Chapter 358: Rabbit Hole

Months passed in the capital, and soon enough, Leon had been back for more than a year. He and Elise had gotten settled into their villa, Anzu’s training was going incredibly well, and things seemed great for Leon on almost every front.

But Leon’s schedule wasn’t filled with relaxing leisure, rather his days were more often than not exhausting, with little time to truly relax. He had to go to the Royal Palace in the mornings and help analyze information about the vampires that were still being rooted out as well as keep an eye on the investigation into Justin Isynos—the latter hadn’t gone anywhere, as Justin seemed absolutely squeaky clean as far as anyone could determine. In the afternoons, Leon would spend a bit of time with Trajan going over what little if anything they had learned, and then he’d check in with Lapis.

Once he got home, he’d spend an hour or two with Anzu and the beastmaster, and it was time to train. Leon would spend a few hours every day working on his Mind Palace or receiving instruction from the Thunderbird. He did his best to follow his ancestor’s recommendation to focus on water magic, but the possibilities of flight were just too tantalizing, so he found himself practicing wind more than water.

What little time he had left in the day was spent on enchanting practice and study. He had all of his enchanting supplies from his vault in Teira brought down to him in the capital in case he needed them, and he threw himself completely into his studies. After seeing the necklace Elise had worn to Marcus’ party, Leon realized that he’d been quite limited in his thoughts about enchantments, in that he’d focused almost entirely on defensive enchantments. He was ignoring so many other possibilities that when they occurred to him, he suddenly felt overwhelmed with how much he was missing out on, especially since so much of it was staring at him right in the face.

He wanted to completely overhaul his armor. Most of the enchantments he’d placed upon it were designed to protect from fire based attacks and facilitate his use of fire and lightning magic. However, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he could do so much more, such as increasing his physical strength, his movement speed, perhaps even achieving flight or getting additional invisibility enchantments other than his ring. He even thought it possible that he might be able to increase his movement speed in water, maybe adding the ability to breathe when beneath its surface.

The possibilities were essentially endless, and he wanted to know them all. To that end, he spent more time working on brushing up on his knowledge of enchantments than he did working on his Mind Palace.

The biggest problem he had in that regard, though, was the material he’d commissioned his armor to be made of. Magmic Steel, which comprised all of the metal parts of his armor, didn’t take well to any enchantment other than fire, which had forced Leon to use the leather straps and Skyflax padding for many of his lightning enchantments. This wasn’t the best solution given how prone to tearing cloth could be—especially in battle—forcing Leon to find another solution if he wanted room for all of his other enchantments and not be worried about their fragility.

The solution he came up with was to have a lattice-work of thin silver strips attached to the inside of his armor which could hold the enchantments that the Magmic Steel couldn’t. Additionally, Leon had a few silver arm rings made that he could wear beneath his armor, so that like his invisibility ring, he could enchant some items that he could then use without wearing all of his relatively bulky armor.

The more he did, the more Leon thought about his meager use of enchantments until this point, the deeper he realized this rabbit hole went. His work on enchanting was rapidly taking up much of his time, especially once he started thinking about the possibility of storing elemental attacks the way Elise’s necklace that had started his descent into this mental mire could, which was why he needed the gemstones from his vault. He just couldn’t figure out the best way to integrate them into his armor, assuming that’s what he even wanted to do.

Regardless, Leon had a ton of work left to do on that front, and it was some of the most satisfying work he did in the entire day. However, once the sun fell below the horizon, he had other priorities, namely Elise and Naiad.

Elise still had a lot of work helping to administer the Heaven’s Eye Tower, but Naiad largely lazed around all day. The river nymph didn’t seem to mind this relaxed life, especially so after Leon, taking inspiration from the obelisk Artorias had built in their compound back in the Northern Vales, installed a few enchantments that doubled the amount of magic power in the air around the villa. For beings of their power, it didn’t do much to help Elise, Leon, or Naiad, but it did make the villa’s air more comfortable and invigorating to breathe.

When it came time to go to bed, though, more often than not Naiad slept in Leon and Elise’s room. Their second time together had practically opened the floodgates, and the three seemed like they simply couldn’t get enough of each other’s bodies.

