Dimensional Descent

 Kill. Kill. Kill.

Leonel was someone who was rarely impressed. But if there was anyone who had experienced his appreciation several times, it was his father. And this time was truly no different.

One of Blackstar's abilities was to flicker in and out of his Shadow World. This allowed him to maintain some form in the outside world while also being incorporeal to it.

If one was fighting him, this was a true nightmare. The fact he could choose when someone could even be allowed to land a blow on him and not was shocking enough.

When Blackstar really wanted to give an opponent a headache, though, he could disappear into his Shadow World completely, only popping out randomly in a swirl of darkness whenever he wanted. This sort of shifting was the most difficult to deal with because unless you had a high enough Darkness affinity, it couldn't be sensed in the slightest.

Leonel had seen how powerful these abilities were, but he had never considered the possibility of using his Destruction World similarly. That was because the foundations of Darkness and Destruction were too different.

The Shadow World was exactly that, a world in the Shadows. The characteristics of Darkness were well in line with allowing the abilities that Blackstar showed.

Although it looked like an application of space, in reality it was a method of using the absence of light to one's advantage. The opening of an entire world only made it more exaggerated.

But here, Leonel's father was hiding all of his destructive might in his Destruction World. What Leonel didn't understand was where those illusory images were coming from.

The tiger, what looked like a dragon, those constructs in general... were they created via some method? Were they distilled from real creatures? Or was it something else?

Leonel still wouldn't be sure.Exclusive © content by N(ô)ve/l/Drama.Org.

What he was certain of was the fact his father's blade couldn't be trusted. No matter what it looked like in the outside world, he had to pay attention to the variations and changes in the Destruction World as well.

Someone else would be out of luck. After all, there were only two people in the entirety of Existence with access to the Destruction World. Or, technically... just one because this was nothing more than a projection of his father.

Without it, Leonel wouldn't have been able to see what was hiding away on the other side.

Leonel wiped away the blood from his lips as he understood.

His father's spear style was highly refined, and its foundation was the sturdiest he had ever seen. It was the style of a man who had practiced the very same spear stances again and again without fail.

Even without his Destruction World, just measuring up to this level of foundation would be incredibly difficult.

However, when he added in the variations hidden within his Destruction World...

Both men vanished at once, and their clashes began to echo.

The battle looked quite odd. Leonel was dodging out of the way of the spear blade what looked like several feet sometimes, when usually he would just dodge by a few millimeters.

The action was forcefully putting him at a disadvantage. The further he was from his father, the harder it was for him to counterattack.

But only he knew that this was exactly what he had to do.

The size of his father's blade changed freely, but the speed and swiftness didn't change in the slightest. It was a fundamental breaking of the laws of physics, and yet it was precisely because he had a World to himself that he was able to do this.

PA! PA! PA!

Velasco suddenly pierced out three times in quick succession, and the tiger wrapping around one of his arms roared.

The echo spread through the Destruction World, and Leonel's expression changed as he hurried to accelerate backward.

But even though he reacted quickly, he found that a layer of his skin had been turned to ash. His expression changed again as he rolled to the side.

At some unknown point, his father had appeared to his side, slashing out toward his son's back.

But when Leonel thought he had dodged, a snaking energy thrust out almost like the chain from a whip. His father's spear suddenly became incredibly flexible, but the blade remained eerily stable on its path through the air.

With a slash downward, Leonel, who thought he had dodged, found a hole ripping right through his abdomen.

The pain rocked his body, and his inner organs were quickly corroding to the point that he felt flashes of death loom over his head.

He rolled to the side, but his father had somehow appeared right next to him.

The forms of his father's spear were changing too fast, too quickly. And because Leonel still hadn't figured out how he was forming those phantom constructs, he was still struggling with counterattacking.

Without the Destruction World's support, Leonel's spear was just a normal wooden spear, and there was nothing that it could do in the face of such monstrous power at all.

Leonel couldn't help but unleash a chuckle as he was sent flying away again, another hole ripping through his body.

His skin was turning a sickly ashen grey around his wound, his flesh flaking away like ash as it fluttered through the air like grey snowflakes.

Leonel landed on his feet, coughing violently without the blood to give. Any blood that he would have spilled was instead turned directly to ash.

His father's comprehension of Destruction made his own seem like child's play.

He was too busy messing around with profound meanings and truths, trying to connect them with Creation, Chaos, and Order, but he had forgotten to actually delve into the true meaning of Destruction itself.

His father clearly didn't have this problem. He didn't overcomplicate his Path of the Spear. Or at the very least, the foundation he built it on couldn't have been simpler.

Kill. Kill, Kill.

Just this and nothing else.