Dimensional Descent

Leonel calmed himself and nodded.

"Is there anywhere I'm supposed to go after this?" Leonel asked.

"Yes. All those who have just returned from the Zone must report to the Void Senate. As for the details, they'll inform you about them."

Leonel nodded and took Aina's hand again as they entered the city to use a teleportation platform to the core of the Void Palace. As for his thoughts, they were much less calm than the rhythmic cadence of his heart.

The Cloud Race.

He knew about them as well. They were a Race of people adept at mimicry. They could freely change their forms and embody whatever their eyes could see.

When Leonel first learned about this race from the Void Library, he was quite confused. After all, Wise Star Order had told him that humans were the weakest of the races because they couldn't focus their attention down one path. Then how, exactly, was the Cloud Race so powerful? Shouldn't they be even weaker than humans following this logic?

Well, the truth was, the Cloud Race was near the bottom of the barrel along with humans and the Dwarven Race, but they were still considered to be stronger than the both. This was because the mimicry of the Cloud Race was all focused on one thing: countering.

The Cloud Race were experts in defense and using your weaknesses against you. This style of battle made them exceptionally powerful, and while they couldn't be considered to be at the pinnacle of the most powerful races, they were still well known to be superior to the humans.

Ironically, though, it was precisely because of this that the humans fared so well against the Cloud Race. Because humans weren't as homogenous as the other races, countering them took time and effort, and true human geniuses might be able to defeat Cloud Race geniuses before said genius could get a grasp on their abilities.

Still, the fact that the Void Palace had suddenly become so cautious against the Cloud Race must mean that by the time Leonel was gone, they must have made great headway into grasping the secrets of the Human Domain.

If the Cloud Race wanted to wage war against the humans, they didn't need to understand all of them, they just needed to understand the weaknesses of the greatest powerful among them.

The Morales family, the Suiard family, the Constellation Alliances, Shield Cross Stars, the Crafting Guilds, the Constellation families…

So long as these few powers were grasped, who cared about the weaker humans? They weren't good enough to match up again even normal Cloud Race members to begin with. The less complex the talent, the easier it was to counter on a whim.

…

It wasn't long before Leonel stood at the base of a mountain, looking up. He knew that the Void Senate was up there, but this was actually the first time he had been to his place.

At the bottom, there were people present to escort them up and they were soon brought to an office.

When Leonel and Aina entered, they found a black haired man sitting across from them behind a desk. He didn't look up even after the door closed, but this aura did seem to grow heavier.

Just from a glance, Leonel could see that this man was missing an arm, one of his robe sleeves behind decidedly looser than the other.

By the time an entire minute passed, Leonel's eyes had narrowed into slits.

While Rowan wouldn't know that he was the reason everyone could return, how could someone who could sit at the top of the Void Senate not understand? And even if they assumed that it was Aina and not him, wasn't Aina right by his side anyway?

And yet, this man hadn't said a single word since they entered.

Looking back at the man's missing arm, Leonel's furrowed brows loosened and his expression became calm. There was a better than 70% likelihood that this was the man his father took the arm of, and likely also the catalyst for what put the sword and spear factions at each other's throat.

Leonel didn't know what was going on with that situation now, or if the two factions had set aside their differences to face a greater threat, but judging by Rosen's reaction, that much was unlikely.

Rosen seemed to sense that Leonel's demeanor had entirely relaxed and he suddenly looked up, his gaze piercing. It truly felt as though a pair of swords were hidden within the depths of his gave.

An invisible aura shot forward, as sharp as a blade, but when it entered an unknown radius of Leonel, it dissipated into the wind, leaving Rosen with narrowed eyes. Leonel didn't even seem to have moved a single inch or down anything. But in reality, neither did he.

"The procedure is simple," Rosen said emotionlessly. "Here are the documents. Write down everything you've experienced in the Zone, catalogue all of the events by day for all exactly 63 days that were inside. Do not miss a single day.

"Also, document all treasures that you've received from the Zone. The Void Palace will not take any of them, but will inspect them, categorize them, and then return them to you in a timely fashion. This is only for the benefit of knowledge and the progress of humanity into the future, we will not steal from our students.

"If you've understood, take these documents and leave."

Leonel's gaze flashed.

As expected, it was highly unlikely that he would be the only one to benefit from the Zone.

Still, there was one question that left him baffled until this point. He had forgotten about it because he had met Aina and she seemed to be just fine. But… Why was it that his cousin and the others couldn't use Force or their Ability Indexes while he could?

Could it be that there were others who were able to use their Force like he and Aina, and as such had managed to gain treasures of their own?

Leonel reached a hand forward and took the documents for both himself and Aina, ready to leave.

"There's also one more matter," Rosen said lightly as Leonel was about to depart. "For you, especially, the Void Palace would like to thoroughly understand the method you used to break the cardinal rule of Zones. Please don't miss out on any details."

Leonel remained silent and didn't respond, but his thoughts were already racing.

How should he handle this matter, exactly?

There was absolutely nothing wrong with either Rosen's words or the Void Palaces asks of him. But his instincts were pulling him in a different sort of direction.