As Leon entered his soul realm, he found it calm, peaceful, and quiet. This was hardly out of the norm, but with both Xaphan and the Thunderbird present, and the former not in a healing trance, Leon did find it rather odd. In fact, they were both not fighting but instead were pouring over the staff that Sunlit had used to defeat Iron-Striker.
Rising from his throne, Leon walked over, eliciting a response only from his Ancestor.
âLeon,â she said with warm affection.
âAncestor,â he replied. âSee something you like?â he asked as he nodded to the staff.
âI do,â she affirmed. âThis is one of the most interesting artifacts Iâve ever had the pleasure of inspecting.â
âReally?!â That surprised Leon given how spectacularly ancient the Thunderbird was, not to mention the power she commanded at her peak.
âYes. It uses a kind of lightning that Iâve never seen before. Iâm actually having some trouble not only figuring out what it does but also how it summons something so unique. It hardly has any special enchantments, but thatâs only what can be inspected from its surface.â
âItâs quite unique,â Xaphan agreed. âI wanted to crack it open and inspect its internal structure, but it was argued that I ought to waitâŠâ He spoke with some bitterness, and Leon guessed that it wasnât only words that the Thunderbird used to keep Xaphan from trying to dismantle his new artifact.
For her part, the Thunderbird just gave him a cheeky smile before turning back to the staff.
âThere is some merit in trying to take it apartâsee here and here? The staff is clearly designed to come apart. However, I thought it a foolish thing to do before making sure we inspect the entire exterior.â
âThank you for that,â Leon said as he crossed to the other side of the table to inspect the staff himself. It had been hours since it had been given to him, but heâd yet to truly inspect the thing that was so powerful a single bolt from it defeated a tenth-tier mage. âIâd hate for it to be destroyed by anyone too overzealous in inspecting itâŠâ
âStrange, that sounded like you were questioning my skills, boy,â Xaphan growled. âThat couldnât possibly be the case, though, could it? I could take this fucking thing apart and put it back together better than any empty-headed asslickers you have back on your little island.â
âNo need to get so offended, demon,â Leon replied as Xaphan crossed his arms and gave him an audible âharumph!â
Focusing on the staff, Leon found that it, at first glance, was made of a single piece of ironânot steel or any other alloy, but pure iron, as far as he could tell. It was only because the Thunderbird had shown him the seams where she believed it could be taken apart that he was immediately able to pick them out. The biggest reason why they were so unnoticeable was because the surface of the staff was covered in thousands of intricate geometric etchings, their edges still distinct enough that Leon could be easily convinced that it had been made only recently.
And yet, it used strange magic, not something heâd ever seen Sunlitâs forces use before. He figured if they were capable of constructing such a weapon, then theyâd be using it more than in just one singular staff, especially since it appeared on a surface inspection to be so simple. Intricate, sure, but not so complex that it would be some great barrier to production in greater numbers.
As Leon took it in, he wondered when or how it had been made. Some Sunlit mad genius, perhaps? Or a relic from somewhere else on the plane?
âJust for confirmation, this wasnât made by our Clan, was it?â Leon asked.
âI doubt it,â the Thunderbird replied. âSomething like this wouldâve made waves had it been produced by any of my descendants or their vassals.â
âWould itâŠ?â Leon whispered in thought as he brushed his fingers against the staffâs etched surface. The Sunlit Emperor had used the weapon on him in their latest fight, and he still remembered how it affected himâŠ
As an experiment, Leon channeled a small amount of magic power into the staff. Not even enough to destroy the table it sat upon if Leon directly used that magic, only enough to try and activate the staff for a moment. His power slid through the staff with ease, racing through not only its external etchings but also its internal enchantments, the power shaping and changing along the way. Leonâs eyes widened in shock at the sheer complexity of the staffâs internal structure before a tiny dull yellow lightning bolt arced from the surface of the staff and into Leonâs hand.
Immediately, he felt a smile spreading across his face as the staffâs strange lightning arced throughout his body several times in less than a second. His heart began to race as euphoria lit him up from within. Leonâs mind remained crystal clear, thoughâin fact, he seemed to almost become hyper-aware of how the lightning moved throughout his body. He only became a little more alarmed when the power began to gather around his waist and hips, where it lit a spark of arousal that quickly became a raging fire.
Leon quickly withdrew his hand hardly a second after laying it upon the staff, but his body was already responding to the staffâs power; his pants grew tight, and he began to breathe hard.
âWellâŠâ he huffed as he did his best to not show the staffâs effects. âI suppose⊠thatâs a unique effectâŠâ
âWhat do you mean?â the Thunderbird asked as she eyed him with some concern. âWhat did it do to you? Do you need healing?â
âNo, no.â Leon waved away the seriousness of her question before answering, âThis staff damaged Iron-Striker quite fiercely. In the hands of another tenth-tier mage, it defeated him with a single bolt, ravaging his body and paralyzing him completely. Itâs⊠not doing that to me. Itâs having quite a different effectâŠâ
âWhat kind of effect?â the Thunderbird demanded to know.
