The basilisk—or so Leon was assuming the creature in front of him to be—came out of his room like a furious animal, but as soon as his reptilian eyes landed upon Leon and Maia, he froze in place, his look of wrath soon dropping into something more akin to a mix of terror and anxiety.

“Who… are you?” he hissed.

Leon almost turned the question back on him, but he figured that since he was in the creature’s home, he’d introduce himself first.

“I’m Leon, a mage passing through Attica,” he said. “I’ve been looking for another mage that went out to hunt a basilisk and vanished. The woman in that room appears to be her.”

The basilisk paled and took a step back. His aura began to rise, but his killing intent wavered slightly. He seemed to be panicking, and his fight-or-flight response was tilting heavily toward the latter.

“As a matter of fact,” Leon continued, “I’m also looking for the basilisk itself. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

The basilisk bared his teeth and didn’t immediately respond. It took several seconds for him to unclench his jaw, and by then, Helen was already carrying Anna out of the bedroom she’d been laying in. The young alchemist had her sister over her shoulder while her other hand was stuffing the antidote for basilisk venom back into her pocket. She remained behind Leon, but she gently placed her unconscious sister down in a nearby armchair, then turned back to face the monster with her spear raised.

“That woman is my concubine,” the basilisk grumbled. “She thought to kill me and failed. Her life is mine to do with as I please.”

“I disagree,” Leon countered. “You’ve been a menace to human society, killing those in this area. It’s only natural that humans would come out here to kill you.”

“I claimed this territory by right of might,” the basilisk riposted. “Your kindred living in this region were too weak to hold onto their lives, and so were ended. This land is now mine.”

“This land is claimed by the city of Attica,” Valeria replied, her voice loud and forceful despite being a full tier behind the basilisk in power. “You can’t claim this land without clearing it with the city, first.”

The basilisk spat on the floor. “Weaklings who need walls to hide behind.”

Leon cocked an eyebrow and nodded to their surroundings.

The basilisk responded, “For the comfort of my women. They needed human comforts, so I provided.”

“You disgusting swine!” Helen screamed in rage as she took a step forward. “You dare to touch my sister!”

The basilisk sneered and replied, “I never touched that sow. Even after all I provided for her, she never gave me what I wanted.”

“And what is it you wanted?” Leon curiously asked as he glanced back at Helen. He’d heard enough to want the creature dead, but there was a part of him that had initially thought they might be able to resolve all of this peacefully. If this basilisk was an Ascended Beast with human-level intelligence, then surely it was capable of reason. However, with every word the creature spoke, that part of Leon was growing smaller and smaller. Already, he was having trouble keeping his desire for more immediate justice in check—and besides, the prospect of adding Helen, an alchemist, to his retinue was just too tempting to pass by, and he could tell that she’d never let him leave this creature alive.

But he was still two full tiers above this basilisk, and he felt like he had the luxury to ask questions.

“Mates. Comfort. Everything that I didn’t have in the north,” the basilisk explained.

“How many have you killed?” Valeria demanded, her aura laced with prodigious killing intent. She was a hair’s breadth away from attacking, herself, that much Leon could tell from her tone. And given the power difference between her and the creature, if she attacked, then Leon’s hand would be forced.

With a grimace, the basilisk admitted, “Many. I’ll admit that I don’t know that much about you humans…” He glanced at Maia, then back to Leon. “At least, some of you are human… I tried to make the lives of those women I took better, but they kept killing themselves or running away when I gave them the slightest freedoms. Even after I took steps to keep them here, they still denied me what I wanted. When I got forceful, it just increased the chances that they’d kill themselves. Frustrating.”

There wasn’t a single trace of regret in the basilisk’s tone that Leon could detect. It was almost like he was describing a failed gardening project rather than kidnapping and veritable enslavement of an unknown number of people. Leon didn’t think that the basilisk believed its actions were wrong but was mostly just confused as to why none of those it took wanted to stay with him.

“You know,” Valeria said as she and Helen started creeping forward, their weapons raised, “if people I wanted to be with kept killing themselves or running away from me instead of just ‘giving in’, or whatever you thought they should’ve done, then I might examine what it was about me that making those choices more attractive. It might trigger some self-reflection, and a change in behavior.” The silver-haired woman took a threatening step forward, and Leon thought that if she weren’t a full tier below the basilisk, then she might’ve already attacked him.

The basilisk took one look at her, glanced back at Leon, and without a word, fell into the floor. The stone below his feet simply split open with a titanic cracking sound, and he fell in.

Leon, having been keeping his eye on the basilisk, knew that this was the creature using its earth magic to try and escape. Before the floor could close back up, he was lunging forward, lightning crackling around his fingers as he summoned a bolt. The basilisk wasn’t yet out of sight, and his head was turning upward, his human face contorted in panic and fear.

With a tremendous clap of thunder that shook the entire cave, the bolt slammed down into the floor just as it closed, but Leon knew at least a few arcs had to have reached the basilisk.

