ODD

Cindra frowned when she saw the crystal Leonel was handing to her.

First, she was in shock that this boy found her at all. After the Slayer Legion dispersed, the commanders were the only ones who hadn't followed into the Segmented Cube along with Leonel. Obviously, this was because they didn't really want to put their lives in the hands of Leonel.

This left Cindra feeling a bit... conflicted. It was a cop-out, honestly. They were willing to trust him with the lives of all of those people, but not their own? It went to show that the Slayer Legion had already become too used to leading... it was a familiar symptom of power. Eventually, the corruption would seep in.

Of course, things weren't so exaggerated. But if there really came a day where the Slayer Legion was victorious, wouldn't things go very wrong, very quickly?

"I'm not a Dream Force expert," she said lightly.

"You just don't think you are. But I can sense it in you."

Now that he was looking for it, not to mention the fact his Dream Force had raised to a new level, Leonel was certain that Anastasia was correct.

His "80%" metric was a bit crude, and it would be hard to tell for a while if Cindra really had that amount of potential or not. But what was certain was that her talent in Dream Force was extraordinary.

She hesitated for a moment. She felt that Leonel likely wasn't lying to her... but she found it difficult to just trust him.

Just the fact he had found her in this vast world meant that they had never really left his range of influence. Could it be the reason he never cared to stop them was because he knew that he could find them again whenever he needed to? That was quite a scary thought.

Leonel tilted his head to the side before retracting his hand.

Cindra frowned. "What-?"

"Let's spar," Leonel suddenly said.

"Huh?"

Cindra was speechless. What's all that supposed to mean?

"Well, you think I'm trying to trick you, no? Won't it be easy to tell after a spar?"

Leonel's smile suddenly made Cindra feel a bit annoyed. Clearly, he was saying that he didn't have to trick her because he was so much more powerful to begin with.

Ultimately, she was just in the Eighth Dimension, and this should mean a lot... especially when her enemy was just in the Fifth. But there was something about Leonel that left her feeling particularly... uneasy.

Cindra sighed. "There's no need for that. I saw Aina's battle, I know that she's very powerful."

"That's neither here nor there," Leonel smiled, "for all you know I'm doing this behind her back and could just be trying to get one over on you, right?"

"Alright, you don't have to humiliate me. I get it," Cindra shook her head and reached out a hand for the Dream Force Crystal.

Leonel chuckled and brought out the Dream Force Crystal. He couldn't help but remember the overly cautious Eamon at that moment...

He wasn't trying to humiliate Cindra, but he just wanted to remind her that her reservations were silly. He really didn't need to go so far to trick her, and if he just wanted to influence her with Dream Force, he could just do it with his own, he certainly didn't need to use a Dream Force Crystal as a proxy.

What Leonel didn't realize just yet was how accurate his deductions were. Cindra was, indeed, the one that had guided Eamon, and the latter had clearly been influenced by her caution as well.

BOOM!

A silvery fog erupted from Cindra. It moved so violently that it pierced a pillar into the skies high above.

Leonel grinned before his expression suddenly changed.

"Shit."

Leonel's own aura erupted, and just as Cindra's own was about to reach a new realm, he placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her into the Segmented Cube.

Cindra was too distracted to fight back against the sudden change. Much like Leonel in the past, memories of her entire life surfaced one after another, from the day she was born to the present. She didn't have any wherewithal about her because her mind was entirely pulled in by these thoughts and memories.

Then, at that moment, high in the skies, the outline of a familiar owl formed, a call that sounded akin to the phoenix's of myth and legend peeling across the skies like a bright spark of lightning.

Leonel exhaled a breath and shook his head. That was close... too close.

He just hadn't expected for the awakening of Cindra's Lineage Factor to be so... violent.

Honestly, it was hard to remember his own because he had been lost in meditation at the time as well.

Clearly, though, this was on a completely different level.

In the Dimensional Verse, the Snowy Star Owl was just a "mere" Sixth Dimensional Lineage Factor. But clearly, in Complete Worlds, this title held much more weight than it seemed.

This made sense. The Forces in these Complete Worlds were on an entirely different level and the Dimensions held entirely different weights.

Wasn't even El'Rion just in the Fifth Dimension? But how much strength did he have? Clearly, a Dimension could mean vastly different things to vastly different people.

But it wasn't just that... Cindra's Snowy Star Owl Lineage Factor felt different from his own. It was still about its completeness, but it also felt more... natural than his own. Almost as though she was naturally born to wield this Lineage Factor while he was not.

'That's odd...' Leonel thought. 'I bet the Life Tablet will have an explanation for that-'

As Leonel was about to send his mind into the Life Tablet to unearth the answers he wanted, Cindra's gaze slowly cleared. When she looked around and realized she didn't recognize her surroundings, she immediately looked toward Leonel with an accusatory glance.

"You-"

She was speaking when she suddenly attacked. © content.