Chapter 1723: Fear

Leonel's mind went blank for a moment and when he came to, he was standing within a world of green and blue. He stood on a platform at the start of a long road of them. Although he wasn't sure if it meant anything, the one he stood upon was particularly green, as though it had been carved out of precious jade.

'Hm?'

Leonel looked around.

There was nothing to his back or sides but an endless miasma of greenish blue energies. Other than that, there was only the path ahead and nothing else.

Leonel couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't exactly asked Aina what her experience with the Blood Sovereign Tablet was, but honestly he didn't think that he had to. After all, Blood Sovereignty wasn't exactly a Lineage Factor, as far as he was aware. So, his personal experience with the Northern Star Tablets would be far more useful in this regard, or so he thought.

But in his experience with those tablets, he had never...

Wait, that wasn't true. When he formed his Aurora Lineage Factor, he had entered a world and even experienced the forms of all three behemoth-like creatures. In fact, he had even been able to interact with them and pick from them.

And if he took another step back, he hadn't been conscious when he formed his Starry Tailed Fox Lineage Factor, he had just woken up one day with it, an oddity that he still didn't have any answers for either.

If things were looked at like this, was it really so odd for a tablet to have a hidden space? In fact, if he really thought about it, even one of his greatest treasures, the Silver Tablet he had gotten from Valiant Heart Mountain, had an inner space.

That inner space wasn't exactly like this one, but it contained a large number of floating souls from that Zone, souls that he could reawaken so long as he invested enough energy into them.

That aside, it effectively had a hidden world of its own as well. So, maybe it would be weirder if the Emperor's Might Tablet didn't have such a thing.

'Interesting...'

Leonel's eyes narrowed. Even with all of these things being true, there was something different about this place. All signs pointed to it wanting him to walk forward, so since he didn't have anything better to do at the moment, he did exactly that.

Leonel's foot rose and he tried to reach the next platform, but he suddenly felt very small. Before he even got half way, he frowned and retracted his foot.

He felt... inadequate?

It was an odd feeling to pinpoint, maybe because he was so unfamiliar with it. For some reason, as he was taking that step forward, he was suddenly bombarded with thoughts that he wasn't worthy of doing so. By the time he got halfway, the illusion of his thoughts became reality and the next platform actually seemed to get further away from him instead of closer.

Leonel was aware enough to feel that it was likely a trick of his mind, but even if he was aware, it still felt all too real. In fact, he felt that if he tried to force it and press forward anyway, he would misjudge where to place his foot, causing him to fall to his death.

Although Leonel knew that this must just be a projection of his mind because his Dream Force affinity was high enough to differentiate, that didn't mean that he wouldn't be harmed by such a thing. It was very likely that a "death" here would cause harm to his soul.

Considering the fact the human race had very little research on the soul and anything there was could only be considered to be in its infantile stages, there was simply no way that Leonel would be able to find a method to heal an injury to his soul in the Human Domain.

Unfortunately, Leonel wasn't very certain if his healing capabilities could extend to his soul or not, and he wasn't willing to risk it.

He could feel the symbiotic sort of harmony that currently kept his body and soul in balance. In fact, he could see aspects of the world he never had before thanks to the separation of his body and soul. It was because of this that he could see through the disguises of the Cloud Race so easily. He was able to look past the forms of their bodies and look into something they had no ability to change: their souls.

Leonel took a breath and exhaled.

What a stubborn tablet, it wanted to put him through the wringer.

Leonel felt that the tablet was more sentient than any other treasure he had ever met, or it might have been more accurate to say close to sentient. If he had to guess, this treasure was likely something a step beyond Life Grade, or even if it shared the same category, it was near its extremities. It could actually throw a tantrum when it wanted to.

Leonel smiled lightly, his foot beginning to rise up again.

'Silly tablet, it's going to take more than illusion to scare me. If there's an illusion in this world that can fool more Dream Force affinity, I'll give it to you."

Leonel leapt forward, the fear overwhelming his mind again, however he had already calculated the exact distance.

BANG!

He landed firmly on the next platform, his body swaying somewhat and his face feeling somewhat pale. During the final moments before he landed there, it all hit him at once, he even felt like he was freefalling into an abyss. Even after his feet landed, he thought it was just an illusion of the mind and that he had miscalculated.

This was indeed quite a scary first step, it felt completely overwhelming.

Leonel looked up and saw the staircases extending to infinity. His eyes couldn't help but narrow as he took deep heaving breaths.