Seeing Aina's reaction, Leonel grinned and suddenly jumped down from the tree, a massive spear suddenly appearing in his hands.
This spear was none other than the one he likened to a hammer. But in this situation… It was perfect.
Leonel's eyes flashed, a golden Domain spreading out around him. In that instant, not only did he become ten times heavier, but so did the over 5000-pound spear in his hand.
The red-nosed bear suddenly sensed something. It looked up into the skies, a snarl taking over its features.
It rose to its hind legs, roaring to the point of foggy, spittle filled breath assaulting Leonel.
A strong red Force erupted around the bear, its body growing a size as its fur stood on end.
It swiped a paw at the descending Leonel, imagining smashing this pesky human into meat paste.
But, at the instant spear and paw met, an overwhelming strength assaulted the bear. Its bones creaked and groaned, before reaching their breaking point and suddenly snapping.
A cry of pain left the beast, but its crimson gaze only seemed to become even more so.
Leonel shifted his weight until it was as light as a feather, landing on the ground with subtle steps before shooting forward.
He gripped the massive spear with both hand, his palms and fingers not large enough to even wrap all the way around its shaft. Yet, he wielded it as though it was no different from an extension of himself.
Leonel sent a strong sweep across, pressing down on the injured beast.
At that moment, he suddenly winced, feeling the fine cracks in his ribs he had been ignoring to this point.
His attack slowed by just a margin, allowing the red-nosed bear to erupt with an even stronger red Force. The beast's healthy paw swung downward, coated by a blazing energy.
The air in the surroundings heated up, the billowing roars of the bear tearing through the forest's canopy.
BANG!
The two attacks collided.
Leonel's feet sunk into the soft soil, his knees bending and buckling.
This beast's strength was no small matter. Leonel could tell why the old man had chosen it to be among those that carried the golden tags.
By Leonel's estimation, this beast was at least as strong as a City Lord of Terrain which was about Tier 6 of the Fourth Dimension.
Of course, Terrain wasn't exactly known for its talent, so its standard of Tier 6 was much lower than that of other worlds.
Still, this kind of beast was difficult for Leonel to defeat without using the Four Seasons Realm, activating his Runes, or using his Dreamscape Battle Sense. Without the help of these factors, Leonel believed that he was actually far worse than this bear. He was only now bridging the gap thanks to two things.
The first was his ability. Even without Dreamscape Battle Sense, Leonel's senses were far beyond what most could even aspire to, let alone claim to have. So his reactions and calculations in battle were perfect.
The second was the most obvious… His weapon.
Leonel was using a Quasi Bronze weapon, a treasure a half step from the Fifth Dimension, against a beast in the middling Fourth Dimensional realms. There was no wonder he was able to stand his ground.
If this was all, things would be fine. Leonel would still be confident in defeating this beast without tapping into his true strength. But, unfortunately… He was still injured.
Just as Leonel was about to clash with the bear again, a shadow suddenly fell from the skies and landed before him. The shadow seemed to only shift slightly, but the roaring of the bear came to an end, just as quickly.
Leonel, who had been about to prepare himself for a tough battle, sighed and lowered his spear.
"You know, you could have at least pretended that it was difficult." Leonel mumbled.
Aina looked back innocently, her eyes blinking behind her mask.
"Is your ego so fragile?"
"Every man's ego is fragile." Leonel defended himself.
Aina giggled. "Alright, I don't mind taking a step back then. You go."
Leonel was about to puff up his chest in pride when he suddenly thought of something and turned a gloomy eye toward Aina.
Unable to hold it back any longer, Aina burst into a fit of laughter, clenching at her stomach.
"Go on now, manly man. Do your job."
Disgruntled, Leonel could only step forward. Kneeling beside the beast's corpse, and to the tune of Aina's laughter, he began to cut open the beast's stomach and dig his way through before he finally found the golden tag he was looking for.
He stood and tried to turn toward Aina, but she scurried away before he could even approach.
She pinched at her nose, still unable to stop her laughter.
"Do you feel more manly now?"
Leonel looked at the bloody, organ littered, half eaten food covered mess in his hand, half wanting to cry and half wanting to vomit. Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.
This girlfriend of his was too cruel.
…
Aina and Leonel shot through the forest, easily finding one golden tag after another. It seemed as though they had a cheat of some sort.
The reality, though, wasn't that far from the truth.
As the old man had said, each tag was capable of teleporting the one who claimed it past the mountain pass. But, the unspoken truth of this was that any beast with this tag was likewise marked by the Force Arts necessary to allow such teleportation.
After realizing this, for Leonel, the matter was simple. His Internal Sight didn't have a very large range in this world. There was no doubt that this place was a Fifth Dimensional world, and as such, not only was the space in Leonel's spatial ring smaller here, but the range of his Internal Sight was only a few dozen meters to a hundred meters at most.
However, the fluctuations in these Force Arts caused small ripples in space.
Normally, one wouldn't be able to sense these ripples at all. Not only was the Space Elemental Affinity even more rare than the Light Elemental Affinity, but even if you had it, it was unlikely to be very strong.
Leonel, however, had just completed his Divine Armor, giving him Space Elemental Affinity no worse than almost anyone within the Fourth Dimension. Though this Affinity would be useless to him after he outgrew his Divine Armor, and was somewhat weaker without summoning the Armor itself, this still remained true.
Using this affinity, Leonel could easily pick out these tiny changes in space. And, once he locked onto a beast, it was a simple matter of using his Internal Sight to see whether the tag was gold or not.
Beyond that, since he knew that the gold tags would only be in beasts of certain strength, he could just as easily not waste time scanning beasts that were too weak!
Like this, Leonel and Aina tore through the mountain range, easily grasping all ten gold tags without the slightest hint of effort…
Well, the effort was minimal on Aina's part.. As for the poor sap that was Leonel, he would have to take at least a dozen showers before he felt clean.