Chapter 10: The Warning signs.

Leon finished preparing herself while the room remained quietly busy around her.

The maids moved with an efficiency that bordered on ritualistic—folding, sealing, cataloguing—never speaking unless spoken to, never pausing without reason.

After a quick shower, she combed her hair and dressed without ceremony.

She glanced once at the vanity and dismissed it just as quickly.

Makeup still felt unnecessary, almost dishonest.

If there was something unbecomingly blunt about her appearance, then so be it.

Some habits, it seemed, survived even rebirth.

By the time she stepped back into the room, the packing was nearly complete.

She had already instructed them on what to take and what to leave behind.

She watched as the last cases were lifted, sealed, and carried out.

One by one, the maids departed, exiting through the door as if erased from the scene the moment their task concluded.

In the end, only one remained.

Beyond the doorway, a carriage waited.

Leon adjusted the briefcase she had

bought the day prior and felt its weight settle against her palm. It held her plans—neatly ordered.

As she stepped outside, she allowed herself a moment of quiet reflection.

The ability to employ such a number of maids—each trained, discreet, and transported by personal carriage—confirmed what she had suspected since Vanon’s first intervention.

Even among mages, this level of authority was rare.

The title of archmage, while formidable, did not grant absolute dominion to their disciples.

Even for them, resources of this scale required more than magical merit.

This empire, for all its indulgence in noble bloodlines, still obeyed a certain rigid meritocracy.

Power demanded status.

Status demanded recognition.

Which meant Vanon’s influence reached deep—far deeper than an isolated mage tower or academic prestige would allow.

So your roots are tangled with the empire itself, Leon thought.

She felt no relief at the conclusion.

If anything, it reaffirmed her earlier decision.

A short contract was a mercy.

Anything longer, and she would inevitably be drawn into the web of imperial politics—something she had neither the patience nor the desire to entertain.

Especially not when her own blood traced back to the emperor.

She had no intention of becoming useful in ways she could not control.

Leon stepped into the carriage.

The maid seated herself opposite, posture immaculate, gaze lowered. The carriage began to move.

“Is this how Vanon conducts all of his arrangements?” Leon asked after a moment, her tone light, almost amused.

The maid’s lips curved, barely. “Only the ones he considers important.”

“That much is obvious,” Leon replied. And restraint, she added silently.

Nothing here was excessive by accident.

The ride was short. Short enough to be unsettling.

When they arrived, Leon was led inside and shown to her new quarters. She paused at the threshold, eyes sweeping across the space.

Calling it a room felt insufficient. It was spacious, refined, and curated with the sort of taste that spoke less of comfort and more of expectation.

She set her briefcase down and allowed herself one slow breath.

There was no time to indulge curiosity.

Almost immediately, a subtle summons reached her.

A schedule already in motion, one that did not account for adjustment.

Leon straightened.

Of course, she thought. He should just have told me earlier.

She reached for her briefcase again and turned toward the door.

It seemed she was scheduled to teach them early.

—-

The class—if it could truly be called that—began the moment Leon raised her hand.

Power clashed again, violently enough that even from afar it would have drawn attention.

Gravity bent, mana screamed, and the outline of a dragon once more forced itself into the world.

Leon faced Leviathan for the second time that day, yet there was no novelty in the exchange. It was repetition in its purest form, a reenactment devoid of progress.

And it ended even faster than before.

Leviathan held on to the dragon for too long.

As always.

The moment his power tipped past control, Leon closed her fingers, and gravity answered.

The air thickened, the space around Leviathan collapsing inward until he was pinned in place, suspended like an insect trapped in amber.

His draconic arm spasmed, scales cracking as unstable mana devoured itself.

Leon looked up at him, her expression unreadable.

“What again?” she asked quietly. There was no anger in her voice—only a faint, exhausted confusion.

“Why do you keep holding on to the dragon?”

There was no reply. Only breathing, rough and furious.

She released the barrier.

Leviathan dropped, landing heavily, a grunt torn from his throat as he straightened and glared at her.

For a brief instant, their eyes met—his burning with resentment, hers clouded with something far less defined.

Then he turned away and took to the air, wings unfurling as he fled the space entirely.

Leon remained where she was.

