Leon was mentally exhausted. Suffice to say he had not been happy when he found out that he had a known rapist and murderer in his clutches and had let the bastard off with a warning, not only that but seemingly in direct response to his generous mercy the ass-hole had gone ahead and did those exact same things little under a day after said incident. He left Pierre in the 'tender mercies' of a literal Realm of Inferno, knowing that he himself would not be able to restrain himself enough to give the zit on the face of existence the due punishment he deserves. For now Leon was back home after having spent days away in Alzer where he could relax and get back to normalcy.
""Welcome home Young Master!"" Speaking of Leon was greeted by a familiar pair of maids when he entered his room on his family's compound.
"Angie? Livia? What're you two doing?" But not the ones he would've expected. In addition to the Maid Uniforms that they wore during the school festival they also had cat ears and a tail in Angelica's case and dog ears and a tail in Olivia's.
"We heard from Luxion that you were pretty stressed out." Olivia hugged Leon from the side as she spoke.
"We decided to help you de-stress, and your sister recommended that this was the best way to do that." Angelica naturally took Leon's other side and held him close.
It made sense to a degree, after all if Leon wasn't into 'nekomini' then why would he get Left and Right to dress up/transform themselves like that?
"Is there anything you wanna talk to us about?" To the girl's surprise: Leon took them to the kitchen. They probably shouldn't really be all that surprised considering the fact that the three of them met while Leon was in the process of preparing for his 'tea party.' Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to them then that this is his idea of relaxing.
"...so needless to say, I'm a little pissed that I let the most vicious mass murderer in Alzer off the hook with a slap on the wrist." Leon emphasised his frustration with a bit too much force as he slammed a meat cleaver down on a section of cow thigh.
"I don't think most people would consider 'shoving an asshole up his asshole' a slap on the wrist." Angelica commented dryly. That's Leon for you, casually traumatising people for life and then casually brushing it off like it's a completely normal thing to do.
"You're taking his side now!?" Leon snapped as he couldn't believe the audacity of what Angelica was saying.
"Absolutely not." Angelica stated making her opinion known. "The world would be better off without the whole lot of them. Livia here almost got date raped ten or twelve times the other night." Leon split the chopping board this time.
"Where are they!?"
"I am perfectly capable of handling the situation myself!" Olivia actually looked proud of herself with her arms crossed and her nose turned up into the air. "And in fact I did!" Leon let his hands crack as he sucked in deep.
"We'll circle round." Leon stated as he let out a sigh.
"How're the girls doing?" Leon was led to a hospital ward while he left the chopped up meat to marinate.
Over all Rodin was hard at work to get everyone into the fighting shape Leon was accustomed to, though the individual stabilisation process was slow going he had still managed to make significant progress. Case in Point.
"Greetings to you Duke Leon Rapha Blackmore." Hertrude caught Leon outside of the Hospital room, still with the weaponized instrument that contained a part of her power at her side. "I've no doubt that you'll be pleased to know that I am progressing rather nicely in my recovery after your uncle's efforts to cure me of my condition."
"Well. I am happy for you Hertrude." Leon stated somewhat awkwardly. "I wasn't quite sure you were... all there when I yanked your soul out of that Nefasturris."
"Think nothing of it." Hertrude dismissed Leon's legitimate concerns as she held up the axe weapon for him to look at. "Rather, I would like you to have this."
"The Weapon Rodin made from your demon?" Leon picked up the weapon in question, and examined it, already he was running through the list of attacks that he would be able to perform with the weapon, and the curses that he would be able to cast with it. "Not something one gives away lightly." Leon didn't miss the spike of murderous intent that was coming off of Angelica and Olivia behind him, but he also picked up something else as well. "I sense though there is something that I must do first before I consider taking you up on the matter." And thus Leon left the weapon to Hertrude. "You will have my answer shortly." Leon indicated for Angelica and Olivia to follow him somewhere more private. "Alright you two what's the deal?" Leon asked as he looked at Angelica and Olivia lightly.
"Consider it a compliment." Angelica didn't sound like she was giving Leon one. "The sight of another woman flirting with you in front of us makes us upset! Worst yet, instead of having the common decency to reject her you instead accepted her weapon! Do I even need to say how personal it is to hand over a literal piece of yourself!?"
"If that's all that is then I simply won't accept Hertrude's weapon." Leon stated as he shrugged his shoulders. "Is that all that's bothering you?"
Angelica looked away, slightly happier but still obviously infuriated. Then Olivia let out a sigh.
"The truth is that we've been watching one of Cleare's playthroughs of the game." Olivia stated as she made her opinion known. "At your parents insistence."