“He’s not dead!” Leon shouted as he felt the vibration of the basilisk tunneling away. “See to them!” he shouted to his companions, pointing to Helen and Anna as he shot off toward the stairs. The basilisk could only be doing one thing: trying to escape by reaching the surface. It wasn’t moving too quickly underground, and neither could it move that easily without Leon knowing where it was, so reaching the surface and transforming back into its true form could it hope to get away.

Any remaining desire that Leon had to resolve this without resorting to violence vanished. If the basilisk got away, then more people would die; that was the reality of the situation. Leon had to stop it here and now.

If Leon were a mere seventh-tier mage, or even an average eighth-tier mage, then if the basilisk could get into the sky, he was practically home free. Leon wouldn’t have been able to follow him. But as it was, Leon was pulling his sword and most of his clothes back into his soul realm by the time he reached the first step.

His magic senses were pulsing out of his body and spilling out above ground before he reached the second step, and he forced himself to pick up the pace as he saw the basilisk erupt from the ground and immediately begin to twist and bend out of human shape. With lightning magic fueling his body, Leon reached the surface just as the basilisk returned to his true gargantuan form, with a huge serpentine head, bat-like wings, a long neck covered in feathers, and an even longer tail with a dangerous barb at the end.

The basilisk hissed at Leon, then beat its wings, pushing it up into the air on a great cushion of wind magic.

Leon didn’t miss a beat, however, and took a running jump after the creature, his own body rapidly expanding and twisting into his avian form as he did. He’d finished his transformation before he’d even reached the apex of his jump, and began to rapidly beat his wings, using his command of wind magic to rapidly pursue the basilisk.

The basilisk was much larger, it’s wingspan at least five times that of Leon’s. However, all that extra mass came at the expense of speed, and Leon rapidly closed on his prey. With a screech of fear, the basilisk began to put all of its magic power into trying to escape, but it was of little use. Leon came up from behind, dodged the basilisk’s whip-like tail twice, and then let loose with a blast of lightning from his wings.

A roar of pain echoed throughout the Wetlands, and the basilisk immediately slowed, a gaping hole torn in one of its wings by Leon’s silver-blue lightning. Little blood was spilled, though, the heat of the blast having cauterized the wounds.

Clearly sensing that it wasn’t going to be able to escape, the basilisk’s killing intent spiked, and it slowed to face Leon. But Leon wasn’t going to give it any opportunities to strike, and slid around the monster with ease that surprised him given his lack of practice fighting in this form, his greater speed taking him above his prey. Another beat of his wings sent a second lightning bolt rippling out from his feathers and down at the basilisk, which slammed into the monster’s back right between its wings. The creature became momentarily lost within a great storm of lightning, as arcs of Leon’s power covered it from snout to tail barb. It screeched in pain once again, and when the lightning cleared up, the scales over most of its back been torn clear, the flesh beneath had been burned black, and its wings had seized up.

The basilisk fell from the sky, still shrieking as it hit the tops of the trees and crashed right through to the ground.

Leon followed at a fair distance, not wanting to get too close to such an injured monster. He was stronger by leagues, but the basilisk was still enormous, and its physical strength was considerable. There was also the creature’s venom to consider.

He kept his magic senses locked on the basilisk, though, and watched as it plowed through the muddy ground of the Wetlands, plunging down from drier land and into a shallow swamp. Finally coming to rest, the basilisk began to thrash about in the mud, seemingly unable to get its bearings enough to rise, and Leon took full advantage of its confusion.

Letting his Thunderbird instincts take over, Leon angled himself downward, his wings curled in and his talons outstretched. He fell from the sky like a thunderbolt, and before the basilisk could react, Leon had spread his wings to control his final descent, and his talons sank into the basilisk’s feathered neck. The force of Leon’s landing slammed the basilisk’s head back into the mud, but without hesitation, Leon lunged forward, ripping and tearing into the basilisk with beak and talon, both sparkling with silver-blue lightning.

All around him, the heat of his lightning boiled the muddy ground and shrouded the environment in a thick curtain of superheated steam. But Leon kept ripping and tearing into the basilisk, not stopping until the monster had stopped moving completely, and when he pulled back, his face, covered in brown and gold feathers, had been practically dyed red from the basilisk’s blood. The monster’s head itself had been nearly torn free from its mangled neck, and it had fallen still, its eyes glassy and unfocused as more water and mud rushed in to replace what Leon had boiled away, covering the creature’s scales, and threatening to pull both Leon and the basilisk’s corpse further into the muck.

Leon took a deep breath, taking half a second to savor his victory, and then pulled the basilisk’s corpse into his soul realm. At the same time, he lifted off with a great wingbeat, and after reaching a height of a couple hundred feet, he surveyed all the damage done.

The basilisk’s landing had carved a long trench into the forest and down into the swamp, while Leon’s lightning had started a few small fires. He didn’t pay much attention to the latter—given the general dampness of the environment, those fires wouldn’t spread far even if he left them alone. He used some of the abundant local water magic to snuff them out, anyway.

