STURDY?
El'Rion found that his heart was beating too rapidly for him to control. Leonel had already gone off far into the distance by the time he regained his bearings. He didn't seem to snap out of it until he realized that Leonel was actually going down below to the location of the partially built pyramids.
El'Rion took another deep breath, trying to settle himself. He looked toward the corpse of the Void Beast. Controlling that? Wasn't that too ridiculous? Who was he trying to fool? Who would believe that a human could take control of a Void Beast's corpse?
He had some understanding of the Fawkes family's ability. Of course, he knew that Leonel wasn't talking about taking control of the corpse. He was speaking of using Arise on Little Blackstar and then using Assimilate and Breathe on him. That way, Blackstar would gain the strength of the dead Void Beast. If such a thing succeeded, Blackstar would indeed become an existence the likes of which even the entity feared, and he would indeed become a puppet of Leonel.
But how could such a thing be possible? From .
Killing Little Blackstar and animating his soul was easy enough. Leonel could easily use Arise on the Ancestors of the Dimensional Verse, so Blackstar was well within his abilities. However, while Assimilate and Breathe worked better the better the material was, the energy couldn't come from nowhere. It would obviously need Leonel to provide the catalyst for the fusion. If it was too far beyond Leonel's abilities, how could he possibly succeed?
El'Rion was smart enough to think of all of this. If the Fawkes family didn't have such limitation, it would be they who were the Gods and not the other way around. In El'Rion's opinion, the so-called Ninth Dimensional Lineage Factor was barely passable. Of course, that didn't assume that there were Tenth Dimensional Lineage Factors and above, rather it was that the title of Ninth Dimensional was just a world, and the ones that Leonel knew of were just the outskirts of this world.
In fact, El'Rion didn't call Lineage Factors by such titles. He divided them into Complete and Incomplete. Only when you were Ninth Dimensional could you barely be considered Complete.
El'Rion knew all of this. So why... why was it that he still felt that Leonel wasn't lying to him just to save face? Was it truly because he was too young and easily led by the nose? Or was it because there were other matters that Leonel couldn't be bothered to explain?
If El'Rion had known Leonel, he would understand just how rare it was for Leonel care to explain anything in the first place. The idea that he would explain everything... especially to a potential enemy...
Well, wasn't that too ridiculous?
After one final breath, El'Rion exhaled another breath and managed to fully reclaim his calm. He descended after Leonel, wanting to understand what this man was doing. Regardless of the circumstances, he had entered a state of complete curiosity. Someone else might have already been completely enraged, but El'Rion was someone who had taken the humiliation at the hands of the entity as though nothing at all had happened, so how could he take a few words from Leonel seriously?
...
Leonel landed on the ground, gliding across the grown sandy plains. The World Spirit that had been fused with him had long since separated, but now it followed over his shoulder, an amorphous blob of energy.
Somewhere inside, Leonel wondered if this World Spirit had followed his mother because it had truly chosen her, or if it was his fault. After he left this place, he couldn't very well take the World Spirit with him, so it would be stuck here until Alienor was born. Who knew, maybe it attached itself to her because it had finally sensed an aura similar enough to Leonel's.
Though he thought this, Leonel didn't accept it right away. For one, World Spirits weren't foolish creatures, they had enough intelligence of their own though it didn't manifest in the same ways. Secondly, he felt that this current World Spirit was very different from the one he knew... it was too strong.
Leonel had noted this the moment it appeared, but since he was in the midst of battle, he couldn't exactly explore this idea. But now, he felt that he had quite a bit of time on his hands.
Because he had been forcibly expelled from El'Rion's body, for all intents and purposes, they had already failed this Zone.
This was unfortunate because his mother wouldn't be able to gain the benefits of completely understanding a new Magic System this time. But it was fortunate in that he didn't have the same restraints.
At the same time, although the rewards would be lost to them, there would be other rewards here. There were still the Void Race members above and there was still this pyramid being built here.
How much had Leonel gained just from entering the Zone of the mere Dwarven Race? It benefited his combat prowess even now and it was a large part of the reason he had mastered his spear so quickly.
The benefits waiting here for him were on a completely different level.
As for why the Void Race members above had yet to run for their lives... the truth was that they didn't dare to. Only the likes of Leonel would dare to even speak so brazenly to a Pluto. As for them? The moment Shan'Rae escaped, even though El'Rion had yet to speak even a single word to them, they acted as though they were captives.
Leonel waved his arm and his injured elbow snapped back into place. With a clench of his fist, it was soon as though nothing at all had happened.
When he entered the range of the pyramid, his eyes narrowed.
With the evolution of his Lineage Factor, he had gained a great deal. One such thing was that his Earth Force affinity had risen to an entirely new level. So, when he stepped foot into range, he felt as though he was standing upon the sturdiest earth he ever had.
It was a completely contradictory feeling. What about sand could possibly be sturdy?