[ABYSSAL RISE]

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Leonel dodged and exchanged blows, the swiftness of his attacks and decision-making turning the ghoul Variant Invalid into a target for practice.

He was clearly weaker, and yet he always seemed to be ten steps ahead. He moved the moment he sensed a twitch of the muscle, and planned based on mere intentions of the mind and instinctual reactions he calculated.

It was like he could truly see the future, and that was because he somewhat could.

He now had a Higher Creation State Dream Force, and with his Sovereignty it wasn't much weaker than the usual Peak Creation State Dream Force. At this point, his Dream Force was firmly rooted in the First Dimension, and as such, things like distance and even time began to matter less and less to him.

The world to most people was a vast chasm of Existence, extending into infinity.

But to Leonel, it might as well have been just a single dimension, just a dot with no longitude, latitude, or depth... a place where even time seemed meaningless.

If his simulations weren't 100% yet, they were about as close to 100% as you could get.

Blade strikes began to litter the fused ghoul's body. It was an array of strikes beautiful in their execution and simple in their make.

Leonel's blade seemed to be everywhere and every-time. Like a cascading net falling like a waterfall, the array of colors was omnipresent and all-knowing. Content © 2024.

The Variant Invalid was being suffocated at every turn.

Leonel's spearmanship had already lost the beauty that made one look at it in awe. The flashiness had been entirely stripped from its existence, and yet it still reeled the minds and thoughts of people into it.

It was like watching the laminar flow of water. There wasn't a single droplet out of place, not one wasted. All of his strength was concentrated to the tip of his spear and it exploded out all at once.

The Variant Invalid had seen many spear experts in its life, it had even seen Gods of the Spear before... And yet, right now, no matter how it wracked its brains, it felt like Leonel was on a level all to his own.

Every strike was simply too perfect, and perfect in its simplicity. It compressed a complex Artistic Conception not just into a single strike, but also onto a single point of his spear.

As the wounds began to accumulate across the fused ghoul's body, it realized that in this situation, it simply had not the slightest chance of winning. It could last three days in this battle, but the conclusion would be inevitable.

Death.

It wasn't that it could predict the future like Leonel could, but rather that it had too much battle experience.

What Variant Invalid hadn't built their current strength through a sea of corpses? It had fought far bloodier battles than this one, but it had never felt so helpless before.

At that moment, it raised its head to the skies and unleashed a roar.

Leonel's expression remained indifferent. He knew what the call was immediately, and he had already expected it. The fused ghoul was calling for help.

Without missing a single beat, Leonel simply tapped his spear out and touched the ground a single time.

In that moment, his Absolute Domain, that had fused to the very tip of his spear, exploded outward.

Wisps of a faint Spear Force began to accumulate on its surface, barely coming together, and yet carrying a heart-shuddering aura nonetheless.

Leonel couldn't use his Spear Force just yet, at least not without doing great harm to himself even with the support of Bracken's vitality.

However, he was nowhere near as helpless as he had been before. At the very least, he could now use his Absolute Domain to form wisps of it from the surroundings.

This would weaken his actual spear strikes a bit. But in terms of an area of effect, it was all the more devastating. And if it was an attack of the mind and heart...

The ghoul was taken aback the moment he saw the faint Spear Force wisps. They floated around like fluttering butterflies, and yet every time they touched a rampaging Invalid, they were wiped from existence.

There were no screams, no shouts of horror, no shocking bouts of pain. There was just silence and nothingness.

An insignificant wisp of this Spear Force shredded apart powerful beings as though they were nothing at all.

And that was when the Variant Invalid felt its mind collapse.

It thought that all this while it was doing a good job in defending against Leonel's Dream Force, when in reality that was only what Leonel wanted it to think.

From the very beginning, it would have never lasted three days. But it had just given Leonel the exact vulnerability he needed to deal a death blow.

Now that Leonel could finally freely use his Dream Force outside of his body... none of these battles would be the same.

Leonel's spear snaked forward and a head was lopped into the air.

The fused ghoul shattered in a rain of light that quickly coalesced into an enormous mote that shined like a star. It was simply the largest that Leonel had ever seen, and yet he didn't seem to react much to it at all.

He grabbed out and looked at it.

Variant Invalids didn't have souls and their path wasn't one of Creation, but rather one of Destruction.

Due to this, King's Might didn't work on them. Or, rather... it shouldn't work on them.

However, Leonel was different.

His Destruction World thrummed and the crimson cracks along his body began to shine.

He stared at the large mote of light as though he was trying to deduce something, his mind spinning.

What the world didn't know was that Leonel was currently in the middle of deducing what would come to be known as the fourth Emperor Ability of the Emperor's Might Lineage Factor. And in all likelihood, he would be the only one capable of using it.

The powers of his Destruction World were barely known to him, but before getting familiar he chose to take things a different route.

"I'll call you... [Abyssal Rise]."

The mote of light shuddered.