The steel before him glowed a brilliant blue, the metal having heated up to a terrible temperature. So hot was it that if Leon’s enchantments weren’t so powerful, it would’ve liquified in a second, and then vaporized a second later. As far as most conventional forging techniques went, it was far and away an impractical amount of heat, but in this case, Leon needed it greatly.

The weapon he was forging was to be tremendously powerful, and to properly channel the power that it needed to, he needed to use an unorthodox forging technique. In this, he’d been helped by Sid. His blacksmithing teacher wasn’t that familiar with enchanting, but with the ideas he’d had over the past few years, together they’d devised this new technique to help prepare steel to receive enchantments.

With the steel so hot, Leon could manipulate it with great ease, carving runes beneath the weapon’s surface in the structure of the metal itself rather than having to rely entirely on etching the runes directly onto the steel once the steel had cooled. It was a new technique—at least to him—that demanded a great amount of magic power and severe control over fire and earth magic, but Leon hadn’t been slacking since the sacking of Argos, and his magical skill had grown by leaps and bounds. To finish this weapon using this new technique was hardly a challenge.

His hands glided across an enchantment control console next to the furnace where the weapon hung in the air. The furnace itself resembled little more than a firepit in the center of his workshop, but all along its surface and spiraling out from its edges were a complex web of fire, light, and earth enchantments that both generated and contained the fire magic within. Using an equally-complex bank of control consoles next to the furnace, Leon could quickly and easily inscribe the enchantments he wanted directly within the steel he was forging.

In this case, the weapon he was making was a glaive—or rather, a foot and half long glaive blade. The rest of the weapon was complete, he only had to finish the blade and then assemble the weapon.

Fortunately, he was almost done, and his heart raced with excitement. However, the excitement he felt was almost nothing compared to Valeria’s, who stood next to him, staring at the blade as if hypnotized as Leon finished using the control console to carve runic glyphs within the blade. Leon could feel her eighth-tier aura flexing with glee and see her fingers curling in anticipation of wrapping around her new weapon’s haft.

It didn’t take him long to finish. The weapon cooled, then was quenched and tempered using oil mixed with blue wyvern’s mana and Leon’s own black fire, then he added a few artistic flourishes such as some silver trimming and filigree along the back edge of the blade, forming stylized lightning bolts flashing around fingernail-sized snowflakes. Finally, he added a few more enchantments to the blade etched into its surface to help it keep its edge.

“Is it done?” Valeria asked as she took in the finished blade.

“Yes,” Leon said, holding it out for her to inspect.

It was a marvelous work if he did say so himself. The steel had been heat-colored to a dark blue, and while the silver additions were clear, they didn’t distract from the beauty of the blade. It glimmered in the light, and the metal had been given a rippling, water-like pattern from the way Leon had forged it. For an ice mage, it was perfect.

Valeria’s smile threatened to separate her jaw from the rest of her face, so Leon took the blade back and headed over to his desk, where the rest of the weapon waited.

There, an eight-foot-long haft of thunder wood had been prepared. Helen had treated it with an oil that colored it sky blue, while Tikos had manipulated the surface of the wood into an artistic twisted shape, perfect for holding onto in the heat of battle. Finally, Leon had added another spike to the weapon’s butt, a spike that could well serve as a spear in a pinch, forged similarly to the glaive’s blade.

It was a trivial thing for Leon to affix the blade to the end of the glaive, and when he did, all of his hard work was finished—the weapon glowed briefly as the enchantments in the blade linked up with the enchantments in the haft, the weapon itself seeming to celebrate its completion. It had taken him weeks to finish this weapon, and looking at the finished product, he had to say that it was as perfect as his skills could possibly make it.

When in hand, it would greatly enhance Valeria’s water and ice magic, while the thunder wood would give her a degree of control over and protection from lightning, as well. Several other enchantments Leon had put into the haft used thunder wood’s apparently endless ability to generate lightning magic and either channeled that power or altered it into ice magic, giving Valeria that much more of a power boost. Aside from those enchantments, Leon thought the blade capable of cleaving through all but the most robustly-enchanted materials, would certainly never dull without hitting something extraordinarily magical, and had such heft to it that only a powerful mage could wield it.

Valeria took it in hand and gave it a few practice swings, showcasing her eighth-tier power in spectacular fashion by twirling blade around like it was practically weightless.

“How does it feel?” Leon asked with a smile of pride.

Valeria paused, then lowered her new weapon. “Perfect,” she purred as she rushed over and pressed herself against Leon, kissing him with a heat and intensity that promised much more later on.

When they finally separated several minutes later, Leon breathed a hearty, “Good…”

Valeria flashed him a wink, then took her weapon and headed out of his workshop, speeding as quickly as she could to their training hall to put her new weapon through its paces.

Leon breathed deeply, the forging process having been mentally tiring, but rewarding beyond measure. Valeria had been the last of his people who had gotten a weapon personally forged by him using all of his skills, greatly increasing the power of his retinue. However, as powerful as the weapons that he’d given all of his people were, they paled in comparison to all the gains they’d made over these past few years.

