Dimensional Descent

With a flip of his palm, Leonel's black rod appeared. His hair whipped in the salty winds as the high sun pierced downward, illuminating everything.

The waters turned frothy and agitated, but the cool air of the ice island he now stood upon left him feeling calm and unhurried. A confident aura exuded from Leonel, his momentum steadily growing with each passing second.

In the distance, the waters began to rise. 300 large whale beasts appeared, surrounding the ice island entirely. Around them, millions of oceanic beasts began to appear. The numbers were so numerous that the waters turned black, a sharp contrast from the previous clarity. However, Leonel remained calm.

The spectators could only remain silent. Were the Life Grade armors really enough?

No one underestimated the worth of the Life Grade, but the problem was that they were so rare that many didn't even have a reference for how powerful they should be. Most would kill to get their hands on even a top tier Gold Grade weapon, and this was all the reference they had.

But was it enough to close a gap of 1 to 300?

It was hard to believe especially when the Heir-Grade Generals began to appear. They looked to be even about 10% stronger than Heir Grade threats that Leonel had fought previously, each one was menacing to an extreme and seemed to have the strength to lay waste to Leonel's city.

But at that moment, Leonel, who had everyone's focus, suddenly sneered. He raised his free hand and snapped his fingers.

Right then, the world turned entirely silent.

On the front line, a group of 10 stingrays suddenly trembled. They felt their backs grow hot as a powerful Force Art suddenly activated, but the chilly waters immediately cooled them down.

A slight sheen of bluish green formed on their bodies until they suddenly explosively expanded, forming a gorgeous, shimmering bubble. Then, these 10 bubbles, one to each stingray, came into contact with one another and overlapped, fusing into one and forming a large bubble that enveloped all ten of them.

Just when it seemed like it was all finished, the large bubble morphed, flattening out and gaining sharper edges and a long protrusion until it formed the construct of an enormous illusory stingray that contained 10 stingrays within.

Even the smallest stingray was about 20 meters from wing tip to wing tip. But now, with this construct enveloping 10 of them, they seemed to have become larger than life, dwarfing 250 meters as they slowly swung their tails.

In that instant, this process repeated, all at the same time, across the stingrays. At that moment, an army of what was once a million large stingrays had become an army of 100 000 enormous monstrosities, each causing vicious hurricane-like cyclones with just their small, insignificant movements.

Leonel looked down as the challenge approached. He could almost feel the skepticism radiating from the observers. He had just limited the flexibility of the army he did have by a factor of ten and the change didn't seem to be significant enough to cause any changes. What was the point of this?

But Leonel's sneer only deepened. He didn't seem to have any intention of attacking himself.

"Kill."

His words descended and the world suddenly changed.

On the front line, the first line of stingray constructs suddenly jolted.

The movement could only be described as a bolt of emerald green lightning. They left afterimages in the water, splitting it apart with such speed that a huge dividing line in the shape of an inverted 'V' appeared on the surface.

Fast.

This was the only thought that those watching could have.

So fast that it was crippling, so fast that it left only time for despair.

The stingrays didn't even seem prepared for the level of speed they had now, so much so that they could do nothing but ram into the line of beasts they were facing. It was the kind of tactic that should have assured death. A hundred thousand running into a dense pack of over 300 million, how could it even compare?

And yet…

Silence reigned.

The stingray constructs shredded everything in their path. Their wings were as sharp as blades and their tails and menacing as jagged daggers with the soft touch of silk. Every time they moved, the water would churn and become their spearhead, shredding skin and blubber apart as though wet tissue paper.

In a single charge each stingray had killed no less than a hundred in a single sweep, and not a single one had been injured. The construct that enveloped them seemed to double for both defense and offense, without the strength to tear it apart, harming the stingrays within was simply impossible. No matter how hard they tried, the mere Gold-Grade threats had no ability to cause more than a ripple on their surface, let alone shattering them apart.

The Heir-Grade constructs bellowed into the skies, but in response, Leonel just took a seat down on the city walls. He realized that he had underestimated even himself. It seemed that it wouldn't be necessary for him to raise a finger at all.

Under the shocked gazes of the spectators, the first stingray construct, powered by a squadron of ten, made it to the first Heir-Grade General.

The two clashed, the stingray construct trembling wildly as the Heir-Grade General was sent reeling backward, the howl of a whale echoing tragically as several cuts were carved out along its thick belly.

The stingray's construct cracked and threatened to collapse, but that was when a second came in and rushed into the body of the Heir-Grade General, shredding it to pieces.

It was then that it finally seemed to settle in.

Leonel hadn't gone from a million Gold-Grade threats to just a hundred thousand…

He had gone from a million Gold-Grade threats to a hundred thousand Heir-Grade threats.

The railing Cynthia was holding onto shattered, her fair palms bleeding as it was ravaged by cuts and scrapes.

Leonel could only be described as a little monster.