true this was, and the kind of heft Leonel's statement carried with it.

"So what does this have to do with this Zone?"

"Well, history is not too different from fairy tales, are they? The only difference is that there were a large number of individuals who witnessed the event as it was, so it's more difficult to distort. Projections onto the past from the future won't be able to change what the reality was, so as such, there are very few changes.

"But, what about a Unique Zone like this? It's kept open for decades, centuries even, its resources continually plucked. As time passes, the original solid Dream Force becomes influenced by our future projections of what the truth was. As a result, they distort and all sorts of oddities can appear.

"Then, the facts become so skewed and ridiculous that it feels like we're in a dream, almost.

"But… what if you have a high enough Dream Force affinity to wade through this dream?"