Leonel was immediately taken off guard. This was obviously not something that he had planned, and as he watched the scene unfold, his eyes couldn't help but narrow.
The shattering of the barrier between the God Realm and Demi-God Realms could be seen as both a good thing... or an absolutely terrible thing.
The good news was that he could already sense the laws of the Gods encroaching. He could sense the Forces clearer, he could feel himself improving with much greater speed, he could even feel that the suppression on Drake had already loosened considerably and would only continue to do so as time continued to pass.
In addition to this, the plan of the Owlans and the others could be cut short. That was because they no longer had to power up for the sake of cracking the barrier, because the barrier was already cracked. As such, their preparations until now were more than good enough to get a handle on the situation and move their worlds up. It could be said that the ones to benefit the greatest from this was them and their alliance... at least on the surface.
As for the issues... there were too many to count.
If there was no longer a barrier between the worlds, then Leonel's plan to use the Owlans and the others as his backdrop had to be thrown into the trash.
Initially, Leonel wanted to distract the God Realm with the rise of the Owlans and the Fallen God Beasts. That was because their existences wouldn't be casually accepted on the God Realm.
The Gods were obsessed with holding onto power, and they were especially stingy with how they chose to do things. Just the fact that the edict had appeared before Drake said everything that needed to be said.
Normally, someone who formed a Dharma would have a few months, at the very least, to set their affairs in order and prepare to ascend. But because Drake had formed an Idol from the very onset, the God Realm lacked patience at all to let him do anything. As such, they basically ordered him to come within the next few days. Though, of course, Leonel had ignored this.
At that moment, a flash sparked through Leonel's mind and his heart shook.
Could that have been the purpose all along? Was he the only intelligent person in existence? How could that possibly be true?
If he could see it, there were certainly others that could see it as well, and if there were others that could see it, but they weren't pushing back very hard...
'The majority faction in the God Realm, according to El'Rion, is the neutral faction that just wants to wait things out. And yet, even with the neutral faction being the majority, the culling was still approved.
'In the past, I thought that this was because they had to force a compromise. After all, killing off a few worlds every few hundred years was far better than just massacring the entire lower planes in a single sweep.
'But... what if the neutral faction isn't so neutral after all? What if they just wanted a better reason to cull? Or maybe... they have other plans that I've yet to see through.'
The more Leonel thought about it, the more he realized that this was likely to be the case. This was what the God Realm wanted, a surge to the God Realm so that they could justifiably kill large swaths of people and extend the life of Existence by weakening the burden on the Northern Star. By the same token, if their enemies came to them instead of the other way around, then they would not only not have to face the suppression of the lower Realms, but they wouldn't have to invest very much at all...
And in this sort of situation, they seemed to be getting exactly what they wanted.
'Truly sinister...' Leonel thought.
Unfortunately, this was still very much only the first and second problems.