No. Absolutely not!
If it ever came to that, what dignity would he have left in this house? How could he ever hold his head up again?
With a clear goal in mind, Leon's movements as he dressed and buttoned up grew noticeably crisper.
Once dressed, he carefully tucked the stray strands of hair from the woman's cheek and the corner of her mouth back behind her ear, then gently pulled the blanket over her, tucked in the edges, pressed a light kiss to her lips, and only then reluctantly closed the door behind him.
"Phew..."
Easing the door shut, Leon let out a long breath.
He glanced at the magic stone clock in the hallway and found it was still early.
"Dead of winter and it's not even seven yet."
A whole night of carrying on, set up by Rose for a relay battle, and then her own long, ferocious assault on top of it. That whole chain of events had stripped Leon of any trace of drowsiness.
Thank god for the Demon Lord's Crest skill. Leon was honored to still be standing here, full of energy, instead of lying humiliated and wrung dry in a sorry heap on the floor.
"Can't sleep anyway. Might as well head down and get to work."
...
At that hour, the whole mansion was still wrapped in the quiet of a snowy day.
Iri and Margaret, the two "rookies," went without saying, still dead asleep and recovering their stamina.
Jeanne, as last night's main force, had taken the brunt of Leon's "firepower," and was likewise deep in dreamland.
Kureha, having fought all out in the Dungeon during the day, was now sleeping soundly.
As for those two little elves... well, best not to bring them up.
"Ahh... the air on a snowy day, it's the good stuff!"
Leon stretched in the small courtyard, drew in a deep breath of the frigid air, and gazed at the snowflakes swirling across the sky as a genuine smile spread across his face.
"If my back didn't ache, this morning would be even more perfect."
After loosening up his joints and shaking some life back into his weary spirit, Leon pulled on a sturdy pair of work gloves and headed to the woodpile in the back courtyard to get started.
First he hauled the big, dry logs stacked a whole wall high down to the ground one by one, lining them up neatly off to the side.
Then he hefted the axe and began his daily warm-up staple: chopping wood!
"Crack!"
One swing of the axe, and the log split clean apart. The whole motion was sharp and decisive, not a drop of sloppiness to it. Anyone who knew the craft could tell at a glance that Leon's wood-chopping was no clueless beginner faking it, but the work of a seasoned old hand.
Clearly, after a few autumns and winters of practice, Leon had this job, which took at least a little skill, down pat.
"Crack, crack, crack!"
After a few test swings to find his feel and rhythm, Leon's chopping pace gradually picked up, every stroke precise and efficient.
About half an hour later, judging he had enough firewood for the day's cooking and the hearth, he finally stopped.
"That should do it."
Letting out a soft breath, he tidied up the split firewood, then carried it inside bundle by bundle through the back door of the small storeroom beside the kitchen.
He lit the fire and let the warmth spread slowly through the pipes until it filled the whole house.
...
Chopping wood, lighting fires, prepping meals.
With everything ready, he moved into his morning training and study.
In the practice corner, one ice clone after another wove and darted across the cramped space, clashing against one another.
Under Leon's control, every move and form carried hidden lethality, each one deadly.
But in the eyes of a true expert, while the clones' movements were textbook-perfect, they lacked any fluid ease. It was as if they had no real soul, leaving every motion hollow.
As the intensity of the sparring climbed, this flaw only grew more obvious. Finally, when Leon reached the limit of his control, a tiny error crept into the ice clones' coordination, triggered a massive chain reaction, and brought the whole formation crashing down.
"Crack..."
One ice clone after another toppled to the ground, shattering into countless ice crystals.
Leon wiped away the beads of sweat that intense focus had drawn from his brow and blew out a heavy puff of white mist.
"Controlling ten ice clones at once, I can get about peak-Lv. 2 strength out of them right now? Hmm... definitely not Lv. 3, that's for sure."
Standing at the edge of the space, watching the glittering ice shards scattered across the floor, Leon stroked his chin, lost in thought:
"At my current pace, getting these ice clones to perform on par with a Lv. 3 Adventurer is going to take a long stretch of training and a much deeper understanding of the magic."
After all this time of repeated practice and exploration, Leon had gained a fairly deep grasp of this newly mastered White Art magic.
It was an open-ended magic with a very low floor and an extremely high ceiling, brimming with limitless possibility.
"Dungeon reconnaissance, route scouting, triggering traps..."
"Intelligence gathering, tactical deception, sensory interference..."
"And in advanced applications, there are even high-level techniques like inherited chanting and linked chanting..."
"Tsk, truly, there's no end to learning!"
Before the words had even faded, Kureha's soft, sleepy voice drifted up from behind him:
"Mm... morning, Leon... what are you over here muttering to yourself about? Something about the boundless sea of learning..."
He turned to look. Kureha was standing not far off. She wore a thin white training shirt paired with black breeches and knee-high knight's boots, the simple outfit neatly tracing the graceful figure shaped by years of training. In the morning light, her face, both alluring and spirited, was strikingly lovely, and Leon's gaze lingered on her without his meaning it to.
"How come you're up so early? Shouldn't you be sleeping in on a snowy day?"
Kureha gave a cute yawn, walked to the weapon rack, picked up her usual training sword, and casually flourished it. Stretching her body through warm-ups, she answered earnestly:
"The true essence of swordsmanship lies in persistence."
She tilted her chin up slightly, eyes shining with confidence:
"Hmph! How else do you think I got this good with a sword?"
The moment the talk turned to swordsmanship, every trace of Kureha's drowsiness vanished. In the winter morning light, her cheeks flushed with healthy color, her eyes blazing:
"Now that I've got the help of the Falna leveling system, I can dig out my own potential to the fullest, and every bit of progress feeds straight back into my Basic Abilities. That fills me with drive and excitement to get stronger!"
"And that's not all!"
"At first I worried that overtraining would drain my body's future potential, so I always held myself back."
"But it's different now! Now that I've got Iri's help, I finally have nothing left to worry about. I can throw myself into training and combat with everything I've got, holding nothing back, chasing an even higher level!"
Leon: "..."
He finally understood where that faint, hard-to-pin-down training arms race in the familia had come from.
So it was you, Kureha, secretly turning training into an arms race!
Half-dead from "Baptism" every single day and still not satisfied, sneaking out at the crack of dawn for extra practice...
That wouldn't do!
How can life be nothing but dreary training? There's so much else in this world worth experiencing.
Like good food. Or like...
"Kureha, come here."
"Huh?"
The next second, Leon roughly hauled Kureha up over his shoulder.
"Ah! What are you doing!"
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