Leonel took a breath, feeling that the air almost smelt... bright.
It was an odd feeling, but he almost instantly dismissed it, his gaze sharpening.
There was only one way forward right now, and that was to crush Patriarch Khafra so thoroughly that the current point gap could be made up for.
This time, he would go all out.
Leonel reached forward and touched a leaf. At that same instant, the dormant carnivorous plant suddenly awakened, biting down toward him with full force.
The task of this challenge was to make it out of this floor, obviously, and the method to do so was by comprehending the Force Art, undoing it, and clearing the floor. However, that didn't mean that there would be no danger in doing so. In fact, you could very well lose your life in this challenge.
However, Leonel was frighteningly calm even as the carnivorous plant seemed ready to swallow him whole, thick globules of acid dripping from its maw.
His Mage Core was an interesting part of his talent. Its usefulness seemed to ebb and flow. Sometimes it was a huge part of his combat strength and at other times, he easily forgot about it.
Leonel never truly forgot it, but the main problem he faced was that much like with everything else, it was hard to actually make use of something if you didn't have the techniques for it.
Why was King's Might so powerful? Sure, it was an amazing Lineage Factor, but without [Assimilate], [Breathe], and [Arise], it wouldn't be nearly so fear-inducing. In fact, Leonel had had the Lineage Factor for years before he got the Golden Tablet, and all he could use it for was a boost to his Dream Force affinity and some help toward supplementing his Spear Force.
He had to admit that it was thanks to King's Might that he was able to master his grandfather's way of the spear so quickly, but even with that taken into account... weren't the results too lackluster?
This was the reality of the world. Having talent wasn't enough, if you didn't have the foundation of a great power, and all the thoughts and comprehensions of your ancestors backing you, the strength you could exhibit would always be limited.
Aina was a perfect example. She was a God Childe, an exceptional talent and should objectively be on the level of a God already. There was a reason they were called God Childes.
However, if Aina was an Eighth Dimension God, would Leonel even have to do all of this? She could have just snapped her fingers and destroyed the Owlans, and he would have happily been a house husband.
The trouble was that she didn't have the foundation of a God. Her father had finally gotten a useful technique to her, and it was only then that she began to improve by leaps and bounds, but even then she was still greatly lacking.
Leonel had too many examples of this in his life. Emna was another, James could be considered another, Elrion...
The list was endless.
But that was part of the beauty of things as well... because when you happened to stumble into a huge breakthrough, the changes to your strength wouldn't be small in the slightest.
The Mage Core was based on the Camelot Magic System, a world where the strongest had only been Fourth Dimensional. Leonel had already left behind their strength by so many leaps and bounds his current Mage Core probably couldn't even be recognized by Mordred herself.
Of course, this was also due to the fact that his Enlightened self had made changes while he was unconscious.
But just now, in his first challenge against Patriarch Khafra, he had felt a huge change. His Mage Core reacted to his Natural Force Arts more fiercely than he could have ever expected, and there were even sweeping changes that occurred.
At that moment, Leonel felt that creating Natural Force Arts was so easy that they even seemed to be creating themselves... and that was practically exactly what was happening.
Leonel had long since realized that his Mage Core scaled with his Force comprehension. But what he didn't realize was that there was a feedback loop formed between the world and himself. It wasn't just him taking from the world, but it was also the world giving to him. And it wasn't just the world giving, but also him reciprocating.
That push and pull that formed not only allowed him to control the Force around him without having to take it into his body, but it also allowed that Force to communicate with him and almost whisper its thoughts into his mind.
The first shocking thing about this change was that his Forces... were much stronger. No, they weren't stronger. Rather, they were able to exhibit a larger power of their real strength instead of being limited by his Dimension. In fact, Leonel felt that if he could perfect this fledgling ability, he could ignore the limits of his Dimension entirely and exhibit the strength of Force purely based on his Comprehension, something that even Gods couldn't do.
The second shocking thing was that he didn't need to put as much effort into analyzing the world before forming Natural Force Arts. In fact, through his Mage Core, he could even create an ability with his Control Ability Index to passively create Natural Force Arts on a whim.
Both of these matters felt more abstract than real, especially since they were tied into one another. That was because Leonel felt that in order to free his Forces of the restriction of his Dimensions, he had to do so through Natural Force Arts.
At the same time, though... what did it even mean to casually create Natural Force Arts from thin air...?
The carnivorous plan continued to bite down toward Leonel, a savage light emitting from it as acid continued to drip. And then, it chomped down on Leonel whole.
BANG!
Suddenly, the entire world of green became a landscape of white that stretched into infinity. In the whole region, only Leonel stood unblemished. However, soon, a bronze Natural Force Art expanded beneath his feet, moving so fast that soon it too seemed to extend into infinity.
... It meant that this challenge had suddenly become nothing more than a joke.
