Chapter 563: Jormun’s Argument

“Ahh, there you are…” Jormun whispered in Leon’s ear as Leon took down some of the villa’s defensive wards.

Leon immediately swapped out his stolen servant’s attire for his armor and drew his sword. His eyes flitted from corner to corner in the small enchantment control room, but he took in nothing that he hadn’t before; nothing but the enchantment control consoles, the five glass-covered pillars, and some spare enchantment materials in the corner, behind which Leon had stashed the corpse of the guard he’d killed to enter the villa undetected. The woman who’d been working in here before Leon had entered was also unconscious in a corner, still not yet recovered from the jolt Leon had given her to cover his entrance.

Nowhere did he see Jormun, nor did he see any sign that Jormun was screwing with his head or with this ‘trial world’.

“Sorry about that,” Jormun continued, chatting with a tone as if he and Leon were but old friends who’d run into each other while out running mundane errands, “I don’t like to keep people waiting for my company, but you were so hard to find! And these controls up here certainly don’t help. Anyways, how are you doing? All right, I hope… After all, I can’t win someone’s allegiance from beyond the grave…”

Jormun’s voice was buttery smooth and so tantalizing, his every syllable seemed to offer something new and wonderful, so naturally, Leon immediately raised his mental defenses and let his Ancestor’s lightning course through his veins. He wasn’t about to leave Jormun an opening that he could magically exploit.

And he did it not a moment too soon, for he felt a few tiny currents of darkness magic that had wormed its way into several parts of his body, including his ears and forearms, be immediately torn to shreds by his lightning magic. As they were, Leon found himself much less taken with Jormun’s words and profoundly thankful that he’d practiced even just some basic precautions for mental attacks like these.

However, he was also mildly concerned, for there had been no darkness magic touching his brain, and yet he’d still been mildly affected by Jormun’s words. It was as much proof as anything could be that his mental defenses were anything but perfect… and Leon’s thoughts momentarily turned back to the Thunderbird look-a-like before he refocused on the situation at hand.

“That’s playing dirty,” Leon growled, his normally-smooth voice resonating within his Magmic Steel helmet.

“Mmm, dirty,” Jormun crowed, obviously relishing every syllable. “Just how I like it…”

Leon scowled and went back to work on the pillars. He wasn’t sure how much control Jormun had over the trial world, so he wasn’t going to just abandon all caution just because the pirate had found him. The sense that he’d need to do so soon, however, was rising within him. Jormun had already proven himself capable of manipulating at least some of the temple’s enchantments—either that, or he took credit, either implicitly or directly, for several very convincing coincidences—so Leon had no doubt that things here in the trial world were about to get much more complicated.

“You talking just to talk? I’m not that big on conversation for the sake of itself,” Leon asked as he removed another ring of glass from the pillars, and he immediately sensed the change in the way magic power flowed through the walls of the villa. He’d be able to use his ring of invisibility without reservation, now.

At least, he would once the ring recovered in another minute or two, assuming Jormun didn’t try to pull any shenanigans.

“No, I’m not talking just for the sake of talking,” Jormun retorted, sounding almost insulted that Leon had even asked at all. “Listen, Leon, I was serious when I suggested that we work together. You need allies, do you not? The Serpent has told me so much about you and your Clan that I couldn’t help but sympathize with you…”

“Fuck your sympathy,” Leon muttered as he removed the third and final glass ring from the pillars, leaving nearly all of the villa’s enchantment scheme completely intact, just missing its main passive defenses.

“Now, now, Leon, surely you’re a bigger man than that? Can’t you hear the sincerity in my voice?”

Jormun sounded so genuinely upset that Leon had to fight for a moment not to be taken in. He wasn’t falling for that. He’d made his peace with Justin, but that was over the man’s personal attacks against Leon and his family, and for the sake of Valeria, whom Leon had strong feelings for; Leon had seen with his own eyes the unconstrained destruction that Jormun wrought, how far it went beyond personal issues, and he knew how much further Jormun was going to take this. He’d make no peace with the man.

