27%

Leonel looked back to face Aerin, but it was clear that the latter didn't recognize him. Though, that much was obvious; if even Aerin could see through his disguise then he might as well not be wearing it at all.

"Let's go," Leonel said.

"Who are you?"

"Not the place to be asking questions." Content © 2024.

Aerin frowned, not understanding what this person was trying to get at.

"I'm not taking you with me, I'm just sending you back to your home world. I assume you were lured here due to something related to Lyra? Well, you don't need to worry about it, let's go."

Leonel placed a hand on Aerin's shoulder and whisked him away. At this point, Leonel's strength was too great for Aerin to resist even if he wanted to, but that only made him all the more wary.

Aerin couldn't help but wonder if all of this was a ruse set up by Leonel... the question was for what, though? Was it to get him to trust him?

Leonel chuckled. "There are much easier ways for me to deal with your Bubble, trust me. I wouldn't have the patience to wait for you to grow up and take it all over. Wouldn't I be dead and decrepit by then?"

Aerin frowned and didn't say much. He would just feel out the situation as he went.

But to his astonishment, Leonel actually sent him back to his world... and then directly left as though there was nothing of importance going on with him.

No strings, no communication, there was absolutely nothing.

'... What did he mean by "they won this round"?'

Aerin frowned, feeling an uncomfortable feeling welling up in his chest. He thought he was only a pawn in one game of chess, but it seemed that there were two masters going at it.

Could he really only be an unwitting pawn?

...

Leonel didn't even enter the Dwarven Race's Bubble.

He could understand the gist of this Dream Asura's plans, but he still hadn't grasped the root of it. And more shocking than that, he hadn't sensed where that attack from earlier had come from, and he couldn't find the person who launched it.

That could only mean one thing: there wasn't a person at all, it was triggered by some sort of Force Art.

That was probably the most unfortunate outcome because for one, that certainly meant that whatever traces could have been found were long since wiped out, and on top of that, whatever predictive and scheming ability this individual had was on a completely different level.

'First sowing discord between humans and Spirituals, and now doing the same between the Dwarven Race and the Spirituals... What are they getting at here?'

Leonel walked through the In-between Worlds as though it was any other location, unmoved by everything happening around him. He was missing a piece of the puzzle, an incredibly important piece but he just couldn't grasp what it was.

If he could just figure it out, he felt that everything would fall into place and it would all make sense again.

He entered the Ma'at Bubble once again and almost instantly had Anastasia continue her monitoring.

...

Flaura sat in a familiar recliner and a newly refilled glass of wine. She read another report and she couldn't help but raise up an eyebrow.

"It half worked... I can work with this anyway, but this person caught on? A Fawkes? Hoho..."

The more she read, the more interested she became and the more she felt an excitement bubbling up in her chest.

She had never thought that this mysterious person was a Fawkes, but maybe this made sense.

She had heard rumors that the Fawkes cashed in a favor from the Pluto to just barely survive that catastrophe from all those years ago. But from her understanding, it couldn't have been more than a handful of them that made it through.

To think that from that small minority, such a genius had risen up.

'But why expose themselves like this? What are they getting at? Are they a fool who overestimates themselves? That can't be the case because he saw through my plot, so it has to have a purpose.'

Blaring warning signs echoed in Flaura's head as it all pointed to one truth: why announce this if he wasn't trying to hide another identity? Could he really be Leonel Morales?

But then how did he mimic the Emperor's Might Lineage Factor without being a Fawkes?

The odds that were at 3% began to tick upward...

Flaura hadn't put much thought into it in the past, but if it was the case that he was Leonel, what would that mean?

'The Fawkes have quite a well-hidden history. The humans don't talk about it because it's a shame, and the others certainly won't talk about how they had to gang up and scheme to deal with a human family.

'But, Leonel Morales has the Life Tablet, or... had the Tablet. It should document histories, in which case, learning about the Fawkes wouldn't be difficult at all.

'As for why he's pretending, it's likely because he's using this opportunity to step out of the spotlight. He already failed at the Gathering of Minds, and there was even a war triggered as a result of it. There would be no better chance than to step out of the spotlight.

'Unfortunately, he was pulled back into it because the Moonlight Lord targeted his wife, and effectively the Human Race as a whole.

'The Fawkes is an interesting angle to take because they are part of the Human Race, and yet also separate at the same time. Because they were betrayed, it's easy to think of them as two separate identities...

'With that sort of framing, I'd say it's gone from just a 3% chance to 27%...'

Flaura took a sip of her wine, wondering if this would be useful. But first, she needed more information.

She called forward a steward and asked for some very specific things.