Chapter 970 - Battle Over Thunderhaven Aftermath

Leon stared at the corpse of the Sunlit Emperor, reveling in his victory. All he needed was a brief glance at his forces to know that the victory was complete. It appeared that the Thunderbird Clan’s heavy cruiser had been seized and what little remained of the Imperial Palace had been occupied. There was a lot of work to do ahead, but most of that burden, thankfully, would be borne by others.

Still, he’d have to stick around to ensure that peace could be negotiated between his Kingdom and the Sunlit Empire, and for that to happen, he’d have to bring Arcaion and the Sunlit officers who surrendered to him from Argos to Thunderhaven. That was a great distance, and he had to make sure that they actually made it and that no enterprising Sunlit officer thought that killing Arcaion might be their ticket to absolute power.

Interrupting his thoughts, Leon sensed a few arrivals.

“Well done, Leon!” the Lord Protector exclaimed as he landed a few dozen feet away, his face breaking out into a wide smile. “A magnificently fought duel!”

The Grand Druid didn’t bother with so many words and simply landed and pulled him into a tight hug. Leon was taken by surprise and didn’t fight the embrace.

“My boy, what a good boy, what a fine man,” she gushed as she held him increasingly tighter. “No other man could’ve ever been worthy of my Cassandra!”

The Director and Penelope landed next, but to Leon’s relief, neither of them sought to replicate the Grand Druid’s show of affection.

“You’ve brought the Sunlit Emperor to a most deserved end, Leon,” the Director stated, the corners of his lips tugging upwards ever so slightly.

Penelope was more direct. “It’s about time that ill-mannered lecher lost his head! I’m only upset that I wasn’t the one to do it!”

The Director’s black-haired daughter sauntered over to the Sunlit Emperor’s remains and kicked them a few times. Leon cringed slightly at the sound of buckling armor and shattering bones.

After a moment, though, Leon turned his attention away from them and towards arguably the most consequential of the other tenth-tier mages: the Keeper of the Sentinels.

The Keeper hadn’t joined the others in the obliterated forest to ‘admire’ the Sunlit Emperor’s corpse. Instead, Keeper had maintained a healthy distance, hovering in the air about a mile away. His blank, pupil-less eyes were staring directly at Leon, though.

Leon tensed slightly as the Keeper’s aura fluttered, but then relaxed as the tenth-tier mage turned around and began flying northeast. He didn’t know what might come next with him, but at the very least, it seemed that he’d be able to deal with it later.n)/o.-v//E-)l./B..I-)n

For the moment, he had some celebrating to do...

---

Leon’s return to his fleet was bombastic. Thousands of Tribesmen raised their voices and roared in recognition of his victory, and of theirs. Of Leon’s family and retainers, Cassandra was the first to come out to meet him, slamming into him in midair and wrapping her arms around him so tightly that he almost lost his magical hold on the Sunlit Emperor’s body.

“You did it!” she shouted. “You killed him!”

“Yes,” Leon replied with a warm smile. “He’s dead. Dead as dead can be, as it so happens. Deader than most dead things, and so dead that... he... well I don’t know where I was going with that, but he’s finally dead, and isn’t that just great?”

Cassandra favored him with a few loud guffaws before Leon had to field another ecstatic lady; Elise came out of Silver Spear and rushed over, embracing him almost as soon as Cassandra pulled away.

She didn’t say anything, but her shivering and glowing smile was all Leon needed to ascertain her mental state—still coming down from the anxiety of seeing him fight with the Sunlit Emperor while beyond joyous that he’d won. He pulled her close and pressed his lips against hers, and she reciprocated in kind. They didn’t need anything more than that.

The rest of Leon’s retainers came to meet him after that, led by Valeria and Maia who’d spearheaded the charge to take the heavy cruiser. Their greetings were no less loving than Cassandra or Elise’s, with Maia wrapping herself around Leon in a manner that almost suggested she was trying to compete for his attention, while Valeria kept a more dignified distance—though he could see through her body language to know that she was practically dying to get out of the spotlight and reveal her true happiness.

“Leon,” Valeria said, “we’ve seized the heavy cruiser.”

“A great prize,” Cassandra said, “but one that pales in comparison to this one’s death.” Much like Penelope had, and to everyone’s amusement, Cassandra gave the Sunlit Emperor’s corpse a few more strong kicks.

“Now, now,” the Grand Druid interjected, “let’s not go around desecrating the dead, young lady!”

“Although,” Penelope added, “if there could ever be an exception to that rule of propriety, it would be him.”

Cassandra scowled and returned to glaring out of the window. “Can you not be right, please? I’d rather you weren’t...”

