In the wake of the battle with Duke Duronius, August ordered the entire army to take a few days of rest and relaxation. They weren’t allowed to leave the camp unless they were on official business, but it was more than enough time for everyone to get some much-needed rest after the first major battle of the southern campaign.

All things considered, the soldiers and noble retainers performed admirably. They managed to bait a force roughly twice their size into getting flanked, then being driven off the field. Duronius and his people were still out there in the forests to their southwest, but for the moment, they weren’t doing much of anything besides sitting in their camp and keeping an eye on August’s armies.

Both sides were waiting for the other to make the next move, it seemed.

That was just as well, for the final count for August’s casualties was about nine thousand dead and almost thirty thousand injured, and they needed as much time as they could get to heal those injured men and women.

Two hundred of those dead and about nine hundred of those injured were from Leon’s unit, leaving him with barely more than half of what he had been given before the battle began. Nearly all of the giants had suffered some form of damage, as well, but they were far easier to ‘heal’ since all they needed to do was use their earth magic to seal the cracks in their bodies. Fortunately, none of the giants had fallen during the battle, so Leon didn’t consider his personal forces meaningfully reduced, even if almost half of his men and women were either dead or recuperating.

This was a bit of a callous and dismissive attitude to take toward his human subordinates, but given that the nobles and knights that he had been placed in charge of held little respect for him, he didn’t see much of a reason to change his mind. Of course, they had known each other for less than a day, so he wasn’t too insulted or angry, and he didn’t expect that attitude to have changed much even though they had fought alongside each other during the day. At the very least, he knew that it didn’t much raise his opinion of them any, so he couldn’t imagine that theirs of him had improved.

In that vein, after Leon and Roland met up with August, Leon returned to the battlefield to link back up with Valeria and the rest of his unit, and he was only mildly surprised to find Valeria almost attacking the nobles he was supposed to be commanding. They were still back at the ridge that Roland’s Legions had been defending, with the nobles and their retainers on one side, Valeria on the other, and the giants not too far away tending to their injuries. The rest of the army had also separated into their component groups as they were slowly organized, leaving Leon’s unit mostly on its own.

“What’s going on?” Leon asked as he and Alix arrived, seeing Valeria staring down the Barons with her glaive in hand as they mostly looked back at her with scorn and derision and their own weapons drawn.

“Insubordination,” Valeria simply replied, not taking her eyes off the armed Barons.

“This little girl presumes to command her betters!” the leading Baroness haughtily replied as she spared Leon a dismissive glance.

“Explain,” Leon demanded. He trusted that Valeria had been ordering them to reassemble and to prepare to return to the camp and deal with their dead and wounded, but he wasn’t going to take that for granted. Besides, as much as he didn’t like the nobles, he knew that it was best if he didn’t blindly take Valeria’s side when accusations were being made—even when they were incredibly rude and elitist.

If he did, he could easily see them attempting to mutiny against him, despite the giants on his side.

“Sir, I was trying to get them back into ranks to wait for you, but they have done nothing but insult me and ignore my orders!” Valeria complained, her tone calm but carrying a hint of killing intent.

“It’s not your place to tell us what to do, girl,” Baron Gellius spat, his brown eyes appearing almost black as his brow scrunched in an almost comically exaggerated scowl.

Valeria didn’t respond verbally. No one needed to be reminded that Leon had made her his second-in-command over the Baroness, so Gellius’ denial only made him a traitor in her eyes. She took a few steps toward Gellius, raising her glaive slightly as she did. Gellius didn’t back down, he was a fifth-tier mage and had more than enough confidence that he could take Valeria if they came to blows—though he did assume a more directly confrontational stance than he had a moment before. Behind him, many of his knights did likewise, drawing their weapons and moving up to support their Lord, while the other Barons backed up to watch.

But neither made any further moves. Before Valeria could get any closer, a brilliant golden bolt of lightning exploded upon the ground between them, showering them and almost everyone else within thirty feet in burning sparks. A split-second later, a deafening boom hit them like a tidal wave, crashing upon their ears so hard that it caused several lower-tiered mages nearby to collapse in shock.

