BOOM!

The violent upsurge of Leonel's aura threatened to blow everything around him apart.

His blood continued to trickle down his body, but in the chaos, it might as well have not been there at all.

His body was instead in perfect harmony with the world.

Creation so powerful it cycled into Destruction and Destruction so great it formed Creation. Destruction so powerful it allowed Creation and Creation so great it formed Destruction.

A Creation that took more than it could give back and a Creation that rose from the ashes of Destruction.

A Destruction so gentle it allowed for rebirth and a Destruction that capitalized on the greed of the sin of too much...

The differences between the two were incredibly subtle, and yet in Leonel's mind, the distinction was clear.

A gentle Destruction and a Creation that rose from the ashes...

Order.

An overbearing Creation and a sinful Destruction...

Chaos.

And yet the two could just as easily be flipped in his mind.

The chaos as defined by Leonel didn't refer to a darkness. It referred instead to a chance at life, the improbability of breath, a chance to roll the dice again...

And order... it wasn't necessarily good...

He had watched order destroy his life. It was because of rules and regulations that his father was no longer by his side, that his mother had to give up her life for him, that he had lost so much in his life...

The interchangeability of it, the dance of probability and chance, the relationship between Creation and Destruction and the balance the Northern Star sought for them all...

This was where real power lay.

BOOM!

Leonel's body shuddered and his Innate Node glowed brighter and brighter, reaching a fever pitch so great that his Spear Force began to howl almost like a beast.

It was all very simple, was it not?

The key to all of this was finding chaos within order... The short man had been so close to something so profound.

'He gave up his Sword Force for the sake of Spear Force, triggering the chaos he needed... However, I will not give up my Spear Force... nor will I give up my Bow Force...

I'll find the chaos within their order and give my chaos the structure it needs as a result.

'Chaos is unpredictable and unruly. If I want to control it, I need to be the one to set the rules and parameters that it follows...

'Much like the way the Northern Star can guide life along the path of proper evolution even with the presence of chaos, I too must become its guiding rails...'

Evolution was inherently chaos. It was a series of random mutations chosen by nothing more than chance and circumstance.

However, over a long enough period of time, these random mutations would begin to show patterns as well.

Those that were strong and useful would remain.

Those that were weak and detrimental would be destroyed in the annals of time and history, forgotten and never to be remembered again.

That was possible because the world had its own set of rules about what was possible and what was not...

Order.

BOOM!

Leonel's wild fluctuations became oddly more controlled. And then from more controlled, they became muted.

It looked as though a Dharma was trying to be formed above his head, but it had no form, no substance.

But if one looked closely, it would be possible to see that this wasn't because Leonel couldn't manage it, but it was rather because he didn't want to just yet.

He had the foundation of the idea, and he felt that he could succeed in forming his Dharma

whenever he wanted.

But it wasn't quite perfect just yet...

That said...

Leonel's eyes snapped open.

Ahead of him, just outside of his wildly fluctuating aura, there was another person blocking his path. But this one... was surprisingly an Owlan. Or rather, a Minerva as they called themselves now.

He was quite a handsome man, with a pair of white wings that spread boldly from his back. The spear in his hands looked to be carved out of gorgeous white marble, and all things considered, he was practically like an archangel descended from above to hand out punishment.

The man gave Leonel a sharp look, his aura powerful and his momentum not waning in the face of Leonel's own.

If he could have attacked by now, he would have. Unfortunately, since this corridor was designed for comprehension, those present received a lot of protection.

But equally as unfortunately for the man, he had underestimated the level of animosity the Idol Battlefield had for Leonel. Leonel received no such protections; it just seemed like he did because the momentum of his breakthrough was so great.

It was only when the man realized that Leonel's momentum was waning that he realized his mistake.

Ile took a step forward and shot ahead without a word, menace in his eyes.

It was clear and obvious that unlike the others, he had some deep-seated hatred for Leonel already baked in.

It didn't take much to realize why that might be. Minerva had announced her love for Leonel to the

world. That had pissed off not just many of the other God Race youths but many of the hidden geniuses of the Minerva as well.

After all, a woman who was a goddess in their eyes falling for a human was simply unacceptable.

And now that Leonel had failed his Dharma breakthrough, there was no better time to deal with him

than right now.

Everyone knew that a Dharma failure, especially for a Weapon Force, would lead to untold consequences, and the fact Leonel wasn't moving at all only seemed to enforce that.

The man's spear appeared at Leonel's throat moments later, and there was a surge as he flapped his wings once, accelerating past Leonel.

The man landed behind Leonel stably and on his feet. But soon, it became clear he was frozen in place as his head fell from his neck.