"Which is completely irrelevant cause the game is filled with so much miss-information and flat out lies that it's practically useless." Leon stated in simple terms. "The information the first one did contained almost misled us into getting you possessed and Holfort destroyed."
"You are one of the potential romantic characters in that Game Leon." Olivia was frustrated and Leon wasn't listening to her concerns but she plowed through anyway.
"Angie has a bad habit of comparing herself to others." Angelica refused to look Olivia in the eye on this matter, as if saying 'you're the only one I'm comparing myself here to.' "Julius abandoned her for Marie, despite her working her whole life to be the best that she could be for him. Perhaps she's moved on from him but the trauma remains."
"The Trauma?" Leon asked cocking a brow suspiciously.
"Angie has been told and has been telling herself that she's 'the best for Julius' her entire life. She worked hard to prove this one fact every day. And Perhaps she was, but then the games recontextualise that train of thought, not for Julius but for you."
"Me?" Leon asked looking at Olivia suspiciously.
"Those games? Near as we can tell the only thing they have in common is you." As Olivia explained she turned to Leon.
"Those games-"
"Has covered one apocalyptic event already." If Fanoss was allowed to manifest their 'God of the Earth' then them retaining control over their monster was the best case scenario, if left to it's own devices it could have easily destroyed far far more. "You are walking into another one, if the second game is right."
"Then I'll deal with it." Leon just shrugged his shoulders as if what he was talking about was obvious. Angelica actually snorted at that.
"There's more of that boundless insufferable confidence of yours." Angelica took Leon by the arm and led him over to a seat before she sat down next to him and seemed to melt into his side mentally exhausted. "It hasn't occurred to you that Olivia isn't the only one that I'm comparing myself to?" Indeed, Angelica had two lovers, and each of those lovers also had someone else that they were also seeing. "For you, there's no better person than Olivia, for Olivia there's no better person than you. You're both so bloody powerful I feel like there's no room for me." Now that she was forced to confess her own inadequacy Angelica only felt worse.
"So what?" Leon's response was so utterly dismissive that Angelica only felt worse from it. "It just means that there are things we are good and bad at, Like my shadows, Livia's healing and your fire."
"Yes and you both so vastly outstrip me in magic it makes me sick to my stomach." Angelica stated letting out a sigh.
"That only means that we're only good for a fight." Leon just shrugged his shoulders as he voiced his confusion.
"If that's what you're saying then you better hope the wars I get in never end or we're gonna be in trouble." Angelica now looked confused. "Olivia spends all her time reading books, she neither has the interest nor the skill to talk to the nobility of this world."
"Considering the fact that a good chunk of them are people who have tried to hurt me I can confirm this." Olivia followed up with her own words of support.
"I consider turning a guy's asshole into a hat as a perfectly reasonable way to slap him on the wrist." Leon replied without any preamble. "My environment has warped me into an individual who cannot interact with people in a normal way."
"You can learn-"
"Can I really?" Leon replied bluntly. "I am part Demon, negative emotions are encoded into my very being. I can suppress my nature but can I overcome it?"
"Obviously..." Angelica looked like she wasn't quite as sure.
"To me you overcoming the difference in power between us is every bit as obvious as my ability to learn the right way to sip tea and bow to my so called betters." There it was again, that insufferable, unflappable confidence of Leon's.
"Saints you really are insufferable." Angelica breathed a sigh as she leaned into Leon more, her stress and anxiety melting away again as Olivia joined in on the group hug. "So how do I use these methods of getting stronger?" Angelica asked looking up at Leon.
"Stop putting yourself down for a start." Leon replied in an obvious tone of voice. "As my parents say 'people who tell themselves they can't kill gods usually don't succeed in doing so.'" Leon sensed a change in Angelica. Enlightenment? Peace? Leon's parents told Angelica that the best way to learn the clans techniques was to take the demons and the Angels inside of themselves and fuse them together into a seed of power. This wasn't exactly Envy and Joy, but maybe Angelica's Pride and Humility will give her some new insight to her power.
"Would you care to share that boundless confidence with me?" Angelica asked in a sarcastic tone of voice.
"I can arrange that actually." With that Leon led the girls away, Hertrude followed the three of them as Leon went to a diamond shaped box and opened it, retrieving from within it two boxes that he then put on a nearby table and opened. "This is the Scarborough Fair." A set of four red double barrelled derringers. "And this is Love is Blue." A set of four blue single barrelled derringers. "They're some of the weapons that Mum used to use, she's outgrown them, she won't mind me giving away a few old hand me downs."
"Hand me downs?" Angelica asked confused.
"Outgrown them?" Olivia gave the follow up.