“None of you will be fighting with each other right now,” Leon growled as he slid down from Anzu’s back. Having just come from the field hospital, he was in no mood for these games. “We’re returning to camp. There will be no arguments.”

His aura exploded outward, inundating Valeria, the Barons, and their closest knights in a veritable ocean of killing intent. And that for the best, for it distracted the Barons from the fact that Leon’s lightning and thunder had attracted the attention of nearly everyone else still on the battlefield, along with the giants. If they knew that they had an audience of tens of thousands, they might’ve decided to stick to their guns. As it was, with Leon’s sixth-tier aura crushing them under its weight, no one said a word other than a few whispered orders from the Barons to get everyone else ready to return to camp.

“Good…” Leon drawled, a vicious smile on his face as he strode forward, placing himself between Valeria and the Barons. “Once we get situated, I’ll expect everyone to come and see me so that we can work through all of this unpleasantness together. Let’s get moving.”

His order was carried out almost as soon as he retracted his aura. The Barons didn’t stick around, eager as they were to just get away from him. If nothing else, it at least displayed that they had had their fill of fighting for the day despite their posturing and weren’t quite willing to take their insubordination too far. Or maybe it was the giants slowly creeping towards them, their healing temporarily suspended in the wake of Leon’s blatant use of magic and release of killing intent.

“We’re good here,” Leon called out to Lapis as the giant approached.

“Are you sure?” Lapis replied as it seemed to flex in an uncannily human way, the blue streaks in its stone body glittering in the late afternoon sun.

“For now,” Leon said, smiling at the giant. “We’ll have to see about later, but for now, we’re all friends.”

Lapis continued its strangely human mannerisms by turning to look at the Barons as they walked away as if it doubted Leon’s word, and a moment later it confirmed its doubt when it merely said, “If you say so…”

“Now… then…” Leon said a bit awkwardly as Lapis turned its attention back to the rest of the giants, “I suppose that we ought to head back to camp ourselves…”

“You sound like you have some kind of question…” Alix stated. “There something wrong?”

“I just figure that we would probably be expected to camp next to all of these people, and I have no idea where that might be.”

“I can take care of that,” Alix happily said. “Give me an hour and I’ll have it all set up!” And like that, she quickly began to ride back to the camp, leaving Leon and Valeria on their own amidst the giants and the rest of the Legions, who were still getting reorganized by setting up patrols and continuing to dig through the bodies by the ridge for their fallen and injured comrades.

Leon and Valeria shared an awkward look before they, too, began to meander back toward the camp, Leon astride Anzu and Valeria upon her borrowed horse. The silence was heavy to the point that even Leon, who normally reveled in such conditions, felt a bit uncomfortable, prompting him to speak up.

“So, have you heard from your father lately?” he asked her, cursing himself for how awkward and forced it sounded—he wanted to learn a bit about Justin, and he figured that now, after spending a couple of months around each other, was a good time to ask.

Valeria stiffened a bit in her saddle causing Leon to think that maybe he miscalculated, but she quickly answered, “No… I haven’t heard anything…”

“That’s honestly quite strange to me, do you have no idea where he might have gone?” Leon asked after a sigh of relief that Valeria didn’t seem too upset at him for asking the question.

“None. He just… disappeared…”

“Kind of strange that he hasn’t reached out, isn’t it?”

“Very much so…” Valeria’s tone was quiet and somber, and she clearly didn’t want to talk much about her missing father. She stared off into the distance, avoiding Leon’s questioning gaze.

“The two of you were quite close before, weren’t you?” Leon hesitantly asked. He did his best to keep his tone even and mildly curious, as he didn’t want this to sound like the interrogation it kind of was. If Valeria continued to so obviously not want to talk, though, then he fully intended to stop and talk about these things later.

But lady luck smiled upon him, and Valeria replied, “Yes, we spoke whenever we could. We had so few others here, and no one else related by blood. I’m sure you can relate, being foreign to the Bull Kingdom yourself…” As she finished, Valeria finally turned to look Leon in the eye, staring at him so intently that he suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious.

He pressed on, regardless. A little discomfort was nothing compared to finally getting around to his main reason for accepting Valeria’s request to become his knight.

