Little Tolly's roar shook the skies. It was hard to believe that an adorable blob of silver could make such a sound, but this was the reality before them all right this moment.
The once little one raised into the skies like a roaring dragon, snaking through the skies, but even that form didn't last for long. Tolly couldn't seem to decide on a form, shifting through countless mystical creatures. Sometimes it was a dragon, sometimes it was a qilin, sometimes it rose into the skies like a majestic, silver phoenix, and yet some other times it became something far more sinister, a vast, endless and casting net of silver that seemed prepared to swallow up the entire world.
'Something is missing...' Leonel thought to himself.
If things continued like this, he felt that he would fail. He felt that his general idea was correct, but it was impossible for things to go perfectly just because he had this idea.
Just think about it for a moment. In order for this method to be created, others had to have failed before. They had all likely witnessed a rampaging Metal Spirit and decided that it couldn't be allowed to happen. That meant that if he did nothing and simply continued to observe, whatever terrible outcome the people of the Cataclysm Zone had wanted to avoid would be exactly what happened here.
It was just unfortunate that Leonel hadn't figured out what that was ahead of time. He felt that he was still missing something to complete his deduction, and the only way to do that was to observe the process in person. But he only had one Metal Spirit and there was nothing else that he could observe in its stead...
So he chose this approach. It was either he succeeded here, or he would lose his Metal Spirit.
Tolliver was a precious friend of his. It couldn't communicate, and it hadn't even chosen an identity for itself, but the teachings of his father was something that Leonel took up with the utmost seriousness.
Now that he thought about it, he had never seen his father's own Metal Spirit. In all likelihood, that was related to exactly why his father was so serious about the matter. His father had lost so much in his life, and maybe his Metal Spirit was just yet another sacrifice on that path...
Leonel closed his eyes, the net of Little Tolly expanding to the point that it crashed against the barriers that the Morales had set up, pushing against it and causing it to crack once, and then crack again. It seemed that even this barrier designed to stop the most powerful of the Seventh Dimension could barely resist against the current Tolliver, the rampaging Metal Spirit having lost its mind entirely.
Suddenly, Leonel's eyes opened. 'That's it.'
With calm movements, Leonel slowly took out something that he had been saving for a long time. In fact, he had never thought that he would come to find a use for it, and even if he did, he thought that maybe it would be used in one of his final Divine Armors, but it seemed that all of that preparation had instead led up to this very moment here.
In his hands, Leonel held up none other than his very own strand of hair.
Leonel didn't know why, but every time he had a great boost in strength, his hair would likewise grow. After recent breakthroughs, his hair became like flowing rivers, extending outward for dozens of meters, even hundreds recently.
What was most shocking about this was that if it wasn't for his Emperor's Might Lineage Factor, he would just have to let it be. The reason for that was because... his hair was truly indestructible. He thought that maybe it was just because he was weak in the past and couldn't gather enough strength, but even now, he was unable to do anything to the hair that had grown back when he was still merely in the Third and Fourth Dimensions.
In fact... even his enlightened self couldn't do it.
Luckily, his hair was attached to his body, it was a part of it, and thus he had perfect autonomy over it. Using his King's Might to allow him to cut it was as easy as breathing, but it was also the only way to do so.
It was truly an anomaly, the other Morales didn't seem to have this problem at all. Leonel actually felt that due to his Lineage Factor deviation back when he had originally tried to open up his first set of doors, he had caused this mutation within himself.
Either way, right this moment, Leonel felt that this was somehow the very best solution to the problem.
He needed something to ground Tolliver, something that made their connection even stronger. Another person might be helpless in this sort of situation. What part of themselves could they feed to a Metal Spirit if not their own flesh and blood?
However, Leonel had a true solution, one he felt had a better than 90% chance of working.
He threw his long strands of hair into the air as Little Tolly dove toward him. Sensing the powerful metals coming his way, Tolliver was immediately distracted, swallowing it all up. But to both their surprise, Tolliver couldn't seem to absorb it all instantaneously like it had done in the past.
The little Metal Spirit bundled up, wrapping around the long strands of hair until it was nothing more than a small silver ball that landed with a plop upon Leonel's hands.
'Corrosive...'
Leonel had long since gotten used to touching Tolliver directly, but it seemed more dangerous now than it ever had been. Even so, he didn't seem to mind.
He nodded to himself, watching as Tolliver pulsed, slowly digesting his ore-like hair. It was hard to believe that this same bundle of silver had just been about to swallow a planet, but here it was.
He had succeeded.
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