Dimensional Descent

"I placed your Metal Spirit into Suspended Animation. 20 years of separation between yourself and your mink is one matter, but if you allowed the same to happen with your Metal Spirit, it would grow apart from you.

"Before maturity, Spirits are too malleable and susceptible to their environment. If you only spent a fraction of their life with them, they would easily forget you, which makes sense since they live far longer than humans, some even believe that Spirits have no finite lifespans at all.

"The little one will be in the first lab."

Anastasia changed the subject before Leonel could ask any questions quite clearly. It was obvious that she had no intention of allowing him to know the truth.

The good news, though, was that Leonel was ecstatic to hear this news, he had actually been worrying about it. If Little Tolly also entered the Sixth Dimension while he was gone, it would already be too late to do anything and he would have wasted billions of Demon Points on nothing.

Someone else might have thought of abandoning Little Tolly at that point and simply picking up a new Metal Spirit, but by this point, Tolliver was Leonel's partner. How could he abandon him just because? He wouldn't have the heart to do it.

…

It wasn't long before Leonel felt that familiar feeling of Little Tolly rushing through his fingers. He couldn't help but have a wide grin on his face. It seemed that Suspended Animation state hadn't affected the little one at all and it was just as enthusiastic. To it, it had been even less than a year since it had seen Leonel, but it was still far too long.

Anastasia had obviously sensed this and made this decision herself. Toward this, Leonel could only be endlessly grateful.

With a smile, Leonel turned to face Candle and Vice. The two of them didn't look to have aged a day, but this was to be expected. Although Savants could rise through the Dimensions via normal means, so long as their control over their Ability Index reached certain levels, they would have no problems living long lives.

What did surprise Leonel, though, was that the usual shadow that loomed over them seemed to have dissipated somewhat.

Candle's finicky and jittery demeanor was no longer as prominent and Vice seemed to have stopped copying everything Candle did to hide his true intentions. Most curiously, though, or maybe it was only to be expected since only the two of them were here, they seemed very close to one another. Facing Leonel now, they clearly found comfort in each other's presence.

Leonel was happy that this happened, in fact he had hoped that something like this would happen although he had done nothing to try and force it. He wanted the two of them to slowly pull away from the shadow their life in Dark Cloud Prison had placed them under.

Even if they didn't quite trust Leonel as he had simply vanished for two decades, it would still be easier to communicate with and understand them the more humanity they had.

"First I want to apologize to you two. I had every intention of giving you both as much freedom as possible, but an event caused me to lose access to the Segmented Cube. To me, it's only been about a year and some change, but to you, it's already been two decades. There's already nothing I can do to fix that.

"However, I still that you two can—"

"It's okay," Vice suddenly spoke.

Leonel raised an internal eyebrow but he didn't do much else other than smile when he heard this. In the past, Vice would be too busy imitating Candle to dare to interrupt Leonel when he was speaking because Candle would be too reserved to ever think of doing so.

"You don't need to treat them with kid gloves," Wise Star Order said with a snort. "My two little disciples are stronger than you can even imagine."

"In that case, I'll ask you two something else then. What do you want to do in life?" Leonel kept looking toward them, not sparing Wise Star Order a glance.

The couple looked toward one another before grabbing a hold of one another's hands.

"We want to help master rebuild the Luxnix family," Vice spoke for them both.

Leonel blinked before chuckling inwardly. He knew that Wise Star Order would do his own bit of brainwashing, but it seemed that his claws were sunk deep into this pair.

Leonel didn't dare to refute it either. After all, if his first interaction with Candle and Vice was to question their motives or if they were smart enough to make their own decisions, then it would completely ruin any good will he had in their hearts if there was any.

To them, Wise Star Order was likely like a father by now, while he was just a person who had threatened them with death and then leveraged that into controlling their abilities. The gap was far too large.

However, what happened next surprised him. It was actually Candle that spoke this time.

"We understand that Sir Leonel is also the hope of the Luxnix family, so we will do our best to assist you.

"Also, Vice and I want to thank Sir Leonel for not killing us for our abilities. We know that you could have any time you wanted, but you chose to spare us. Thank you very much."

Candle spoke very softly, but her words were firm and carried much more confidence than Leonel expected. It seemed that she had truly come out of her shell as well. He had simply missed too much.

Leonel sent a gaze toward Wise Star Order. He hadn't expected the old man to tell them about this.

Of course, Leonel could have told them himself. But something like that was hard to bring up naturally without making it sound like a threat. If they didn't learn about it naturally, it was best they didn't learn about it at all.

Wise Star Order snorted. "Don't look at me like that, this one made me tell them."

Candle giggled hearing her master's complaints. The mood and atmosphere felt quite homey all of a sudden.