Dimensional Descent

Suddenly, the orb in Aurora's palm shattered, catching her off guard. She was thrust into a state of confusion, not quite understanding. She had only caught it with enough pressure to maintain control, she hadn't put in nearly enough effort to crush it. Just considering the speeds the orb had withstood just to fly over here in the first place, it would take hundreds of times more strength than she applied to crush it like this.

Suddenly, her heart skipped a beat. Could it be? Aurora panicked and her aura flared out. She entrapped the bits and pieces of the orb that she could, and she directly destroyed the ones she couldn't.

Obviously, she thought that Leonel had expected this to happen. So, he set the orb to detonate as a way to get around her defenses and make it to the Pillar of Truth anyway. If those pieces touched the pillar, then her stopping it wouldn't matter anyway.

But unfortunately, she miscalculated.

That was never Leonel's intention at all.

Instead, the world watched as a supposed elite Owlan panicked at the thought of the shards touching the pillars and rushed to stop them.

Was the Pillar of Truth really so fragile that it couldn't stand such a thing? Why were the Owlans trying so hard to stop it?

Aurora blanched when she realized how bad the optics of what she had just done were. She stood frozen, unsure of what to do. However, when she looked up at Leonel, his smile had never faded.

"If this was such a problem, you could have just said so. Why did-"

Leonel was silenced and his lips seemed to be pressed close under some mysterious power.

It would have been perfect if Celestia had done it, but the Owlans weren't such fools. Instead, it was Talon and the Dream Asura who had taken action.

However, Leonel didn't seem fazed in the slightest as he turned his smile toward them.

Everyone had heard the rules. You couldn't just silence a person for the sake of silencing them, you had to have a rebuttal for what they were going to say. Leonel really wanted to hear what they could possibly have to say that would be counted as a legitimate rebuttal.

Unless their rebuttal was perfect and unimpeachable, the optics would only get worse. And, clearly, Talon knew that. However, this was simply a matter of picking the lesser evil.

Should they one, allow Leonel to continue talking and make the situation worse? Or two, should they take action to stop it now and take the backlash that might come with it?

The answer was obvious. Sometimes you had to take a loss to earn a victory.

"I believe that is enough," Talon said. "We've gotten far off topic during this debate. I won't make any accusations about what may or may not have happened between yourself and these two, but as the senior said, those were mere petty squabbles."

The moment Talon spoke, his pillar glowed as well. It was inevitable. Now, he was roped into a three-way battle. In addition, when he finished speaking, it seemed that the pillar had taken it as an adequate enough rebuttal because his silencing rights hadn't vanished.

That said, for the next hour... he had no ability to silence Leonel.

"Oh? I didn't expect such a thing from the member of the Barbarian Race. Novel, indeed," Leonel replied.

Talon's eyes narrowed. "That's the second time you've mentioned another's Race entirely unprovoked."

He didn't say anything further, but Leonel's pillar began to dim while his own grew stronger.

From high above, it had taken all of Minerva's self-control for her expression to not become a gloomy mess. She seemed to finally realize that Leonel was playing the same game she was. He had never come here expecting this to be a completely fair arbitration of his skills and intelligence. He was more than willing to play as dirty as they were.

The main issue was that Minerva suddenly couldn't see his depths. Why did Leonel keep digging himself into a bigger and deeper hole?

Even Lumina hadn't mentioned the Human Race even once, even though that was probably the easiest dig to take at Leonel. But now, Leonel had disparaged the Cloud Race, and now he was doing the same with the Barbarian Race.

She couldn't see how this would benefit him at all.

"Was it?" Leonel blinked innocently. "Didn't this Owlan descendant here say that the reason the four of you were able to reach the same exact standard is because of your upbringing? Wasn't that implying that you did better because you were Demi-Gods?"

Talon frowned and looked toward Lumina with a quick side glance before focusing on Leonel once again.

"Your thoughts on the world are so twisted," Somnus suddenly spoke. "I find it both sad and unfortunate."

The Dream Asura shook his head, sighing deeply. When he spoke, the world seemed to resonate and listen. His voice was gentle, yet masculine, soothing, yet commanding.

It was clear coercion.

"Please, do explain," Leonel replied.

"What you should be looking toward here is not a matter of Race, but a matter of Class. It is not because we are Demi-Gods, but rather because we have well-established families within our Race that gave us certain advantages in our upbringing.

"To reduce it to a matter of Race is laughable. There are many of our Races who are entirely incapable of performing as well as you can.

"To make matters worse than that, not only did you reduce such a complicated matter in such a rudimentary fashion, but you also took it a step further and disparaged them as well.

"Don't you find this to be too unacceptable?"

The pillar of Talon and Somnus glowed even brighter.

Leonel's smile deepened.

"Idiot."

The fact Leonel would choose to say this word now of all times, especially when he was being accused of being crass, was shocking to them.

But the confidence in his gaze made them waver.

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