Dimensional Descent

[I lied, here’s number 3]

As Leonel caught up with Aina, he slowed, eventually coming to a halt by her side. He smiled a bit, seeing that her cloak of gold had indeed become violet. 

Leonel knew that she was already close, so defeating those last four individuals should have put her way over the edge. If she took out her Golden Token now, it would most definitely be Amethyst. 

Leonel looked down at his metal encased arm. He didn’t know what else this journey would have in store for him, but this would definitely be a problem. He could only sigh toward his bad luck. He had never really consciously trained his left hand and his right always took the lead. 

‘No, I should be able to if I… Alright, I’ll name this Dream Mirror.’

Leonel closed his eyes for a moment, a focused aura concentrating around him. It took a few minutes, and he even had to come to a stop, but when he opened his eyes again, the feeling of his left arm was completely different. It was almost as though he was looking through a mirror world. 

The control Leonel had over his body had definitely increased. Just now, he rewired his proprioception and reworked how he received signals from his nerves. He didn’t physically change anything about his body, he only put the signals he received through a filter he built in his Dream World. 

Dream Mirror allowed him to now use his left hand as though it was his right. It felt as though nothing had changed at all. 

‘Good.’ Leonel nodded to himself. 

“Ready?” Aina asked. She didn’t bother to ask Leonel what he had just done, she assumed that if it was important, he’d say. If wasn’t so much, it was fine. 

Seeing her trusting expression, Leonel sighed inwardly. He knew he would have to tell her what he had tried to do with her father soon. He didn’t feel right keeping it to himself. 

“Aina.”

“Hm?”

Leonel met Aina’s gaze. The two ignored everything around them, even the slowly opening gates up ahead. Leonel bluntly explained everything, not leaving out any details. From start to finish, Aina didn’t say a word. Even after he was done, she remained silent. 

‘ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ N(ov)elBin’,

Leonel didn’t press her and simply waited. 

“You wanted the tablet?”

“Yes.” 

“And you were willing to steal it?”

“Yes.”

“But you rejected me?”

Leonel blinked, a bit confused. 

Aina suddenly smiled. It was the kind of smile that froze Leonel in place, one he couldn’t even properly react to. She was simply too beautiful. Even wearing beast skin clothing, something that should have made her primal and quite rough, she had an air of softness and a rare gentleness that left him in awe. 

“You’re quite the idiot, don’t you think?”

“Huh…?” Leonel responded absentmindedly, unable to take his eyes off of her face. 

“If you want to steal something from a woman’s father, you just have to get her to steal it for you. What are you going to do without me? You can’t even do the simplest of things without my guidance.”

Leonel was speechless. What was this woman saying? 

“Come on, we still have work to do. Don’t worry your handsome little head, I’ll take the vanguard.”

Leonel found himself being pulled away by a strength he probably couldn’t resist even if he wanted to. His brain was still trying to compute what he had just heard, but it felt as though the program kept returning errors. 

And then his eyes happened to land on Aina’s swaying hips and the dimples on her back. Had those Venus Dimples always been there? Maybe he had felt them with his hands before, but he had never actually seen them. It felt like two enchanting pair of eyes were looking back at him, swaying with the rhythm of her hips and ass. 

‘Damn…’

“Tokens!”

Leonel was snapped out of his day dream by the shout of guards. When he looked up, though, he found that their appearances were far more reserved than one might have expected. It was clear that their apprehension was rooted in the violet glow that surrounded both Leonel and Aina.

Doing as they were told, the couple presented their Tokens, and as expected, Aina’s own had mutated. There was just a tinge of gold that separated it from Leonel’s own. This was likely just confirmation that Aina had battled her way to earning her own. 

The apprehension was still quite muted, though. The youths could probably hardly be considered youths any longer and they had seen their fair share of battle. Plus, reaching this step, Leonel and Aina could only be considered Quadrant Ranked disciples while all of the students here were Galaxy Ranked at worst. Their status could not be compared. 

However, whether that would last, was a different matter entirely. 

There was something that Leonel had forgotten in his thought of the True Selection being over… This was merely the Gold Token Ranked Selection. As for the Amethyst Token Ranked… 

‘There’s some god up there that hates me.’

Leonel looked toward Aina, suddenly understanding what she meant by ‘take the vanguard’. She literally meant that she would carry him the rest of the way. 

The duo had hardly stepped foot into the walled off fort when a familiar woman appeared before them both. 

The Human Domain Fort was unlike anything Leonel had ever seen before. The height of the walls were measured in kilometers, there thickness measured in hundreds of meters. They seemed to be all metal-worked into a single sheet and he couldn’t find a single seem anywhere. Maybe if it wasn’t for the gloomy atmosphere, they would be shining like stainless steel. 

The inner-workings of the fort were a bit confusing. They seemed almost too simple compared to the walls. There were nothing but endless beast skin military tents, with even the tallest only being barely three meters. There wasn’t a hint of luxury in sight. 

The woman that appeared before both Leonel and Aina was, of course, Ossenna. Her expression was impossible to read, even for Leonel himself. However, he had already been carefully observing this woman since she had a spat with his mother. 

“You have three days. Failure in that time frame demotes your Token and your only chance to become Galaxy Ranked Disciples in a single bound.”

She snapped her fingers and a formless pressure took hold of Leonel and Aina. 

When Leonel’s vision cleared, he found himself in a world he couldn’t make heads or tails of. What he could tell, though, was that aside from Aina, there was a third person by his side. 

Amery.

Leonel sighed. The Void Palace was truly not a place that allowed you to relax.