Leonel shook his head. Maybe someone else would have been truly enraged by now. After all, making jokes about such a sensitive subject was enough to trigger a lot of people, especially when it was about themselves. But, Leonel had always been good at compartmentalizing things.
At least he hadn't said too much before his father went off. This old man was really getting more and more annoying with age.
The good news was that this was less likely to be a serious matter. After all, the last time a recording of his father was triggered, it was about the death of his paternal grandfather. Back then, there hadn't been any room for joking at all. In fact, Leonel distinctly remembered his father being on the brink of rage, an emotion Leonel had never seen on him before.
Since his father could joke now, at least that meant that this was a lighter matter…
Unfortunately, Leonel couldn't have been more wrong.
…
Leonel speechlessly looked from the dictionary to the vial and back again after his father's hologram faded. For a long while, or at least what would have felt like it with how many things ran through his mind, he didn't move or say anything.
Void Invalids.
If it could be said that Invalids were the 'failures' of the universe and Variant Invalids were among the greatest threat, then Void Invalids were the creature lurking in the night—not in the sense that they were a bedtime fairy tale, but in that they were an existential threat to all.
Invalids, as 'failures', were often the carbon copy of the races they supposedly failed from. Leonel had never thought about it before because all the Invalids he had ever come across were humans, but what if the Invalid in question was from another race? There had to be Invalid beasts, maybe Invalid Oryx, or Invalids of any myriad of other races… Right?
Void Invalids were Invalids of a particular race, a race that would have ruled over the Dimensional Verse had they still existed. His father called these creatures Void Beasts.
Void Beasts had never had a world to call home. They were birthed from Celestial Bodies and roamed space with the same freedom that birds roamed the skies. They swallowed worlds as snacks and burped out stars for relief. These were the kind of creatures that were simply far too beyond Leonel's understanding to grasp.
The current Leonel couldn't even sustain himself in the depths of space without special equipment. In fact, only Sixth Dimension existence with special abilities and upward could do such a thing. However, from infancy, such Void Beasts took what he would find difficult as a time of leisure.
And yet… They were not only extinct, they had been devoured by the Invalids of their race, creating an all new category of Invalids all to their own…
Void Invalids.
The truth was that this blood wasn't from a Void Invalid. As far as Leonel knew, Invalids didn't really have blood. Or rather, they did, only up until their death wherein their bodies became motes of light and Force.
The blood that Kira had given him was from the corpse of a Void Beast. According to the dictionary, it had less than 1% of its original potency left by the time Kira's Salvatine family had found it.
From analysis, the original Void Beast had been dead for hundreds of thousands of years, likely longer than even that. The dictionary had further deduced that the Void Invalid that killed it likely only snatched away its Ethereal Glabella, swallowing it for its evolution. As for the rest of the Void Beast's body, it was fairly useless to it.
Leonel could imagine a mountain corpse the size of a planet floating about in space, an endless river of red orbiting about it…
It was said that the empty space in the universe was so vast that even if you pointed in a random direction and headed in it without deviating to the left or right, there was an almost 100% chance you would reach the end of it all without touching a single thing.
For a beast as massive as the Void Beast, this was likely still true. Who knew how long its death had been an unknown blight on the world?
Leonel was suddenly reminded of another thought experiment… If a tree fell in a forest with no one to witness it, does it make a sound?
If you die alone in the vastness of space without a friend or family to remember you… Did you really die?
It was quite chilling. The Void Beasts were so powerful, and yet there were so few… They had no parents, no friends… They could hold the fate of the Dimensional Verse in the palms of their hands, but what did that count for?
Leonel clenched the vial tightly.
Just months ago, he was worrying over exactly how to continue to press Little Blackstar's evolution forward, only for such a boon to end up in his hand. Even though the potency was less than a percent what it was originally, Void Beasts were still the rulers of all Shadow Sovereigns.
Even though Little Blackstar's ability placed him at the very pinnacle, he was greatly limited by how ordinary his origins were. The small body of Earth's minks weren't entirely conducive to producing powerful beings. This was why Leonel needed to help Little Blackstar's evolution along with the blood of stronger beasts.
The stronger Little Blackstar's body became, the easier he would be able to accommodate the strength of his ability, and the faster he would grow.
After absorbing the Mimicry Bat's blood, Little Blackstar's talent shone through and he was immediately able to awaken the strongest form of mimicry: ability steal. Right now, this was already one of Leonel's strongest trump cards toward building the ideal world he had in mind.
This alone was enough to prove just how strong Little Blackstar's talent was.
Leonel was curious to see just how much Little Blackstar would progress after fusing with the blood of a Void Beast…
...
Leonel's subsequent pace was just as slow. He took his own advice quite well. Since he would be behind no matter what, why would he ruin his own stamina just to not catch up anyway?
Even though Leonel didn't have to worry about stamina at all in this place, he still chose this route. This was because the time he gained to not only strengthen himself but to reflect and think was invaluable. With every day that passed, Leonel grew by leaps and bounds.
[Star Fusion] was a technique Leonel formed using Camelot's magic system. He was able to further improve upon it by using his Bronze Runes as a medium.
[Star Fusion] could be considered a Knight's technique rather than a Mage technique. It essentially used his body as a core of a star, combusting energy to boost everything from his strength to his speed to even his reaction time.
Leonel calculated that in the real world, he would probably last a few minutes in that state and it would give him the strength of an entire Dimension above himself, something that proved just how fearsome Vital Star Force was. At least this was the case when the gap between the Fourth and Fifth Dimension was the target.
However, in this world, with a Vital Star looming and the location being saturated with it, Leonel could stay in that state for as long as he wanted to. The only real limitation was the stress on his body. But, even that had been fixed thanks to using his Bronze Runes.
When Leonel activated his Bronze Runes, his body became sturdier and more solid. It was essentially like releasing hidden shackles on his Metal Body and allowing him to become even stronger.
The reason this was necessary was quite obvious. Skin would never be as sturdy as Metal and Metal would never be as flexible as Skin. In order to gain advantages of them both, some sacrifices had to be made, sacrifices that were unnecessary once Bronze Runes were activated.
In their activated state, Leonel's body became both as hard as metal and as flexible and spongy as flesh, giving him the best of both worlds.
By using his Bronze Runes as the passageways for his Vital Star Force, Leonel was essentially forcefully awakening his Metal Synergy Lineage Factor without truly activating it. This gave his body added strength the Vital Star Force was able to feed off of in a feedback loop.
Vital Star Force would make his body more explosive and powerful. This would result in his Bronze Runes becoming stronger and make his body more durable and harder. And, due to his body becoming more durable, Vital Star Force could make him even stronger.
It could be said that the formation of Leonel's Vital Stars and his creation of [Star Fusion] was enough to make this trip more than worth it even if he didn't gain a single other thing… And that was ignoring the fact he had found Little Blackstar the perfect path toward evolution.
Of course, the best part that Leonel was happy to find out was that he really had perfectly deduced the Fourth Dimensional Layer of [Dimensional Cleanse].
After defeating Kira, it had appeared in his mind as though it had always been there. The result was Leonel being impressed with even himself.
'Not bad, if I do say so myself.' Leonel chuckled. 'Oh…?'
Leonel's gaze narrowed slightly. There, up ahead, he realized that he had made it to the next round after another three months. This time, however, there wasn't just a single road meeting his own… There were two.
The two young men seemed to sense him at the same time, their gazes glowing with a hidden sharpness.
It seems that they weren't nearly as friendly as Kira.