Dimensional Descent

Leonel felt his head spinning; That final blow was so powerful that he had most definitely shattered his skull; Blood flew from his nose and ears; shared of his own bone sticking into the most important frontal networks of his brain;

However, even while feeling so dizzy, he struggled to prop himself up, his mind repeating the very same action he had every other time as he rose through this world;

The platform he had started on was barely enough for two of him to stand on, but this one was tens of kilometers wide and long;

Even so, after making himself several kilometers tall, it would only take a few rolls for him to reach the end of it;

Realizing that he didn't have the strength to stand; Leonel could only do that; He didn't want to stop his momentum; He felt like if he wavered even once; he paused even once; he would no longer have the strength or courage to continue; He had to keep going; The moment the fear response cleared; he had to keep moving; no matter what;

He grit his teeth. ignoring the pain of rolling over his injured hands and arms as he made it to the edge of the platform; Just one more roll and he would fall off to his death; Only then did Leonel come to a stop. blinking several times and trying to see the distance between this platform and the next one so that he could judge exactly how much strength he had to gather to reach it;

However; at first glance; Leonel didn't see anything; His vision was quite blurry; so he blinked again; even weakly wiping at his eyes with his forearm before he could look again; But even then; he couldn't see it;

Leonel's heart froze over; Could it be that the next platform was so far away that he couldn't see it despite its surely overwhelming size? Just by a rudimentary calculation, it would take being a few thousand miles away at the very least; He was already several kilometers tall and the pain was unbearable;

He had already pushed his Dream Force to the max and couldn't get any larger. Even if he could get larger. could he really withstand what would happen to his body if the fear response suddenly became a thousand times more potent?

Leonel jaw steeled, the shards of broken teeth in his mouth digging into his gums as he used the more acute pain to pain him up;

He slowly rolled to his knees; standing up; It took him several minutes; but he finally managed to get to his feet and look right up into the vast and endless skies; He took a deep breath; glaring upward as though he was looking at his worst enemy;

But at that moment. the platform began to shimmer and shine.

Leonel. who was still thinking about how he would reach the next staircase. suddenly felt his body enveloped by a caressing sort of light; The injuries to his projection were quickly being healed; His tendons and ligaments snapped back into place. his grotesquely curled fingers were pulled back. and even his teeth and fractured jaw began to mend themselves;

Leonel looked down with a hint of surprise, not understanding for a moment until it hit him.

It wasn't that the next platform was so far away. it was that he had already reached the last platform;

He had already lost count of the number of platforms he had climbed, but he had stopped keeping track because doing so was only attacking his psyche; Having to worry about how far he had gone and trying to guess how far he had left to go would have only worn down his mind and made him more likely to give up; He had shunned all such thoughts, so much so that he hadn't even considered the fact that he had truly reached the end;

Leonel stood in silence for a moment, thinking back to everything he had gone through. He probably should have felt happy or relieved, but he didn't feel that way at all. All that pain, all that horror, he just felt like if he juxtaposed it to his usual methods, the latter was far too inferior.

If he was honest with himself, he had never worked so hard before. Compared to Aina, he was far inferior in this respect.

Leonel took a breath.

In the outside world, his body had truly become little different from a skeleton wearing a bit of skin. But for the first time in a long while, his condition didn't deteriorate and even seemed to become a bit better. Although he didn't suddenly recover immediately, he at least seemed to stabilize somewhat.

Leonel didn't even need to personally observe the current state of his body to know that Instant Recovery wouldn't work on him. He had pushed himself so far that he would need true time and rest.

Back when the cobra demon had eaten him alive, it was only by snatching strength from the demon that he had been able to recover. This proved that there was a certain point of no return even for Instant Recovery unless it gained outside support with the help of the Healing Branch of the Dark Force side of the Lineage Factor.

Regardless, this wasn't a problem that Leonel was too bothered by. Although his body was a bit weak, it wasn't as though he was helpless. And right now, he was more concerned with what exactly reaching the final platform meant. It couldn't be that it would just recover his Dream Force, right?

In truth, even if this was the case, Leonel found himself not minding as much as he thought it was. This may be one of the few times where he felt he had gotten more out of the hardship than the reward waiting on the other end of it.

However, it was a guarantee that things wouldn't be so simple. It was potentially time to truly learn what the Emperor Might Lineage Factor could do.

Leonel's projection was enveloped by a light and brought to a new place.

When he appeared, he stood in another world of green and blue. There were bubbles all around him, some of which were delicate and pale green color, and others of which were radiant and blinding royal blue colors.