HOW BEST?

Leonel tossed the net of runes in his hands and then chose a direction. He needed to test this thing first. He wasn't a fan of jumping into things without information.

Soon, he found a Tier Five to target as it would take heading to a new mountain range to find another Tier Six, and he had already run out of lower tier mountains to take advantage of. The next few were all guarded by Tier Sevens at the peak at worst.

It was more awkward than he expected, but he finally got the hang of it. Plus, it was also much faster. It only took about 20 or so seconds now to get it to work, whereas before it had taken over a minute.

On top of that, he had dialed in the power.

Essentially, it could explode forward one time with a strength just one and a half Tiers above the creature trapped within it. If the target was in a vulnerable position and exactly one Tier above the creature within, then it was almost certainly a sure-fire kill every time.

With Leonel's control abilities, he should almost certainly never lose in that bet.

The only drawback was that it seemed to take about an hour or so for it to be able to repeat this feat. But that was, once again, not a problem for Leonel.

Didn't he now have ten nets of runes?

Well, he had nine now, with one on cooldown. And of them, only two had actual creatures within any longer, with the third one he had just used only having a Tier Five within it now. But this was still a huge advantage for him. Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

According to Leonel's calculations, because he was in Tier Six, he could already control a Tier Nine creature for just under 20 seconds. That was just shy of what he needed to succeed, but even if there was a Tier Nine in front of him right now anyway, he would still need a Tier Eight creature that he had previously trapped in order to take it out.

As for a Tier Eight creature, as a Tier Six, he could control one for just shy of 40 seconds. He already had the capital to capture one.

Now, the only thing holding him back was finding these creatures. And his first target would be a Tier Seven.

...

"You overestimate yourself, Burul," a man said with a calm voice.

It was a battle between a Spiritual and a Nomad. Dream Force flew about in a flurry of exchanges, but the two men stood across from one another, separated by hundreds of meters, without even the slightest intention of closing in the gap.

There was a creature trapped between them, a Tier Seven that didn't even have the option to retaliate. It could be maybe considered the first time someone might actually feel sorry for one of these gorgeous creatures.

It was a Starry Tailed Fox standing at over seven meters tall. It was a powerful and majestic beast, but right now it was no different from a caged animal, unable to find a way out from the strikes of the two men.

It was clear that both of them had their eye on this Starry Tailed Fox, but what was interesting was that the Nomad, Burul, already had a Tier Seven trapped within his shimmering Ethereal Glabella.

"You Spirituals always think yourselves to be better than you are. You're stuck here along with the rest of us, and you're no better than us mere mortals. Who do you think you are to speak to me like this?" Burul sneered.

The Spiritual, Regnier, didn't seem to react much to these words, his calm remaining just the same. It was this indifference that could really drive a man mad, and yet Burul, who wasn't well known for his good temper, chuckled.

"I wonder, if you saw the state of your fellow Spirituals by now, how indifferent could you remain? How many of them are left, do you think?"

Regnier frowned, his eyes flickering to that net of runes fused with Burul's Ethereal Glabella. He had been observing all this while, and he felt that there was something off about it, but he couldn't quite grasp just what it was.

"Why are you trying to hide it? I know your Breeze Dream Pavilion has a method of tracking all of your other members. Why don't you tell me how many of them are left?"

Regnier didn't respond, mostly because using that treasure required his concentration. If he diverted his attention now, then he might suffer.

...

From a long distance away, Leonel watched this scene. He had already captured one Tier Seven, and he had the support of now three Tier Sixes on top of that. He had come here to capture yet another Tier Seven, swapping them out for his current Tier Sixes. But he didn't expect to run into a battle of Pavilion Heads.

It was obvious to him that Regnier couldn't immediately dismiss Burul's words because he hadn't actually been able to check whatever that treasure was.

As for Burul, he believed that his fellow Nomads were still alive and that all of them had the strength of Tier Sixes by now, so he was confident that in a battle between the Nomads and Spirituals, he would come out on top.

In truth, he would have been right... had Leonel not already killed all of them.

Unfortunately, the Tier Seven that Leonel had just caught was still on cooldown. It would still take more than 50 minutes before he could use it to attack, and that left him out of his depth in the battle that was going on below.

But the tracking device on the Regnier really intrigued him.

In this battle, there was a better than 80% probability that Burul would be the victor. It was definitely a victory the latter was looking forward to as the Breeze Dream Pavilion was ranked above his own.

But now Leonel was thinking about how best to take advantage of this without actually having the strength to do so.

'Hm...'