KHAFRA

The man looked like a mummified statue. His skin was an unnatural shade of grey, and his body was as skinny as a willowy wisp. His joints almost seemed sharper than blades, his bones sticking out against his frail skin as though they might rip their way through at the slightest of movements.

And yet, despite all of this... the man seemed... healthy...

His Ethereal Glabella glittered with the radiance of a starry sky, and his expression was calm and impassive. When he opened his eyes, it looked like all his Life Force had converged onto just those two points, a great amount of vitality exuding from him.

This man was known as Patriarch Khafra of the Khafra family, and was also the current Pavilion Head of the Khafra Dream Pavilion.

When he received the notice of Leonel's challenge, he wasn't surprised. Why should he be surprised? Everything was going according to plan. All that was left to do was to secure two victories and enter the top 100. After that, the real games would begin.

With everyone's attention diverted to the Demi-God war, hardly anyone would notice the shift; they would dismiss it as a Pavilion asserting dominance after someone beneath them issued a challenge. Most might even assume that they'd fall out of the top 100 soon enough, much like Leonel's Vast Dream Pavilion had, or the former 100th place after Minerva took action.

However, what was missing in all of this was a why...

Just one top 100 Dream Pavilion wouldn't change much of the situation, and if they started trying to sneak in larger numbers of Dream Pavilions, no matter how well obscured their schemes, someone would take notice.

Patriarch Khafra took from his meditative position. He moved much more vigorously than a man who was mostly skin and bone should have. His strides were long and powerful, but he somehow seemed unhurried at the same time.

He soon stood before a statue of God Zoltene and gave it a deep bow. Only then did he exit his own Dream Pavilion.

The message had been sent to the rest of the Nomads of their ilk, so he didn't need to wait very long for them all to have gathered.

At the forefront, two Nomads stood out.

One would have reminded Leonel of another he had seen. His floating palms were so large that they dwarfed his figure. Just to stop from taking up so much space, all four interlocked into a single formation, making it look like a blooming flower form from an array of fingers and thumbs.

Much like the Spirituals, Nomads were separated into Lineages as well. The difference was that their own were even more obvious at a single glance.

As one might expect, the Nomads had their own legends about their origins and where they hailed from.

Many knew of their tales about their Nomadic origins. One portion was separated into a figurative representation, denoting their adaptability and their wide-ranging paths. Wicked was a very keen example of this, as his Incomplete World had been able to adjust their very foundations by undergoing quasi-rebirths.

The second, though... was quite literal. This represented Nomadic origins that stemmed not from poetry or imagery, but instead referred to a tale of a castaway race, one forced to become Nomadic by circumstance and not choice. It could even be said that the first interpretation of their name was a method of reclaiming a title that was once laced with shame.

Then, the question was obvious... what had forced them to become a nomadic Race? Why were they known as the Nomads?

These were tales that most of the Nomad Race themselves would be unaware of, but what they did know, and what they did take pride in, were their floating hands.

In their inner circles, they termed them the Hands of God. But not all of them had such a right...

Only those with hands so large, hands capable of blotting out the skies, were worthy of saying that they had the Hands of God. And such people were the noblest of their Race...

Which was probably what made the fact no one could see Patriarch Khafra's floating hands all the odder... a point only made all the more peculiar by the fact even this first man seemed to have an endless flood of reverence for him.

As for the second standout amongst the crowd of gathered, it wasn't because he had the Hands of God. Instead, it was because he was someone that Leonel would recognize had he been there.

He was someone who held a deep-seated hatred for Leonel, a man who would rot in hell just for the chance to see him crushed and annihilated.

Prince Gregwyn of the Dimensional Verse's Nomad Domain.

The last time Leonel had seen him, he had been nothing more than a mangled mess. In fact, his neck had been in Leonel's palm. Content © 2024.

Ultimately, Leonel had been forced to leave due to the approaching Wicked. At the time, he hadn't been strong enough to deal with Rhangyl and Wicked at the same time, but that was the reason Gregwyn was still alive.

It ultimately boiled down to the fact that Leonel had let him live. Regardless of what he said about being uncaring or unfeeling about wiping out almost the whole Nomad Domain, in the end, he had spared Gregwyn.

It was a subconscious weight on his scale. He had let Gregwyn survive once after trying to kill him... that simply meant that the next time around, he wouldn't get such a chance again.

At that moment, the Dream Pavilions began to tremble, and their projections shot across the bounds of Existence.

Soon, the Vast Dream Pavilion was in their sights, but what they saw was a smiling Leonel.

When he saw Leonel, Gregwyn's eyes went completely red.