ANNOYING

Kaelan froze.

1. Aina Morales.

That last name, he didn't recognize it. He could tell with ease that that was the name Leonel was pointing at.

It was impossible for him to not recognize a last name on the rankings, especially not if it was first place. They all should come from the most prominent families below the Demi-God Realms. So how was it that-

He froze. Wasn't this human's name Leonel Morales?

"Surprised? Don't be. I tried to tell you all that my wife is amazing. Not my fault none of you wanted to listen."

"You..."

"Are you going to attack, or not? I'm getting quite bored. You came here all boisterous, beating your chest like an ape. But where's the follow through?"

Kaelan's eyes were completely red.

The boy was confusing him. He suddenly couldn't tell left from right, or right from left anymore. He felt like-

Kaelan froze. He suddenly remembered... Why would this boy be speaking so much? Wasn't it to attack his mind? Wasn't he a Dream Force expert? Could it be that his mind was already being infiltrated? Was everything around him fake?

Kaelan erupted with a roar that shook the world, streams of Earth Force coming out from him in waves.

Leonel coughed up a mouthful of blood as he was sent blasting into the distance. Kaelan's Earth Force was clearly in the Life State, and unlike Leonel, he had access to the full brunt of it as a Ninth Dimensional powerhouse. He was on an entirely different level. Whether it was Leonel or Aina, they stood no chance against this sort of enemy.

Another mouthful of blood came from Leonel. He wiped his lips with a forearm then spit to the side, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. The waters of Existence were truly deep.

Even the experts of such "weak" worlds were so powerful, let alone the true behemoths.

"DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN FOOL ME?!" Kaelan roared, the world shaking beneath his mind. The earth whined and split as mountains collapsed.

His four floating palms were held up into the air and the entire world seemed to elevate. The sea level descended and the cracked and floating rocks rose.

Leonel smiled. Well, wasn't this guy just a big ball of sunshine?

Unfortunately... he was also an idiot.

BOOM!

The world that seemed about to collapse was suddenly forcefully stabilized.

High in the skies, higher than even the Nomad, a man appeared... Or rather, a humanoid male...

His skin was a greyish color with echoes of blue. He was tall, standing at over four meters, but at the same time, he was lean and powerful, not to mention muscular to the point of exaggeration. His skin pulsed with striations a human simply couldn't form.

He was bald and his body was covered in ancient tattoos of dark gold that seemed to be a mixture of a careful inking technique and a branding one. That made these ancient tattoos elevated in some portions and subtle in others. It felt like the longer one looked at them, the more lost one would become.

When Kaelan saw the man in the skies, he shook violently, his heart dropping into an abyss.

"P... P... Pluto..."

He took such a blow that his mind went entirely blank and he lost consciousness for a moment before it returned and he lost it again. The man seemed to fade in and out of focus, his mind being ravaged by thoughts of inferiority and fear. Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

Leonel's lip curled but he didn't really say much of anything.

Why had he spent all that time goading the Nomad?

There was actually no specific reason at all. He just didn't like him. Wasn't that enough?

These people had been annoying him for a long while now, and he was getting very tired of it.

It had only been a short time since he saw El'Rion last, but the brat seemed to have grown substantially already. What was interesting to Leonel was that El'Rion was most definitely still in the Fifth Dimension, and yet he had grown substantially.

El'Rion had said he was a Quasi Sixth Dimensional expert, and that should mean that he was at the absolute limits of what the Fifth Dimension had to offer already... and yet he had still found so much more room for growth.

Leonel found it all fascinating.

'Jackpot,' Leonel suddenly thought. He was eager to see what the Life Tablet would pick up from El'Rion. It could be said he was killing two birds with a single stone.

All in a good day's work.

El'Rion frowned when he saw that Leonel wasn't surprised to see him. It only appeared for a moment, though, before it vanished.

He shook his head. He was used to being silent and stoic, but Leonel seemed to have a way of getting to him.

'He's changed...' El'Rion suddenly thought.

Leonel had, indeed, changed. But somehow, he was just as annoying. It left the Pluto youth without the words to describe him. How'd he manage to change almost everything about himself except this one thing?

He had an urge to tell Leonel to go back to the drawing board.

El'Rion's gaze turned toward the trembling Nomad and he waved a hand.

BANG!

Kaelan's head exploded, waves of blood falling through the skies.

"Satisfied?" El'Rion asked.

"Why are you asking me that question like I ordered you around?" Leonel asked with a smile.

El'Rion wasn't sure how to respond.

"Isn't it obvious you knew this would happen?"

"You're not very good at lying, El'Rion," Leonel said with a chuckle. "You definitely thought I'd be surprised."

El'Rion's nose scrunched up but his demeanor went back to normal.

He stretched out a hand and clawed space, his short, curled nailed ripping into the stream of time and rewinding the events.

He watched the scene in silence and then waved a hand for them to disappear.

"Why did you antagonize him so much?"

"His face annoyed me."

El'Rion, once again, didn't know how to respond.