As the tide of the opening storyline receded, players officially embarked on a long development cycle. Days passed one by one.
Across various communities—be it video platforms or forum threads—the game's popularity remained consistently high, showing no signs of decline.
The early game was manageable, but once all side quests were completed, the real challenge began.
The first hurdle was the Simulated Universe.
Enemies with control abilities caused countless players to suffer.
Spending hours chasing blessings, only to wipe at the final stage due to crowd control or missing key characters, was a common ordeal.
Kafka and Cocolia, in particular, were nightmares.
One wielded Domination, the other froze players.
The pool of characters with cleanse abilities was limited to just a few.
Without the right characters, players had to rely on resistance blessings or activate Path resonances with cleanse effects to cope.
Obstacles in exploration naturally sparked discussions and strategy sharing among players.
Guides for each Path, playstyles, and core blessings abounded.
Gradually, a four-star character emerged from the pack, completely alleviating players' frustrations with being controlled:
Wind Abundance—Leon.
Reading skill descriptions or watching streamers explain his abilities through videos paled in comparison to experiencing his effects firsthand.
To be precise, Leon himself had no cleanse skills.
However, his ultimate's effect was far more terrifying than mere cleansing.
Ultimate (AoE) (Level 10)
[This Doctor Is Reliable]
Deals Wind damage equal to 80% of Leon's max HP to all enemies, while restoring 1,234 HP to all allies.
Targets hit enter the [Dreamscape] state, which can trigger up to 1 time.
[Dreamscape]:
When an enemy attempts to apply action delay or control debuffs to an allied target, the ally becomes immune to the debuff and reflects it back to the enemy, ignoring their resistance.
Initially, no one grasped the sheer power behind the words "ignoring resistance."
It wasn't until the Ice of the Outer Universe, which couldn't be frozen even with maxed Remembrance blessings, suffered backlash and froze itself—
That's when players realized just how domineering Leon's Dreamscape effect was.
Conclusion: My code priority is far above yours!
Immune to freeze? Doesn't matter. As long as the enemy has the Dreamscape status, if they successfully apply a freeze debuff to any ally—
Sorry, it's reflected right back, ignoring your immunity.
And the ally that would've been controlled? They remain unaffected.
Players running Remembrance with Dissociation discovered Leon's dominance and were thrilled.
"No more worrying about those disgusting blue enemies when I play Remembrance Dissociation!"
Leon is a member of the Astral Express crew. Even if players didn't unlock him early at Herta Space Station, he's guaranteed after completing the Jarilo-VI storyline.
A true "everyone owns one" character with a 100% ownership rate.
Seeing others play so smoothly, even the small minority reluctant to train male characters couldn't resist breaking their rule.
With minimal investment in Leon—raising his skill levels and unlocking key Trace 1—players quickly found themselves hooked.
His fixed healing output was a massive advantage in the early game, when resources were scarce and builds were weak.
This meant that even without chasing specific relic substats, his healing remained consistent.
Of course, his healing, enhanced by Path blessings, wasn't his flashiest feature.
The real star was his control reflection.
Not only did it counter the Ice of the Outer Universe's freeze, but it also reflected Kafka's group Domination control without fail.
With Leon in the team, Kafka's group Domination posed no threat.
Leon never lacked energy.
Before the first Domination could even take effect, Leon's second ultimate was often already charged.
And the Dreamscape debuff was guaranteed to hit, lingering on enemies until triggered.
Why? Because group Domination has a delayed activation with a suggestion period.
Kafka could never break through Dreamscape's shackles to successfully apply control.
Players came to a realization: Leon was the ultimate counter to Kafka in the Simulated Universe.
Another example: Cocolia, whose control was equally frustrating.
Once Cocolia was tagged with Dreamscape, her ice spikes would freeze herself—hilarious.
The Abundance Deer's frenzied branch summons, the Voidranger: Trampler's charged shots, the Imaginary confinement of the Shadow of the Devourer…
None could bypass Dreamscape's control reflection.
The only thing that could "counter" Leon was Svarog's mechanical claw.
But Svarog's claw was indiscriminate, grabbing everyone equally, so it didn't truly counter him.
These were just control debuffs.
Leon's ultimate also reflected action delay debuffs.
Ice axes pushing the action bar, the full-screen shockwave slow from the Frostspawn (aka the chubby ice enemy)—
They'd push or slow themselves instead.
Players tormented by these debuffs were ecstatic watching enemies suffer their own consequences.
This perfectly matched some of Leon's skill and Constellation names:
"You—Come Here!" "Why's Your Head So Pointy?" "I'm Happy Watching You Suffer!"—they were a joy to see and hear.
"Too perfect, bro!"
I love watching enemies who tormented me torment themselves.
Reflected control didn't just feel good—it provided immense safety.
Enemies unable to act or acting far less frequently effectively bolstered team survivability.
Frozen enemies, upon thawing, had their action bar pushed back by 50%.
Kafka's Domination, a special control type, would control herself for two turns.
In the Simulated Universe, no sustain had a higher usage rate than Leon.
Bailu and Gepard were strong at launch, but neither had cleanse capabilities.
Beyond his ultimate, Leon had plenty of other strengths.
For example, he was the most synergistic character with the Elation Path, second only to Clara.
While Elation blessings didn't boost attack, stacking Path resonance triggered massive Aftertaste effects.
Even without Himeko or Clara, Leon could solo-collect Elation blessings, earning the Stellar Jade reward for unlocking the catalog.
But the most popular choice was the Abundance Path.
In the launch version, Leon was the only character whose skill damage scaled with HP.
Abundance blessings offered abundant HP.
In ideal scenarios, with tens of thousands of HP, he was nearly unkillable and dealt massive damage based on his HP.
Tanky as hell, with sky-high damage.
Across video platforms, you could find showcases of Leon solo-clearing the Simulated Universe on the Abundance Path.
Players, often quietly competitive, were rarely casual.
Seeing Leon solo faster and more reliably than most main DPS teams—
The few holdouts who stuck to their principles finally caved, quietly joining Leon's embrace.
No choice—if you didn't use him, you couldn't clear.
Plus, Leon was so good to the Trailblazer, a true bro with a likable personality. Training him was no loss.
As a result, Leon's fanbase grew, reflected as faith points in his system.