The little pink-eyed woman felt her heart skip a beat. What was that question? Well, it was obvious. This man wanted to steal Innate Nodes. Was he an Innate Node Hunter? Those kinds of people in her Verse were especially notorious, but it didn't matter. There would simply always be a market. There were probably many in the Ocular Chaos Clan who fell into this category as well.

Was she wrong about Leonel's character? What did she know about this man anyway, and did it even matter what she thought of him? Would it change anything?

Even when she tried to be cautious against him, he saw through it and cut right to the heart of the matter with absolute ease. There was simply nothing she could hide.

"N-no... Not that I know of..."

She looked to the ground, unable to meet Leonel's eyes and worried she would expose her own. She made a mental note that unless it was a matter of life or death, she most definitely wouldn't use it. In this world, where killing was already incentivized, she couldn't give others extra reasons to target her if she didn't have to.

Leonel could tell that there was something that this woman was hiding, but this time, he didn't choose to say anything about it. Her use had run out. And unlike what she was thinking, he didn't go around hunting Innate Nodes just for the fun of it.

Maybe he would have, if for no other reason than to help strengthen his brothers and subordinates. But after learning what he had from El'Rion, he understood that it wasn't as simple.

But if you thought about it, it made sense.

The Vast Bubble was middling in the grand scheme of Existence, and yet they had a method of perfectly fusing with Innate Nodes. If that method was truly so valuable, and could change a person's outlook on progress and life, why would it be in their hands? There were only so many truly valuable things a place like the Vast Bubble could have.

What Leonel was interested in, though, were the Domain Rings. He really wanted to see what secrets those people were trying to hide from him.

"Alright, you can go."

After Leonel said this, he flickered and moved, only causing a bout of annoyance to well up inside of him. He was much slower than he had been in the past. The level of Force he could circulate within himself was limited, and his body was also weaker, so his actual speed had plummeted.

That said...

Leonel's Ethereal Glabella pulsed as his Mana Core thrummed with life. He gathered Spatial Force from the surroundings and the ground seemed to shrink beneath his feet.

His speed exploded as he rushed ahead. He guessed that the first thing he should try to do would be to close the distance on that so-called Seeded Participant of the Dimensional Verse.

The little pink-eyed woman watched this scene stunned. He was really letting her go... just like that? Like it was nothing?

She almost collapsed in relief, but then her eyes drifted toward the corpses around them. Each one had an orb of energy floating above them. She didn't believe for a second that Leonel had just forgotten them. He had heard her explanation about the uses of that energy, but he didn't even give them a second glance before he vanished.

'This...'

She hesitated. This wasn't the only thing that was odd about Leonel. How had he not known the rules? Everyone knew the rules, even the weakest of them. They had it all explained to them at the same time and they were projected across the verse. Even those not participating would know the rules.

Then there was the fact he was in the Fifth Dimension and yet so powerful... How was that possible? On top of that, he came from a verse that had a Seeded Participant and yet he didn't spawn with his group? It all pointed to the fact that maybe Leonel wasn't like them. He might be ignorant about some things, but not in everything... in fact, he might know much more than most of them about the situation, maybe even more than those families who had seemed to have begun preparing for this decades ago...

After some hesitation, she grit her teeth and went with her gut. She wouldn't take the energies here. With one last look, she too shot in a direction, the exact opposite of Leonel's.

...

Leonel continued to run in the far-off distance, his Internal Sight still trained on the little woman. When he saw that she didn't absorb the energies, he chuckled.

Of course, Leonel didn't just have the task of surviving this endeavor, but he also had some recruiting to do. Although he didn't care very much about being a King any longer, there was still a nudge within him to continue to build.

There was something that stuck with him from his future self even though that vast, overwhelming pressure had vanished... and that was loneliness.

Despite his true personality, Leonel had always liked to have people around him. The camaraderie of his football team and his brothers had always been a highlight of his day. He didn't want to be alone. He wanted to experience this world that he was so curious about with others by his side.

But in a world like this one, that not only required strength but required backing. Since he didn't have backing of his own... he would just have to make it.

Leonel rushed forward, tweaking his Spatial Force use from time to time. Right now, he was at the very bottom of the Fifth Dimension. In fact, he was even at the very start of Tier 1. He could feel that if he wanted to, he could shoot right back up to the Seventh Dimension in one go. It might take a few hours, if that. But then wouldn't that waste his opportunity?

'Ah, another group of people to interrogate.'

Leonel caressed his wooden spear. It was the primitive woman's spear, faceted with a stinger-like blade. Wielding it made him feel nostalgic. He didn't think these people ahead would feel the same, though.