She felt… at a loss.

Not because she lacked experience.

She had taken care of children before—her cousin’s children, stubborn and loud and emotionally transparent.

She had learned patience through scraped knees and tantrums and learned compromise and firmness in equal measure.

This was different.

Radically so.

She glanced at the training plans she had painstakingly assembled, each one layered with contingencies and gradual thresholds.

For the first time since drafting them, she felt an uncomfortable thought settle in her chest.

They might be useless.

While that thought lingered, Anis looked up from her book.

The purple-haired girl had been writing the entire time, her pen never once hesitating.

Letters crawled faintly across her skin, rearranging themselves with quiet intent, as though her body itself were annotating her thoughts.

When she spoke, her tone was calm—too calm for a child.

“Instructor Leon,” Anis said, eyes fixed on her, “may I ask you something?”

Leon turned. “Go ahead.”

Anis closed her book, resting it lightly against her knee.

Her gaze sharpened—not cold, but probing, like a physician examining a wound beneath the skin.

“Why do you push yourself so hard to teach us?” she asked.

“You do not need to. In truth, you could simply stand here all day, observe us, and declare that instruction has taken place. No one would question it.”

She paused, then continued, her words deliberate.

“Furthermore, beings like us—those born from concepts—do not understand as humans do. Our cognition is structured differently.

Fundamentally. Just as you will never fully comprehend us, we will never fully comprehend you.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, curious rather than accusatory.

“There is no necessity. No requirement. No realistic expectation of success. So why exert effort at all?”

Leon blinked.

She was genuinely surprised.

For a moment, she simply stared at Anis, as though reassessing her entirely.

Then she let out a quiet breath, the corner of her mouth lifting faintly.

“I didn’t expect that question,” she admitted. “But I suppose you deserve an answer.”

She walked over and sat beside Anis, close enough that the faint hum of conceptual mana brushed against her senses.

Leon rested her elbows on her knees, fingers loosely interlaced.

“To your first point,” she began, “my morality wouldn’t allow it. I didn’t take this job to avoid it. If I did nothing and still accepted the rewards, everything I earned would feel… tainted.”

She searched for the right words.

“Like bad money,” she said finally. “The kind that rots your hands the longer you hold it.”

Anis listened without interruption.

Leon continued, her voice steady but introspective.

“Taking shortcuts like that changes you. You convince yourself that effort is optional, that results can exist without cause. Eventually, it destroys whatever integrity you thought you had. I don't want to be such a person.”

She glanced at Anis briefly, then back ahead.

“As for the second point—I’m aware of the difference. I know there’s a wall between how humans think and how you do. No matter how much either side tries, but there are those that are different, the one who wishes to transcend that barrier.”

She smiled faintly.

“That wall to me isn’t a reason to stop. It’s a challenge.”

Anis’s eyes widened slightly.

“This is my first time teaching beings like you,”

Leon went on. “I don’t expect it to be easy. I don’t even expect it to succeed quickly. But my plan doesn’t change just because something is difficult—or because it’s deemed impossible.”

Her voice firmed, carrying quiet conviction.

“I believe nothing is impossible. And because I believe that, I’ll keep moving forward until I prove it true.”

For a moment, the world was silent.

Anis stared at Leon, something unfamiliar stirring beneath her composed exterior.

Surprise, yes—but also something warmer. Something she hadn’t anticipated feeling.

She realized, distantly, that she was… moved.

A smile crept onto her face before she could stop it.

“…Very well,” Anis said softly. “Then I will help you.”

Leon turned toward her.

“But,” Anis added, her tone sharpening just a little, “in exchange, you must never betray that determination.”

Her gaze locked onto Leon’s.

“Nor betray me.”

Leon met her eyes without hesitation.

“I won’t,” she said.

And for the first time since the class had begun, something shifted in a good direction.

—-

Time passed quietly, almost deceptively so.

When the lesson was finally over ,

Vernon once again manifested the door.

The space before Leon folded inward, light bending into a familiar frame.

She stepped through with her briefcase

in hand, her posture composed, her expression devoid of any visible emotion.

Vernon noticed it immediately.

“How did it go?” he asked.

Leon paused for half a breath, then answered evenly.