There were a few other beasts in the area with auras that caught his attention, but none were stronger than the fifth, and all were fleeing away from the site of the basilisk’s fall. Amusingly to Leon, about a quarter mile away were a small handful of what looked like fishermen on a dirty boat, their lines lowered into the green water of the swamp. All of them were staring up at the sky in terror, though none seemed able to see him through the leafy canopy. He guessed they’d heard the fight, but none were stronger than the second-tier, and so he wasn’t worried about them noticing him.

Almost lazily, he turned around and began flying back in the direction of the basilisk’s lair. They hadn’t been flying for long, but he and the basilisk had still managed to cross a couple miles, and it took a few seconds for Leon to land back on the shallow hill just outside the cave entrance.

As he touched down, Maia, Valeria, and Helen emerged, with Helen pulling a hovering litter behind them which had the still-unconscious Anna tied to it.

Without hesitation, Valeria rushed forward and summoned a low wall of opaque ice just tall enough to cover most of Leon’s naked body. As he assumed his human form, he quickly dressed himself and stepped out from behind the wall.

Is it dead? Maia demanded as Valeria rushed over to check Leon for any wounds.

“It’s dead,” Leon confirmed aloud. “I’m fine, and its corpse now decorates my soul realm. So how about we head back to Attica and get miss Anna some medical attention?”

His words didn’t deter Valeria from looking him over, and Maia calmly walked over to his side. Helen, meanwhile, stood fairly far apart from them, staring at Leon like… well, like he’d just transformed into a massive eagle and then back again.

“What… in the FUCK… just happened?!” she screamed.

Leon smiled at her as nonthreateningly as he could, though the effect clearly wasn’t quite what he intended as he saw her tense up a little with his attention focused upon her, and he said, “Let’s get back to our boat. I can explain on the way back to Attica.”

—

The journey back to Attica proceeded fairly quietly. Leon started to explain what he was comfortable with on the way back to the boat, but he’d barely started before Anna started to awaken, and after that, all of Helen’s attention was focused on her sister. Anna didn’t truly wake up during the journey, though her eyes did open part way, and she mumbled incoherently, though those episodes never lasted too long. Helen seemed to think this wasn’t much to worry about, though, or she was keeping her emotions a little more bottled up after seeing what Leon did. She notably sat as far away from Leon, Valeria, and Maia as she could on the boat, indicating that whatever trust they’d built up on the way to the basilisk’s lair had been lost.

Leon felt more than a little regretful for that, though he couldn’t say the result was too terrible. Anna had been found alive, contrary to seemingly everyone’s expectations, and the basilisk had been killed. It hadn’t been quite the hunt that Leon had expected, but it was a fine enough way to spend the day. At the very least, the rural residents of Attica would be just a little bit safer now that the creature had been taken care of.

What Leon was most looking forward to now, though, was dissecting the basilisk. He was a little squeamish about it because the basilisk had been a creature of human level intelligence, but his excitement at maybe seeing what was going on within its body was overpowering that particular anxiety. Besides, he didn’t regret killing the creature that much, given his seemingly complete unrepentance for the harm he’d inflicted on many other people. He thought that he might need some help, though, since not only was the basilisk incredibly large, but he also didn’t think he had the biological knowledge to truly understand what he was doing or what he might learn.

He’d need some help from Heaven’s Eye.

After that came the issue of what to do with its parts. As he contemplated that particular problem, his eyes drifted over to Helen, and he figured that he’d save the parts until he and she could meet up again—assuming she even wanted to, she seemed quite freaked out at his ability to transform—and perhaps work out some way where she could sign on with his retinue. He might have to sweeten the deal a little bit more, but the idea of adding a fifth-tier alchemist, and maybe even her sixth-tier sister, to his retinue was too attractive of an opportunity to pass on.

Upon their return to Attica, Helen swiftly disembarked from the boat to bring her sister to a healer. Anna appeared to stabilize during the trip, falling back into total unconsciousness not long after they got back to their boat, and Helen seemed unable to do much to help. Not even some of Leon’s healing spells did much, though she at least accepted them, giving Leon some hope that she would at least hear him out when he made his offer of employment.

That left Leon, Valeria, and Maia with the rest of the evening to fill. So, they turned the boat back in, informed the bounty manager of their success, and made their way back to the guest house, where they met up with Elise and the rest of Leon’s retinue. As they sat down for a large celebratory dinner, a number of Heaven’s Eye workers came by to help Leon prepare the basilisk for dissection the following day, and Leon was able to leave the corpse with them until then.

The rest of the day he spent with his family. Elise managed to get Leon, Valeria, and Maia to head out into town with her to sample the night life, but Attica was a small city with not much in the way of fun to be had after nightfall. Consequently, Elise then dragged them over to where Princess Cristina was staying, and the four spent a long night with the Princess and several of her knights.

When they returned to the guest house, Leon was tired, both mentally and physically, but he considered it a day well spent.