Leon was a rather family-oriented man. Growing up, he had no one but his own father around, and since coming south, he had little else but the stories of the fall of his family to motivate him onward. After starting a relationship with Elise, she became the single most important person in the entire Kingdom to him, which was why he was so reluctant to sleep with Naiad in the first place.

Quite simply, Leon was not a man that had sex casually. Naturally, then, the more that he and Naiad had sex with each other, the more he found himself starting to care about her, despite everything that had happened to bring them together. By the time he had spent a full year back in the capital, Naiad was already considered a part of his small family, whether he was willing to accept it or not.

During this time, Naiad’s fertile period came and went, and she was yet without child. It most certainly wasn’t due to lack of trying, but with Leon’s bloodline and with both his and Naiad’s power, fertility issues were to be expected on both sides. No one was too upset by it, since it gave all three the opportunity to continue what they were doing without confronting what would happen when Naiad did get pregnant.

As for Elise, she threw herself completely into training whenever she could. She made plenty of time for Leon, her friends, and work, but after Leon told her about his intention to go to the Nexus and reclaim what his family had lost so long ago, she realized that she needed to be much stronger than she was if she didn’t want to be left behind. She didn’t think Leon would physically leave her behind—and Leon was careful to reassure her of that—but she was determined to both accompany him and not be a burden in any way.

Beyond that desire, the simple prospect of seizing divine powers lit a fire in Elise that hadn’t been there before. With the Thunderbird helping Leon, and her own leveraging of Heaven’s Eye’s resources, Apotheosis didn’t seem like an esoteric concept, it seemed perfectly achievable to her. She only had to train hard enough to take it.

However, ascending through the tiers wasn’t nearly so easy, Leon’s experience notwithstanding.

All-in-all, things seemed great for Leon and his ladies. There was little he could truly complain about, assuming things stayed the way they were.

But things never stay perfect forever.

—

“Leon!” Trajan said, his face pale and gaunt from a year of trying to keep things together in the capital.

Leon, in contrast, seemed healthier than ever, with his normally pale skin decently sun-kissed and his body perfectly sculpted from training to be exceedingly well-built, so much so that it was almost as easy to see Leon’s musculature through his clothes as it was to see the much-larger Trajan’s.

The Prince couldn’t help but feel some amount of jealousy at how obviously happy and healthy Leon seemed, but that part of him was miniscule in comparison to his pride in his young protégé.

“Your Highness,” Leon responded, giving the Prince a respectful bow.

“How’re things going with you?” Trajan asked as he rose from his desk and waved Leon over to the sitting area. “It’s been all business here for too long, we haven’t had much of a chance to catch up!”

“There’re going well enough,” Leon said with a smile.

“Well enough to marry Lady Elise?” Trajan asked with an eyebrow cocked in a teasing manner.

“Uhh,” Leon sputtered as he reeled from the question. He and Elise hadn’t spoken about marriage quite yet, and Leon himself wasn’t looking forward to the prospect. A ceremony wouldn’t change how he felt about Elise, and it would be a massive pain in the ass, so he preferred to let the issue remain open for as long as he could swing it.

“There’s been talk around town lately about it,” Trajan said.

“Why!?” Leon incredulously asked. He was a sixth-tier Legate in the service of a Prince dating the daughter of the Tower Lord, but he still thought himself to be nobody special given how politically inactive he was. But people still talked, if only due to his connection with Elise.

“I believe Lady Emilie has been dropping hints that you two are quite committed to each other,” Trajan said. “Naturally, there are quite a few people who would love to deepen relations with Heaven’s Eye, and a marriage ceremony would be the perfect time to make that happen.”

“Well, they’re going to be a bit disappointed, Elise and I haven’t thought much about such an arrangement quite yet…” Leon said, quickly regaining control over his surprise.

“Not too shocking,” Trajan said with some disappointment, his excitement dying down a bit. With his work, he had few outlets for his stress and disillusionment with politics and talking with Leon about the younger man’s life was one of them. “There are quite a few people who stay with each other for a long time before getting married, if they ever do so at all, but such a long courtship is quite rare for nobility…”

“We’re hardly nobility, though, are we?” Leon asked with a half-smile that was at once dangerous and self-deprecating.