âYou need to ask?â Xaphan responded a little contemptuously. âLook at him, he looks like heâs about to start fucking this table if we were to only turn around.â
Leon grimaced as the Thunderbird glared at the demon. âAs fine as this table is, itâs not really my type,â he said. âOn the whole, though, youâre not entirely wrong in its effect. It seems to be inducing a⊠uh, well⊠itâs⊠eh, a reproductive urge? Ugh, why did I phrase it like that?â
âIs it really?â the Thunderbird murmured as she turned her attention back to the staff, to Leonâs immense relief. As she took a moment to study the staff a bit more, Leon focused his magic inward, dispersing the staffâs magic and trying to get his body back to normal. âOur Clan came up with many different ways to be fruitful, but this is quite new. I never even heard of lightning that could have this effectâŠâ
âNot even from the Iron Needle?â Leon cast his gaze over at the Iron Needle as it lazily spun around in the larger golden tube that Nestor had first constructed for it.
âNot even from there.â
âDismantle the staff!â Xaphan petulantly interrupted. âIâm dying here; just open the fucking thing, and letâs see whatâs in it!â
He shrieked as the Thunderbird glared at him and her aura slammed him into the ground. However, a moment later, he was back on his feet, staring expectantly at Leon.
With a grin and a shrug, Leon laid hands on the staff again and set about trying to figure out how to take it apart. It was only three pieces, so he figured it ought not to be that hard. As it turned out, it wasnât, and he soon removed one-third of the staff from the other two-thirds. Once it was no longer in contact with the other pieces, however, that one piece began to emit an odd aura, and the magic that filled Leonâs soul realm began to swirl around it.
âNope. No, no, no,â Leon said as he hurriedly reattached the staff piece.
âOh, come on!â Xaphan cried. âWhat are you doing? Just let it do its thing, why are you being such a little bitch? Not scared of âconsequencesâ, are you? Just because you could be easily crippled if injured here in your soul realm? What kind of excuse is that?â
âQuite a good one, actually,â Leon murmured, though he knew the demon wasnât being serious. His disappointment did appear genuine, if not quite to that exaggerated degree. âIâm not going to risk it doing something here in my soul realm. No, thank you. Not after losing two months.â
Xaphan sighed while the Thunderbird stared at the staff with great interest.
âFine, whatever, do what you want,â Xaphan complained as he turned around and started making his way back to his pavilion.
Leon chuckled and shook his head as the demon ambled away. However, he remembered that he had some things he wanted to discuss with Xaphan, so he said his momentary goodbyes to the Thunderbird and followed the demon over to his pavilion, leaving his Ancestor to continue her studies of the staff now that sheâd gotten a chance to see its effects firsthand.
âWhat do you want, Leon?â Xaphan asked as he got himself settled in the pit in the center of the pavilion, the enchantment that Leon had built to help him absorb the Mists of Chaos warming up. âIâm about to be doing shit, you know.â
âYeah, like trying to catch up to me, right?â Leon said provocatively. âNow that Iâm here, it really feels like my soul realm has grown, doesnât it? Maybe only two hundred miles or so to go until itâs tenth-tier, right? That means I might actually surpass you, doesnât it?â Leon gave the demon the biggest shit-eating grin he could, and the former Lord of Flame grunted, unimpressed.
âI was once powerful enough to squash you like an insect,â Xaphan growled. âThe depths of power I once achieved wouldâve allowed me to effortlessly dominate this plane. Just because I need to recover that power doesnât mean you can gloat about being temporarily stronger than meâwhich you are not, yet.â
Leon hummed as his expression turned a bit more serious.
âThose demons that Sunlit summoned,â he said, causing Xaphan to immediately straighten up, âare they from that time when you were stronger? Did you know them?â
âWe⊠IâŠâ Xaphan sputtered a bit before he went quiet for a long moment to gather his thoughts. âWe didnât⊠we didnât say much to each other. We didnât have much to say to each other.â
âFollowers of Amon?â
âProbably an accurate guess. They werenât wearing fucking name tags, though, so hey, they couldâve been from the Prince of who-gives-a-fuck instead of Amon. The Primal Devils couldâve sent them for all I fuckinâ know.â
âThatâs⊠not a real possibility, is it?â Leon asked with some trepidation.
Xaphan grunted in amusement. âWe demons were created by the Primal Devils, but the Primal Devils are all dead.â
Leon frowned slightly. Krithâis, a Primal God, had still been alive, so he honestly didnât think it was too far-fetched to think that a Primal Devil could still be breathing somewhere in the Divine Graveyard. Still, he took Xaphanâs point at face valueâthe Primal Devils held no sway within the Void or the elemental planes at the edge of the universe.