“You’re a proven liar, and a man who has perpetuated at least one massacre on the previous island in this chain. I can make peace with just about any enemy I make, but there’s a world of difference between those who personally harm me and mine, and those who bring death and destruction on a scale like you’ve done. So, no, I won’t be wasting my time talking with you. Instead, I think I’m just going to find whatever hole you’re hiding in and drag you out into the light.”

“I mean it, Leon. Nothing good will come of our conflict, and we only stand to benefit from working together.” Jormun’s voice was quiet and earnest, but Leon still ignored it as he felt his invisibility ring return to normal functions.

With that, Leon completely ceased participating in this conversation and made for the door, the light all around him bending and warping until Leon was rendered invisible.

“Oh, come now, Leon,” Jormun droned on, “we don’t have to do this, we should be united in this. After all, we’re in practically the same situation! Your family once ruled as a dominant force in this world, as did mine! Your family was unjustly overthrown, and so was mine!”

Jormun paused a moment for dramatic effect, and Leon didn’t take the opportunity to speak up, choosing instead to test out if his strategic removal of wards from the enchantment pillars had worked by brushing his hand against the control room door’s doorknob. What Jormun said next, however, brought him to at least a momentary halt.

“… You bear the power of an Inherited Bloodline, and so do I!”

Leon stood there, in front of the door, blinking in surprise at what Jormun had just claimed. He wasn’t going to take what he said at face value, but… if what Jormun was saying was true…

“This world is cruel to people like us,” Jormun quietly stated. “People will always resent those in power for having that power, and by virtue of how our kind reproduces, those without powers like ours will always heavily outnumber us. Now, we may make a few friends, we may even gain a great deal of power every now and then, and we may even keep that power for a long period of time, but the people will never accept us. They see us as less than human, when in reality, we are something more! But they will never accept that we are inherently superior; they will covet our powers, our ancestors, and our very blood! So long as we exist, all of humanity will be our enemies! The only way we can survive is if we unite!

“Think about it, scion of the Thunderbird. You, ruling the skies, and me, ruling the seas. With our powers combined, all that exists will be forced to bend their knees to us. We need only make a mutual alliance, and the world is ours! All of the powers and positions that have been taken from our families, we’ll take back! Not even the Four Empires will be able to stop us!”

Leon stood before the door, his heart pounding in his chest, his hand outstretched, fingers brushing against the doorknob. He wasn’t of a mind to accept Jormun’s offer, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he wanted more information.

‘Nothing he says can be taken at face value,’ Leon thought to himself as he took a few quiet steps away from the door and, without dropping his invisibility, asked, “Are you saying that you’re the descendent of some Ascended Beast?”

As soon as he was done speaking, he moved a few steps over, not wanting Jormun to be able to figure out where he stood by the sound of his voice, just in case that was even possible with the magical way they were now speaking.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, young Leon,” Jormun replied, the swaggering smile he wore evident in the tone of his voice. “My family is descended from the legendary Serpent of my people. We were the last of his descendants, and after the death of my father at the hands of the Penitent Paladin, the only remaining man who bears that legacy… is me.”

Leon frowned, though not so much at the story told as he did at the remarkable coincidence it would take for Jormun’s story to be exactly as he said—it was close enough to Leon’s own story that it made it impossible for Leon to believe.

He didn’t voice those doubts, however, and simply let Jormun talk while he began to sidle back toward the door. He also began to, as subtly as he could, project his magic senses through the villa in an attempt to get some idea of what to do and where to go once he left this room. Now that the wards against such things had been disabled, there shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Almost immediately, he saw almost the entire villa in near-perfect clarity, from the small army of guards that filled the main villa’s halls—many of whom were now scrambling about and locking the large building down—to every plant and blade of grass in the garden courtyards, if he cared enough to examine them. The one exception was a large section of the top floor that appeared to have its own independent ward scheme, for as his magic senses brushed against the walls of this section, they were immediately scattered.

