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He’d left the port not even an hour ago, doing so without even the support of his personal ark. The ark was still following with his strongest Tempest Knights and his retainers, but Leon had prioritized speed in reaching the battle. It would take a few more minutes for the rest of his people to catch up, and then perhaps half an hour or more for the proper response force to reach them. As it was, many of the reinforcements that had already arrived or were on their way were being diverted to assist in the battle.

But Leon put all of that out of his mind. He’d summoned the storm clouds not long after the Sunlit Emperor had revealed himself, which meant it was time for their rematch. He could pay attention to the movements of his side after dealing with the enemy’s strategic assets—their highest-level mages.

He dove through the clouds, lightning erupting from his feathers and raining down upon the Imperials far below. Dozens died as the bolts struck the Imperial ships, some as strong as sixth-tier. These people weren’t nearly as important to Leon as the Sunlit Emperor or the ninth-tier mages he’d brought with him, but opening with these strikes sent the message, he hoped, that if they didn’t try and stop him, then he would wreak havoc upon their naval lines.

Leon’s eyes found Sunlit’s as he pulled out of his dive, the man’s eyes just barely visible through the slit in his helmet’s visor. The man’s pupils dilated slightly as they made eye contact, their auras clashing in the skies above the battle. His armor had clearly been replaced and his body healed if his aura was anything to go by, but it seemed the memory of how their last clash ended was still strong in him as he immediately fell back.

But Leon couldn’t pursue for at the same time, the four ninth-tier mages at his back charged.

With the expansion of his soul realm, Leon had a significantly greater amount of magic he could call upon, but four ninth-tier mages represented a fantastic amount of power, rivaling if not potentially exceeding that of a tenth-tier mage. So, he flapped his wings and ceased charging down the Sunlit Emperor, who seemed intent on falling all the way back to his flagship.

As the ninth-tier mages moved against him, they spread out and filled the air between him and them with their magic power. A wave of fire, deadly gusts of wind that could flay flesh from bone, a roc made of water, and an eerie orb of darkness sped toward Leon, but he responded with a number of powerful lightning bolts from the clouds above. The orb of darkness was torn to pieces in short order, and the water roc quickly boiled away, but the silver-blue lightning of the Thunderbird Clan did little to the wind and the fire.

So, Leon rose higher, the fire flowing beneath him while the wind ripped and tore at the feathers of his undercarriage. He felt the sting as a few flesh wounds were opened and a few feathers were pulled out; hardly debilitating injuries, but it was their first exchange and he’d come out bloodied.

His heart began to beat not just from exertion but from excitement and anger. His eyes narrowed as he responded to this insult with another round of lightning from the heavens, and the four ninth-tier mages were forced to halt their advance and defend themselves. The wind mage was struck hard and fell several hundred feet before righting himself, but the darkness mage managed to cover himself and the others with a black shield that absorbed Leon’s lightning and was torn apart.

With an annoyed snort, Leon wreathed himself in lightning and accelerated toward the darkness mage, eschewing the long-range battle for a more aggressive strategy.

The Imperial mages responded with force, firing off another round of their magics with greater intensity, making the sky above the battle dangerous enough that nearly all other airborne warriors were forced downward to avoid being caught up in their clash. Even two arks, one Tribal and the other Imperial, were damaged due to proximity.

But Leon cut through it all, losing a few feathers and suffering a few more lacerations, and crashed into the darkness mage. He wore heavy armor, but Leon’s talons were strong and sharp; the talons of his right foot wrapped around the man’s left leg while his left talons took ahold of his waist. Now entangled, they fell from the sky, and Leon squeezed as he brought his head down to slam his beak into the Imperial mage’s lighter armor around his neck. The strength in his talons deformed the Imperial mage’s armor and broke bones.

The mage screamed and wrapped himself in darkness, while another sphere of darkness was conjured around them. In the face of Leon’s silver-blue lightning, however, the Imperial mage’s darkness was torn asunder, and Leon’s beak pierced the mage’s armor and lanced into his throat, severing all soft tissue in the neck, and shattering his neck bones. The mage’s scream was cut off as Leon then channeled lightning through his beak and into the mage’s body, frying him from the inside out, destroying not only his body but also his soul realm, ensuring the mage was thoroughly and completely killed.

Leon hardly had time to drop the man before another wind blade sliced into his back, tearing away yet more feathers and opening the largest and most painful injury he’d sustained so far. The fire mage then appeared almost out of nowhere, his body trailing flame, his eyes wide with fury, and he buried a sword to the hilt in Leon’s side. Fire surged throughout Leon’s body, wracking his mind with pain. Before he could react, the Imperial water mage then appeared on his other side and brought a massive war hammer down upon him, aiming for his head. Leon barely managed to crane his head away in time, but the hammer struck his shoulder, shattering it immediately.