“I can understand that, I think the Barons have rather plainly shown how much they respect those they think beneath them today, and foreigners will always be beneath them in their view. But you two have also lived in this Kingdom longer than I have, and the Bull King even gave Lord Justin the Exarchate of Calabria. You two were nobles where you were from, weren’t you?”

“The length of time we have lived here, or the privileges extended to us have never mattered, we’re still defined by our name,” Valeria replied, referring to her last name.

As she explained to Leon back during their time in the Knight Academy, ‘Isynos’ simply meant, ‘from Isynia’. Much as Leon had been marked as an outsider with the name of ‘Ursus’, so too had she been marked.

Valeria’s tone turned a bit wistful and nostalgic as she continued, “This Kingdom has always been my home, and it’s filled with a great many wonderful people that I will remember for my entire life. But there are always people here and there that will do what they can to ensure that this isn’t my home. Or who try to, at least. People like Asiya, Elise, and Cristina help in that regard.”

“I can agree with that,” Leon said. “It’s almost like the nobles are from another world with how they can treat me, sometimes.”

“They kind of are, they’re stuck in the past from before the Bull Kings began to limit their power.”

“What about Gaius? He seems to be quite fond of you.”

“Gaius… represents another kind of attitude. He’s a noble, but he wants something from me. Or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that he wants me. Not being rude towards me has always struck me as false and untruthful since his behavior, at least until our time at the Knight Academy, was usually quite unrestrained.”

“What did your father think of him? I get the idea that he thought that he had a legitimate chance to be with you, regardless of your personal feelings.”

“His father and mine frequently spoke with each other, since Lentia is quite close to Calabria, and to my understanding, the Duke of Lentia sometimes floated the possibilities of me and Gaius getting married. My father always promptly shot those down.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Leon nodded appreciatively while suppressing a scowl. Justin was his enemy, of that he had no doubts, but learning that the man wasn’t a card-carrying villain rankled him a bit. Killing an enemy like Tiberias was easy, the young noble didn’t have much in the way of redeeming features. Knowing that Justin cared for his daughter—or at least Valeria seemed to think so, given her slightly reverent tone as she spoke about him—would make killing him just that much harder.

“Why are you so interested?” Valeria asked, shaking Leon out of his thoughts. “No offense intended, but I’ve always gotten the feeling that you like to remain distant, I honestly wasn’t expecting you to ask me about my father.”

“You’re my knight,” Leon replied. He knew that he would be bringing this up with Valeria at some point, so he had mentally rehearsed the answer he’d give if she ever asked this question. He was quietly happy that she did, meaning that his efforts and preparations in that respect weren’t in vain. “Would you not agree that it’s my duty to worry about you and to learn what I can about you?”

“Duty is one thing, following through on it is another.”

“… I did wait quite a while, though,” Leon pointed out. “To be honest, I almost pushed this down the line a bit more. But still, you’re my knight, and I would like to know more about you, if you’re willing to tell me.”

“I am,” Valeria immediately replied, giving Leon a joyful smile. “In return, I hope to learn more about you.”

“That’s… fair, but I don’t think my life has been that interesting. Mostly just living in a single-room cabin in the woods.”

“Then you can tell me about those woods. I promise not to fall asleep out of boredom.” Valeria gave Leon a cheeky smile that took him completely by surprise, stunning him into silence. “So, is there anything else you’d like to know about my father?”

There was. In fact, there was quite a bit Leon wanted to know, he hadn’t even scratched the surface, but with the eager way Valeria was staring at him, he knew that he’d have to pay for it with information about himself, and that wasn’t a price he was quite willing to pay.

“No, at least not for now.”

“That’s a shame, I was hoping to grill you about yourself…” Valeria teasingly replied.

“From the looks of it, I think I might’ve dodged an arrow, there,” Leon said with a good-natured smile, to which Valeria responded with a playful smirk.

The two returned to the camp in relative silence with the giants not too far behind. Neither of them spoke too much for the rest of the day, for the day had already been quite long and they were both tired. The first proper battle of Prince August’s southern campaign had come to an end, and it was time for them to get some rest.

Leon knew they’d need it, for he now had to deal with the Barons, and the sooner he did that the better.