‘I guess that’s where I have to go,’ Leon thought just as Jormun began to speak again.

“I know the pain and the strife that comes when those who bear powers passed down through their blood start to gain power,” Jormun continued, obliging Leon’s curiosity. “Those already in power don’t like to see others rise out of fear that they’ll try to supplant them. They also resent us for having a magical edge. This prevents us from having any true friends or allies. Trust me when I say this, Leon: you will find no one except for me who will accept you when they learn who you are and the advantages that you enjoy because of your Thunderbird. I’ve been all over this plane, finding those who’ve inherited powers from their ancestors, and their story is always the same. They, if they wish to participate in human society, must either give up their powers, or resign themselves to a life of paranoia and superstition—either their own, from others, or some combination of both.

“So, Leon, all I ask is that you support me in my endeavor. When I raise the Serpent, a new world will be born. If you join me, you will be greatly rewarded by the Serpent, and you will take your rightful place as the ruler of the skies!”

Leon had to hold himself back from snorting in derision. Even if he wanted to seize back all the power of the old Thunderbird Clan with blood and blade, he would never do so by unleashing some terrible creature of yore that had been sealed for at least eighty thousand years. He momentarily grimaced when he realized that that had been exactly what he’d done with Xaphan, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that Xaphan’s power had been incredibly drained and they’d made a magical contract—plus, he hadn’t even needed to sacrifice a single person to do it, let alone the thousands Jormun had sacrificed one the previous island, let alone again the number of people he’d sacrificed that Leon didn’t even know about. He wasn’t about to aid Jormun in releasing this Serpent and watch as it destroyed this world.

But that wasn’t the only reason Leon found the offer so repulsive, and after several long seconds, his urge to laugh managed to break through his self-control, and he slowly began to laugh harder and harder at Jormun’s offer. It started as a low chuckle before growing into full-bodied roaring guffaws as each successive laugh made it harder and harder for Leon to get control of himself.

Even more intense were the emotions that were cutting through Leon’s being as he thought about some dinky little water snake being so arrogant as to think that it could vassalize him! If that snake were here right now, Leon felt like he’d rip and tear into it with fang and claw, stripping its scales, rending its flesh, and finally burning it into ash.

It was only the strangeness of that feeling that allowed Leon to bring himself back under control. As he took a deep breath to steady himself from more than ten seconds of completely uncontrollable laughter, only one though ran through his head: ‘What in the hells is wrong with me?’

It wasn’t the first time that he’d felt some kind of instinct compelling him to move or use body parts that he didn’t have, and he had no idea where they were coming from, only that it was a recent thing.

‘Something about these islands, maybe?’ he wondered, for he’d never felt such things before arriving at Kraterok.

“What do you say, Leon?” Jormun asked, his voice soothing and inviting, though tinged with an undercurrent of offense from Leon’s outburst.

But Leon wanted nothing he had to offer. The very idea of accepting anything from Jormun had his blood boiling. But he kept his reaction as neutral as he could, and he asked, “On the last island I was on, I found what looked like a mass blood sacrifice. Your doing?”

Leon already knew it was, but he wanted to know if Jormun would admit to it or lie. And it seemed that Jormun might’ve been thrown for a bit of loop by the question, because it took him a moment to respond.

“It was,” Jormun slowly admitted. “Nothing changes without sacrifice. Those people gave their lives so that my dream could live on. They went to that ritual site willingly, and offered themselves up to the Serpent.”

Leon smiled behind his helmet, understanding that Jormun both told the truth and lied.

Or, well, he supposed he couldn’t know that the thousands of dead people he’d found at the ritual site had gone there willingly or not, but he doubted they did—especially not the children—but Jormun at least admitted that he did it.

“It sounds like the powers-that-be on this plane aren’t going to take kindly to you messing with their sandbox,” Leon observed. “As you said, those in power don’t like it when those beneath them start getting too big of their britches. Do you not worry that they’ll retaliate?”

