Chapter 2014: Two Options

Leonel pushed off the city walls, his body suddenly flickering and vanishing. His first tier Divine Armor took shape, a blinding Bronze Aura emitting from him as the ocean's waves rose to his back.

Suddenly, he swung down, the mighty wave responding in kind and slicing an Heir-Grade General in half.

Leonel's spear spun in his hands. In response, the surging wave spiraled into the air like a twisting tentacle. He took another step through the air and appeared above another Heir-Grade General and thrust forward.

The skies rumbled and the clouds split. The spiraling wave seemed to be controlled by Leonel's might, shimmering with a slight golden hue as it pierced forward along with his spear, tearing a gaping hole through the head of another whale beast.

Everywhere Leonel passed, the ocean's waves roared after him. As though his movements alone were enough to elicit their action, they responded in kind. As he danced through the skies, they too danced, a deadly waltz of murderous storms and flickering Spear Force causing mass destruction everywhere they went.

Just days ago, Leonel didn't have nearly this much skill with Water Force. And yet, before their eyes now, he seemed to have become a God of the Seas, a Poseidon donned in armor and traversing the skies.

Leonel swept his spear out three times, causing three spiraling tendrils of water to rise from the surface. His hips pivoted and his blade glided through the air. With one thrust, the tendrils ripped through the body of another beast, then another, then another.

They followed Leonel like roaring flood dragons, droplets of water falling around them and reflecting the delicate gold of his Spear Force. It was a scene too beautiful for how deathly it was, even the waters below were beginning to turn a fierce violet color, dyed thoroughly with the blood of creatures far too large for their own good.

The Morales Ancestors watched with a glow in their eyes. They had never seen the Absolute Domain used in this fashion, but it was truly a sight too gorgeous for words.

With the Absolute Domain, Leonel's spear could appear wherever he wanted given a certain range. In fact, when the Absolute Spear Domain grew enough in strength, even displacing it through time wasn't entirely impossible.

But to use this ability to make use of the power of nature itself to strengthen yourself... This was a level of Spearmanship that was rare beyond belief, this was even beyond what these Ancestors could do. Their Spear Force was, obviously, much stronger than Leonel's. But when it came to comprehension of the spear, it felt like they were actually not just a single step behind.

Ten Stars erupted to Leonel's back and his Divine Armor shifted as he retrieved his first tier armor and used his second tier Divine Armor. His strength multiplied several times over.

He unleashed a mighty roar, dragging his spear blade from a downward position and pulling it up in a wide arc toward the skies.

A blinding crescent of golden Spear Force took shape, blasting forward and splitting everything in its path in two.

The ocean's waters parted, forming a trenching several kilometers deep. The boundaries of the trench's sides were so solid that beasts caught up in it began to fall. They slipped out the sides of the trench, crashing into the darkness below and churning the waters with flesh and blood.

It was a complete massacre. What should have been the difficult Heir-Grade upgrade challenge had become nothing more than a joke.

In the three days that Leonel was busy, others had managed to catch up and form Gold-Grade territories of their own. But just as quickly as they had, they were left behind again, and this time the gap was even larger than it had been previously.

It might not be an entire week, potentially two for some, before these Heirs even thought of challenging the Heir Grade. But now... Leonel had claimed an entire sea for himself.

Leonel stood in the skies, taking a deep breath. The dense smell of the ocean filled his nostrils and lungs, leaving him with an oddly peaceful expression, even though the Human Domain was anything but peaceful at the moment.

Still, this had nothing to do with Leonel. With a flash, he appeared in the city lord manor, looking at his current territory.

Leonel's heart skipped a beat. He already knew that he would have control over an entire sea, a fourth of the ocean after this, but he was stunned by just how expansive the territory truly was. Just taking into account the surface, it was about a quarter the size of a supercontinent. However, if you accounted for its depth...

Just in a small region of the ocean previously, Leonel had found 200 challenges and almost 50 dungeons, and that had been in just a 20 kilometer range. Now, however, Leonel controlled almost 2000 kilometers of length and just over 500 kilometers of width. There were so many challenges and dungeons that it wasn't even realistic for him to clear them all in a short time.

Leonel realized that this was likely another test. Now, he had to juggle the benefits of accumulation versus action.

He had many resources at his fingertips, but there had to be a balance between gathering and taking part in these resources and spearheading his path toward ending these Heir Wars and claiming victory for him.

Leonel fell into thought for a moment.

Seeing the sort of advantage claiming a sea held, if there was one thing he had to do, it was to make sure that no one else could gain such an advantage.

There were only two ways of doing this. The first was by finding anyone trying to expand into the ocean and taking them out before they could take more action, but this was unrealistic. Just his fourth of the ocean was so expansive, how would he find others in the three quarters that remained?

That only left the other method: to claim them before anyone else could.

Leonel's gaze narrowed.