Chương 1274: 1304 - Demon's Limit Reached

Silence fell upon Leon's soul realm in the wake of Xaphan's statement, but Leon wasn't able to appreciate it with blood thundering in his ears.

'He… what?' For almost Leon's entire life, Xaphan had been one of his closest supporters—one of his closest friends, truthfully, though he'd be hesitant to admit it aloud—and for him to suddenly say that he wanted to leave was…

"Calm yourself, boy," Xaphan cackled as he sat next to Leon's desk, his fires calming enough that they wouldn't even scorch the stone beneath him.

"Looking at you is making me feel like I'm abandoning a traun—you wouldn't know what that is… A puppy, maybe—it's making me feel like I'm abandoning some cute and fluffy baby animal." Leon set all his notes aside and turned in his seat to face Xaphan properly.

"Maybe you can clarify, then, demon?"

"I'd love to, human. For years, I have languished in your soul realm. It has been a welcome respite after my tens of thousands of years long misery in the cage your Ancestors locked me in. My powers haven't entirely returned to me, but… They won't. I won't reach the heights I once stood at by hiding in your soul realm for the rest of my life. This is not me making an argument to mindset or motivation or any other more ephemeral concept—I literally will not advance further than I have reached while hiding here."

Leon stroked his chin in thought, the glow of Xaphan's fires warming him to a point that mortals would have considered unpleasant, but he found it rather comforting.

"What's making it impossible?"

"Being inside a soul realm affects how my soul realm utilizes the Mists of Chaos. This… is an issue with demons. Better not to talk about it. I'd hoped to get around it. Those hopes are now dashed. Suffice it to say that if I want to regain my position as a Lord of Flame, I'm going to have to leave your soul realm." A sigh hissed past Leon's lips as his eyes turned somewhat mournful.

"I suppose this would've happened eventually, wouldn't it?"

"This was always a temporary arrangement," Xaphan confirmed.

"But it's been as… fun as anything of this sort could be." Xaphan returned to his feet.

"This isn't the end of our partnership, Leon; not if you don't want it to be. If you're amenable, I would impose upon you further, though with an amended contract." One of Leon's eyebrows rose as his hope caused his heart to flutter momentarily. But he schooled his expression and said, "I'm listening."

"With Amon as the new Prince of Flame, I'm left in a precarious position. I cannot return to the Elemental Plane of Fire; that would be suicide. I need somewhere I can reside in peace, a place I can start contacting old friends and potential allies without threat of retaliation."

"And you want that place to be Artorion?"

"Not necessarily the city… but yes. Somewhere private would do." Some measure of relief wound its way through Leon. His constant companion would be more removed, but not entirely gone, and their contract wasn't being dissolved. Still, he couldn't just jump to accept this; that would be poor form.

"And what would I get out of this deal?"

"Trade," Xaphan declared.

"I know where sun-glazed obsidian can be sourced. Motes of Luxflame are also frequently traded with outsiders. Assuming no shitheels have ruined them, some of my old friends can even supply you with ember roses and crackling lotuses."

"I'm unfamiliar with these materials. Why should I be excited to source them?"

"As is your wont, you humans love decorating yourselves in shiny things. Sun-glazed obsidian makes for striking jewelry, though serves little practical purpose. Still, it's a valuable luxury, and you might gain access to it, which you can use to reward your people or to trade further on in the Nexus.

"Luxflame is what my fellow demons use to store magical power. Your storm crystal is better for your purposes, but Luxflame will burn a bitch too, if turned to that purpose. Your weapons are lacking in glorious flame, but Luxflame can be the solution.

"Ember roses and crackling lotuses are sources of heat, light, and magic power. Fire mages, once they gain a taste for the refined petals and seeds, will suck unfathomable cocks to get more. Few trade it in lands of Nexus Lords, which would give you a near-monopoly."

"That sounds… well, I have questions about those flowers. Addictive?"

"Yes, boy, they are, as I just said. Were you even listening, or have you allowed your humanity to dull your hearing?"

"Is there any practical use to them?"

"They're resources that idiots will pay to acquire." A frown spread across Leon's face.

"Those don't interest me, if I'm honest."

"You're a King, you conquer and despoil, extract tribute in coin and blood, but balk at selling flowers to the willing?"

"If that's how you want to interpret it, then yes, that's me. As for the other materials… They sound intriguing. I'd have to get my hands on some to see how well they'll mix with what I already have." Xaphan was silent for a thoughtful moment.

"Then you'll support me in this?" Leon snorted in derision.

