Emna didn't know that there was nothing to find yet; To her; it had only been a few minutes and she had no idea that Leonel was capable of enveloping the entire asteroid; even to the point of penetrating to its core; In fact; the fact Leonel had spent a few minutes on this task at all just went to show how thorough he had been; In reality; he already knew that there was nothing to find after a single instant;
'There has to be something here…'
Leonel thought that it might be hidden on the corpse itself, but he had already scanned the corpse at all and there was nothing to be found, not even the slightest mark of Shield Cross Stars was present; There was simply nothing;
'Hm…'
Leonel felt that he had to think outside of the box; The instant he shifted his perspective, something suddenly clicked;
With large strides; Leonel crossed the convenience station and entered its outhouse; It was just a small box barely two meters tall; Just to step into it; Leonel had to duck and the smell was absolutely horrid; There was nothing in this place aside from a hole in the ground and a single phone;
Leonel snapped his fingers and with a whoosh; a blinding golden light cleansed everything and he picked up the phone that looked as though it had come right out of Earth's 19th century;
After a moment, Leonel's expression flickered and he placed the phone back down.
There were three mechanisms on the phone; each one more layered than the last and they were all exceptionally well hidden; The first allowed it to function as a normal communication device; the second was a diversion tactic that scattered the signal and made it difficult to trace; the third was the real communication network; connecting this phone to a very specific subset of other phones;
Leonel's hand formed a clawing motion and ripped the phone from the walls of the outhouse; He had to carefully analyze this himself; or he could hand it over the Segmented Cube to do; Regardless of the choice; it required the utmost amount of secrecy;
Stepping out of the outhouse, Leonel looked into the distance to find that Emna was still looking; He observed her for a moment, shaking his head;
She was truly an anomaly; She reminded Leonel a lot of a term that he hadn't heard in a very long time: A Spark;
A Spark was a genius who would become the starting flare to a powerful lineage; The accomplishments of their future influenced their abilities in the present, creating a feedback loop that made them even more powerful than should be possible;
What was common within Sparks. though. was that they didn't have the backing of powerful families or organizations.
In the beginning of his journey; Leonel had been mistaken for a Spark many times before; But for obvious reasons; ever since he entered the Void Palace and became a second generation wastrel; no one had accused him of such a thing again;
Leonel had already realized why she felt so threatening; Her Blade Affinity Ability Index allowed her to use her body as a blade; and she had pushed this to the very pinnacle of the 4th Tier; but beyond that; she had gone from being able to turn her body into a blade to being able to turn her blades into her body;
This seemed like a simple reversal. but the truth was that this was a huge change. In fact. it was enough to call this a mutation of the Ability Index… In fact. Leonel felt that Emna had already taken the step toward turning her Ability Index into an incredibly powerful Lineage Factor!
The current Emna had control over Sixth Dimensional Blade Force, not Fifth; Setting aside just how rare it was to comprehend a weapon Force beyond your Dimension, if Leonel was correct, she was using this Blade Force to reconstruct her body;
If the Morales family had a body of metal, Emna was creating a Lineage Factor that forged her body of Blade Force.
Due to this, she was able to break free of the usual restrictions of her Dimensional tier, meaning that she had already stepped onto her own path. In fact, it was even more exaggerated than just this.
Leonel had a feeling that the reason Emna hadn't stepped into the Sixth Dimension wasn't because she couldn't, but rather because she was subconsciously aware that if she did so, she would lose this opportunity forever.
If Emna managed to perfect her self-created Lineage Factor before entering the Sixth Dimension, she would create a Path separate from the God and Conventional Paths. And because this Path was created by her own hands, her strength would be almost unprecedented.
If Emna's path were to be boiled down into a few words, she wouldn't have to worry about anything outside of improving her blade. As her blade improved, so would she.
Once she perfected this Lineage Factor, her Dimensional level would be decided by her Blade Force level!
It was no wonder Emna had such perfect and efficient control over her body. In her eyes, she wasn't controlling her body at all, but rather her blades!
From Leonel's senses, he could see that Emna was already a step away from forming Seventh Dimensional Blade Force. This meant that it was very likely that on the day she succeeded, she would leap from the Fifth Dimension into the Seventh Dimension directly! And not only that, but she would also be among one of the most powerful Seventh Dimensional powerhouses in the whole of the Human Domain!
'This is the power of fusing your paths into one. Her Ability Index, her partially completed Lineage Factor, even her practice method itself, all have the exact same origin, and due to that, she's extraordinarily powerful, even to the point of being able to assassinate a Seventh Dimensional powerhouse at the Fifth Dimension…'
Leonel was rarely impressed. Too rarely.
But at this moment, he was completely won over. It seemed that his judgment was quite good.