“That would depend on who you ask,” Trajan said.

“We have no lands that our children will inherit, and we don’t have any plans for children in the near future, anyway. Since we don’t have to worry about the legal hurdles of inheritance and bastardy, why rush?” Leon explained with surprising comfort.

Trajan sighed in response, and replied, “If only we could all be so lucky to have so few problems…”

Leon’s half-smile turned to a frown. He was hardly without his own problems, with Justin Isynos and the vampires still remaining quite the threat, but neither were trying to break down his front door, so he could—with some difficulty—forgive Trajan for not considering them immediate threats.

‘Trajan did renounce his claim to the throne for a reason…’ Leon thought to himself, at this point used to Trajan’s general blunt and sometimes oblivious attitude when he was in private company with only a few people that he trusted.

“There happens to be a fantastic solution to that,” Leon said as he regained his smile. “You need only get married! I’m sure that would grab the attention of all those gossip-mongers!”

Trajan began to laugh so hard that he was left a bit out of breath when he was done. “No, no,” he said as he took a few deep breaths. “My problems are numerous enough without adding another person into my life…”

“Do tell, what’s going on?” Leon asked, offering his ear. He essentially already knew due to his own work in the palace, but that wasn’t the point. He wanted to give Trajan some time to vent, even if that venting was about things he already knew about.

“Ah, most of it’s nothing of consequence, but there’s still a lot that’s been keeping me up at night,” Trajan said with deep fatigue etching dark lines into his face. “The investigation into Tiberias Decimius’ assassin has been called off due to lack of evidence, and his father’s apoplectic over it. Duke Decimius has even threatened to have his troops march on the capital if the investigation isn’t reopened.”

Leon nodded, wisely keeping his mouth shut about this matter and doing his best to keep a straight face. Inside, though, the mention of Tiberias’ killing still filled him with more than a bit of pride. He had a long list of enemies and it was beyond gratifying to scratch even one relatively insignificant name off of it.

“The vampire menace seems to be in hand, I suppose,” Trajan continued. “Attacks are down by more than seventy-five percent compared to last year, so I’d say we’ve been making some good progress. The investigation into Justin Isynos, on the other hand, has gone exactly nowhere.”

“That’s surprising,” Leon humorlessly said. Trajan had the Spymaster assisting him in this endeavor, and though Leon knew that there had been no results, he wasn’t privy to the daily goings-on of the investigation.

“There’ve been no leads at all,” Trajan said. “We have someone in Lord Justin’s household reporting his movements to us, but Justin’s done nothing particularly noteworthy. We have to assume that he’s working through his three powerful subordinates, since they’re seen so infrequently these days. Hells, one of them hasn’t even been seen in months!”

Leon nodded. The one who hadn’t been seen in a while had been killed in Emilie’s estate by Naiad, and he debated with himself for a moment about whether or not to tell that to Trajan. He hadn’t at the time as he didn’t want to put Naiad in an awkward position, and he figured that telling Trajan now wouldn’t do him any favors, so he kept his peace.

“What about the other two?” Leon asked.

“A few glimpses here and there, mostly in the Northern Territories or purchasing supplies here in the capital,” Trajan said. “All-in-all, nothing too outrageous that we’re able to tell. Justin Isynos’ finances are even in top-condition, we can’t find anything in them that are even remotely suspicious. In fact, they’re so perfect that that’s the only suspicious thing about them!”

“That’s unfortunate,” Leon said. “This person who you have in his household, are they in any position to provide us with, say, a map of his estate?”

“Why? Looking to infiltrate the Isynos place yourself?” Trajan asked in an almost mocking tone, but after remembering Leon’s past actions, he decided to take the question completely seriously.

“I figure… it’s just best to have a plan for everything,” Leon said.

“I’ll… see what I can do…” Trajan said, not dismissing the idea out of hand. He would never let Leon anywhere near the Isynos household, though. “It’s just… I trust your word when you say Justin Isynos is related to the fall of House Raime, I do…”

“… But?”

