Chapter 10: Assasination

"Leon!"

Leon heard his mother’s voice. He immediately knew that he had been found out. He heaved a sigh and waited for her. She showed up in the next moment, looking at him with angry eyes.

"Why did you run off without your maids?" She asked.

"I came to train with Ash. She was teaching me more magic."

His mother heaved a sigh. "Leon, I know you love magic, but today is you and your brother’s birthday. Can we leave training to the side for just a day?" She asked. It sounded like a question, but it really wasn’t.

Leon looked at Ash for support, but she smiled and spoke, "You should listen to your mother, Leon, and spend your birthday having fun. You can always come for magic training tomorrow."

’Tch, you betrayer.’

His mum took him by the hand and carried him up. She held him tight to make sure that he would not slip out.

Leon looked back as his mother walked. He saw that Ash had turned her back and immediately cast a spell, creating a ball of ice now that she was not paying attention, and then he attacked with it. The ice flew through the air, but at the last moment, she spun around and waved her wand, destroying the ice. She smiled at him.

"Tch," he clicked his tongue.

His mother returned him inside, and the rest of the celebration continued. They ate, his sisters allowed him very little breathing space, and by the time the day was over, he was extremely tired.

The maids gave him a bath and got him ready for bed. He slept in the same bed as his mother for now. She refused to allow him to have his own room even though William had one already.

That night, while he slept right beside his mother, a figure moved past the window. Leon sensed something. His eyes twitched as he suddenly woke up. He spotted a shadow outside the window.

The figure came through the window without opening it.

Leon watched through barely open eyes as the shadow at the window simply moved, the darkness pulling inward and then releasing on the inside of the room, a shape forming from it the way smoke formed from a flame, present and then more present and then fully there.

’Moving with the shadows,’ Leon thought, keeping his breathing steady and his body still. ’Some sort of technique. Shadow movement spell.’

He could feel the mana in it. That was the part that struck him most, the way the figure’s movement carried a particular signature that pressed against his awareness in the way that all mana did ever since he started practicing with Ash. Like a sound only he could hear in a room full of noise.

’Who is he here for?’

His eyes moved to his mother, sleeping beside him, her face peaceful and completely unaware.

’Mom has enemies. She has always had enemies. She was the second wife after all. It would not be unusual for someone to try and remove her.’

He kept watching.

The shadow figure moved through the room toward the bed, and Leon tracked it with the particular stillness of someone who had learned very early that the best time to act was when the other person was certain they were unobserved.

The figure stopped.

Not beside his mother.

Beside him.

’Oh,’ Leon thought. ’So it’s for me.’

He turned it over in his mind without moving a single muscle. Someone wanted him dead. He was a child at his own birthday celebration, and someone had decided today was the day. He was not sure whether to be offended or impressed by the efficiency of it.

The figure reached into its coat and produced a blade, slim and dark, the kind that did not catch light because it had been made not to. It raised the knife, and Leon watched it go up through his barely open eyes, kept his breathing even, and kept his face slack.

The blade came down.

Ice formed around the figure’s hand before the tip could travel two inches.

The figure stopped.

It looked at its hand, genuinely confused, the blade locked inside a formation of ice that had appeared from nowhere in the span of a breath. Leon felt the effort of holding the spell in his chest, the mana flowing into it continuously, and he poured his attention into keeping it steady, not letting a single degree of inconsistency enter what he had built around that hand.

The figure pulled.

The ice held.

It tried again, putting real force behind it, and the ice held again. Then Leon raised his other hand from under the blanket, and the water that gathered above the figure’s head was not a dramatic amount. Just enough. A sphere of it, formed and sealed, pressing down around the figure’s masked face before it could process the shift from hand to head.

The figure reacted immediately, both hands going up, clawing at the water, the knife forgotten.

Leon watched it from the bed.

He kept the water there.

He poured everything he had into maintaining it, the way Ash had taught him to hold a spell under pressure, consistent and complete, no gaps, no hesitation, the mana flowing smoothly from him into the formation without interruption.

The figure struggled for a long time.

Then it stopped.

It went down slowly, the way things went down when something fundamental had run out, and hit the floor without a sound that would wake anyone.

Leon looked at it for a moment.

’So someone really tried to kill me.’

He sat up in bed, careful not to disturb his mother, and looked down at the body with the detached consideration of someone doing an inventory.

His first thought was his stepmother. He held it there for a moment and then set it aside. He would need more than suspicion before he acted on that.

He raised his hand over the body and reached for the Affinity Steal ability.

[Affinity Steal Activated]

[Shadow Affinity Acquired, Subclass of Darkness Affinity]

Leon looked at the notification.

He looked at the body.

Then he looked at the notification again.

Not only did I just survive my first assassination attempt, he thought, but I got something out of it.

He considered hiding the body and decided against it. Someone had sent this figure, and that someone would be watching for a result. He wanted to see what the reaction looked like when the result came back wrong. He wanted to know for certain before he decided what to do next.

He went back to bed.

He pulled the blanket up, lay his head down, and opened his system screen in the quiet dark of the room.

[Current Affinities]

[Water — 10]

[Ice — 8]

[Shadow — 2]

[Wind — 6]

[Fire — 6]