After the opening day of the triumphal games, the capital descended into solemn silence, with many people confused and scared of what might be on the horizon after August and Octavius’ public disagreement.  However, by the end of the games, most people had returned to their usual behavior, though the possibilities of what might happen in the near future remained on everyone’s mind.

In Leon’s case, he hardly noticed anything was wrong, as Trajan ordered him to steer clear of the arena for the remainder of the games.  He was more than happy to do so, so also didn’t notice the fact that it was only the three Princes who were sharing the Royal box; none of the Paladins or high officials joined them.

Elise and her friends attended every day of the games, oftentimes with open invitations for Leon to join them.  Since Valeria was there, however, Leon refrained, choosing to stay at Emilie’s estate and train.  None of them could fault him for his decision, given the public disaster at the end of the first day.

Even after the games ended and weeks went by, Leon and Elise continued to live in Emilie’s estate, as Elise’s realtor had yet to find them a suitable villa in the capital.  Leon hardly left, since Trajan subsequently ordered him to stay at home, with the added comment that forcing him to go to the opening games was a mistake on his part.

Leon gratefully agreed, and so he spent almost an entire month in Elise’s training chamber, only occasionally leaving to visit Trajan at the Royal Palace to keep up-to-date on the surveillance of Justin Isynos—the man had yet to do anything suspicious, so these quick visits were largely pointless.  Elise would join him in training for a couple hours every day, and Alix stopped by every now and then to spend some time with her friends, but for the most part, Leon’s only company was Anzu.

Anzu continued to grow at a startling rate.  After a month, he had not only grown powerful enough to be about on par with a fourth-tier mage, but he was now big enough that he could look Leon directly in the eye.

Normally, this would’ve been about the time that Leon should’ve started training Anzu to be his war mount, but Leon was focused completely on his own magical growth, so he pushed that matter down the line for the time being.  He’d been told by the Heaven’s Eye beastmaster that took care of Anzu in Leon’s absence that Anzu wasn’t going to be capable of flight until he was at least fifth-tier equivalent, anyway, so Leon figured it was fine if he delayed Anzu’s training.

Leon’s birthday came and went with little fanfare.  Trajan was still busy keeping the peace in the Royal Palace and apart from Elise, who gave him quite a bit of affection on that particular day, no one else knew when his exact birthday was, not even Alix.  For his part, Leon made sure to inquire with the estate servants when Elise’s birthday was, as she hadn’t told him, and discovered that it was only about a month and a half after his, so he had that long to make some plans.

Fortunately, neither he nor Elise cared too much about their birthdays, so he didn’t feel too much pressure to make it incredible.  Still, he couldn’t let the day go by without any acknowledgment, so the only time he left the estate during that month apart from the occasional visit to the Royal Palace was to the Heaven’s Eye Tower where he made some arrangements.  He knew that her favorite flower was a Sun Lotus, a flower whose petals glowed red at sunrise, purple at midday, and blue at sunset, so he had a large bouquet of said flowers arranged to be delivered on her birthday.

Even that much took him quite a long time to decide on.  Elise was inconceivably wealthy, so if she wanted something, she could typically purchase it immediately.  Consequently, Leon didn’t think she actually wanted anything that could be bought that she didn’t already have.

‘Shopping for a rich lady is damned difficult…’ Leon had thought at the time.  ‘Hopefully, the flowers will be enough, because I have no idea what to do if they aren’t…’

After that, Leon went right back to training.  When all was said and done, Leon left Emilie’s estate a grand total of three times—once to Heaven’s Eye and the other two time to the Royal Palace—and it was otherwise non-stop training for Leon day in, day out.  And then the fateful day finally came, the day that he had been striving to reach since the first days of the Talfar-Bull Kingdom war.

He ascended to the sixth-tier.

It had been an otherwise quiet day, apart from the fact that Leon could feel how close he was to ascension and had been relatively on edge the entire week because of it.  He went directly to Elise’s training chamber after waking up and having breakfast, and since she had nothing better to do, Elise joined him.  As it so happened, she was close enough to the fourth-tier that she had informed Emilie that she wasn’t going to work until she had ascended.  Understanding her daughter’s determination perfectly, Emilie happily authorized Elise some time away from her duties in the Tower.

And so, the two lovers found themselves in the training chamber, Leon quietly meditating while Anzu dozed nearby, and Elise quietly practicing with a rapier.

Then it happened.  Leon was working on his last bone, letting his magic power flow into his bone until that power took on its shape and that of his body around it.  As soon as it did, Leon felt a sudden welling of power from his soul realm filling his body, and his aura went wild.  Sparks and small bolts of lightning arced out of him and his hands burst into flame, startling Anzu, but curiously not bothering Elise.  She was far too into her own practice to notice what Leon was doing.

Leon’s eyes shot open as he felt this power rush through his body, spreading out from his heart and through his bloodstream.  If he could see within himself—which he technically could do with a magic body but didn’t yet know how—then he would’ve seen every drop of blood within his body glowing bright red with magic power.  Usually, only about half of his blood at any one time was bright red mana.

This wave of power subsided, and Leon glanced around at the rest of the training chamber.  His aura had been tempestuous enough that he almost expected to see some training weapons knocked off the walls, but instead, he saw something far more disturbing: he saw himself, still sitting in his meditative posture, about three feet below him.

Leon stared down at himself, it taking a moment or two for him to realize just what he was seeing.  When he did finally process the sight before him, he became aware that he was floating above his body like a ghost above their corpse, completely invisible, but he could feel himself still breathing, he could feel his heart still pumping blood through his body, so he knew he wasn’t dead.  He was just disembodied.

Leon flailed around in the air, trying to reach back down and grab himself, but he was just out of reach of his body.

