FIRST CASUALTY
When the panda-like Ancestor's eyes landed on Seltin's body, his expression became even uglier, but he struggled to force himself to calm down. How could he not recognize Leonel? He knew that this man was the current Patriarch of the Morales family, if they were to do something to him it would be about as good as declaring war, and if they were ready for something like that against such a behemoth, they would have already attacked the Three Finger Cult to get their revenge.
But at the same time, he couldn't just let things go like this, that was impossible. They had their own bottomline as well.
The panda Ancestor, a man named Gefnor, took a breath trying to calm himself. He didn't interact with the world much for obvious reasons, so these types of matters weren't what he was good at, but he was still sharp and astute. He immediately thought of a solution.
"... I know that you're able to revive people. Bring them back to life and we will pretend like this matter never happened."
"My tablet. Return it. Now." Leonel said coldly.
Gefnor's expression darkened. So this was what this was about?
"Revive her first, then we can discuss this matter..."
"She will remain dead."
Gefnor and the others were stunned into silence. They thought that maybe Leonel would demand to see his tablet first, maybe he would talk about not trusting them to keep their word, maybe he would try to work out some other deal... But what they never thought was that he would respond like this.
He didn't want to revive her. He would revive her. He had given her three seconds, and she didn't cherish it. What right did she have to live after offending him? What right did she have to revive when he couldn't do the same for his father?
The dead should remain dead.
Gefnor didn't know how to reply, but his fury did. It continued to bubble upward, threatening to spill over. Whether he interacted with the world or not, he understood the kind of weight the title of Ancestor brought, and he understood even greater than that what a gap between strength levels represented. No matter how talented Leonel was, even if he had been at the pinnacle of the Seventh Dimension, bridging the gap to the Eighth was absolutely impossible. That was only an understanding that one would gain after touching upon the threshold.
How could he allow a child to talk to him like this? But before he could say anything, Leonel nodded.
"You can all die, then."
At that moment, three Starships that had been hovering in the skies made their presence known. They rumbled just a single time and then their lasers shot out, piercing forward. The laser whizzed by Leonel's ear, a searing heat erupting that would have burned practically anyone else to ashes. Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g
The laser was too quick for Gefnor to react. A hole was torn through his head and his gaze became vacant almost instantly.
The remaining two Ancestors were shocked away, quickly reacted to pull their strengths together, but Leonel had already spoken again.
"Rise."
Gefnor shuddered and a violet spirit came from his body. It didn't even get a chance to bow to Leonel before it was forced to attack.
Tragic cries echoed once again. The two remaining Ancestors were entirely occupied with waiting for the next strike of the Starship. By the time they realized the rest of their family was in danger, it was far too late and over half of their Quasi Eighth Dimensional experts had been crushed to death beneath Gefnor's might.
Leonel continued to walk forward, slipping by the two Ancestors as though they weren't worth much and entering the depths of the Umbra family compound.
By the time he came back, Bronze Tablet in hand, only Gefnor and the two Ancestors remained. Unfortunately for them, it wasn't easy to deal with an Ancestor who could endlessly regenerate. The two were on their back legs and struggling mightily against Gefnor's suicidal attacks. He had already been the strongest amongst the three of them, which was why he was the first one to speak, and now they were suffering an obvious fate.
"Fight to the death," Leonel said indifferently, stepping out from the palace and preparing to leave. He didn't have the time to waste here, and he didn't feel like using more of his power on something so insignificant.
However, when he stepped out, he found a red-eyed Radlis kneeling by his aunt's corpse. He cared about his aunt greatly, and their relationship had always been extremely close. Although the latter was always teasing him and saying ridiculous things about her beauty, it was exactly that that made Radlis love her so much. It could even be said that most of his perversion came from the influence of his aunt, she had practically molded his personality.
But now she was dead, and at the hands of a person he had thought was a friend.
When he met Leonel's gaze, he thought he would see some helplessness, maybe an understanding that they were simply standing on two separate sides and that this matter was inevitable, maybe a certain level of understanding for his pain, maybe even a little remorse, but he saw none of that.
There was only an endless depth of indifference, as though he saw Radlis' emotions as nothing more than a fixture in his life that would pass away given enough time. There was no humanity in there, no care, no sympathy.
Radlis was in a complete daze. Could that even be a gaze that a human could have? Did he not understand human emotion? Did he not have a heart?
By the time he awoke from his daze, Leonel and his three Starships had vanished. The Umbra family, filled with hope and expectation for the future, had been razed to the ground. Those that remained alive were only those Leonel felt to be insignificant existences, and of those that were important, only Radlis and Silam remained, their silence palpable.
They were only the first casualty of Leonel's wrath.