Chapter 754: The First Four

Chapter 754: The First Four

The inheritance let Leon feel an army he didn’t yet have.

For a moment, he understood how willing fighters could recognize one another’s intent inside his command field: where a strike was going, who was preparing to cover it, when someone needed room to move. They would still make their own choices. He could help those choices meet instead of collide.

Supporting the field would strengthen their coordinated action. Its reach and reinforcement depended on what he could sustain.

Then another part of the knowledge settled, and he stopped examining the battlefield applications.

He could grant titles.

Each appointment strengthened its holder in a particular role. A modest benefit remained even away from him; the stronger collective effects needed his active support. The inheritance made the distinction clear, along with the requirement that a recipient willingly accept. It gave him no claim over their private thoughts or decisions.

Leon already knew who he wanted to appoint first.

He examined the other reward before leaving.

[Administrator authority: advanced]

[New privilege: Reward Selection]

[On future qualifying clears, the administrator may choose from eligible rewards within the grade earned.]

That was useful. He could work toward a grade knowing he would have some say in what he received. His next reward might suit what he actually needed instead of becoming another valuable object he had to find a use for.

Can I pick everything? he asked, just to see.

[No.]

Worth asking.

The Mandate was already his. Reward Selection applied to future qualifying clears, and nothing in the new privilege suggested he could raise his own evaluation or open someone else’s reward cache. He dismissed the notice and called the exit.

***

By the time the four women joined him in the main house, Leon had washed the battlefield grit from his hair and eaten most of the food Xyra had put in front of him. His arm still complained when he reached across the table.

Ira noticed. "Good fight?"

"Very good," he said. "You’ll want to hear this."

She pulled up a chair.

He gave her the account she’d asked for, including the illusion the Marshal had recognized. Seraphine asked how quickly the formation replaced its broken links. Vyra wanted to know whether the army’s coordination depended entirely on the commander. Loriel listened while checking his aching arm, then told him it needed rest rather than healing.

When he explained the reward, Ira leaned forward.

"You can do that for us?"

"Something like it. Without making you march behind a shield wall." Leon looked around the table. "I’d like you four to have the first titles. If you want them."

"What’s mine?" Ira asked.

"Vanguard. Close pressure and breaking through resistance."

She held out her hand. "Yes."

"Wait," Vyra said. "Before anything changes, we should try the same exercise without it. Otherwise we’ll spend the afternoon arguing about what it actually did."

Ira lowered her hand reluctantly. "One exercise."

They went to the eastern flat. Xyra followed and watched Leon raise a thick stone pillar in the sand circle, reinforcing its interior with mana. He made two more beside it, checking that the same amount supported each.

"Measured attacks," he told them. "We want to compare results. Not see whether you can destroy a rock."

Seraphine tested the first pillar with a light cut. "And the same sequence."

They settled on one quickly. Vyra would confine the impact, Ira drive heat into a selected point, and Seraphine cut through it. Loriel would sustain a measured thread of vitality through the sequence, letting them compare how smoothly she supported Ira’s exertion. Nobody needed to exhaust herself to discover whether that changed.

They practiced the timing without striking, then performed it against the first pillar.

A deep groove opened across its center. Stone flaked away beneath Ira’s fist, but the reinforced core held. Leon examined the damage before releasing the remaining support.

"Now," Ira said, holding out her hand again.

He laughed and offered her the appointment.

The Mandate reached toward her and waited. When she accepted, he felt the role settle into place. Ira flexed her fingers, then drove a short punch through the air.

"There’s something there," she said. "Small, though."

"That’s the passive part. I haven’t raised the field."

"Then hurry up with the others."

Seraphine rested a hand on her sword. "If I see an opening you haven’t noticed, do I need to wait for your order?"

"No," Leon said. "You’ll feel what we’re preparing, and we’ll have a clearer sense of what you’re doing. You still choose when to act."

"Good. Blade Captain?"

He nodded. "Precision and coordination. It should suit how quickly you change between your two affinities."

She accepted after considering the offered role. Loriel took longer, examining the feeling of the Mandate’s invitation before looking up.

"Life Keeper," she said softly. "Does the field decide who receives my support?"

"You do."

"Then yes." Her smile came more easily than it had at the table. "I want to see what changes."

Vyra waited until Leon turned to her.

"Warden," he said. "Field control. Keeping the group’s defenses working while the others move."

"That sounds like what I already do."

"That’s why I thought of you."

She studied him for a moment, and he found himself waiting more intently than the simple exchange required.

"I accept," Vyra said at last. "But don’t start assuming every problem can be solved by adding more people to your field. You’ll be supporting them."

"I remember how tired the first army made me."

"Good."

She moved beside the second pillar. Leon let the brief pleasure of her acceptance linger before following.

They repeated the sequence with their titles active and the command field absent. The attacks used the same measured output. This time the groove penetrated farther, and a crack reached around the pillar’s reinforced center. Loriel lifted her hand from Ira’s shoulder and glanced at her own fingertips.

"The transfer was cleaner," she said. "I didn’t have to correct it when you struck."

Ira inspected the crack. "That’s worth having even without him."

"I’m standing right here," Leon said.

"I know. Raise the field."

He did, and felt all four accept its guidance.

Their intentions reached him as immediate battlefield awareness, without words or access to anything private. Vyra was ready to contain the strike. Ira was waiting for that pressure to settle. Seraphine intended to follow the opening in the stone, while Loriel watched the moment Ira committed.

Leon supplied the field, feeling its steady draw alongside his ordinary circulation.

The third strike landed with none of the tiny delays he’d seen before. Vyra’s containment held as Ira’s heat drove inward. Seraphine followed the forming fracture, and Loriel’s support arrived through the exertion without needing an adjustment afterward.

The pillar split through its reinforced center.

Ira caught one falling half before it hit her foot, then looked over at Leon with an enormous grin.

"Again."

"After I rest my arm," he said, lowering the field. "I did just fight an army."

She came over to inspect it herself, apparently unwilling to trust Loriel’s earlier conclusion when it stood between her and another attempt. Leon let her, enjoying the others discussing the test around him.

They had fought beside him long before today. Now he could contribute something that made their shared efforts more effective, even when his sword wasn’t the one reaching the enemy.

At the fence, the boy who led the morning drills was quietly moving his curious students farther back from the fallen stone. He wanted to stare as badly as they did, but he made sure nobody climbed through first.

Leon noticed.

There was room in the Mandate for more appointments. He intended to make people earn them, and the first lesson wouldn’t be how loudly they could promise loyalty.

He waited until the boy had settled his group, then called him over.

"Tomorrow," Leon said, "I want to watch you train them."