With a terrible shriek, Leon let loose a massive wave of lightning that pushed all the Imperial mages back and scorched their armor black. He then returned to human form and donned his armor, eschewing the extra power and speed of his Thunderbird form for the added protection and healing abilities of his armor. The injuries he’d sustained thus far carried over to his human body, and the pain immediately began dying down as the tau pearl got to work.

Leon didn’t remain passive, however, and as his power inundated the sky, it competed with the auras of all the other mages in the battle. The sheer amount of magic in the air caused the storm clouds he’d summoned to begin to weep, and the wind picked up into a roaring gale. The seas became rougher, and those mages who’d fallen in and hadn’t been eviscerated by the Tribal war beasts were pulled under, as were some of the lighter Imperial ships. At the same time, Leon glanced over his shoulder and summoned as many bolts of lightning from the clouds as he could, striking one of the two remaining Imperial arks, ripping through its defenses, and obliterating its internal enchantments.

The ark didn’t fall from the sky; it exploded in a massive blue fireball as the magic powering it surged out of control. Leon still had six arks on his side, and the Imperials had lost more ships, so he judged the course of the battle to be swaying in their favor, but it hadn’t yet been decided. That was made clear as the Sunlit Emperor’s aura once more exploded out from his flagship, and he directed a massive stream of lightning from its bow, which arced from Tribal ship to Tribal ship, shattering a handful in one attack. They were mostly lighter ships, but nearly a thousand Tribal sailors died in less than a second from that attack alone.

Leon scowled and directed a few more lightning bolts at the Emperor, but Sunlit ducked away and managed to deflect them with his own mastery of lightning magic. Leon couldn’t direct any more bolts as the ninth-tier Imperial mages dove back in for the next round.

Before they could cross blades again, however, a truly massive water dragon sprang from the writhing ocean below, snapping many of those Imperial mages still in the air into its jaws and almost bringing a comedic smile to Leon’s face as it chewed. At the same time, the most distant Tribal reinforcements finally came into range, and a few more Tribal Lances were added to the fray. A few more medium-weight Tribal destroyers also drew close to some of the heaviest Imperial ships and bathed them in fire using the same Flame Lances that Jormun had used on his ship in the Serpentine Isles.

But as a twister formed around him, as fire swept in from all sides, and as boiling water surged from below, Leon put all that out of mind.

He pulsed with power, his magic senses keeping track of the ninth-tier Imperial mages and allowing him to direct a few powerful bolts of lightning their way. He saved most of his strikes for the wind mage as he seemed the strongest of those who remained. Most of his lightning was absorbed by the man’s armor, but he was gratified to see a few burns appear on his face, joined a moment later by a few streams of blood.

The fire mage, however, was largely unscathed, and he charged through the massive fiery cyclone powerful enough to pull small ships right out of the water below and struck at Leon with his blade again. Leon met the sword with his own, the two exchanging fifty blows in hardly a tenth as many seconds, every one of them accompanied by a fantastic explosion.

Leon didn’t allow himself to stay on the defensive for long, though, and, trusting in his armor to protect him, he twisted his body to let the fire mage hit his body where his armor was thick and used the opening to strike at a weak point in the fire mage’s armor—as much as there was one, the mage was wearing full plate. To add to his chances, Leon conjured his anti-fire magic stone and activated it as frantically as he could, and for a moment, the fire mage wasn’t able to call upon his offensive power.

The fire mage’s blade raked across Leon’s armor, leaving a long scratch but not penetrating. Leon’s Adamant blade, however, bit into the fire mage’s armor at the shoulder of his sword arm and, with the aid of Leon’s lightning magic, penetrated several inches and tasted blood. The fire mage growled in anger and pain and slammed his feet into Leon, pushing the two of them apart. Leon almost lost his blade as it caught on the fire mage’s armor, but his strong grip and perhaps a bit of mutual desire between himself and the weapon to not part kept it in hand.

The sound of horns rolled across the battlefield as Leon assessed the position of the other Imperial mages. He was starting to feel drained and his injuries were taking some minutes to heal, so he was struggling against the pain. But the Imperial mages, with some bitter hatred in the small bits of their faces Leon could see past their helmets, turned and fled, though Leon still had to tear his way out of the fiery twister.

The Imperials returned to the Emperor’s flagship, and Leon noted that despite the Emperor’s power, his reinforcements and arks were causing casualties. Maia’s water dragon was rampaging through their fleet, too, causing immense damage among all but the largest of Imperial ships.

