Dimensional Descent

'The only path forward seems to be to take drastic measures,' Leonel thought to himself.

Right now, he still couldn't reveal that he had the Life Tablet. He also couldn't reveal that he had the Silver Tablet or else that would cause problems of its own.

The former he couldn't reveal because doing so would be as good as admitting that he had triggered a war Gods were involved in.

The latter he couldn't reveal for much the same reason. According to the world, it was the Wise Tablet of the Cloud Race, and they were currently facing assaults from all sides because of it.

Did he feel bad about using the same trick twice?

Absolutely not.

If it wasn't broken, why bother to fix it?

But that did put him in a bit of a bind.

The first thought he had was to raise the Dream Pavilion to the top 100. If he did so, then all this nonsense would be irrelevant because the ratios and formula would begin to tilt to his side. By then, he could finally use the large swaths of contribution points he had to exchange for another large-scale protective formation.

That way, the Human Race could hunker down and be safe for at least a short while.

Such barriers weren't infallible, but the Invalids wouldn't dare to send out a real powerhouse because they were too valuable.

The Nomads wouldn't take such action for obvious reasons as well. If they could be so overt in their action, they wouldn't have had to be so covert for so long in the first place.

Unfortunately, this idea had its problems.

For one, trading for such a barrier would almost certainly drain the rest of the Contribution Points that the Vast Dream Pavilion had.

It had to be remembered that the first time they traded for the barrier, they still had points worthy of the former number one overall Dream Pavilion.

If the point difference between the top 200 and top 300 were so large, one could imagine the point disparity in the top 100. There was a large gap every 10 spots at the very worst.

Was it worth it to trade their quick pace of progression for security that might not even be permanent? It could be said that the entirety of Leonel's "empire" was funded by the Dream Pavilion right now.

Without those points, where would he get the Force Herbs and resources everyone relied on? How would he feed Blackstar, who had an outrageous appetite? How would his brothers continue to improve at their current pace?

Right now, those points he took almost for granted had already become the backbone of his operation. Without it…

But that wasn't even the main problem, frankly.

Breaching the top 100 without the use of a Life Tablet was a tall order.

It had to be remembered that Patriarch Khafra's death relied on a brilliant series of events.

Foremost, there was the Silver Tablet, and that was likely the main turning point.

Second, he had dealt a psychological blow to the Nomad first by using Aina, or Lyra from their perspective, to kill one of his strongest warriors.

Third, Patriarch Khafra had been holding back to hide his true power. By the time he realized he couldn't do that anymore, it was already much too late and the psychological blow had been dealt.

It wasn't so easy to claim the benefits of the top 100.

There were just too many problems all around, and it was difficult for even Leonel to wrap his head around them all.

However, panic wasn't the emotion Leonel was feeling right now. Instead, he felt the calm of a brewing storm.

In this whirlwind of chaos, there laid opportunity. The trouble was how much he should try to take advantage of it.

If the Human Race came out on top, that sounded great… until you also realized that part of being at the top meant having the strength to maintain it.

That wasn't something he could guarantee right now.

This time, there was no Gathering of Kingdoms or Gathering of Minds to give him a convenient platform. If he wanted one, he would have to create it himself.

Leonel's gaze flickered before he took a step and vanished.

…

Aina looked up when Leonel appeared before her, a questioning look in her eye.

"It's fine," Leonel shook his head.

"Doesn't sound like it's fine."

"I'm more mad at the audacity than the strength," Leonel explained simply.

Aina smiled, but didn't respond.

"How is it?" Leonel asked.

"Slow. It's harder to look at the world and grasp it at a lower Dimension. My Ability Index is weaker, so I can't see the complete picture as easily as I should be able to."

Leonel nodded. This was the real loss they had suffered after the Flaura drama. Without her Eighth Dimensional strength, it was ironically difficult to tell when Aina would make it back to her true strength.

They had won and dealt a savage blow to the enemy, but they still hadn't managed to kill them.

That said, there was something else they gained other than Flaura's defeat, and that was proof that Somnus' information was truly potent.

"I think we're going to have to step it up a bit," Leonel said after a while.

"In what way?"

"Well, there are two ways to get the Bubble what it needs. The first is to enter the top 100, but there is another method."

"The Dream Force experts?" Aina asked.

"Yes. They've been under us for a while, but we've never had them officially join the Dream Pavilion despite them training beneath its influence. I'm going to speed up their growth a bit.

"We'll use the Forgetful Orbs and if my experiment goes well, I'll assassinate a few top level Dream Force experts to use my King's Might on."

"Isn't that…"

"Dangerous? Yeah. But I think it's about time the Human Race has more than just you and me."