They were now a little more than five years out from the sacking of Argos, and in that time, Leon had not once stood idle. He was in the playground of giants, now—or at least, he was compared to the enemies he was more used to facing. He needed more power, and he needed it as soon as possible.

In that vein, the single most important thing that happened for his retinue happened about a year and a half after the sack of Argos, when the apple orchard finally produced a haul that Leon cared about. With Tikos in charge of the place, the regular trees had produced apples at a startling rate. They were delicious, to say the least, so much so that the apples from his orchard had quickly become the most popular brand in Occulara, made even more so by their relative scarcity, despite great tree-sprite-powered yields.

However, it was the Hesperidic Apples that Leon cared about, and that took so long to finally mature. They rarely bore fruit, but the apples they did bear were practically miraculous, serving to greatly aid any mage in whatever tier they were in to advance to the next. Even the dreaded sixth-to-seventh jump when a mage had to identify their own nature and build a Mind Palace that reflected it was made easier with the help of Hesperidic Apples.

For him, they were much less spectacular, though no less amazing, stimulating the growth of his soul realm to a degree that he’d never before experienced. It had taken him almost thirty-two years for his soul realm to reach a little over two hundred miles in radius, but in the past five years, thanks to the Hesperidic Apples, he was brushing against the doors of the ninth-tier, with his soul realm’s radius now measuring just under one thousand miles.

Even without another Hesperidic Apple, Leon estimated that he could reach the ninth-tier in less than two years. However, it was about time for the trees to produce another batch, and just one more Hesperidic Apple was all he needed to reach the ninth-tier.

The rest of his family and retainers had realized similar gains. They’d all shot up a tier or two, leaving even those who focused less on magical training, like Helen, much stronger than they were before. In fact, Helen had grown from fifth-tier to the sixth, while all the rest of his retainers had reached the seventh-tier at least. Anna, Valeria, Anshu, and Red, meanwhile, reached the eighth. Gaius, Alix, Marcus, Alcander, Talal, Exotikos, and Anzu were all of the seventh-tier, and of them, Anzu was the closest to the eighth.

Leon couldn’t help but beam with pride when he thought about his griffin. Anzu was almost twenty years old, now, and moved about with what Leon could only assume was a human level of intelligence. He estimated that Anzu himself was only one Hesperidic Apple away from ascending up another tier, and when he did, Leon hoped that he might finally grow strong enough to take human form. That power hadn’t manifested when Anzu reached the seventh-tier, to Leon’s quiet disappointment, but he was certain Anzu would realize it when he reached the eighth.

However, for all the progress that everyone had made, there was still one person in his home who outshone them all: Maia, the formerly eighth-tier river nymph, holding the rank of Naiad amongst her people—or at least, she did, when she still had river nymphs attending her. If that were still the case, she’d now be a Pleione, for she’d managed in the last five years to ascend to the ninth-tier, keeping her position as the strongest member of Leon’s family and retinue.

The only one that could possibly match her—and given that he wasn’t partaking of the Hesperidic Apples, Leon didn’t typically count him the same way—was Xaphan, who’d also finally, after almost twenty years, managed to reach the ninth-tier as well. It had seemed an interminably long time to Leon, but such a span of time was nothing to the former Lord of Flame, who admitted that Leon’s current enemies and allies were skewing his standard a bit, and twenty years between eighth and ninth-tiers was still a tremendously swift rate of recovery or advancement.

Leon had to admit to some jealousy on his part, but given how close he was to the ninth-tier, he didn’t let it go to his head.

Instead, he was just happy that the powers his people were now achieving were potent enough that he didn’t think someone like the Keeper would be able to successfully attack his villa again without plenty of back-up.

Which, of course, any tenth-tier mage would undoubtedly have, but a step forward was a step forward.

Fortunately, Leon hadn’t needed to test his defenses since the Keeper’s attack. The Lord Protector frequently stayed with him, practically living in Leon’s villa for almost a third of the year. The Grand Druid wasn’t able to match him for sheer time, but between the two of them, there was a tenth-tier mage in Leon’s villa during at least half of the year. Those times when they weren’t available, Leon and the Director made sure that he had a much larger security detachment assigned to his villa than usual. It wouldn’t stand for long against an attack of the Keeper’s caliber, but it was more than enough to make a statement. Leon had Ilion, Evergold, and Occulara with him.

Part of the reason why Leon hadn’t had many problems—or so he assumed, anyway—was the new status quo in the south. The Sky Devils hadn’t pushed much past the Sword, to everyone’s surprise, but they hadn’t left their garrisons on the Sword so understaffed that the island could be easily reconquered. There had already been two attempts made to reclaim the island, each led by the Sunlit Empire, but both had been repelled with little to show for them.

The Sky Devils made the occasional raid along the coast of the Free Cities of the Tam or the Pegasi States, but for the most part, they stuck to their own waters. Commerce was able to continue without too many interruptions, and the economic impact of their actions five years before was thusly blunted.