“There has been not much improvement so far.”

She exhaled softly, the sound carrying a trace of fatigue she did not bother to hide.

“I’ll need to revise my plans. But this time, I have more to work with.”

She inclined her head slightly, a restrained gesture of courtesy. “Until tomorrow.”

And with that, she left.

The door sealed itself shut, leaving Vernon alone in the chamber. The faint hum of residual mana lingered in the air, but his attention had already shifted elsewhere.

“Report,” he said.

The distortion stirred.

The figure he had assigned to observe her emerged just enough for his presence to be acknowledged. His voice was low, controlled.

“She sensed me.”

Vernon’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Not only that,” the observer continued,

“she was able to see me.”

That confirmation settled heavily in the room. It aligned too cleanly with Vernon’s suspicions—suspicions he would have preferred to be wrong.

“There’s more,” the man added. “While observing her, I attempted to record her notes. However, the writing appeared… incomprehensible. Not merely encrypted—structured in a manner unfamiliar to us. It may be a private code. Or an unknown language entirely.”

Silence followed.

Vernon folded his hands behind his back.

“Reclassify her,” he said at last. “High observation. Immediate priority.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And compile everything we have on her movements after she left the academy. No omissions.”

That single command carried weight. If his assumptions were correct, then they were dealing with a worst-case scenario—one that could not be addressed through force alone.

A high-level infiltrator.

Perhaps worse.

The distortion faded, leaving Vernon alone with his thoughts. He stared at the space where Leon had stood, his expression unreadable.

Leon returned to the guild as evening settled in.

The hall was quieter than usual. At this hour, most adventurers were already underway.

She took her usual seat and ordered her customary drink, the familiar bitterness grounding her far more than she cared to admit.

Hector noticed her immediately.

“You look like someone who’s thinking too much,” he remarked as he set the glass down.

“That’s never a good sign.”

“Anything new?” Leon asked.

Hector hesitated.

“I’m not sure how much of this is solid,” he admitted, lowering his voice, “but the rumors are getting… heavier.”

Leon glanced up. “Go on.”

“…The signs of War,” he said.

She stiffened, just slightly.

That surprised her.

Not because war itself was unfamiliar—she knew it was coming. She remembered it. But not yet. In the game’s timeline, it came after graduation. Next year.

“Are there reasons?” she asked.

Hector nodded.

“Plenty. Officially, not all has been announced. But the peace treaty renegotiation between Vanafra and Kaleos has been delayed.”

Leon’s fingers tightened around her glass.

“Delayed?”

“A terror incident took place,” Hector explained.

“No clear culprit yet, but it’s caused unrest on both sides. The factions from two sides are already arguing that the attack came from each other's side to cause the negotiation to fail and start a war.”

Leon understood immediately.

War meant opportunity.

Titles to be claimed. Land to be seized. Military commissions. Emergence in power.

For certain nobles unsatisfied by their current position, chaos was the perfect moment for a rise.

“They’ve pushed negotiations back,”

Hector continued, “supposedly to let tensions cool. But if you ask me? That just gives the hawks more time to sharpen their knives after all the both emperors just want the taste of blood.”

Leon’s expression darkened.

“And there’s more,” he added. “House Fenrir and the Imperial family.”

That name alone reminded her something.

House Fenrir—the guardians of the North. The builders of the Three Moons: colossal defensive walls sealing off the monster-laden wastes beyond the empire’s reach.

Between those walls lay a city-scale military zone, perpetually manned by northern armies hardened through generations of war.

Their forces rivaled—no, surpassed—the standing military of the Imperial family itself. Their duke had long since entered the realm of Sword Saint.

For centuries, they had stood as the empire’s shield.

And for centuries, they had been treated as near-equals.

Until peace dulled memory.

Leon recalled this was a story arc involving one of the main heroines,

Lunael Fenrir.

“The fallout from the Third Prince’s scandal hasn’t healed,” Hector said.

“Compensation was paid, sure—but trust doesn’t mend that easily.”

Leon remembered Lunael’s words clearly.

The engagement had been political—a binding thread between the North and the imperial family.

The Third Prince, who felt insulted as Lunael didn't reciprocate any feelings or praise to him, felt highly insulted.