THIRD

Leonel fell into his thoughts, spun the tip of the letter on his finger before he burnt it to ash. The smile on his face was still there.

The question was... how best to use this?

"Let's return to the Human Bubble," Leonel suddenly said.

"Why?" Anastasia frowned. She didn't understand what was happening, but she had read the letter. There was nothing but bad that could come from it. Why was Leonel smiling? And wasn't returning to the Human Bubble exactly what Flaura wanted? It wasn't like Leonel to fall into the schemes of others so easily.

"Don't worry your pretty little head, Anastasia. Have I ever taken a loss?"

"Yes." Anastasia pouted. "Pretty little what? Who do you think you're talking to? I'm older than your great, great, great, great, great, great-!"

Anastasia kept adding greats because it seemed that no amount could sufficiently satisfy her, and the funny part was that she was correct, especially due to the time dilation between Earth and the rest of Existence.

Leonel chuckled.

Had he taken losses before? Sure, but they never had to do with intelligence. He would crush this Dream Asura at their own game, and he'd feel good doing it.

Soon, he had used yet another method to step away from the Ma'at Bubble. The suffocating, more quasi or pseudo pressure of Anastasia's constant vigilance over their land faded away, but not soon afterward, they were shocked by a sudden challenge.

...

The Emberheart Lord was stunned. When he received Leonel's challenge for their Dream Pavilion, he wasn't even sure what to think.

Of course, he wasn't the one who ran the Dream Pavilion. His daughter was a member, but personally, he could only use Soul Force. Instead, it was actually his wife and Lyra's mother who was the current Head of the Dream Pavilion.

Normally, she wouldn't bother him with such things, but not only had the message infuriated her, but she also felt that it just might be an opportunity to do exactly what her husband and her brother-in-law wanted to do.

Although she wasn't fully on board with what was happening, she was accepting of it only because of what was at stake. They didn't have the luxury of letting their morality win out at the moment. owns all content.

The Emberheart Lord read the letter of challenge. The more he read, the more furious he became as well.

~"I've heard that the world of Spirituals is having a grand time praising their little Princess. What a fucking joke. Do you think that if it wasn't for the shamelessness of the Owlans and the Celestial Embers that she would have earned the third place position? She lost to my wife in the Gathering of Kingdoms in humiliating fashion, and she would have lost to me if she had the balls to challenge me.

~"The world seems to think that I, Leonel Morales, am some kind of pushover. In that case, I'll show you what true strength is.

"Accept the challenge if you dare. A good friend of mine informed me that your Lord's so-called brother dared to speak foul words about my wife. Since you think talk is so cheap, I'll run your wife into the ground and humiliate her before the eyes of the entire world. In the future, you'll learn that the Morales aren't the kind of people you can speak about so casually!"

"Fuck!"

The Emberheart Lord barely managed to withstand the desire to shatter the letter of challenge to pieces. Run his wife into the ground? If he was a Dream Force expert he would have accepted already on his wife's behalf.

Everything seemed to be going wrong, and his usually even and controlled temper had been fluctuating wildly for the last few days.

This was practically the straw that broke the camel's back.

He looked toward his wife with a steely gaze. She was a beautiful woman with only the slightest hints of age on her countenance, that being the barely perceptible crows feet at the corners of her eyes. But even with this, she carried the usual grace and elegance of a Spiritual Empress.

She was actually much older than the Emberheart Lord. When he was born, she had already long since entered the Ninth Dimension and reigned supreme for a long time. If not for her status as the Emberheart Lord's wife, she would have already been listed among the elders of the family, though weaker than their true Overlords or Ancestors. Even so, he had pursued her feverishly and in the end, the Emberheart Lady had taken a liking to him and chose to birth a child for him, that being Lyra.

In the end, her choice was correct. The Emberheart Lord was on a trajectory to the peak and he had become their Lord at such a young age. Right now, his potential was only weaker than maybe two or three of their old monsters. He was even said to have a better than 20% chance of becoming a God in the future-though no one would ever dare to guarantee such a thing.

"Do you have confidence?" The Emberheart Lord asked.

She didn't answer immediately, but this was what the Emberheart Lord loved about her. Even though he could feel that she was angry as well, she remained calm and she weighed her options just the same.

"I believe it shouldn't be a problem. The variable is how much he has improved. I watched his Challenge Sequence earlier, and the reason he performed so well was because of the Life Tablet. And even then, it was thanks to others severely underestimating him that he was able to flourish like he did. His final battle with the Owlans was the biggest testament to this.

"First, he no longer has the Life Tablet, and that's the biggest knock. Second, I will not underestimate him and I will mobilize as many of our Dream Pavilion members as is allowed.

"Third, and most importantly, I believe this is a chance we cannot miss. Publicize the letter and use it as the lightning rod we missed out on."