Dimensional Descent

Leonel spent some time with his brothers before returning to the Lab Setting. He didn't establish a connection with the outside world because that could lead to some issues, which was why he had taken so long to break the news to them and also why he hadn't really been communicating with Aina either.

The Force Arts the Gathering of Kingdoms worked on were far beyond what level King had been on, and before his recent breakthrough, King had practically been a suffocating influence to Leonel.

So, it wasn't Leonel's place to make large deductions about how everything worked. For all he knew, if he projected his voice to the outside world, then it would register Anastasia's world as part of the Gathering of Kingdoms and try to take hold of it.

While the Segmented Cube was the greatest treasure ever created by the best Crafting Race to ever exist, the Gathering of Kingdoms was literally created by the God Beasts of Creation. They still couldn't be compared.

This was to say that there was no guarantee that the Gathering of Kingdoms Stele couldn't integrate Anastasia if it wanted to. So Leonel had to tiptoe around the topic, at least for now.

As for Aina, he wasn't worried about her in the slightest. He didn't need to watch her battles to know that she was absolutely crushing it.

And crushing it Aina was. She made it into the Penultimate round without even breaking a sweat. This was a round if 100 of your world's people made it into, your world would survive.

To go from such a large percentage of a population of tens of billions at worst, to just 100 to meet a quota, one could imagine just how difficult it was to make it to this stage.

Now, there was just this final hurdle between Aina and the final round.

The Penultimate Round was scored differently from the others.

Everyone would fight ten battles. This battle would be scored on how long it took to finish and then weighted against how well your opponent did against others.

The number of desperate people in this round were far fewer, because the odds that one could make the Penultimate Round and not have a world strong enough to reach the percentage threshold in the Preliminaries was slim to none.

However, that didn't mean that they were all in the clear. Just looking around the city, one could feel a sense of anxiety setting in for a minority.

And for the majority, there was a different type of anxiety taking hold, one that read much more like anticipation.

Reaching the Finals was a huge threshold. Many were working based not on an existential dread, but rather their desire to be rewarded by their worlds for reaching that stage.

It was also said that there was a small chance of something greater...

It had been a long while since the Gathering of Kingdoms Stele rewarded anyone. Many believed that the treasures had run out and without the God Beasts of Creation to create more, it was useless to hope for more.

However, there were others that thought that the Stele was just waiting, biding its time for someone worthy. There were a limited number of resources remaining, so its standards just kept increasing year over year.

So on the one hand, there were those fighting for that last sliver of survival and on the other, there were those fighting for treasures.

As for Aina, who should have been on the former side, she was extremely relaxed as continued into the round.

A familiar ticker appeared before her and she vanished soon after.

When her vision cleared, before her, there was a familiar demon.

Thorne stood, his eyes blinking with surprise before he smiled. He shook his head and chuckled.

The seeding from the Preliminaries was still in effect, so technically, with so few left, it was only a matter of time before Aina was put up against one of them ahead of time.

Even though she would have ten chances to fight, losing the first round and potentially ending up heavily injured would end up impacting the rest.

Despite seeing Aina's performance until now, Thorne wasn't very moved because the victories of he and the other Council Members were just as overbearing.

Of course, there was a slight difference...

Their seeding had been excellent from the very beginning, while Aina's had been near the bottom of the barrel. As the rest of the competition was weeded out, she had slowly gained the worst seeding among them all.

Thorne slowly pulled out an elegant thin sword. He pulled a hand before his back, standing like a handsome prince. This wasn't a sign of disrespect, but rather the exact opposite. It was just that his sword was a one-handed sword, so this was his usual fighting stance.

Aina, though... didn't bother to pull out her battle ax.

Thorne's smile didn't fade. In fact, it became brighter.

To him, teaching this woman a lesson would be as good as getting Leonel back for his arrogant words.

He suddenly moved, his sword flickering through the air and appearing before Aina's throat in an instant.

CLANG!

Thorne's eyes widened as he took a step back. His hair fluttered, pieces of it slowly falling to the ground as he looked at Aina.

She had a single finger held up, one wrapped in strong Forces. She stood there without even taking a single step back.

Thorne's wrist twisted and he shot out with several attacks in quick succession, but one after another, Aina deflected them with nothing more than a finger.

Suddenly, her feet moved for the first time and she pressed a finger to Thorne's chest best he could react.

BANG!

It started as a small hole, smaller than even the thickness of her finger. But when the Forces came out the back of Thorne's back, it erupted into a rushing dome of energy, drawing a long, wide, and deep trench in the arena.

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