“Elise!” Leon called out instinctively, trying to get his girlfriend’s attention, but she was in a meditative trance, and Leon immediately felt a bit terrible for trying to pull her out of it.

Taking another couple of seconds to calm down and evaluate his options, Leon fully understood what happened, even if he didn’t know exactly why.  He’d finished his magic body, that much was clear, though the reality of his situation dulled his joy somewhat.

Somehow, his magic body had been forced out of his physical body, taking his mind with it.  A mage’s mind was more firmly attached to his magic body than it was to his physical form, so wherever his magic body went, so did his awareness.  How to move around and get back into his physical body, however, wasn’t something that Leon knew how to do.  All he could do was helplessly float around in the air.

[What are you doing, boy?] Xaphan asked from deep in Leon’s soul realm.  The sudden rush of power that Leon experienced after ascending had taken Xaphan’s attention away from his recovery, and the demon was more than a little shocked at the sight that greeted him.

[Clearly, I’m hovering in the air,] Leon growled in response.

[Don’t bite my head off, it was only a question,] Xaphan retorted.  [Anyway, are you going to come back into your body anytime soon, or are you going to continue floating there with that stupid look on your face?]

[Once I figure out how to do so,] Leon said through clenched teeth.  [And how are you able to see me?  My body’s transparent!]

[Your bodies are connected, it should be easy enough to return,] Xaphan stated.  [And magic bodies are only invisible to the naked eye, they can still be detected quite easily with magic senses.]

Leon frowned, but he took a moment to stop and truly evaluate his condition, not just take stock of his surroundings.  As soon as he did, he could feel a kind of tether that attached his magic body to his physical form that actually felt quite similar to the golden ‘thread’ that connected him and Xaphan.  However, before he pulled on the tether between his magical and physical forms, he paused for another moment and looked around.

[I heard that magic bodies can be used like projecting my consciousness… or something…] Leon mentioned.

[A terrible, but not exactly inaccurate way to put that,] Xaphan replied.

[How do I move in this form?] Leon asked.

[You need only will yourself to move, and you will,] Xaphan explained.  [No need to flail around like you’re underwater, you’ll only look like a fool that way.  Well, more like a fool than you already do.]

Leon took a deep breath–even though his magic body didn’t seem to need to breathe—and willed himself to move.  Surprisingly, he immediately began to drift across the room.

[This is pretty easy…] Leon muttered.

[Be careful, boy,] Xaphan cautioned.  [As your magic body is made up entirely of magic, it is incredibly fragile.  Most demons don’t ever use their magic bodies for anything other than accessing their soul realm, as the destruction of your magic body will kill you instantly.]

Leon frowned, then stopped floating around.  The training chamber had enough enchantments to make him more than a little nervous with what Xaphan had just told him, not to mention Elise training nearby.  Leon pulled on his tether, and his magic body was swiftly dragged back over to his physical form, where it sank right down beneath his skin and vanished.

Leon’s eyes opened and he immediately rose to his feet.  He wasn’t that much stronger than he was just the day before in terms of raw magical power, but finally finishing his magic body indicated a major advancement in his powers and capabilities, with being able to access his soul realm at will perhaps the most profound of those abilities.

But this wasn’t the time to fully explore what he could now do.  He had a long list of things to speak with the Thunderbird about, and he wanted to get to that as soon as possible.  Before he did that, though, he wanted to tell Elise what he was doing, as he would likely be gone for a while.

Leon’s eyes turned to his lover; Elise was still quietly practicing a few basic thrusts and pivots, but it wasn’t her swaying body that caught Leon’s attention, it was her intense aura.  To Leon’s senses, it seemed like a halo of white light had surrounded Elise, and he couldn’t look away.  It took him a moment or two to realize what was happening, and when he did, he could only stop and watch, mesmerized.

About ten minutes later, Elise’s aura changed, suddenly expanding and growing even more powerful, until it took on the characteristics of a mage that had ascended to the fourth-tier.  It was only now that Elise finally got out of her meditative trance.

After taking stock of herself and her new status as a fourth-tier mage, she turned her head to the ceiling and laughed uproariously, exaggerating her joy because she saw Leon watching her out of the corner of her eye.

“Congratulations!” Leon said, smiling at her.

“I’ve taken a step closer to you, so don’t get complacent!” she said pointing half-playfully and half-imperiously at him from the raised platform in the training chamber.

“Well…” Leon said hesitantly before he described his own ascendance.

Elise stared at him in abject shock.  She knew he was close, but for both of them to ascend on the same day was something she never expected.

But it wasn’t bad news at all, she may have been a little disappointed that she wasn’t as close to Leon’s power as she thought she was, but Leon ascending was good for them both.  She happily laughed off her shock and leaped down from the platform.  She intended to jump into Leon’s arms, but she underestimated her new strength, and Leon had to jump and catch her to keep her from crashing into the wall.

When Leon’s feet returned to the ground, Elise in his arms, the two were practically sharing a single set of lips.  Elise had her arms around Leon’s neck, keeping him close, and when they finally separated after what felt like hours, she said, “I have to tell Mom.”

“I have some things to take care of, as well,” Leon said.  “I have a Thunderbird in my soul realm, and I want to get some answers out of him.  Or her.  Or it.  Maybe that should be my first question.”

Elise giggled, then hopped out of Leon’s arms.

“Be sure to be out in time for our celebration!” she said, giving him a radiant smile.

Leon smiled back and almost lost himself in her emerald eyes that seemed to be glittering in glee.

“I’ll do what I can,” he replied.

Elise laughed again, then sashayed over to the door, pausing only to give Leon a smoldering look before leaving the room.

Now, Leon and Anzu were alone, and Leon sat back down next to his sleeping griffin.

[Prepare yourself, demon,] Leon said to Xaphan, [for I’m on my way…]

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