Riveria paid no mind to Loki fuming beside her.
She focused on recalling the combat ability Leon had shown in their few encounters, slowly letting out a breath:
"All my earlier assessments were based on the data he showed fighting monsters. But now it seems... my judgment was seriously off."
Loki opened her crimson eyes, her gaze drifting back and forth between Demeter and Leon:
"The magic that kid uses... it's almost all fast-cast magic, right? And what's even more absurd is that even that frost control magic can apparently be cast instantly. Against monsters it's one thing, but in combat against people... isn't that just overpowered?"
Riveria nodded in agreement.
All fast-cast magic, huh. Why am I feeling a little envious...
She was far from the only one who'd noticed.
Freya lightly brushed her lower lip with a fingertip, a probing glint moving through her eyes. Astraea and Artemis traded a glance, the surprise on their faces impossible to hide. Even the ever-composed Hermes tugged at the corner of his mouth without thinking.
The gods wore varied expressions, their thoughts a tangle.
But whatever each of them happened to be thinking, on one point their understanding was oddly unanimous: this child of Demeter's was, well, a little too absurd.
"Ottar, what do you think?"
Freya pulled her gaze back from the distance, looking at the support teams, military police, and adventurers flooding into the area around the plaza like a tide, and asked softly without turning her head, a trace of amusement in her tone.
Ottar's eyes turned toward Leon. At that very moment, Leon turned to look as well, and the two completed a brief, "soulful" cross-field stare.
Leon gave Ottar a polite little nod, then turned and walked toward Demeter and the others, joining their conversation.
Ottar withdrew his gaze at the same time.
Freya watched this silent exchange with great interest, the corner of her lips lifting:
"Well?"
Ottar's warrior's instinct told him that man...
"Is strong!"
"Oh?"
A trace of surprise crossed Freya's lovely eyes, but she quickly recovered her usual composure.
It wasn't that she'd never paid Leon any attention. After all, his group were regulars at the Hostess of Fertility, and she'd long since savored the radiance of not just this young mage's soul, but Jeanne's and the others' as well, many times over.
But still... for Ottar to give that kind of answer now genuinely caught her off guard.
She curved her lips and smiled charmingly.
"Interesting."
...
"Tch..."
Leon glanced at the notification that had popped up on his panel and raised an eyebrow.
"Thirty-nine Excelia? And this was a top-tier Lv.3, even. Sure, just a Second-Class Adventurer, nothing that rare, but how are they popping out one after another like this? What, is training people at this level the best bang for your buck or something?"
Hearing Leon's offhand griping, Demeter seemed to recall something and picked up the thread with a soft laugh:
"You actually hit the nail on the head. That's exactly right. And from what I know... out in the world beyond Orario, since resources are nowhere near as abundant as they are for us with our Dungeon, some nations looking to cultivate high-level adventurers usually do it by honing them through live combat against people. Mm... you've heard of the Baptism rite, haven't you? It's far more extreme than that."
Leon curled his lip dismissively:
"It's just cricket-fighting, isn't it. Breeding venom-bugs in a jar. Pit them against each other, and whoever's left alive at the end naturally comes out stronger."
Demeter nodded in agreement:
"Indeed. Lv.3 only takes two rank-ups to reach, and to the outside world this tier requires relatively few resources. Power-wise, if you set aside Orario, the Dragon's Valley, the School District, and a few particular secret realms, it's already enough to handle most situations among the great kingdoms. So it really is the best value for the cost."
Demeter's explanation made Jeanne realize something too.
"I see... No wonder the assassins Evilus hired before were mostly elite Lv.2s as their main force. And those few Lv.3 officers were surely born from this kind of cruel survival-of-the-fittest culling."
Just then, Leon looked around and still couldn't spot Rose or Kureha anywhere, prompting him to speak up in confusion:
"Jeanne, where's Ro..."
Before he could finish, Jeanne raised a hand to signal him to be quiet. She sidestepped to plant herself in front of Demeter and lowered her voice to warn everyone:
"That's enough chatting. We have guests... and quite a few of them."
The moment she finished speaking...
Black silhouettes shot out from the shadows all around like phantoms, and in the blink of an eye they had Demeter, Leon, and the rest surrounded.
What was even more alarming was that a dense swarm of black-robed believers and Evilus soldiers came pouring out again from the eight main avenues, charging at the military police and the neutral factions' reinforcements like a frenzied tide, fearless of death.
Leon glanced at the outer battlefield sinking back into chaos. Across the snow paradise he had made, fighters who had broken free of the ice were already attacking enemies still trapped like sculptures. He let out a helpless sigh:
"I knew Evilus couldn't just throw their entire force in all at once. If Arachnia were really that stupid, she wouldn't have been able to hold out against the Order Alliance to this day."
His gaze swept over the masked assailants in black around him, and he let out a soft sound of surprise:
"Hold on... your getups look kind of familiar, don't they?"
"Pal, when did you underground outfits skulking around outside the city start recruiting ninja all the way from the Far East?"
These assailants in black combat gear not only hid their faces behind masks, they were dressed head to toe like ninja. The cold gleam of the kunai, shuriken, and wakizashi in their hands left no doubt about where they came from.
"Heh, quite the turnout."
Persephone stepped forward calmly to stand shoulder to shoulder with Leon. She lightly pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses and corrected him coolly:
"There were ninja mixed in during the last attack too. Did you forget?"
"Oh, right!"
Remembering those assassins who'd already turned into his Excelia, Leon swept his eyes over the shadows around him, his expression turning to realization:
"So you underground outfits actually recruit worldwide, huh? Tch... that's a pretty big operation."
The lead ninja had no intention of wasting words with Leon. He waved a few hand signals to his subordinates, then formed a seal with both hands, his figure abruptly dissolving away...
"Holy shit, the Body Flicker Technique!"
A blade flashed, the wakizashi swinging down hard against Leon's ice armor with a frosty gleam.
"Fast. Force is average."
A muffled crack rang out.
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