TRUE PEACE

Lady Emberheart was having a hard time calming the harsh beating of her heart. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't seem to take her eyes off the pair of footprints as though they were being seared into her ground as well as her thoughts.

Somehow, even without laying eyes on him, she knew exactly who had been here. But if she was correct, this was terrible. Worse than she could even imagine.

It was clear that the two Ancestors by her side had realized the same thing, and seemed to only now understand just how close to death they had been.Content © 2024.

The killing intent permeating through the air was suffocating. Maybe under usual circumstances, they might be able to approach at least 100 meters. But now, even double that was difficult.

It was like they were teetering on the edge of a blade, and they had been let off in the face of a storm. They had just been one thought away from their peaceful lives being destroyed down to the very last of them.

If Leonel had come here, there was only one explanation: he had either defeated or maybe even killed a God.

Willowyn alone had been able to solve their predicament. That was why there were no Invalids in this region, or any Spiritual Bubble for that matter.

What did it mean for Leonel to be able to defeat her?

Now, they found themselves standing on pins and needles... just wondering when the other foot was going to drop.

**

Leonel sat before his workbench, his mind calm. In the end, he had ended up visiting the Spirituals before he could even start on modifying the enormous spatial key, and that was because he really couldn't hold back his fury.

In the end, he took it to be an opportunity.

Those moments after his father's death were probably the largest stain on his life. He had taken actions that his father would look down in disappointment at him for.

Now, while he couldn't say that he had fixed those errors, what he could say was that he now had the confidence to never take such a path again.

He felt that he was more in tune with his Dream Force Path now, more than he had ever been before.

In the past, he was constantly fighting it, pushing against his very own nature. But now he realized that this path of Dream Force wasn't fighting against his nature at all... it was not only the man he wanted to be, but the man he was most suited to being.

Seeing his previous path of confidence as a marker of his future self was looking at it too simply. It wasn't just that his arrogance and overall furious temper was a product of his future self, but rather everything that his future self had experienced.

Despite being so powerful, he had lost his father, his mother, his wife, his brothers, his friends.

Becoming callous to everything, pretending as though the world was beneath him and there was nothing at all to gain from it was precisely the only thing that could have possibly allowed him to trudge on for so long.

Allowing himself to sink back into the endless rage would only push him further toward that path. It would have brought him right back to that pathetic state, forever entangled with what he had lost in the past, but forgetting about what he could protect into the future.

Right now, his mother was still alive, his brothers were still here, his wife was by his side.

If he couldn't embrace that now... in the future it would be too late to do so.

So he went to the Spirituals Bubble and basked in their warmth and happiness even though he was feeling the exact opposite...

And then he had completely let them off.

As he left, he likewise left a weight on his shoulders. He felt calmer than he ever had, and he couldn't help but recall that state of tranquility he had entered when he first heard Mo''Lexi's name.

That state of tranquility had allowed him to break free of the Demoness' hold, and his soul, which had been entrenched in rivers of blood, broke free from their chains as well.

Although his Dream Force didn't break through and enter the Peak Creation State, he felt that its foundation had grown both denser and wider. It thickened and he felt that it stretched further than it ever had before.

Now, when he sat down before his workbench, allowing his fingers to glide across the wells that stood before him, he was truly calm.

He could feel true peace.

"Let's go, Tolliver."

BLOOP

There was a surge and a tsunami-like wave of silver and gold liquid rushed forward.

The key was formed of two halves, and as far as Leonel saw it, this was a flaw as well. The moment the two halves were fused, and the reason they had to be kept separate, was because the moment they touched, the treasure would activate.

In Leonel's eyes, this was a clear and obvious lack of control, and an even more obviously janky solution to what should have otherwise been an extremely elegant treasure.

It reminded him a lot of what the Minerva had put Anastasia through. The reason the Sylvans had to take such a roundabout path was because they couldn't properly control the World Spirit hidden in this treasure. They could only suppress it and then channel its power outward.

With every step in Crafting that Leonel took, he had Anastasia in mind. That was because ever since he realized that her thought processes were flawed, he wanted to fix the mistakes the Minerva had left behind.

In terms of research into this particular field, while he didn't dare to say that he was truly number one in this regard, with his current skill he wasn't far off.

But unlike with Anastasia, he didn't care about this World Spirit's quality of life. So his range of options was much wider.