"You even have to ask? I'd have given you a place to be even without the promise of trade." Shifting uneasily, Xaphan responded, "I'd thought you were that foolishly sentimental. Such relationships among demons are… rare. There are always costs to be paid." Leon hummed noncommittally.

"A cost in this case… will probably be some people who want to learn fire magic from you. I won't deny them a right to ask."

"These people will be held up as the smartest of your race; they understand their shortcomings and look to a Lord of Flame to fix them." Xaphan crossed his arms and nodded, and Leon could almost see the grin on his face.

"A condition," Leon added.

"No vampires."

"You insult me. You know my thoughts regarding blood sacrifices."

"Had to say it. Is this going to be a formal contract like what we 'signed' back in your prison?" A long moment passed, human and demon staring each other down, tension ratcheting up with every heartbeat. Then, the response.

"No. I trust you enough not to insist upon it. The contract we currently have will be maintained, though. It might lose some power with me no longer residing here, but you'll still be able to access my glorious fire through it, and it will still allow us to keep track of each other." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"That's fine with me," Leon said.

"Now… I suppose we should decide on where to get you set up, now… The northwest of the valley, maybe…?"

Usually, inspections were one of the more boring duties that Leon was expected to perform. Fortunately, as King, he could pawn most of them off on lower officers or bureaucrats, but he still had to see to them occasionally. The inspection he found himself on a week and a half after returning to Artorion, however, was one that he was fully invested in.

"… an' these here power regulators will get phased out fer the next blocks," the Bison magic engineer explained, pulling the piece of enchanted machinery out of the wall to show Leon. It was a plate with a dozen internal gears constantly spinning, power flowing through engraved runes to wherever it needed to go. A Silan-class scout corvette might only have a dozen such regulators, but a Trajan-class supercarrier would have several thousand spread throughout the ark.

They were reasonably efficient at what they did, but they had been designed decades ago. The design had been iterated on, and the newer blocks of arks would have upgraded systems compared to the previous blocks. Leon nodded approvingly as the enormous Bison slid the power regulator back into the wall.

"We'll need to upgrade our current arks to new standards. I'd even considered delaying commissioning for new arks until they could integrate our better systems."

"Capacity grows," the master arksmith Amethinos said, the giant's voice coming out metallic and vaguely masculine, though surprisingly normal in volume, from its eight-foot-tall frame—short for a giant, but it made building and inspecting the interior of arks much easier.

"Upgrades are possible. But time is short."

"Indeed," Leon murmured. Time in arkyards might be better spent on building new arks rather than upgrading old ones, though, as Amethinos said, they had greater arkyard capacity…

"I want to see the Nestorian Drive," he said, taking the rest of his party by surprise. Thankfully, between the engineers, the master arksmith, the captain who would soon be given command of this supercarrier, a host of other high-ranking officers, his own secretaries and adjutants, and a dozen Tempest Knights, there wasn't a man among them who tried to argue that they should stick to the schedule. So, to the drive room they went.

The drive room was one of the larger compartments in arks, and for a supercarrier, it was cavernous. It was dominated by a long shaft running from one end of the room to the other, as thick as Leon was tall, and perpendicular to the spine of the ark. Dozens of enormous discs spun along the shaft, runes hovering just off every surface. More runes covered a tube that surrounded the shaft and spinning discs, more runic constellations hovering in place around the inner surface.

The discs would spin and move along the shaft, creating new enchantments and channeling power as needed. It wasn't quite up to the standards that Leon wanted, but this was, like the power regulators, an older design, and this was likely to be the last Trajan-class to be built with one. All others would have the new Nestorian Drives, which featured double the number of discs and flowing runes on the tube's inner surface.

Unfortunately, Nestorian Drives were some of the first pieces of magical machinery installed in arks, so the inefficiencies and problems he'd identified when checking the plans after returning to Artorion were going to have to be fixed after assembly instead of before.

"Real beaut', isn't she?" the Bison engineer said admiringly.

"When spinnin', Lumenite glows from end o' the room ta the other. Titanstone in that jump train will liquify, an' this room gets mighty dangerous ta be."

"How so?" Leon asked.

"Are the safety regulations insufficient?" His sharp tone took the engineer by surprise, and he sputtered a bit before Amethinos jumped in.

"They are sufficient. No one who does their job will be in danger." Leon frowned, his golden eyes raking over the entire apparatus, searching for problems. He found many, though they were more of the retrospective, fixed-in-the-next-iteration variety. His lips twitched back upward as he realized just how much he was understanding of the magic at play. If he were stranded on a plane all by himself, he wagered he could even build a fully functioning— … a reasonably functioning ark by himself.