"These are not Devil Arms, they are a medium for contracts between witch and demon." Leon stated bluntly. "As that demon has grown stronger over the years these weapons are no longer able to channel her power. I on the other hand am much weaker than she is." Leon stated as if emphasising his point.
"So these will work to establish a contract with you?" Olivia asked and Leon nodded in response.
"I assume my parents have explained to you that you don't actually have to beat the crap out of them to make a contract with a demon." Leon asked as he used a marker to draw a magic circle on the table.
"No they didn't." Angelica stated bluntly. "Personally I prefer negotiation, 'an abused horse a branch in the face' as my father is oft fond of telling me." There was a certain part that nagged Angie, about not earning the power she had. But war is what war was, resources should never be dismissed.
"That is what Marriage is, my Fiances, or at the very least it's what it's supposed to be." Leon stated bluntly. "This isn't 'you're using me to increase your power' its 'we are supporting each other mutually.'" Shrugging his shoulders Leon gestured to the weapons on the table.
"Still eight guns in total." Both of the young women in question picked up one of the red Scaborough fair Deringers. "I hope this is not you saying you're-" The gun disappeared from Olivia's hand and reappeared in Angelica's free hand. "Of course." Angie immediately understood what was happening. "The Guns are a set, so the red ones count as 'one weapon' and the blue ones as 'Another weapon.'" Having drawn this conclusion Angie indicated Olivia to pick up the Love is Blue, which she did. "Now yah thinking." Leon smirked as he completed work on the circle. "Alright Angie you put your hand with one of the Guns there." Thus Leon walked both of the girls through the contracting process. After a short light show there was a notable change, as far as the two girls were concerned, magic circles had appeared on both of their bodies wrapped around their ring fingers of the left hand.
"Let's try them out!" Olivia look so excited she was bouncing with joy. At once the three of them found an empty courtyard and took aim in front of them with the guns. Energy flowed into them, not just magic but also knowledge as well, both from Leon and from the weapons. Olivia's and Angelica's hair went wild and entered a portal behind them. From summoning portals blonde hair emerged and wove itself together, soon taking on the form of a pair of giant gold coloured arms which then fist bumped with each other.
"Congratulations girls for completing a basic summoning spell." Leon gave both Angelica and Olivia a clap of his hands before adding his own two cents.
"Now than I would like to go on a date." Leon stated as his two Fiance's looked at each other confused at the sudden declaration. "Know a good place to pick up some coffee?"
A few short minutes later both of the girls were dressed in casual wear and with Leon in the Capital, the three of them sitting underneath a sign prominently featuring a black raven over twin crescent moons.
"Excuse me may I take your order?" Leon didn't recognise the blonde haired woman in a maid's uniform that was taking their order, though based on the way that she looked at him she recognised him. "Right away Master." Angelica had set up a 'Blackmore Maid Cafe' in the capital, of course supplied by Leon's own company and based on Last Year's student festival.
"Did I beat her up and forget about it?" Leon asked indicating the woman in question.
"Not likely, I don't think you ever got physical with anyone, though you did use magic to throw some out of a window once. For the most part I think it was Left and Right that got physical with the fairer sex on your behalf." Angelica reminded Leon simply. None of the employee's here were demons, Angelica had the dual tasks of trying to drum up more business for Leon and find employment for the female students of the school who no longer had exclusive servants willing to bully the male populace for funds.
"I would've thought they would be encouraged to find their fortunes in the dungeon. That seems to be the whole deal with the academy anyway." Leon asked as his coffee arrived, alongside Angie and Livia's tea.
"Were most of them not pregnant I would agree with you." Angie casually dropped a bomb and Leon almost spat out his coffee. "Think about it for two minutes Leon. How many of our classmates were expelled for connections with the Ladies of the Forest, part of Frampton's faction or tried to flee when Fanoss hit?"
"So what? They were all shipped off to a Gulag or something?" Leon asked making his confusion known.
"Brothel more accurately." Angie explained as she pulled up Livia's shirt, revealing the belly piercing therein. "The orb found out about Yamatai's accessories, now it's trying to breed as many people in the same class of magic casting as Livia is." Angie explained while folding her hands together.
"Why?" Leon made a face of confusion at this. "Too much mana in the air is what's making the Float Stone float right?" Livia took a drink of her tea before she continued. "It's also what makes the surface so inhospitable, hence why we all live on islands. The issue here is that the longer time goes on there are fewer and fewer islands right?" Livia looked to Angie who nodded in agreement. Whether the Islands fall victim to natural disasters, monster attacks, war or entrepreneurs trying to harvest their float stone the islands are on a limited life span.
