Chapter 2619: A Bridge

Leonel felt that a new world had opened up to him, one that felt bright and new. And yet, despite the progress he had made, he still felt like he was sitting on the edge of something amazing.

Oddly enough, he didn't really feel like he had learned anything new. Rather, it felt like he was just connecting things he never had before, binding them together in new and exciting ways.

And that shed light on something that he would need very soon... A Natural Force Art.

There was a great amount of overlap between creating a Force Art capable of triggering certain factors in the environment and one that could elicit Auspicious Air.

The only real bridge he had to form was turning the environments he was creating for his Crafts into a Craft that wasn't acting against the world, but instead... with it.

And honestly, that was easier said than done.

"What did it mean to create such a Force Art? Did he have to grasp all the Forces in the world? Did he only have to grasp one? And in the case that it was just one, how powerful would it have to be?"

"It felt like a Force Art of that level would have to at least be at the stage of the Creation State. How else would it force the creation of Auspicious Air?"

"But that also didn't make sense to Leonel."

"The first Natural Force Art he had come across had been in the Camelot Zone, created by a man named Merlin. It had been greatly beneficial to him in the past, but it was ultimately just of the Fourth Dimension, so he had left it far behind over time."

"It was hard for him to believe that a Fourth Dimensional anything could be formed of a Creation State Force. It was wholly incompatible and didn't make sense."

"Beyond that, he had gained a lot of understanding of the world since then. He knew that the Force Art wasn't built based off of just a single Force, but it was something deeper than that, something more magical."

"But what was it?"

"'I feel like I'm close, and yet so far...' Leonel thought. It was like he was sitting in front of a complex circuit and all he had to do was connect a few points for the light bulb to turn on."

"Strings of Dream Force danced in his Dream World, forming one Force Art after another and then dispersing them before trying again. His hands worked the same way, forming one after another, after another, but this time with Emulation Spatial Force."

"The Emulation Spatial Force formed thin strings of silvery gold energy, pulling at the tips of his fingers as though the strings of a puppet."

"Every time his fingers twitched, they would form new connections and snap into a new Force Art, but it never stayed around for long, a single tremble of his wrists disturbing the net of strings into their original forms before they went at it again."

"'Is it space, maybe?'"

"The thought came like a gentle wind. He had wondered for a while, why Emulation Spatial Force? Why was it the weaker little brother to Infinity Force?"

"Infinity Force was said to be all Forces there were, it was the greatest force of Neutral Force, one that didn't just exist... but would rather create."

"'Neutral Force?'"

"This thought came to Leonel quite suddenly as well."

"Indeed, wasn't Neutral Force also an amalgamation of Forces? The difference was that Neutral Force was extremely impure, not in the sense that there were energies aside from Forces inside of it, or that there were other things that weren't energies at all, but rather as a measure of its balance."

"What separated Neutral Force was the much stronger Pure Neutral Force was that the latter had a perfect balance of Forces. One didn't overpower or overshadow the other, allowing the strength to be much greater."

"'But by how much?' Leonel suddenly wondered."

"Did Neutral Force really contain all Forces, or was it just a large segment of them? Would he really be able to find extremely rare Force mixed in with Neutral Force? Or was it just relatively common Forces?"

"'And what does this have to do with space...?'"

"It was said that Spatial Force users were extremely dangerous. They were the only specific Force type that all powers actively guarded against."

"The ban on Dream Force that Caspian tried to trigger was something all too common to Spatial Force users. Something that was interesting because Dream Force was just as dangerous, and even more so in many ways."

"The difference between the two, though, was that Dream Force manipulation on a high enough scale couldn't be stopped, and yet, at the same time... it was the easiest to stop."

"Anyone could put up defenses against Dream Force if their Force Manipulation was high enough, but no one could stop a mass murderer from suddenly teleporting into your home unless you were likewise a Force Art expert."

"And then Leonel suddenly remembered."

"'Dream Force is rooted in the Second Dimension because it represents not life itself, but the impetus of it, the chance at life, the potential for it...'"

"He had forgotten something that was extremely key to all of this..."

"In a lot of ways, Dream Force was all Forces, just in a different form. It wasn't the Forces themselves, but rather the idea of them, almost like a bookmark of their definitions, ready to be spread out into the wider world..."

"In that case, if Neutral Force was only the amalgamation of many Forces and not necessarily them all... and Dream Force was almost the rolodex or library of Forces and what they were or could become..."

"Then why did Emulation Spatial Force need Spatial Force at all?"

"'As a bridge...' Leonel suddenly thought."

"A bridge from the Second Dimension to the higher Dimensions? Maybe... or was it even more general than that, a simple root to reality itself... laying claim to what Dream Force could not alone..."