Leonel stepped out from the Segmented Cube holding Aina's hand. He allowed it to shrink, becoming a finger band once again as he stared forward.
At that time, a large number of auras pressed down, causing him to frown.
This place actually couldn't truly be considered the Void Palace. In reality, it was one of the cities that formed the last line of defense on the Void Battlefield.
Leonel and Aina had been to this city before. It was the very same city they had come to after leaving the Rapax Nest. Right this moment, it was even larger and more imposing than before, even having troops stationed on the outside and along the walls.
Leonel couldn't imagine why you would need a vanguard stationed outside of the city when the defenses were so great to begin with. But since he knew so little about the situation after being gone for so long, he didn't question it too much. Instead, he waited for the small squadron that was approaching to finish their approach.
However, by this point, Leonel had already recognized the individual leading this small squad. He was Rowan Cancer, the very same young man who had tried to take advantage of Leonel's injury after he led them all out of the Rapax Nest in order to target Aina for her Token.
Back then, Aina had ended up killing a large number of Rowan's followers, but Rowan himself had managed to escape. It had been a long time since then, just over a year to Leonel and likely much longer than that to Rowan.
Now, the rookie from back then who had entered along with Leonel was already strong enough to lead a squad here. So in all likelihood, Rowan neared the top tiers of Galaxy Ranked disciples already, or might even be a Sector Ranked disciple by now. It would mostly depend on what sort of talent he was.
Rowan, of course, recognized Leonel and Aina as well although his gaze was just as placid and emotionless as usual. However, that didn't change the fact he had some waves rising and falling in his heart.
Leonel and Aina had just come back and clearly didn't understand the usual protocols. And, just about a month ago, the spatial phenomena that had had the Human Domain in its grips also came to an end. These two things were highly unlikely to be a coincidence.
Although there were others who came very recently as well, given the odds, Leonel was definitely the top three most likely to have been the reason they could return.
Of course, this was only to the general public. To the elders paying attention to these matters, they had already confirmed it with 100% accuracy.
While Rowan was considered to be the most likely to inherit the Cancer family in the future, he didn't have that sort of cache just yet, and as such, he could only make his own guesses. But the fact that this guess of his was so accurate already spoke volumes.
"Please display your disciple badges."
Despite recognizing Leonel and Aina, Rowan still asked this. In fact, he also pretended as though the trio of them had no prior history and that he hadn't tried to kill Leonel not just once, but twice.
Leonel calmly looked toward Rowan and flipped his palm over to reveal his badge. However, to his surprise, rather than just casually looking over it, both his and Aina's badges underwent several layers of inspection before they were finally allowed to take them back.
Although his first reaction was to believe that Rowan was purposely making things difficult for him, Leonel didn't act on this, mostly because it made little sense. Delaying them by an extra few minutes for the sake of something so petty made little sense. In addition, these guards seemed to have specially created devices purely for the sake of inspecting his badge, something that made little sense unless there was a good reason.
"You two can enter the city now."
Leonel put his badge away and scanned the squad again.
"Is there a case of people impersonating Void Palace disciples?" Leonel asked.
Rowan's eyes flashed before he nodded slowly.
"Yes. The Cloud Race has encroached onto our territory in recent decades and has become more brazen. In addition, areas we used to hold firm control over have weakened drastically. Now that Earth has entered the Seventh Dimension faster than was expected, our enemies have re upped their efforts and are pressing us.
"It's also the case that during the spatial phenomena that just ended, the region was incredibly unstable, making it difficult for us to safely maintain a defensive line, but simultaneously very easy for enemies to cross large distances into our territory via teleportation.
"So this is the situation now."
Leonel's brows jumped in surprise, but the squadron which followed Rowan was equally as shocked.
Rowan was a man of very few words and they had never heard him speak so much all at one time like this. But he had done so for this individual? Who was this, exactly?
The number of people that could recognize Leonel by his face were simply too few in number. He had only spent a short time in the Void Palace and hadn't interacted with enough people to truly build fame.
While the event of him clearing dozens of floors in his first attempt at the Void Tower was circulated, that was also more than two decades ago and the amount of things that happened since then were too many.
Seeing this now, though, Rowan's squadron seemed to understand that Leonel must have been a prominent figure before the cataclysm.
Leonel, though, was shocked by something else entirely.
It seemed that in his absence, Earth had become a name even the geniuses of the Void Palace was very familiar with. Not only that, but in just a short 20 or so years, it had actually become a Seventh Dimensional world already and a vicious storm was brewing around this matter.