Dimensional Descent

Toward this, Leonel could only sigh. He had just been feeling like he was making great progress with the Spear Domain. He had finally gained a small bit of its acknowledgement, his Spear Force was rapidly evolving everyday, and he had finally claimed a Quasi Gold spear, only to be shuffled right back to step one. 

Leonel couldn’t help but feel that there was a small sense of irony to this. The moment Leonel thought that he should maybe stop emphasizing Peak Spears so much and focus a little bit more on the spears beneath them, he was thrust into a situation where if that would seem like a privilege. 

Truthfully, Leonel would feel pretty depressed about this setback if he had truly gotten nothing in return for it. But, the change to his Lineage Factor was just one of the changes that had occurred in Leonel’s body during these last few days. 

If Little Blackstar was truly safe and just shuttled off to some pocket of space by the spirit of the Segmented Cube, then this sort of trade off wasn’t bad. In fact, Leonel could be said to be benefiting. 

The second most obvious change to Leonel was the evolution of his Mage Core. Although he couldn’t understand what had happened, it almost felt as though an answer to everything he needed was already engraved onto his heart. 

The Mage Core had become a looming canopy within Leonel’s Ethereal Glabella. If one was looking from afar, it looked a lot more like an entire forest than a singular tree. Leonel almost couldn’t believe it when he saw it again for the first time. 

The Mage Core had lost its petals and flower-like characteristics. Instead, it had become an enormous tree with countless millions of leaves and branches. However, what was truly special was the fact that these leaves were multi-colored, each representing a different element and each engraved with a Rune. 

These Runes looked completely different from the ones Leonel had seen on the blue apes he fought on floor nine, but the feeling they gave off was practically identical. It was an esoteric sort of feeling, as though they were elevated in being and worth, touching upon something Leonel couldn’t quite understand fundamentally, but could somehow still grasp. 

It was almost as though Leonel was reading a book and had stumbled upon a word he couldn’t understand. However, thanks to the words and context around it, his guess was accurate as the definition itself. 

‘ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ N ovelBi(n)’,

If he focused, he could understand what the individual Runes meant, but if he wanted a holistic understanding of them all and how they fed into one another and played off of one another, he would need maybe months, probably years. 

You would think it would be easier than that with all his split minds. But, Leonel found that if he tried to split himself to understand things, the clear definition he had in his head would blur. He didn’t have a clear reasoning for why this would be unless, but he had a guess… 

‘If whatever was controlling things while my mind was stuck in my Dream World comprehended all of these Runes at once, then that would mean that the bits and pieces of understanding are all spread out and won’t be focused unless I train all of my minds on a singular Rune…’

Leonel frowned slightly. He couldn’t ever remember his split minds working like this. Aside from Dream Counter, where he would always assign one mind to a task, the rest had always been fluid and interchangeable. 

But, this felt as though his split minds had all been tagged and assigned to a separate control center. 

‘Wow, it’s no wonder…’

Leonel couldn’t deny it. While this made things more difficult on him comprehending the changes to his Mage Core, it made his thinking speed and efficiency far higher than it ever had been. 

Before, he had still been stuck in his ways, still trying to use his split minds the same way as always. But, when he fell in line with the changes, it was as though some had pressed down on an accelerator, hard. 

His thoughts became like bolts of lightning, almost completing before he had even decided to use them. His intention was almost lagging behind his actual thoughts! 

Leonel was almost lost in the world of his own mind again. But this time, it was completely intentional. 

With the way his mind worked before, when he needed to deduce something, he would work linearly. When one line of thought failed, he would abandon it and then proceed onto the next thought. However, with how it worked now, he could simultaneously think through every possibility and even have them ranked by probability and likelihood before his former self could even switch to a new line of thought. 

Leonel realized that if he had used this method to think back when he first met Wise Star Order, it would have been impossible for the old man to read his intentions by shifting through ten million minds because every mind would have already had the same intention! It was just that that intention would have been broken up into little tidbits and divided ten million times, making it almost impossible for anyone other than Leonel to piece them together and understand them. 

The irony of this was that it was using Leonel’s several hundred million split minds as though they were all one mind… And somehow that still made it all more efficient! 

Leonel took a deep breath. 

‘Even if I can’t understand my Mage Core entirely though, the result is… Almost too obvious.’

Leonel reached out a hand and Force surged toward him as though it had a mind of its own. 

He could always do this. However… He had never been able to replicate this feat in a world of dense Anarchic Force. Most of Leonel’s ability to use atmospheric Force was locked away in this place. Even the golden scaled koi fish could only pull in Force fused with Anarchic Force. 

But right now, so long as it was an Element found on his Mage Core, Leonel could force it toward himself, ignoring all the Anarchic Force around him. 

Suddenly, the air sparked and a ball of red-gold flames formed and began to rotate upon Leonel’s palm. 

Scarlet Star Force. 

Not just any Scarlet Force… 

But Fifth Dimensional Scarlet Star Force.