âThe Sunlit Emperor himself didnât appear to be a vampire,â Leon said. âStill, I think it would be foolish to rule out the possibility that heâs working with Amon. He summoned six ninth-tier fire demons, how much power would that require?â
âThe power of a Lord, at least,â Xaphan said. âPossibly even as much as a Prince. Assuming no power was used on the receiving end, at least. Your Clan was powerful enough to summon me and others not too much weaker than me. But they were powerful enough that that wasnât surprising. Some puny Empire on a backwater plane summoning that many relatively powerful demons wouldnât have been able to do that without help. Still, I didnât sense anything with that fuckboy to suggest heâd made a contract. Nothing as powerful as ours, at any rate, and our contract is on the weaker side of things, all things consideredâŠâ
âSo no contract with Amon, then?â
Xaphan took another moment to consider it before shrugging. âProbably not. That usurping bastard probably just sent those demons to try and kill us. Iâd put this more on him than on Fuckboy.â
Leon hummed again. It was encouraging, at least, to hear that the Sunlit Emperor probably wasnât in a power-sharing contract with Amon, but he still possessed some level of power gifted by a Demon Lord, so he couldnât just assume that he wouldnât pull something else unexpected out in the future.
Leon didnât linger too much longer in his soul realm, though he resolved to further experiment with the staff when he had more time. For now, though, he did not have that time, especially once he left his soul realm and found an adjutant sent by the Jaguar bringing him good news.
It was now official: the Imperials were abandoning the Sword.
---
A week after the last battle, Leon stood on the bridge of the first Thunderbird destroyer, now serving as his personal ark. Anshu was the one in charge, for the most part, with Leon more occupied with strategic concerns than what the ark was doing moment-to-moment. And the current strategic matter lay before them: the port city that the Sunlit Empire first took in their campaign and that had served as their base of operations on the island ever since.
It was surprisingly small, being a city of about a hundred thousand before Iron-Striker first seized the island. About seventy thousand remained, though, and, Leon was told, were fairly amicable with the islandâs occupying force.
At least, it wound up being fairly amicable, things were quite tense at the beginning.
Now, though, the city had swollen, with much of its hinterlands squashed and trampled beneath the boots of hundreds of thousands of Sunlit troops, and the newly-constructed facilities to support them.
Most of those facilities were now empty as everyone either fled behind the cityâs tall walls or melted away into the countrysideâSunlitâs troops mostly doing the former while the islandâs inhabitants mostly did the latter.
It was easy to see why the port was so prioritized by the Sunlit Empire: it was the largest population center on the northern coast, and its port was quite highly developed. The cityâs port could service dozens of large ships at once, all while dozens more could be sheltered from the elements behind a massive earth magic-created breakwater.
That port was extraordinarily busy, with it being apparent even from dozens of miles away that the Sunlit troops were boarding transport ships as fast as they could and leaving the city. With his magic senses, Leon could see that the scenes at the other two remaining Sunlit-held cities on the coast were similar, with hundreds of thousands of Sunlit troops doing their best to get off the island as quickly as they could.
The Sunlit and Pegasi navies were doing an admirable job in this, Leon was pleased to see. After the retreat became undeniable, Leon had given orders to press the Imperial forces hard, but not so hard that they felt it was necessary to stand and fight. He just wanted them off the island and gave them the perfect motivation to keep fleeing for the coast. Fortunately, his strategy so far had been working, with few units staying behind to fight rear-guard actions or making suicidal last stands.
Part of the reason why was because Leon was quite liberally using the officers heâd captured, most notably including Arcaion, to convince some units to surrender, and others who tried resisting to flee instead. He didnât want them fighting to the death, so anything he could do to make this go easier, heâd do.
Now, theyâd pushed all the way here, and it looked like the Sunlit forces were going to need a few more days to evacuate. Leon was inclined to give them that time, but he also didnât want them to forget why they were fleeing in the first place. As his ark hovered in the sky, its escorts at its side, staring down the few arks that the Sunlit Empire still had hovering defensively over the city, he projected his power outside of the ark and into the sky. The sky was already fairly overcast, but the gray clouds darkened and flashed with lightning. He kept it from raining or from the wind getting too wild, as that mightâve impeded the Sunlit evacuation, but he wanted everyone to know why they were running every time they looked up.
Down below his ark, the Tribes were already digging in, just in case. That meant they were also setting up Lance emplacements and were getting ready to bombard the city. Leon didnât think that would be necessary, but he might need to light a fire under Sunlit asses to keep them moving.
Unfortunately, it seemed Sunlit himself had already fled the island, so Leon wasnât going to get his third rematch any time soon, but he was content with this, for now. It would take a few more days, but this campaign was essentially over. The Sunlit Empire was retreating; Leonâs Kingdom had won.