"The Drone wants to start colonising the surface." Leon summarised the explanation as he nodded along in thought.
"In any case is there anything you want to do after we're done with the Cafe?" The two of them began to understand Leon's reasoning. He led them to take him to the Cafe, in order to demonstrate something they've done for him: getting his business up and running. Now it was his turn to do something nice for them.
"What do you know about the Colossi?" Angie asked leaning in serious focus.
"Hmm. My parents training dummies eh?" Leon leaned back on two legs of his chair as he spoke. "My parents wouldn't be happy if I told you what forms their training dummies take on." Well it was worth a try, or so the pair had thought.
"My parents have contracted with many demons over the years. Fire types, wind types, lightning, water, Earth, metal. But there's only one that deals with plants." Thus Leon began talking about a completely unrelated topic that had absolutely nothing to do with the demon waiting in the forest.
Alraune: The Whisperer of Dimentia.
A woman from a noble family who, drowning in despair after being abandoned by her husband, swallowed mandrake poison and took her own life.
Even after death, the poison continued to devour her soul and at the height of being consumed by delusions and hallucinations, she was at last reincarnated in Inferno as a demon.
With virulent poison coursing throughout her entire body, even a slight caress from her is said to mean certain death.
She constantly searches reality for the most beautiful creatures, be they human, angel, or demon, and then injects poison into their nerves to make them unmoving "eternal lovers" to decorate her palace.
Insatiable desire and obsession have painted her heart so thickly that she will never know peace. Not even with the sacrifices of a thousand souls, or a million...
Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons
A crane made a mechanical noise as it lifted its prey from the depths of the Ocean. Eight Hundred years without human intervention had done well for the shark's as a species. This one was twice as large as the average Great White Shark of the time of Luxion's masters, the creature cackled with electricity even after it should've been long dead.
"Your Kraken does good work." Luxion stated as Nick's crane dropped the animal on the deck.
"Lightning isn't exactly a common affinity though." Nick commented dryly.
"Luckily we already have our pilot picked out." Clarice was dressed in a sea foam green pilot's suit as she stepped up. "You've built the armour to my specifications love?" Clarice asked as the word pleasantly rolled off of her tongue.
"Emphasis on Speed first and foremost." Nick led Clarice to his creation, an armour with the familiar blue quad engines of the Arwing. It had extra arms with large shields, guns loaded inside though their main purpose was not combat. "The back weapons will help to maneuver in a weightless environment. Shifting your centre of gravity around and using the momentum for tactical dodges. It should help you to conserve the engines." The engines would run off of the electricity produced by the Shark's catalyst crystals, operating fans that would push it forward through the air.
"I do love to go fast." Clarice smiled happily as Luxion put his machines to work, gutting open the shark and carefully extracting the internal organs where the Catalysts were located.
"You do realise that even with the most generous estimates we are still several hours away from this unit being fit for active duty." Luxion found itself confused by Clarice's choice to basically spend the entire day in her pilot's uniform.
"My boyfriend gave me such nice clothes, I've no intention of changing them." Clarice stubbornly refused to change either, so now they were at this new junction of a situation.
Over the course of the next few minutes the organs were peeled open and the contents studied, runes were identified and printed out across sheet metal before being folded around the Catalysts and installed across the Armour.
"Mjolnir model Armour readied for it's test run." Luxion intoned and the group nodded their heads in agreement.
Aside from Nick and Clarice Sarah and Jillian were also hard at work, through unlike Clarice who was testing the armour and Nick and Luxion who had built it their jobs were closer to customer service.
"I've completed the survey from my father's men, here we have all of their magical affinities of the soldiers listed out here from most common to least common." Jillian explained indicating which armours they would have to mass produce, or attempt to anyway.
"I have the Survey from our best paying clients for the affinities that we need." Sarah on the other hand had the list of custom armours that they would be making the majority of their money off of.
"Well that's the easy part done." Nick commented as he watched Clarice taking off through the air and riding on the monster they had spent the past few weeks building. "Parts. Now we need to figure out mass production. If we work from the logic of the demons, then the creatures below will use the affinities most suited to their environment, in other words we can expect the majority of them to be water types." Nick said that but there were some doubts too.
"If that's the logic you want to go with, then the majority of Newmans would be air types." Ever the Ruthless and logical being, Luxion continued to rip apart Nick's logic. For one thing, it was an ocean, most of the animals should be fish or other marine creatures, they wouldn't need magic to live in the ocean. "We'll need to identify habitats and migration routes to get an idea of where we can find what we need." Luxion stated bluntly. "Hopefully we can get Cleare to clone the animals that we require, or at least their parts, otherwise we're going to deplete a few eco-systems." The group nodded in response.