He couldn't help but flashback to his escape from Arkhnavi with the barely-Voidworthy ark that he and Mari had gotten running. If he knew back then what he knew now, he guessed he would've been able to almost completely repair it in half the time that he and Mari had. Almost as if summoned by his thoughts, Mari appeared.

"Hey!" she shouted from down the hall, only a moment later barreling into the drive chamber.

"I was waitin' on the bridge! Why're ya takin' so long?!"

"Good to see you, too, Mari," Leon said as the Bison engineer and Amethinos both stepped back, allowing one of the stars of ark and Ulta suit design to take center stage.

"Ya can see me any time ya want, Lel—uh, King Leon!" She gave the rest of the party a look that was just long enough to return all the dirty looks she was receiving, though she at least took on a more formal demeanor after a deep breath.

"Right. So, any questions?"

"How long to rip one of these out and install one of the new ones?" Leon immediately asked, pointing at the Nestorian Drive with his thumb.

"Hmm," Mari hummed.

"If we had all the parts, maybe two months? But we don't have the parts."

"We'll get them eventually," Leon promised. He wasn't ignorant of the state of his supply chains—it wasn't just arkyards that he needed more of; he also needed to increase manufacturing capabilities for thousands of smaller parts, including parts for jump drives. Unfortunately, they were sensitive, delicate, and utilized strategic materials, and so scaling up jump drive manufacturing was one of the hardest and most expensive parts of the entire chain.

Even with his reliable and loyal base of support, his resources weren't infinite.

'Hopefully to change with the addition of new planes…'

"Very well," he said aloud.

"The bridge, then?"

"Yeah!" Mari shouted, unable to contain herself. She took Leon's arm and practically dragged him, and by extension the rest of the inspection party, through the orderly halls of the supercarrier to the great machine's control center, one of the few places on the entire ark that could argue to be as complex as the jump drive. Leon knew that the next block would have completely redesigned bridges that featured hovering workstations around the central information nexus.

It wasn't as fancy as the bridges of the ancient Thunderbird Clan arks, but it would be functional, ensuring an orderly flow of information and orders throughout the entire ark.

This ark, as the last of the first block of Trajan-class supercarriers, still featured a more conventional bridge design, where the command throne sat atop essentially a shallow hill in the center of the chamber, with all stations and consoles arranged into concentric rings around it, each level descending slowly until they reached the chamber floor.

The information nexus—that was to say, the projections that listed all the important information on the ark, its position, and the position of everything around it—were all around the 'command hill', rather than in its center. Despite its older design, Leon immediately noticed a few changes, mostly in the form of a dark, cloudy material on the headrest of every chair in the chamber.

On top of that, he noted that every chair had been more heavily secured in place than it strictly 'needed' to be according to safety regulations. He gave Mari an inquisitive look, though he already strongly suspected what this was.

"We had the extra material, so we made a last-minute install of cloud glass," Mari said proudly, her formal demeanor cracking enough for her to extend an arm theatrically toward the command hill. Leon smiled back at her and made his way to the command throne. The ark wasn't ready to do anything yet, especially since the wisps and giants that would operate most of the ark's various systems hadn't yet been installed or taken residence, but he still wanted to inspect the work done.

Mari's cloud glass, as far as Leon was concerned, was as if not more miraculous as any material he'd had a hand in making. Of course, storm crystal and thunder wood were used in just about every system on the ark, but cloud glass just struck him differently. The ability to merge one's mind with the enchantments in an ark, essentially turning the entire ark into an extension of one's own body, was simply more magical than a material that stored power better than gems.

Cloud glass was mostly a material that had been constrained by manufacturing capacity to fighter arks and Ulta suits. With it, Leon was confident in saying that he had the best pilots in the entire universe, even if other Lords had better platforms. Installing the cloud glass on a larger ark was another beast entirely, as it essentially merged everyone using the glass into a single 'body', and required enormous training and coordination to properly utilize.

But once proficient, it would cut crew size down significantly, by as much as thirty percent, if not more. In fact, Leon was certain that, certainly not with next-generation arks and perhaps not even the generation after, but at most the one after that could be operated with only the bridge crew, wisps, and giants.

'Will still need maintenance enchanters and engineers, but there'll be far more room for combat forces…' Leon couldn't help but smile as he foresaw what his forces would look like the next time they took to the Void. Along with the various ideas he'd taken from the Belicenian Games, he felt like his forces were finally starting to take real shape. Contending with other Lords was an inevitability, but Leon was going to ensure that on the material side at least, his Kingdom would win before the battles even started.