Losses

"Imperial Father, you…"

Galaeron looked toward where Leonel had vanished with a complicated look in his eye. This pair of grandson and grandfather really didn't like to take any losses. At this moment, he actually felt a little bit bad for Leonel.

If things had gone normally, Leonel might have still gotten a little something out of them. But this… It was a little bit much.

Emperor Fawkes, after making sure that Leonel was gone, burst into a fit of laughter. He laughed harder than he had in a very long time, what remained of his wrinkles seemingly fading away with every peal of laughter.

It took several moment for him to calm down, his move having been lifted by several levels.

"Who asked that brat to be so cheeky? Since he wanted a reward, I gave him a reward."

"But…"

Galaeron's gaze flickered.

The 'reward' Leonel had gotten was a pendant of the Luxnix family. It was one you received for granting a great service to the family and held just as much, if not more, weight that the Imperial Pendant Leonel had received from his grandfather in the past.

The difference here was that one granted you the favor of a world like Earth that was ultimately still weak. However, the other granted you the favor of a family at the very pinnacle of the Sixth Dimension. Ultimately, the vaults of the latter were far more valuable… At least on the surface, anyway.

The Star Pendant, when exchanged with the Luxnix family, would give one the ability to freely pick out a treasure from the Luxnix family treasury. The ability to pick out a single reward might seem stingy, but the truth was exactly very much the opposite of this.

As one of the three most powerful families of the Sector, the treasures the Luxnix had monopolized were beyond one's wildest imaginations, at least from the lens of a Fifth Dimensional world and below. Even in the eyes of many Sixth Dimensional existences as well.

But… It was exactly because of this that the Snowy Star Pendant was more like a ticking timebomb than a reward. It only made it worse that the reward was originally given to Emperor Fawkes to begin with.

Emperor Fawkes was dying of laughter because he could already imagine Leonel's face when he realized that his reward wouldn't be so easy to cash in.

"What are you so worried about? Alienor is there."

It was only after hearing this that Galaeron realized that things would be alright and it allowed him to settle down the weight on his heart. It seemed that he had long since given up on his own mother's backbone. Only in this way could he feel that his son would be safe.

As for Leonel, that cheeky brat could use a few beatings.

However, there was one things still weighing on Galaeron.

"Imperial Father… The service you rendered to earn that pendant…"

Emperor Fawkes waved a hand. "I don't need a single thing from that family. They can consider themselves lucky that I haven't razed them to the ground yet."

Galaeron fell into silence as Emperor Fawkes closed his eyes.

A gentle wind passed by, washing the weight of their words away.

**

Leonel had no idea that his grandfather had still had a trick up his sleeve. Currently, he was still blind about a lot of things and wasn't even aware, just yet, that the Luxnix family estate was potentially hostile ground.

Oblivious, Leonel rounded up his brothers and contacted Noah. It wasn't long before the group of them had set off to a journey across the stars.

In a somewhat unexpected twist, Leonel ended up taking more people along than he thought would be involved to begin with. It wasn't just Noah, but he also brought along Jessica. Along with the two of them, several other talents of Earth including the people of the Moon followed along as well. In fact, there was even Arthur's son, Lionus.

It hadn't been long since Leonel saw Lionus as they had fought together on EarthX1, but in an odd twist of fate Leonel ended up being closer to Lionus' father and his big sister by several decades than he was to Lionus himself despite their ages being so close. The world worked in odd ways, indeed.

Seeing so many people, Leonel realized that he was definitely missing a large piece of this story. Whatever was going on at Planet Luxnix was definitely far more important than it seemed. He thought he was just going to see his mother… But things clearly weren't so simple.

Still, Leonel welcomed them all with open arms. Since they were headed to a Sixth Dimensional world, there would definitely be a lot of chances to grow stronger. Why wouldn't he want the people of Earth to benefit from this?

After learning about the Three Finger Cult, Leonel realized that there were far more claws sunk into not just the Milky Way, but the Dimensional Verse as a whole. None of them had the luxury of growing up slowly.

…

As was natural, the men and women split and the rowdiness of Leonel's brothers came into full effect. Noah, who was clearly not used to such situation, stood out like a sore thumb.

"… No, really. I was a fan." Karolus tried to hide a bit of his embarrassment. "It's just that we didn't tend toward playing football on the Moon because our bones are more fragile than yours. We were too prone to injury. So I could only watch."

Milan burst into a fit of laughter. "You hear that, Cap?! I have a fanboy!"

"Who's a fan of you? I've never heard of someone tripping over themselves to praise a position as boring as yours!" Raj snapped. "Clearly he's infatuated with my elegant blocking."

"Piss off. There's nothing elegant about people crashing into that jiggling stomach of yours."

"It's called insulation, you uncultured swine. In the eyes of mother nature, I have an evolutionary advantage over you. Good luck in the long, cold winters!"

The rowdiness of the group only grew as the days passed. Not long later, the rotating orbit of three planets that couldn't have been more different from one another appeared before them. Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.

However, it was difficult to enjoy the beautiful sights at all because the densely packed starways of spaceships clogged up the view.

"What the fuck?" Raj exclaimed. "There's traffic in space too?"