Dimensional Descent

Leonel didn't respond to the envoy's words. He simply stood there silently, his expression not giving way to any emotion. It was as though he didn't even notice that there was someone before him.

At this moment, they were in the dead of winter. Heavy snow fell all around, coating the ground, the trees, and sprinkling through the air as though to coat the whole world in white.

Still, the cold didn't seem to bother either of the two men as they faced off in an endless snowy plain. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to seek reprieve, nowhere to run…

It was then that both men suddenly moved.

Leonel's palm flipped over, revealing a four meter long, flexible spear. Aside from his Quasi Silver spear, this one was quickly becoming on of his favorites. The range of flexibility and freedom it gave him made his battle style reach an impossible level of fluidity.

At the same moment, the envoy didn't bother to stay on his horse. He had read all the reports about Leonel. This was a man who never rode a horse, yet had felled more Titled Knights than anyone else in history. If there was anyone confident in battling a man and a steed together, it was Leonel.

In that case, why allow him the chance to do what he was familiar with?

His palm flipped over to reveal an outrageous, monstrosity of a saber.

Its blade was an obscene three meters long alone. It had a width of almost two feet and a curve that almost made it look like a scythe as opposed to a saber. Yet, it had a thickness as thin as two or three strands of hair.

When the saber was swung, it felt like the wind itself was being split in two. If swung at the perfect angle, the blade was so thin that it was almost impossible to spot. And, whether by coincidence or not, this envoy seemed capable of finding this perfect angle with ease.

A streak of gold and one of black tore through the snowy plain, their clash causing a whirlwind of violent explosions to swirl around them.

Despite the size of their weapons, the two men seemed to exchange hundreds of blows in a single breath. And, as though that wasn't enough, their speed only seemed to get faster and faster.

Gold lights enveloped Leonel's body, massive white gold wings spanning ten meters two his left and right blooming from his back.

Ancient patterns of gold began to outline each individual feather. It felt that with each passing moment, the pair became less illusory and more corporeal as though Leonel was birthing true wings from nothing more than light.

One would have thought that Light Elemental Force would be difficult to gather in the depths of the night like this, yet Leonel seemed completely unaffected.

These two years, just because he had been stuck here, didn't mean that he was stagnant.

With a single flap, he retreated more than a hundred meters in a single step.

His feet stamped the ground, causing a tsunami of snow to rise into the air. The wall of white rose up more than 10 meters and was at least 20 across. Yet, what was most shocking about it all was that this was simply the result of the earth beneath heeding Leonel's call.

Leonel roared, his chest expanding as bronze runes surged over his body. The robes he wore shattered beneath the surge of Force, unable to handle it.

Beneath the shimmering white gold of his massive wings, Leonel's bronze runes stood out all the more. Under the night sky, he looked no different from a Roman God descended from the skies above, his halo hanging above his head.

The massive slab of stone that Leonel had lifted from the ground shattered into tens of pieces, rising into the air to form several stones of over a meter in diameter each.

"[Armageddon]."

In that instant, the stones erupted with flames.

In the skies, as though tens of miniature suns had appeared, they raged with a fiery light, their surfaces beginning to melt in a near instant.

The envoy's pupils constricted. What kind of attack was this? Something of this caliber could level an entire city!

The battle hadn't reached such a peak yet. He couldn't understand why Leonel had dared to come to fight him like this in the first place, especially after he had traveled so far away from their encampment. But now, it really seemed like he wanted to kill him.

The envoy roared, raising his saber into the skies.

A violent black energy coiled around him, forming countless black chains from seemingly thin air.

The ground around him suddenly exploded, the expanse of snow being washed away beneath his rippling might.

His robes fluttered in the raging wind, his eyes trained on the meteors descending toward him.

"HA!"

The envoy stomped his feet.

In that instant, the earth seemed to respond to his call. In one moment, there was nothing. But, in the immediate next, sparkling spikes of black shot out from the ground, impaling the descending meteors and causing explosions that rocked throughout the night.

Leonel's eyes narrowed. Those pillars were definitely not normal. In fact, he could faintly tell that they stood on a level nearing his Scarlet Star Force.

Somehow, the spikes seemed to be both made out of small dust particles, yet remained solid at the same time. Each of these little particles radiated out with a faint black light that made it look as though it was sparkling beneath the high moon.

It was as though the envoy was controlling iron shavings and darkness to form them…

If the envoy had heard Leonel's thoughts, he would have been shocked. Just a short observation, yet he was already so close to the truth.

However, no matter what the envoy did, Leonel wasn't shaken. To use a Force on this level at this envoy's strength was akin to painting oneself into a corner. There was a reason Leonel didn't use his Scarlet Star Force so casually.

As expected, the envoy was truly gasping for breath. He hadn't thought that he would be forced to use such an ability, but Leonel's combination attack had strength beyond his wildest imagination. If he had used normal earth to counter, those meteors would have blasted through with ease.

He couldn't understand how Leonel could pull earth capable of withstanding such heat from the ground so casually. Of course, what he didn't know was that Leonel's Earth Elemental Force was Variant just like his.

However, this didn't mean that the envoy was finished, he gripped his saber.

Since the pillars had already been formed, manipulating them was much easier.

The chains that floated around his body constricted as Leonel's wings flapped one more time.

He appeared ten meters before the envoy.

In that moment, the latter was prepared to turn the earthen spikes of shimmering black light toward Leonel. But, he stopped when it seemed that Leonel had no intention of attacking. In fact, Leonel stood there unmoving, his eyes calmly observing the black chains wrapping the envoy.

"Earth Elemental Force. Dark Elemental Force. Star Elemental Force…"

The envoy froze when he heard this.

"Chaotic Particle Force. Number one in Earth Elemental Forces, top three in Dark Elemental Forces, top ten in Star Elemental Forces." Leonel concluded. "… Your talent is quite high for an envoy, don't you think?"

The envoy's eyes narrowed as he gazed toward Leonel.

"…You were testing me?"

"I guessed that you were an Oryx a long time ago." Leonel said plainly.

"But…"

"But your cloak blocks senses? But you don't look or smell like an Oryx?"

The envoy didn't say a word, but clearly this was what he meant as well. This shouldn't have been possible.

Leonel didn't explain himself either, at least not with words. He had seen a long lineup of possible evolution paths for the Oryx in that hall, so he knew well that a stature like the one this young man had wasn't impossible.

As for how he had known? It was just a guess.

This envoy hadn't tried very hard to convince them to change their minds and also didn't have the tact one would expect the representation of a nation to have.

"So why don't you tell me the true purpose you had for coming?" Leonel responded.

The envoy remained silent for a long while before he finally removed his cloak. What was beneath made Leonel raise an eyebrow.

It was a young man with flowing white hair and handsome, delicate features that would make any woman and some men swoon. His skin was quite tanned, giving him an excellent, exotic sort of contrast and his eyes were the very same bright white his hair was.

Growing from this young man's forehead were two branching horns that were a very pure shade of white, yet they didn't seem to detract from his beauty at all, even the vertical slit between his brows was completely unable to do so.

Aside from these clearly Oryx-like features, the young man was strikingly human. If Leonel didn't know better, he would think that this young man was some sort of demon prince risen from hell. And maybe, in some ways, he was.

"This is just my natural state. My battle state, however, is much different..."