Name: 『Grimoire: Ice Lance』
Origin: Azeroth
Type: Grimoire
Effect: Gathers the power of frost to form a sharp ice spike that can be hurled at range. Deals frost damage on hit (base damage is low); if the target is Chilled, damage increases; if the target is Frozen, damage is doubled.
Chill: Lowers the target's attack speed and movement speed.
Frozen: Renders the target completely immobile. Frost-school magic deals increased damage to Frozen targets.
Summary: A proper, honest-to-god instant-cast attack spell.
...
"Ice Lance, huh. Nice, very nice..."
"Finally got my hands on it. From now on I won't have to pair Ice Ring with Fireball anymore."
Ice Ring paired with Fireball had never been Leon's preference; it was just that he hadn't had a single frost-school attack spell worth showing off.
Now that he had Ice Lance, he wouldn't have to deal with that awkwardness any longer.
Leon's fingertips traced the frost-crystal patterns on the grimoire's cover, his gaze settling on the few striking runic letters, and a satisfied curve tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Leon, Leon!"
Laurier came bouncing over from the side, her eyes sparkling, showing no sign at all of having just been through a brutal fight:
"What kind of magic is recorded in the book?"
"Here, Ice Lance."
He handed the book to Laurier and Aura as they crowded in close, but his gaze had already drifted off into the near distance. Jeanne and Persephone were still standing where they'd been, arms crossed, heads bowed low, but he sharply caught it... the tense line of their shoulders had quietly relaxed.
Leon arched a brow and slipped soundlessly around behind the two of them.
"Two beautiful ladies."
There was a laugh in his voice, his breath nearly grazing their ears:
"Got your emotions more or less back in order?"
"Eep!"
Both figures stiffened at the same instant. Recognizing him, Jeanne's ear tips flushed red in a flash, and she wrenched her head away in shame and indignation; Persephone hid a flash of panic behind her cold profile and bit out under her breath:
"N-none of your business..."
...Heh, that's some thick jealousy.
Leon laughed to himself but said no more, sweeping an arm out to pull Jeanne into his embrace. The girl struggled for show, but her strength was pitifully soft. His other hand circled Persephone's waist at the same time, effortlessly "hauling" the two flustered, sulky ladies back over.
"Aura."
He turned his head and asked, his expression perfectly natural:
"Are we done tallying up our section?"
Aura's gaze swept over Jeanne, who absolutely refused to lift her head from Leon's arms, then flicked to Persephone's face with its forced composure creeping over with red, and she decided to pretend she'd seen nothing.
"Setting aside for now the large-scale area losses you caused with that Blizzard..."
She flipped open her notebook, her tone businesslike:
"Casualties in this section total 233. Of those, 149 have been confirmed as Evilus members, and the rest are all festival civilians, Adventurers, merchants, nobles, and tourists."
She paused, then added:
"Worth mentioning, the dead include several merchant-guild bosses who run gray-market operations in the underground world, along with their guards. They seem to have had the bad luck of getting caught in the radius of Evilus's self-destruction."
Her words successfully drew everyone's attention.
Leon fell silent for two seconds, then suddenly let out a soft laugh and tightened his arms around the two in his embrace.
"Oh."
He drew the syllable out, a perfectly measured note of regret in his voice:
"That's truly... such a shame."
Then he shrugged and asked in a breezy, feigned-indifferent tone:
"Aura, can you track down the locations of their stash warehouses? Since the owners of the goods have already returned to the gods' embrace, it'd be a waste to let all that ownerless property go to nothing. Better than letting the goods flow into the hands of the underground world and beefing up those bastards, it could shore up our familia instead. Call it putting everything to good use."
He paused, a look of almost saintly compassion coming over his face:
"I imagine that if that kindhearted boss could see from beyond the grave that his legacy was being put toward a just cause, he'd probably be able to rest in peace."
Everyone: "..."
The air went strangely quiet for a moment. Every single person's expression turned a little odd.
