Dimensional Descent

He was so confident in himself that he even thought he could toy with Aina's emotions as he pleased and still get her back? Did he really think like that?

Leonel frowned, finding the words hard to accept. But, he didn't immediately reject them either. Whether they were true or not, just the fact that Aina felt that way meant that it was important for him to take her seriously. He would either have to address such a thing head on, or he would have to convince her that this wasn't true.

The trouble was that if even he wasn't sure, then how could he go about convincing her? Plus, it wasn't like he could just lie to her, he didn't want to break her trust any more than he already had. There was also the fact that they often connected their minds as well.

Leonel just fell into silence. Was he such a person? Did he carry such a dangerous mentality?

If Leonel was honest with himself, the answer to that question was most definitely yes. As for proof of that, didn't he just need to look at his own moral compass?

Why was it that he was such a "moral" individual? Many would think it was because he had a soft heart, or he was inherently virtuous, or he just believed in the sanctity of human life and life itself. These would be the reasons most would give to such a thing.

But, Leonel was a different sort of beast altogether.

Soft heart? He was had never had one. Virtuous? He couldn't be considered that either? The sanctity of human life? What kind of nonsense was that?

Leonel had always had the very same reason. Because he couldn't logically deduce an objective metric for the worth of a life, he decided that everyone, regardless of status, was equal. It was as simple as that.

He wasn't a saint, he wasn't virtuous, he didn't have a soft heart… In fact, it could be said that he was quite cold.

When he first entered the Mayan Tomb, and he made it all the way to the end, all to finally kill the Priest and nearly lose his life to that teenage girl who was about to be sacrificed… one might think that he truly was soft hearted, and maybe in practice he was, but foundationally? He didn't think so.

To that teenage girl, Leonel had just killed the Priest who was about to give her people, and most importantly, her family, peace and prosperity. She was already ready to give her life for this cause, but Leonel had swooped in with his own ideologies and imposed them onto her.

In fact, it was worse than that. Leonel ruined their ritual because he simply didn't have a choice. If he wanted to go home, he had to kill the Priest. It was inherently a selfish desire that had brought him to that point, and he felt guilt about it.

Why should he get to go home, and yet this young girl's life would forever be ruined? Who knew what kind of punishment she and her family would face after the death of the Priest? Leonel might have made a terrible situation several times worse.

Guilt.

That was right, he had felt guilt. But, wasn't that an emotion? Wasn't he logical to a fault?

He was. The difference was that while others felt emotion based on ingrained biases, Leonel's moral code was decided by his own deductions and the two words his father had instilled in him from his youth.

Respect and Persistent.

This was why Leonel was so fascinated by his emotions for Aina. They didn't make much sense, they bloomed from nowhere, and she seemed to have latched onto him in a way no one else could.

In fact, the first time Leonel felt that he had acted irrationally was also due to Aina, speaking those disrespectful words in the presence of so many people and violating one of his own core doctrines: Respect.

Leonel's brows furrowed deeper.

He didn't quite understand what to do.

Leonel hadn't spent a lot of time with his mother, but she had said something quite profound during one of their conversations. It was quite simple: when someone shows you who they are, believe them. People don't change unless they want to. Even though she loved his father, she never entertained him, not until he showed his own willingness to change.

Leonel had always naively believed, though, that he was quite good at adapting to the situation. So long as he had enough information to logically change his position, he didn't mind changing. He even thought that he had done this many times already.

But was that even true?

It took Anya saying something for him to realize that he was ruining a lot of his relationships with organizations on his own. And, even when she pointed it out to him, did he suddenly turn a new leaf…? Not really. He was still the same person.

And now, it took Aina saying something about this for him to realize where the core of the issue lay.

Was he too confident? No, it shouldn't be called confidence, he was arrogant. He had an overinflated ego, and he wasn't even sure if he had the ability to rein in it.

What worried him the most was that what if there really did come a day when he couldn't just think his way out of something? It would be too late to do anything by then.

However, this was most definitely a humbling experience. A race even weaker than the humans had managed to become so powerful by following a path Leonel would have sworn up and down was just useless.

This was just his first stint into the wider Dimensional Verse. Who knew how many things there were out there that he couldn't possibly wrap his head around? Maybe there were things even more fantastical than this that he had never laid his eyes on.

Still, just like Alienor had said, a person changing wasn't a simple matter at all. In fact, if Leonel began to uncover the truths behind these things he couldn't understand, wouldn't his confidence only grow?