CHOKE POINT

"What happened?" Leonel asked, standing in the skies and looking toward the horizon.

"Odd movements related to Dwarven Race. There was a report that someone intercepted a prince."

"Got it."

Leonel took a step, prepared to leave the Bubble.

There was a reason that he had asked Anastasia to pay attention to the Dwarven Race. He had several ideas about how this might go, and it seemed that he was correct.

The truth of the matter was that the Aeritha Bubble, the home of the Dwarven Race, was one on Somnus' list. In fact, it was the exact same Bubble that Leonel planned to target after he left here because it had a Dream Pavilion. The use of conquering a world with one, or at the very least having it as a chess piece, couldn't be understated.

So, from the very beginning, Leonel had been paying attention to such things.

But what was more interesting than that was how strategic the location of the Aeritha Bubble was. It was positioned in such a way that it was a choke point between the Ma'at and Kairo Bubbles, and it was an unmistakably important location as a result of it.

Most tended to ignore it, but the reality was that it was the perfect springboard to attack either one of these Bubbles, and as a result, it was undeniably important and couldn't be ignored for these very reasons.

However, even this was just surface-level analysis. Anyone could think of this, and Leonel knew even without exposing himself to the reality of it that there was no way that whoever was playing around in the background would take such a simple approach to what was happening here.

Then, he thought a level deeper.

What was the world thinking about everything that had happened at the Gathering of Minds?

Of course, there was Leonel's embarrassment on one hand, but no one cared much that the Demi-Gods had won; that just seemed natural. What was more important to the common man was the fact that a Spiritual and a Sparrow had come together to claim third place. It was these sorts of underdog stories that everyone gravitated toward.

But then what happened after it all ended?

Well, the Spiritual Race basically took all the credit for it, and aside from the Dwarven Race themselves, how many people remember Aerin?

This was by design, of course. The Emberheart Lord and the Moonstone Lord were trying to use this matter as a springboard to help them fuse their Races as one.

The political landscape of Existence was very... precarious to say the least. You couldn't just evolve your Race because you felt like it, and it involved a great deal of trouble.

Simply put: why would the Demi-Gods want to allow another Demi-God Race to appear? Wouldn't that just add more competition for resources that they wanted?

More importantly than that, the more Demi-God Races there were, the more likely it was that the culling, which was an event that only the Mortal Races had to suffer, would soon become a matter that the Demi-God Races also had to deal with.

The end of Existence wasn't slowing down, and the closer they got to that inevitable end, the more drastic the measures taken would be.

Who knew if one day the Gods might decide that their existences were unacceptable and it was best if only Gods remained?

Due to this, the Spirituals had to be very roundabout and clever with how they moved forward in their attempt to become Demi-Gods. They couldn't make it too obvious that this was their goal, but they also couldn't shirk away from it because no one was a fool at these levels of power.

All of this political nonsense felt convoluted and ridiculous, but that was because it was. When everyone had pros and cons to weigh, especially when Gods and Demi-Gods couldn't just casually descend to lower worlds, all of these games of political face and subterfuge became matters of life and death.

And that was where the Dwarven Race came into play.

There was no doubt that Aerin was the most important piece of the Dwarven Race. His talent in Crafting was exceptional, and he had the potential to become their next God.

While the Spirituals were vying for a spot to Demi-Godhood, the Dwarven Race just wanted to be more comfortable and survive.

With every culling, they felt that they came closer and closer to suffering as well, and they had to speed ahead to remain ahead of the curve... Aerin was their hope to do that and live out the next few generations in peace.

Now what happened when a Bubble World in a strategic location, with so much political freedom riding on the life of a single young man, fell in love with the princess of another world that was riding on the end of a thin, sharp blade?

If one wrong move was made, everything might collapse and the world would quickly become embroiled in chaos.

This was a pressure point. If it was pressed down upon, moved, and manipulated correctly, the right person could end up with not just both, but all three worlds in the palm of their hands. This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.

And not only that... but three Dream Pavilions for the price of none.

Even with all of this said, Leonel went one layer deeper than even this.

He was almost certain that a Dream Asura was responsible for all of this after seeing the detailed scheming that Somnus was a part of. He also knew that Somnus had been expelled from his Clan after the matters of the Gathering of Minds.

Was it a coincidence that so soon after Somnus' life and death was in the balance that one of the Bubble Worlds he had so much information about had become the key chess piece in the games of another Dream Asura?

Most definitely not.

As such, he was certain that not only was it a Dream Asura, but it was a Dream Asura with incredibly close ties to Somnus himself.