[Bonus chapter courtesy of Fire2112 (aka Firemonster) <3 2/6]
'A honey trap?' Leonel almost wanted to laugh. Truthfully, sending a Pure-Blooded Spiritual was quite "sincere" of them. Most of these people thought that humans were scourges to Existence itself, trying to lure him with a Pure-Blooded Spiritual meant that at least some of them weren't so set in their ways.
A Pure-Blooded Spiritual couldn't be created in the traditional sense. In fact, a Pure-Blooded Spiritual could be born even from a pair of parents without the Pure-Blooded title. In this way, they were completely analogous to the Chaos Demons, and they were creatures on the same exact level.
With that sort of comparison, one could imagine how highly regarded they were. Regnier was probably seething that his people were actually trying to do this after he was so publicly destroyed.
Unfortunately, even if this woman was more beautiful -which she wasn't-it wouldn't be able to change even a single thing. The origin of this chapter's debut can be traced to N0v3l--B1n.
Of course, Leonel was likewise reading a lot into the simple action. The words were benign enough, and the woman was dressed quite conservatively, not even her shoulders were exposed, and her sleeves even covered much of the back of her hand.
It was just that Leonel's Dream Force was on a completely different level now than it had been in the past, and they had sent a girl that was of the junior generation for obvious reasons. From his probes, she was only the Seventh Dimension and hadn't even formed a Life State Force yet.
How could she hide her intentions from him?
Since the girl wasn't too overt with it, Leonel felt that there was no reason to be too rude to her, but he also didn't play into it.
Leonel planned to give the young woman a glance before he left without a word, but the mention of a gathering caught his intention.
This gathering was known as the Gathering of Kingdoms. It was a weird name considering only a small fraction of those participating could actually be considered as such, but it was one steeped in tradition so no one changed it.
The first Gathering of Kingdoms had been held by the God Beasts many years ago, and their purpose was for the sake of finding the subjects they wanted to take in to pass on their bloodlines to other creatures. This had, of course, created the Northern Star Lineage Factors.
These days, it was a method of balancing power. The so-called "Kingdoms" were being powers not ruled by Gods or Demi-Gods.
Everyone knew that Existence was running on a finite clock and many were taking steps to try and manage that.
To take a complicated list of rules and make them simple, the harsh truth was: those that lost this gathering had their Bubbles destroyed and turned into energy that dispersed into the wider world. This chance would also give those beneath Demi-Gods to forge Demi-God-level Worlds, and thus evolve their race.
Essentially, the largest hurdle to a Race becoming one of the Gods could be boiled down to the environment. God Bubbles were simply on a completely different level.
Of course, this wasn't the only thing that was needed, and there were a few powers with Demi-God worlds that weren't ruled by Demi-Gods at all. That said... all Demi-Gods were created from Demi-God Worlds even if not all Demi-God Worlds had Demi-Gods.
All of this said, the Human Race was actually immune. The Dream Pavilion was like a badge of protection, and they didn't need to partake in this... culling. It could be said that this was the only reason they had survived for so long.
However...
Leonel's eyes narrowed as he vanished without a word.