Many minutes later, Leonel finally managed to calm down.
This matter was far more complex than he had expected and it felt like the world was playing a practical joke on him. So close and yet so far away, just a single step away and yet miles away.
He suddenly heard the echo of a familiar laughter in his mind. He didn't remember having laughed like this in the past, but for some reason he was certain that it was his own laughter. The laughter sounded quite heroic, and yet there was an undertone of sadness and helplessness hidden within, an echo that grew louder and louder until his vision suddenly went white.
When Leonel came to, he was still standing in the same spot. His body was drenched in sweat, but other than that, he seemed like the same person he had always been.
Taking a breath, he returned to the Living Setting and entered his and Aina's personal bath. He had already reached a state of cleanliness where he could spend months, even years, without a shower and still be fresh, but right now, he felt like he really needed one.
He slipped into the Cleansing Waters after stripping down his clothes and lowered himself into the water. The water slid around him until he had submerged even his head, sinking to the bottom of the large pool.
He breathed deeply, ignoring the waters around him. When the Cleansing Waters entered his lungs, rather than flooding them and leaving him gasping like one might expect, it immediately became vapor, dispersing into his body.
Leonel hadn't expected this. In truth, he had just made a mistake. He had wanted to do what he had recently begun to do in the water, filtering out Wind Force from the Water Force and inhaling that. But in his absentminded and somewhat fatigued state, he had forgotten that Cleansing Waters were the purest form of Water Force. There was no Wind Force within it at all to filter out and breathe.
Just when he thought that he would be drowned by his own foolishness and was prepared to rush up to the surface to expel the Cleansing Waters from himself, this had happened.
His body suddenly began to tremble, deep-seated and hidden imperfections began to be pushed out one after another.
Leonel was rendered speechless. He hadn't expected that things would actually end up like this. He had been thinking about how to help his body approach perfection, and he had actually stumbled into the method in such an unbelievably stupid way.
Quickly, Leonel calmed down and accessed some things. Only then did he realize that this wasn't a natural state of Cleansing Waters, or most accurately, not just anyone could inhale Cleansing Waters like this. If someone else tried, they might truly drown themselves.
The sudden vaporization of the Cleansing Waters he inhaled was a result of his new Lineage. Or rather, a result of his previously evolved Metal Synergy Lineage Factor evolving once again.
Leonel's new Lineage Factor built upon the four components of the Metal Synergy Lineage Factor quite beautifully.
The first component was the one all Morales had access to, and that was the ability to absorb the life of metals and make it their own.
The second, the one the Radix family had received, was the reverse. To take one's life and bestow it upon metals.
The third was what was given to the Midas family, and that was the ability to swallow flames and gain endless Life Force from them.
The fourth was given to the Florer family and it was ultimately the ability to bestow life once again.
The way Leonel had seen it, although these were separated into four more complex bits, they were ultimately two larger halves, one that could take life and make it one's own, and the second was to bestow it and grant power. One relied on refinement of external sources to grant oneself power, and the second relied on refinement of internal sources to grant an external object power.
Both formed a yin and yang sort of balance and there were all sorts of techniques that could branch from it. But what Leonel benefited from the most was the nigh infinite pool of longevity.
Somehow, after the evolution, Leonel had gained the ability to refine more than just metal and fire, even water seemed possible now, and he had gained the largest store of unrefined waters right before him. Even if he tried to refine all of these Cleansing Waters, he wasn't sure if it would truly be possible unless he reached the Nine Dimension, but by then these waters would expand once more as Anastasia would definitely reach that level as well.
As his pores dilated, Leonel found that his body had far more imperfections than he had thought. What was being expelled from him wasn't impurities, per se, but was rather like foul Force. This Force would be the kind that stopped normal Force Crystals from becoming Pure Force Crystals.
This sort of Force, impeding those born with fused souls, was precisely what stopped them from reaching the perfect state of body and mind.
These Cleansing Waters were only Eighth Dimensional, so Leonel wasn't sure if it would truly be able to allow his body to reach that state of perfection that only few geniuses of other Races and a handful of Spirituals had. But.. what he was certain of was that it would allow him to get much, much closer.
'I guess this can be counted as a disaster turning to fortune...' Leonel whispered to himself softly.
The complexity of a pie forming in the sky, only to land right in his face, and then for another one to form soon after had brought him through a rollercoaster of emotions.
Suddenly, Leonel gripped his fists.
The complexities of life were something that smacked him in the face every time he tried to gain an inkling about what truth may lie behind the doorway.
But he felt that maybe he was going about this all wrong. He had always felt like he should have an answer first before he decided what road he should take, but did he have a right to gain such an answer at his current strength?
Maybe instead of that... he should do the reverse, work to strengthen himself so that maybe one day, he too could laugh like that...
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