...How does this guy manage to make looting a disaster sound so fresh, so high-minded, so utterly self-righteous, without a flicker of change on his face?
Even the two "newbies" still pure as blank paper, Margaret and Irisviel, were left gaping and speechless at Leon's shamelessness!
Aura visibly hesitated. She shot a quick glance off into the distance.
Beside the damaged stone-carved fountain in Adventurers' Plaza, several representatives of the Order Faction, Shakti of the Ganesha Familia, Finn of the Loki Familia, Alise of the Astraea Familia, and others, were gathered together discussing something in low voices.
Only after confirming no one was paying attention over here did Aura lean in half a step, drop her voice even lower, and offer a careful warning:
"Um... according to Orario's Provisional Regulations on Postwar Resource Disposal, all materiel seized on the battlefield has to be reported to the Guild in a unified manner, then distributed all together based on each familia's contribution and merit value. If we handle it ourselves ahead of that..."
She weighed her words:
"Er, isn't that... maybe a little against the rules?"
Leon, an arm around each of Jeanne and Persephone, said with utter indifference:
"Rules? Where do all these rules come from. Whoever finds it, it's theirs."
He blinked, a sly note slipping into his voice:
"Besides... as long as it's done clean enough, who's going to know?"
He added as if it were the most obvious thing in the world:
"Loot that's never logged on the books, how can you even call it loot?"
Aura: "..."
Margaret and Irisviel: "..."
Even the two bodies in his arms visibly stiffened for a moment.
In the end, everyone looked at one another... and for a while couldn't come up with a single thing to refute him.
...Something about that is clearly off somewhere, but why... is it actually kind of impossible to argue against?
"Let's go!"
Leon swept a hand through the air, signaling Aura to lead the way, and the group withdrew from the scene swiftly and quietly.
The very instant their figures vanished around the street corner, Finn, deep in his low-voiced discussion, sensed something and lifted his head to look that way. All he saw was empty ruins and drifting flecks of snow.
Demeter, who had stood with the gods the whole time, took the entire scene in.
Knowing Leon as she did, her thoughts turned a little, and she guessed at most of what Leon was scheming...
Hmph, found yourself another way to get rich, have you. You've even gone and made off with my Persephone...
She shook her head, privately amused.
"Demeter, do you have any suggestions?"
A deity beside her asked.
"Hm? No."
She came back to herself and smiled gently and easily:
"Handling it this way is perfectly fine."
...
At that same moment, Southwest Main Street.
Deep in the old district, not far from the Free Trade Market.
At the end of a narrow alley, an inconspicuous wooden door sat embedded in the shadows of a mottled brick wall. Push the door open, and a stone stairway wound downward, stretching all the way into the depths of the dark.
Rose and Kureha wore hooded black cloaks, the wide hoods perfectly concealing their stunning faces and striking figures. Rose walked in front holding a magic-stone lamp, its faint glow lighting only a few steps beneath their feet, and the three figures descended the stone stairs in silence.
The clack of high-heeled boots echoed hollowly through the enclosed stairwell.
Before long, the stairs bottomed out.
A low stone door was pushed open without a sound.
In that instant, dim yellow light, murky air, and a fine scatter of noise came surging out together.
The next moment, a vast and clamorous underground hall opened up before them.
Inside that hall, figures moved in dim, shadowy numbers.
As far as the eye could see, every person was draped in a cloak and hood, or else wore a mask. Some crouched behind stalls, silently guarding their scattered odds and ends of goods; others threaded through the narrow aisles like fish through water.
Murmurs, tapping, the soft clink of metal echoed indistinctly between the arched stone walls.
"This is the place."
Rose's voice was pitched extremely low, nearly swallowed by the noise around them:
"The Underground Black Market."
She glanced at the road signs and directional symbols scrawled on the walls in dark-red pigment, then gave a slight nod to Kureha beside her and to Princess Lydia, who followed behind, likewise wrapped in a cloak.
"The place that handles commissions is over there."
She finished in a hushed voice, then led the two of them toward an even darker passage in the corner of the hall.