But the build-up of arms down in the south couldn’t be ignored. It was obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the situation at all that the Empires were not content with this new status quo, and that they weren’t ready to write off the Sword just yet. There had even been rumblings among the most hawkish sectors of the Empires to eventually push all the way to the Sky Devil’s Hell itself, and finally put an end to their threat once and for all.

Leon didn’t think such a thing was even remotely feasible, given how the Imperial fleets had been performing so far. He was quite content with the current situation, though he knew that it couldn’t last for too long. The only thing he was concerned about was the sheer lack of information coming out from the Sword. He’d given Anshu plenty of leeway to try and get into contact with the Sky Devils, but in these five years, little progress had been made. He was hardly about to stop trying, though.

With these thoughts in mind, Leon readied himself to leave his workshop. He still had some thunder wood on his work desk, and all of that went right into his soul realm before he did anything else.

With Tikos, Helen, and Elise’s help, Leon had managed to create more thunder wood about three years after the sack of Argos. It had taken quite a few tries, but they’d finally managed to find a suitable tree. Unfortunately, on that first successful attempt, they’d only managed to create a few splinters of thunder wood, but in the two years since, the process had been refined enough that Leon had enough of the material to use in the weapons of all of his retainers.

But weapons for his retainers wasn’t the only use he had for thunder wood. One of the first things he’d used thunder wood for was to make a new bow. With the power of the thunder wood, any arrow fired from it would explode with lightning once it hit its target, and even without enchantments, it could still shoot an arrow more than a thousand feet. With enchantments, the effective range of the bow was more than half a mile—it could shoot arrows even farther than that, but accuracy greatly suffered.

With that first bow serving as a good lesson, Leon made bows for the rest of his retainers, and then crafted an even newer, more powerful bow for himself. That particular bow didn’t even need a bowstring, being able to fire off bolts of lightning instead of physical arrows.

He was able to create such a bow thanks to the advances made in Heaven’s Eye during this time. He had a few working prototypes of a second generation Lightning Lance, which then helped to inform his bow designs. He’d not yet had much of a chance to test any of these new pieces of gear in actual combat yet, since he hadn’t left Occulara at all in these past five years, but he felt like that was going to change sooner than he’d like. At the very least, they worked well enough in testing that he was confident they’d perform well in combat.

As he finished making sure all of his sensitive materials had been put away and his workshop had been properly locked up, Leon made his way back to his villa, where he found Tikos already waiting for him. His villa had been heavily damaged in the Keepers attack five years ago, but now, the structure and the estate as a whole showed no signs of such an attack ever taking place. All the damage had been repaired, and Leon had rebuilt his villa’s defensive enchantments even stronger than before.

“Leon,” Tikos whispered through the piece of amber in its wrist as Leon approached.

“Tikos,” Leon replied with a broad smile. “I didn’t think you were going to be here for another week, at least! Did something happen?”

“No, everything fine,” Tikos replied. “Fact in, the apples have well grown, faster than expected.”

With an almost theatrical flourish, the seventh-tier tree sprite conjured an apple into its hand. The apple was fairly large, though not overly so by apple standards. But it was the color of polished gold and glowed with a mesmerizing inner light. Leon knew that beneath its skin, it was less fruit and more concentrated magic power—though it was still just as sweet as a fresh green apple.

Leon had to restrain his instinct to grab the fruit right away, but it was damned difficult knowing that he was only one Hesperidic Apple away from the ninth-tier. Instead, he kept business at the forefront of his mind.

“How large was the yield?” Leon asked.

“For everyone, one,” Tikos answered. “Two are extra.”

Leon smiled, his greed greatly stimulated. His apple trees typically produced more than enough for all of his people to get at least one apple, but those few spare apples the trees occasionally gave him were reserved for other people. As beneficial as it would be to give one of his retainers an extra apple, he judged that it would be just as damaging to morale as a whole if he were seen to favor one retainer over another like that. On rare occasions, he gave a couple to Penelope, bringing her and the Director in on what exactly his apple orchard truly contained. Most of his spare apples, however, were reserved for Anastasios and the Grand Druid—they didn’t ask questions after the first time, and Leon never gave any answers. They were allies, after all, and so far, during these past five years, neither the Director nor any of the tenth-tier mages had yet given him any reason to doubt their sincerity and commitment to their alliances with him.

Thankfully, none of them made any unreasonable demands for more of the apples. The Director, in fact, hardly even seemed to want any, and Penelope had been extremely happy just to receive the two that Leon had given her. They weren’t enough to boost her to the ninth-tier, but she was now getting quite close. Anastasios and the Grand Druid, meanwhile, both stated that they were going to give their apples to younger members of their Empires—the Grand Druid even specifically told Leon that she was going to give her apples to Cassandra.

Leon, now staring at the first of the latest batch, gritted his teeth to keep from licking his lips and said to Tikos, “Let’s get everyone together, then. If the harvest has come early, then we eat early. No need to put this off.”

Tikos nodded, and Leon took a deep breath as he used his darkness magic to call all of his family and retainers together.

It was time for him to finally reach the ninth-tier.