Leonel stretched and tried to move, but Aina was still wrapped around him like some sort of cross between an octopus and a koala bear.
"You're so clingy, wife."
"Are you complaining, husband?" Aina sneered, not opening her eyes.
Leonel's face almost split with a wide smile. That was the first time Aina had called him that, and it felt sweeter than he had thought it would.
Aina opened an eye when she didn't hear Leonel respond, only to see a smile that she could only return in kind.
"I'm not done with you yet," Aina said after closing her eyes. "Be an obedient hunk of a pillow, please."
Leonel chuckled. "Alright."
He pushed himself up and shifted Aina's position, letting her curl up in his lap and arms as he pulled himself into a meditative position.
Whether she was here or not wouldn't really affect much. In fact, it made him calmer and his thoughts and Force only seemed to move more smoothly.
He had already gathered up all the resources he needed to enter the Fourth Dimension, but he was still missing a few things on the comprehension side.
His Forces weren't the problem. He had already succeeded in elevating them all to the Middle Impetus State and then some. What still remained on the list was comprehending True Destruction Sovereignty, tempering his body with Sixth Dimensional Pure Ores, and raising his Constellation Realm comprehension from Rudimentary to Common.
Luckily, that sudden breakthrough while he was running from Khelgis and Adru had covered a lot of those bases as well.
This time, the change was even more violent than last time, but he took it much better. Sweat beaded down his brows and his body tensed, but at the very least, he wasn't curled up in a ball and hiding in a corner somewhere.
He felt that a large reason for this was his Dream Force. As much as he wanted to say it was because of Aina's soft body pressing into his, that was only really a cherry on top.
His mind right now gained an almost flexibility to it that it hadn't had in the past.
Absolute confidence sounded nice, and it was also very strong, but it was also very brittle. If it was bent beyond a certain point, it would snap apart and break.
Leonel had gone beyond that point several times and the outcomes were never pretty.
But the flexibility he had now made his body more receptive to change.
He watched as the spheres of his Destruction World grew larger, increasing in size and truly flourishing.
Anastasia's Cleansing Waters was able to raise the quality of Ores to their peak. Leonel didn't have to refine anything out and could just bask in their perfection.
As his body elevated to a new Dimension, he felt a tirade of strength that had seemed to be blocked behind a dam rushing out of him.
His Forces, especially, began to truly flourish. Even without a single other breakthrough, he had truly become like a new person.
When Dimensions were first introduced to him, they were described as the difference between mortals and Gods. Crossing that dividing line should be akin to raising to a completely new state.
As Leonel grew more powerful, he began to care for this explanation less and less. It was just too easy for him to jump across Dimensions and crush people who should, supposedly, be Gods to him.
But feeling the changes in his body, his heart began to thump as those previous thoughts surfaced once again.
At the very least... if he was comparing his current self to his former self...