“Their time to retaliate has come and gone,” Jormun smugly stated. “They could’ve stopped me thirty years ago when I was in the southeast, raiding and pillaging the southern coast of the continent. Got my hands on quite a few nice magical toys and made a big enough name for myself that there’s not a single pirate in all of Aeterna that doesn’t know who I am! But for all my successes, they didn’t consider me worth their time. The eyes of the Emperors don’t turn this far north. Ever. They don’t care about the troubles of people this far from their seats of power; the only things they care about beyond their own borders are Titanstone and the Sky Devils far to the southeast. By the time they realize their mistake, the Serpent will already have been unleashed, and their time will have already ended. I don’t fear them.”

Leon didn’t ask any more questions, even though everything Jormun had just said brought quite a few to mind. Instead, he just pushed open the door and left the control room without a shred of hesitation. Jormun wasn’t going to stop, and Leon wasn’t going to join him. He’d lost his patience for the conversation, and there was no point in indulging Jormun any longer, not when he still had yet to find Gaius or Maia.

“Hang on, now,” Jormun called out, his voice sticking with Leon, proving that it wasn’t limited to the room. “We’re still talking, it’s rude to just walk away like that.”

“It’s rude to murder thousands of people to satisfy your own vanity and lust for power, too,” Leon retorted as he strode through the courtyard, still invisible. The guards who’d been stirred up by his incapacitation of the servant were still assembling and running around, so he still had some work to do, but now, he had unfettered use of his ring and magic senses again, so he moved with greater purpose and confidence than he had after stealing the servant’s clothes.

He slipped past guards and other household servants as they did their best to lock the villa down, but invisible, Leon was able to slink past them all for a short while as he crept through the villa. Eventually, he knew he’d have to kill someone or resort to violence to get past a closed and guarded door or something of that nature, but he didn’t run into any immediate troubles.

Although, he supposed he did have one trouble: Jormun was continuing to try and entice him to go back to the control room—or any other private place where they could easily talk—and was growing increasingly frustrated that Leon wasn’t doing as he wanted. Strangely, it didn’t seem like anyone else could hear the man, for he wasn’t being quiet, and yet no one reacted to his voice.

Eventually, as Leon set his foot down upon the first step of the closest set of stairs that would lead him to the top floor, Jormun sighed dramatically and said, “I suppose there’s no convincing you, then. A shame. I regretted immediately lashing out at you when you started putting holes in this place, but now, I do this with no regret. I tried to convince you, but you won’t listen to reason. My regret is better spent on others.”

Only a moment later, a great pulse of magic power swept through the entire villa, doing largely nothing at all, but when it hit Leon, his shell of invisibility conjured by his ring was torn to shreds, revealing him there on the stairs to the guards both below and above.

Guards who immediately began to shout and draw their weapons, drawing other guards with their shouts of alarm. Even as Leon was drawing his blade from his soul realm, at least a dozen other guards appeared from around corners and from within other rooms as if from nowhere, quickly surrounding Leon.

None of them were above the fourth-tier, but that didn’t seem to matter all that much to them; none of them seemed at all intimidated by Leon’s unrestrained aura and prodigious killing intent.

It was with a conflicted heart that Leon began to cut them down as they charged at him. With his power and lightning magic, none of them could so much as scratch his armor, let alone do him any real harm.

It was over in less than a minute. Leon hadn’t even had to use any elemental attacks, he used only his blade to end the fight. He was left standing there on the stairs, surrounded by corpses and the sounds of additional guards running in his direction.

He sighed and began to run up the stairs, scowling as he heard Jormun’s voice again.

“I’ll admit, that was petty, but it seems clear enough to me that you’re not going to stop. So, how about I do… this…”

Leon came to a swift halt as three more guards made their presence known at the top of the stairs leading from the second to the third floor, his sword going up in p

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