SNEAK IN

People would likely call Leonel ridiculous if they knew what he was thinking. But this was what he felt from the bottom of his heart.

The Sea Gods weren't as imposing, and their blood certainly wasn't as potent, but the feeling and momentum they gave him was similar to a miniature Pluto Race.

It wasn't just because they shared the same blue-tinted skin, but it was something deeper.

Even though they were just standing there and talking, their presences alone exuded a great deal of might. Leonel could hear their heartbeats synchronizing like waves, the thrumming enough to make a Third Dimensional existence's eardrums burst. owns all content.

'They didn't send their powerhouses, but it honestly doesn't seem like they need to. This sort of status quo had remained for a long while. I wonder why the Sea Gods haven't just ended it. The humans almost certainly have something that's making them hesitant. Either that or they're trying to bait out something else.'

Now Leonel was wondering how to get in.

Right now, the land was in an odd situation.

At the center of the several armies there was a city. The trouble was that the city took up practically a tenth the size of the entire planet. It was absolutely huge.

'Well, it takes up ten percent now...'

Usually a capital city of a Domain would take up an entire planet, if not an entire solar system or network of planets. It wasn't normal for one to be so... reserved.

Obviously, they had been forced to retreat back to this point.

The good news was that the city walls were tall, and the protective Force Arts were excellent by the metrics that Leonel had seen of this world at least, but that was pretty much where all the good news stopped.

For one, it looked like the Sea Gods were turning the city into an island. The ground that did remain was sloshy and waterlogged, but there were already large segments that had flowing quasi-rivers and lakes.

This would be bad even if the water was fresh. After all, there was only so much water plants could intake. Any more and they would all die.

But it was even worse that all this water was salt water.

Leonel didn't know where the Sea Gods were pumping this water in from, but it was devastating for the ecosystem.

The second issue was that just because the Sea Gods weren't attacking, didn't mean that they weren't pressuring the humans in some way. There was only so long food could last, only so long unrest could be suppressed, only so long before the last human empire crumbled beneath its own weight...

Both figuratively and literally.

Which led to the third problem. The city would probably begin to sink at some point or another. The foundation it was built upon wasn't designed to withstand this odd rush of water.

And even if the Force Art managed to protect it somehow, succeeding in something that it wasn't designed to do in the first place, who was to say that the water level wouldn't just keep rising until it covered the whole city?

Even if the Force Art protected the city from the water spilling in, what would happen if it continued to rise? What would the citizens feel like they were entirely submerged in water? What if they were buried so far that sunlight couldn't reach them? What would it feel like to be plunged into a perpetual darkness?

These tactics by the Sea Gods seemed designed to break their spirits. They didn't seem to just want to kill all the humans, they wanted to crush them until there was nothing at all left.

What was even more interesting than all of this was that security was lax, almost too lax.

Leonel had been caught by Sixth Dimensional Oryx on the Ancient Battlefield, and yet here he had managed to slink his way all the way to the capital without being stopped.

It seemed the Sea Gods almost wanted humans to be able to sneak back to this location.

Was it as simple as a trap to deal with them all at once? Or was it related to what he had learned about their partial Cloud Race ancestry?

Leonel stood in a tree in the far off distance, the salty waters lapping at its trunk. He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering how best to go about this.

There were too many variables in this Incomplete World. Without laying his eyes on the situation, it was impossible to plan ahead of time. And even now that he could see it, he knew it wasn't the whole picture, so that was its own problem. He was so worried about this that he had no choice but to place Aina in the Segmented Cube.

'Alright. First, I'll just have to sneak into the city. Then we can take it from there.'

He was tempted to hide in the waters, but if he was correct, this was the worst option available to him. The Sea Gods should have a huge advantage in detecting things in the water.

So he took an unconventional approach, avoiding the waters entirely.

Emulation Spatial Force sparkled around him, but more was a deterrence. The main character became his Light Force.

He refracted the surrounding light at a quick pace.

The trouble with using Light Force or Emulation Spatial Force to hide yourself was that there were too many perspectives to consider. So long as you were a bit off in the eyes of just one person, it might be enough for you to investigate.

Second, Leonel didn't want to impersonate the Sea Gods for now. For one, this was supposedly something the humans were capable of, so they would be on guard and have prepared measures against it. And second, how would he justify sneaking into the city if he was one of them?

Like this, Leonel inched closer to the city walls. Now, he had another problem to face.