"... Do you really think that you can trust him?" Amanda asked with a serious expression."I"m here thanks to him; I used his method for transporting spies," Leon answered.
"How did you convince him that he could trust you?" Amanda asked.
"I cleared the dungeons his soldiers didn"t manage to clear, and I gave him a few pointers in how to do the same," Leon said. "Putting that aside... why William would give Hector such armor?"
"I don"t know, Hector doesn"t know either," Amanda said. "Hector never talked with him directly, but one day William just gave him the armor, and he said that he wanted to negotiate with him in the near future. I trust Hector, Leon. In the last four years, everything he did was to keep the survivors here safe."
"I will trust your judgment... well, let"s forget about this conversation for the time being," Leon said.
"Why? I also want to help you and make our nations become allies." Amanda declared.
"Just leave it to me, all right," Leon said. "If something happens or if I fail, I don"t want you end up suffering the consequence of my actions."
In the end, Amanda understood why Leon wanted to do that alone. She had a life now, a family, and he didn"t want to see her losing that again. After that, they had lunch together, and eventually, Hector joined them, but he didn"t come alone. A blue-eyed, blondie woman was with him, her hair was relatively short, and she wore gla.s.ses. For some reason, she also looked kind of familiar. Leon didn"t know why, but Hector was grinning from ear to ear, and that alone was enough to make Leon feel the urge to punch him.
"Hey, Leon. Did you remember Sasha?" Hector asked. "She is one of the survivors who escaped with us."
"Sasha... Sasha... Ah, your neighbor Sasha." Leon recalled the memories of the times he went to Hector"s house. "We went to the same middle school and high school, right? I can"t believe someone who knows the old you decided to work with you... anyway, stop grinning you are creeping me out."
"... h.e.l.lo, it has been a long time." Sasha offered a handshake while smiling wrily. "I"m thankful for your remembering about me."
"Mmm? Yeah, sure." Leon accepted the handshake and tilted his head in confusion.
Leon had few memories of Sasha, even though they went to the same schools for years, she was a shy girl so that he couldn"t recall himself ever talking with her.
"Leon... did you know? Back in the day, Sasha had a crush on you." Hector grinned even more.
"Captain..." Sasha lowered her head to hide her embarra.s.sment.
"Is that so? She certainly has discerning eyes." Leon smiled. "Anyway, stop grinning, or I will give you another marriage present."
"... What did you give to him?" Amanda asked while frowning.
"A punch, what else would I give him?" Leon asked. "By the way, do you want something in particular?"
"I want to see you two getting along like the old days..." Amanda sighed. "I also want to recover the lost time... but I guess that is asking too much."
"It isn"t... I cannot make you any promises regarding this guy," Leon looked at Hector and frowned. "But I plan to take it easy for one week… after that, I will do the things I have to do."
"Which are?" Hector asked.
"It is none of your business," Leon answered.
"Please, get along…" Amanda sighed again. "Leon, can you teach them how to use mana manually?"
"If you want to, I don"t mind, like I said, I will take It easy for a few days," Leon answered.
"I really don"t have that much free time…" Hector said.
"It is okay if you follow Leon"s instructions you can learn almost instantly," Amanda grinned. "In fact, I already learned Earth Manipulation."
Hector and Sasha looked quite dubious of that, but after lunch, when they went to the garden, after five minutes, both of them were controlling small spheres of earth, and their mouths were wide open.
"Well, that is certainly surprising," Hector furrowed his eyebrows. "But it is not a spell per se."
"To learn new spells, you have to make the system recognize the spell," Leon explained. "Certain criteria need to be met... I"m not entirely sure, but to learn spells that shoot small projectiles, you have to create and shot them in less than 0.2 seconds."
"Are you fine teaching us that?" Hector asked. "Knowledge is a power you know; you could make a fortune by selling this information."
"Do you think I"m that pesky?" Leon frowned. " I"m not going to stay here forever, so I would rather increase my sister"s a.r.s.enal while training her. If you guys share this information with other people, I won"t mind, if more lives can be saved by using magic, then that is fine by me."
"It will take a long time to master this type of magic..." Sasha stared at the earth"s sphere floating in front of her.
"But, it is fine, right?" Amanda asked. "It is not dangerous to practice, and the more we practice, the more points we will get. Leon said that he mastered this in a few months."
"Yeah, but there is much more to learn," Leon explained. "It is possible, but I didn"t learn any spell using Earth Manipulation alone."
"... What do you mean?" Hector frowned.
When Leon explained to them about transformation and creating magic, finally, they understood why despite being a mage, Leon spent so many years on the island. Despite that, learning from a teacher was much easier than learning alone. So, they were certain that in a month or two they would be able to learn spells... they couldn"t be more wrong.