He grinned behind his helmet as two older Tribal arks approached from the southwest, adding additional Flame Lances to their arsenal. The Imperials, however, began turning their ships around. The Sunlit Emperor glared up at Leon as his flagship began the laborious task of turning its hulking hull around, and Leon hung in the air, glaring right back as the tau pearl continued to heal his injuries. Had he been without those injuries, he would’ve pursued the Imperial mages, but as it was, his adrenaline and excitement for battle weren’t able to keep the pain away, and the stab wound in his chest and the long laceration on his back were making themselves impossible to ignore the more he strained himself.

The Sunlit fleet then fled, leaving more than a third of their ships, eleven of their arks, and several tens of thousands of their sailors behind.

Leon’s fleet, however, had lost about a quarter of its force, half of the six arks they’d started with, and of their war beasts, only two krakens and one whale had been killed. The rest of their losses Leon couldn’t yet tell, but it seemed to him that this was a victory. The damage the remaining ships and arks had sustained prevented them from pursuing and making the victory decisive, but he wasn’t going to balk at this win. They were able to keep their supply line to Kataigida open, and that was what mattered, especially since Sunlit’s reinforcements were still on their way.

It was their first rematch, even if only by proxy, and as Sunlit quickly sailed away, Leon felt his confidence rise. With a pulse of his magic senses, he observed the Jaguar and Iron-Striker leading counterattacks on the Sword, taking advantage of the absence of Sunlit and his most powerful mages to strike at the Imperial lines, and it seemed they were already making some marginal gains.

Leon wasn’t sure how far they might be able to push, but as he drifted downward to meet the rest of his retinue as their ark finally approached the battlefield, he smiled again.

‘A good first step,’ he thought. ‘Time to follow it up with a few more.’

---

He’d hoped that Leon would arrive at the battle. That would’ve given him a chance to kill the boy properly; the loss of even his entire navy would’ve made it a winning proposition.

But as soon as he’d arrived, Sunlit had felt a searing pain shoot through his body, and he’d been unable to stop himself from falling back and ordering his subordinates to attack in his stead. As a result, not only had they not managed to kill or capture Leon Raime, they’d even lost another of their number. Sunlit’s supply of ninth-tier mages, already fairly low at sixteen before the ambush on Leon Raime over the Ivory Plains, had now shrunk to a mere eleven, and of those eleven, three were far too valuable for their skills to waste on such personal engagements.

As Sunlit entered his private chambers on his flagship, he had to stop himself from screaming in frustration. There were still people in the adjacent rooms, waiting for him to come out and receive their after-action reports.

But he couldn’t yet face them. Most of his military advisors had supported his plan, but there had been some dissension. Those dissenters had proven themselves correct—not that they cared anymore, with their heads so distant from their bodies by now.

As he used his power to close the door, Sunlit strangled off a cry of pain as he pulled his armor back into his soul realm, the sudden release of pressure on his body causing the scars that covered so much of his body including his once-handsome face to flare up with new pain. His eyes watered up and he growled in hate and rage. Whatever Leon Raime had done to him had seemed like it was getting better, with the pain noticeably dulling over the past couple months. However, it had grown again in this past week and then had come roaring back once he and Leon were in such close proximity.

Sunlit had to find some way to fix himself.

‘That little bastard!’ Sunlit silently complained as he stared at his face in the mirror, the awful burn marks covering his face impossible to ignore. ‘I will find some way to kill you! You will never escape from me!’

He heard a sound from the window, but ignored it for a moment, chalking it up to normal noises to hear whilst at sea. But when the sound came again, he glared at the window, a small and heavily reinforced thing that held little beauty, and stalked over to it as he donned his armor again. Whatever was making that sound was going to regret it.

When Sunlit threw the window open, however, he found no one waiting for him, only the open ocean. However, as the ship banked slightly, his eyes caught something hanging off a nail that had been hammered into the ship’s hull.

Sunlit’s flagship was, as it ought to be, heavily reinforced and had an outer hull of enchanted steel. For something to hammer a nail, even one the size of his largest finger, into it was disconcerting.

What disconcerted him even more was the object hanging from the nail: a jagged piece of obsidian that glowed with an oily red light as it caught the light of the sun hanging from a golden chain. Whatever that obsidian was supposed to be, it held an enormous amount of strange power that didn’t seem hostile, if his magic senses weren’t failing him.

Tentatively, Sunlit glanced around once more, and, after not seeing anyone else around, cautiously used his powers to telekinetically grab this obsidian amulet, or whatever it was.

As soon as he brought it inside and closed the window, it flashed with yellow-orange light, disrupting Sunlit’s power holding it up. But instead of falling, it simply hovered in the air, and Sunlit retreated and drew a vicious-looking hammer.

The obsidian then calmly emitted a flame that surrounded it, forming a ball of fire. Within that fire, two glowing white-hot eyes then formed.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” a deep, crackling voice resounded from the fireball. “I believe we may have a common enemy, one that has proven himself frustratingly hard to kill. My name is Amon, and I believe we may be able to help each other…”