Leon hugged her from behind and lightly kissed her cheek. “I’d rather I wasn’t, but I’d much rather that we don’t have to come back to this place. Let’s just finish our business, make peace with Arcaion, and then leave.”

“And the Keeper?” Cassandra asked.

Leon took a deep breath and glanced to the northeast. In the past few days, Keeper had returned to Sentinel land, and it didn’t seem he was preparing for war. Instead, his armies, which he’d been using to keep Ilian and Evergold from interfering in Leon and Sunlit’s war, appeared to be standing down.

“That’s... up to him,” Leon said with some uncertainty. “I’d like to make peace with him, too, but making peace requires both sides to agree... I want access to my Clan’s old ruins to see what remains; I don’t want to fight them.”

“Speaking of,” Valeria said, drawing everyone’s attention to the map she pulled from her soul realm and planted on a table.

It was a detailed map of the Sunlit Empire, and multiple locations in a cluster around the southwest were circled in red, though nearly all had subsequently been crossed out. Only two circled locations remained.

Indicating the map, Valeria said, “These are the two only places where the Titanstone refinery that Nestor claims is here could possibly be and never have been discovered before now.”

Leon walked over and examined the map. He’d retrieved the locations of the most important Thunderbird Clan sites during their occupation of Aeterna from a map in the Cradle, the lab that Nestor had established in the Border Mountains between the Bull and Talfar Kingdoms. The stone giants had been born there as golems, and Leon had used the training array within to ascend to the fifth-tier.

That same map had pointed him not only to Nestor’s lab deep in the Forest of Black and White but also to the lab in the Sacred Golden Empire where he’d acquired thunder wood and Tikos as a retainer. The Titanstone refinery was a place he was hoping might still be salvageable, and if he was able to make peace with the Sunlit Empire last, he was hoping he’d be able to poke around and see if it could be found without much pushback from local forces.

To that end, Valeria had taken it upon herself to head into the city and find some records of what lay in the area. This map represented her results.

“Everywhere else,” Valeria continued as she indicated the crossed-out circles, “have either been surveyed, settled, or undergone too much geological change for much of anything to remain. But this forest and these hills remain largely unchanged and uninhabited. If the refinery has gone unnoticed, as it seems to have, then these areas are the only places it could be.”

“We’re going to have to see if we can get permission to explore that area,” Leon stated as he fought the urge to lick his lips. To fix Storm Herald, the personal ark of Jason Keraunos, he’d need a spectacular amount of Titanstone, more than was produced on the plane in decades. That refinery was a longshot, but could very well be the key to acquiring enough in a timely manner.

Of course, there was always the possibility that the refinery no longer existed—eighty-thousand years was a long time for facilities like it to break down and decay—and there was no guarantee that the refinery even had any Titanstone remaining within it. In fact, Leon almost expected something like that to have been heavily looted when the Thunderbird Clan’s vassals abandoned the plane after Jason Keraunos’ death. The amount of Titanstone that Nestor claimed went through that refinery was enough to make even an Elemental King turn his head in interest; only a fool would’ve discarded such a resource.

And yet Leon was hoping just such a fool had existed. Hells, even if none did and the refinery had been completely scrapped and looted, he knew he still would’ve gone looking for it. It was just as much a part of his Clan as the palaces in Sentinel territory, and he wanted to see if it was still around.

“I’ll make a note of it,” Leon said. “I’ll be meeting with Arcaion in a few days. Hopefully, we won’t have to stick around here for much longer and we can get the hells out with a peace treaty in hand. Then, maybe, we’ll be able to explore this area ourselves and see what we can see...”

“Even if we aren’t given permission, we’re still going to explore it, right?” Valeria asked with a roguish smile.

Leon returned her smile. “Of course, we will.”

“Ha! I knew it!”

“And we’re all going, aren’t we?” Elise said expectantly.

“I’m not staying behind!” Maia insisted.

“You’ll only be rid of me when I’m dead,” Cassandra added.

Leon smiled and promised his ladies they’d be brought along, too. He wasn’t sure how much time he’d have left for adventures for the next few years, so he wanted to make sure he could squeeze in one more before having to focus on being a King for a while. If anything, he was almost disappointed that he had nothing else to look forward to in the near future than the bureaucratic and state duties of being a monarch.

Peaceful, to be sure, but tedious. Not a duty he’d look forward to, but one he’d see to all the same. At the very least, he could start working on trying to achieve Apotheosis.

Although, he also couldn’t settle the feeling of unease in his stomach at the fact that the tau hadn’t yet shown himself again. Given what he’d told Leon, Leon thought that his near future might yet hold some excitement, though of what sort he still had no idea...