"Being able to raise them ourselves does save us the trouble of having to go down there and get them." Jillian stated in response. "But we need a mana rich environment to work with if we want to do that." Sarah countered bluntly.
"If that's the case we can just make one." Nick stated with a shrug of his shoulders. The girls looked at Nick confused. "Mana is just demonic and angelic energy mixed together correct? We can get an unlimited supply just by opening the doors to Inferno and Paradiso."
Luxion's eye turned a bright glowing red at the statement.
"You want to release more mana into the atmosphere you miserable little cretin!? Do you have any idea how hard I'm working to clean it up!?" Luxion zoomed into Nick's face as it glared hatefully at point blank range. "One, cool your tits." Nick grabbed the orb and pushed it away from him. "Two, we don't need to release it into the atmosphere. There's already a place where Paradiso and Inferno cross naturally with Midgard, Purgatorio."
"Yes. Your mother already gave a lecture about this 'Trinity of Reality.'" Luxion indeed floated back as it made calculations. "And that I seem to be carrying a piece of it around with me." Luxion had not been pleased with the two witches informing him that humanity had accidentally turned the internet into a part of the Trinity of Reality, as that meant that when the colony ships tried to take the internet with them they had brought little pockets of hell filled with all the horrors human kind had been hoping to escape with them.
"But you don't have the ability to access it do you?" Nick looked down right cocky as he asked his question.
"Frustratingly, no I cannot. But I suspect that you can."
Nick took the liberty of drawing up the array that Luxion would need to carve into his ship. Nothing that a few dozen of his maintenance drones wouldn't be able to do. Luxion had also placed several defensive turrets to fill the hallway as well. He had no idea of what was inside of the realm, and no way of controlling it other than the liberal application of violence. It wasn't a matter of inserting a few lines of code and making a building appear, the realm's building blocks was the collective will of man kind, there are no ways that he can control it nor would he want to. For now Luxion just had to have a gander at what he was looking at inside of the bizarre line between the technologically advanced and the mystical realm, with luck he'd have a fully furnished factory ready to assemble new tech for him. After several minutes the drones had finished welding the magic circle into place, and Luxion could send his drones through the portal, is what he thought but it was fried as soon as it was sent through.
"Concentrated Mana leads to elevated magnetic fields." So Luxion built a faraday cage and shoved it through the portal, and then he was able to pass through the hallway, but the protection against electro magnetic forces didn't allow the magic to work as intended. "I'll have to redesign my exploratory droids from the ground up it would seem." While Luxion was doing that the weekend was finishing up.
Spending two days outside of the social hellhole that is Alzer, Leon was mentally recharged and ready to return to his ship and learn about the extent of that he would have to be working while he was here.
"Bernhard...!" That was the plan anyway, but Leon's intentions was complicated by the sight of an unfamiliar sigil that had been plastered on the side of his ship. "Why are there some Great Noble's Crest plastered on the side of the damned ship!?"
"You were the one that specified that Pierre's death was to be as slow, painful and drawn out as possible, master." Bernhard spoke with the confidence of someone who had done no wrong. "This way we do not have to worry about the Fievel's coming to look for him." Based on the way that he acted Leon suspected that the puke's parents were throwing a party right now since they no longer had to put up with having a unhinged psychopath they had to pay the fines for.
"I trust that there is no need for more adjustments to be made before this mess is over with?"
"No master I assure you there is no need for further modifications to complete the plan. Would you like me to tell you about them? I assure you that my knowledge of inflicting suffering knows no peer."
"I gave you four days and you have two left, I don't care what else you do in that time but have the ship back to normal by then." Leon's orders were given with a tone of absoluteness.
Which was a given, considering that Leon was the master in this relationship. In his own way Leon was quite spoiled, the demons he was used to contracting with were usually well behaved, because of his unique bloodline he also had a firm grip on them. In comparison, Bernhard was a far more cunning and vastly more vicious beast, if Leon had been more wary of him and had a better idea of what he was up to he might've chosen to word his commands differently. As it stood, Leon had no way to even imagine the work load that the demonic castle had prepared for him as a result of 'just following orders.'
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: True. I'm good at Math, I wouldn't really want to be a teacher though.
RedRat8: She has lots of reasons, for one thing Louise is still a inbred spoiled daughter of Alzer with a fair number of mental issues on top of that the least of which being her crush on her own brother, for another as I recall the light novel she was explicitly told to bully Noelle as the most effective way to keep her safe from the other inbred Brats of Alzer without drawing any extra suspicion to Noelle.