"Well, you two should take your time talking for the time being," Hector said. "I"m going to be in my office.""Did something happen?" Amanda asked.
"Yeah, another horde attacked the South entrance of the city." Hector rubbed his eyebrows. "Five soldiers died... it could have been worse if Leon didn"t have helped. Your big brother is a hero, Amanda."
"Why the h.e.l.l are you complimenting me? You are creeping me out..." Leon frowned.
"Don"t fight... how did you help them, Leon?" Amanda asked, with her eyes full of curiosity. "No, where have you been in the last four years?"
"Well, it is a long story..." Leon said.
"Is it? I think you summarized your last four years in three sentences when I asked." Hector frowned.
Leon ignored Hector"s comment and entered the house with Amanda. Although the place was big, it was quite simple, just like the outside. Leon thought his sister would be the type of wife who would decorate everything, but aside from her room and her daughter"s room, everything was pretty dull.
Leon"s niece was called Maya... it was the same name as Leon and Amanda"s mother. She was sleeping, and she was adorable like her mother was when she was a baby. Maya was 18 months old; she could talk to some extent and even toddle without help. However, she was sleeping.
"Are you hungry? You can tell me what happened while I cook something." Amanda said.
"I"m kind of hungry; I didn"t eat anything since I learned that someone used a hydrogen bomb to sterilize our hometown," Leon said. "Still... can you cook? I remember that you didn"t even know how to make noodles."
"That was a long time ago." Amanda pouted and looked away.
While Amanda was cooking, Leon told about what happened to him. Since he only trained, slept, and ate, there wasn"t much to say.
"So, when happened, you were in an airplane…" Amanda said, surprised. "Most humans can survive a fall from that height now, but I don"t want experiment that kind of thing…"
"I don"t want to experiment that ever again… I still remember the state I was after I woke up." Leon said. "My legs and arms were bent to wrong directions, and I barely could move any muscle without screaming in pain."
"Ah... please say no more, just by imagining, I have s.h.i.+vers," Amanda said with a pale face. "Four years alone... I don"t think I could endure that for so long. Sorry for making you remember that."
"It is fine, even though some days were depressing, I knew that I could return home if I worked hard," Leon said. "Hector gave me a summary of what happened to you... so I think I don"t want to hear anymore. Especially the last two years... if I hear one more sentence about your marriage, tomorrow Hector will wake up on the moon."
"Stop being so childish... Hector isn"t the same he was, you know." Amanda frowned. "Still, to think that you learned magic by your self... is it that hard?"
"The basics aren"t that difficult; like everything, the more your practice, the easier will become," Leon explained. "The hard part is how to make the system recognize an offensive spell. Let"s go outside; you will learn in no time."
Amanda was a bit dubious of that, but in the end, her mouth was hanging open when she learned Earth Manipulation. She couldn"t believe how simple that was, of course, she only could manipulate a small amount of earth, but eventually, it would become something she could use in combat.
"I can"t believe it..." Amanda said. "Speaking of which, did you fight on the island to get those items?"
"No, this is..." Leon hesitated. "Amanda, what do you know about the political situation between the nations?"
"... I know that is pretty bad in Europe." Amanda frowned.
"Do you know that some American spies stole resources from j.a.pan and ended up killing the eldest son of the Emperor?" Leon asked.
"No, but I imagined that something like that has happened..." Amanda crossed her arms. "Suddenly, the higher-ups obtained scales of Water Dragons and understood something shady had been done because Water Dragons never attacked our nation. Soon after, hordes of monsters started to leave the dungeons... someone caused that. The higher-ups said that is work of the j.a.panese spies."
"I"m not so sure about that, and I"m pretty sure Hector"s armor is made of that material..." Leon said. "Where did he get that?"
"A few weeks ago, a man gave it to him," Amanda answered. "His name is William, and he is the founder of the council. All in all... he is the number one survivor, and he represents the American people. Together with another Canadian and a Mexican survivor, they decide what is best for the future of the Allied Forces of the North-America... Leon, are you hiding something?"
"...I left the island three weeks ago," Leon explained. "I didn"t have enough mana to cross the whole Pacific ocean while protecting myself. So, I headed west and arrived in j.a.pan."
"Really? What happened there?" Amanda asked, surprised.
"At first, I was treated pretty bad since everyone knew that spies coming from the Allied Forces of the North-America killed their prince," Leon answered. "But eventually, I met a few reasonable people... one of them was the Emperor."
"He was reasonable? I can"t imagine..." Amanda frowned. "Every single bad thing that happens here, a rumor suddenly emerges, saying that a j.a.panese spy was the cause of it."
"Well, I can"t say for sure if that is true or not..." Leon said. "All I say is that he wants justice, and he asked me to bring to him those who killed his son... and I intend to do that to avoid a war and make j.a.pan become an ally of the Allied Forces of the North-America."