“But others are not so convinced, especially after spending almost an entire year looking into this man’s history and yet finding nothing.”

Leon nodded. He wasn’t particularly surprised, but there was still some disappointment there. He was grateful that Trajan started the investigation, of course, but he had never relied on it finding anything of substance.

No, Leon was mostly relying upon himself for that. And for the moment, with his own rise in power, Naiad at his side, and Xaphan in his pocket just in case the demon truly needed to make an appearance, Leon felt like he was ready for anything. He just wasn’t ready to destroy everything he had invested in the Bull Kingdom by making the first move.

Besides, if he were to act against the man who probably destroyed his family, one of the most powerful noble families in the Bull Kingdom, if not the entire continent, then he wanted every ounce of power he could scrape together at his fingertips before doing so.

“Beyond that, we’ve just got a huge pile of political shit to dig through, and it seems like this pile is only getting bigger with time, no matter how much we shovel.”

“How so?” Leon asked.

“We lost contact with the expedition sent to the Serpentine Isles, Octavius has been absent from a lot of advisory council meetings lately—my gut is telling me that he’s up to something big—and there’s been some troubling reports of nobles who’ve declared their support for him hiring mercenaries and running their knights and men-at-arms through large-scale battle drills. I can’t help but be afraid that at least the last two are related. Additionally, Aquillius over at the Horns has opened trade negotiations with Talfar and the Samar Kingdom at August’s request, and we’re trying to shore up support for him in the Eastern and Northern Territories, but we’re not going great on those fronts…”

“I can understand the Northern Territories not jumping straight into August’s camp, they’ve little practical reason to,” Leon said with a thoughtful expression. “Why not the East, though? I would’ve figured having you on his side plus his taking the initiative to help defeat the Talfar Kingdom would’ve endeared him some to the Eastern Lords.”

“You’re not wrong, and the Eastern Territories is without a doubt where August’s strongest support lies, but it’s not the nobles we’re having trouble with, it’s the Blasted Furnace…”

Leon nodded again. The Blasted Furnace was the largest weapons and armor manufacturer in the Bull Kingdom. Heaven’s Eye made better quality goods, of course, but since they were supposed to be politically neutral, they didn’t provide military gear in the quantities that Kingdoms needed to supply their armies. A Legion at the most could be equipped by Heaven’s Eye, if what Leon had picked up from Elise was anything to go by.

The Blasted Furnace filled that gap, providing not only most of the weapons and armor for the Legions that Heaven’s Eye did not, but also affordable weapons and armor to less well-off knights and private citizens. Leon hadn’t really had to deal with them much given his connections with Heaven’s Eye, so he wasn’t entirely familiar with them. He had always wanted to see their foundries in the Eastern Territories, though, as Artorias had told him that the Blasted Furnace’s headquarters was like a city with so many forges that they would turn the night sky orange.

“Whatever, they’ll come around eventually, I’m sure of it,” Trajan continued. “The political situation is relatively stable, with the West, South, and Center in Octavius’ hands. The North is still relatively undecided, while the East can be said to belong to August, despite our own troubles there. But still…” Trajan suddenly sat forward, and his tone and posture turned deadly serious. “There’s probably going to be some shit happening in the next few months, I can feel it in my bones. One way or another, if my Royal Brother doesn’t wake soon, things will come to a head. I want you to be ready when that time comes, understand?”

“I do,” Leon said, answering Trajan’s seriousness with his own.

“Good,” Trajan said, leaning back into his chair. “On a more cheery note, done anything interesting lately? Has your tinkering with enchantments borne any fruit?”

Leon raised an eyebrow in interest, then nodded. “Just a few days ago, I managed to make something fairly interesting,” he said, reaching into his soul realm to procure a thin, plain silver bracelet. It had no decorations, save for a single bright purple amethyst set in the center.

“What is it?” Trajan asked, sensing a moderate amount of power within.

Suddenly, one of Trajan’s pockets began to glow red, and noticing it, Trajan reached into it and retrieved something that Leon hadn’t seen in a

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