Salem was unaware of what cinder was planning or else she would absolutely not sit back and watch as leon's animosity skyrocketed if cinder succeeded. the small glimpses of information salem had on leon's power meant enraging him was little different then unleashing a nigh unstoppable force to kill you , suicide with extra steps. oddly no matter how hard she looked salem had never seen any indication of leon getting medical treatment either. this was concerning as it meant he either didn't require it after getting injured or he had simply never been injured to begin with.
These sound similar but they had very different levels of significance with the later being much more concerning for salem. leons genius was a well known fact globally but book smarts rarely translate well to combat genius as well and if he had never been injured despite the way he hunts he would undoubtedly be considered a combat genius as well. salem had seen a few of these over her long life and each one had always been a pain to kill even before they fully matured. an example would be the woman known as "the grim reaper" decades ago who was a member of the silver eyed clan as well as a combat genius.
Salem had lost literally all of her powerful subordinates in the process of attacking the woman and even till today wasn't one hundred percent sure she was dead since no body had been found. salem had recuperated her losses since then but learned from her mistake of underestimating such people. leon was different than any genius salem had ever seen as he not only rose to a level of power that she suspected was on par with a maiden. but he had done this at only fifteen years old on top of his businesses.
Such a genius had only appeared a single time in the form of the "beast god" who along with the artifact of creation created the entire faunus race and was unrivaled even until his disappearance. that's right , disappearance , not death , no one , not even salem , knew where the man went but he simply seemed to just vanish from the world after his work was done. if salem hadn't known for a fact that ozpin's identity was not the same she would have been confident that it was just another of her ex's ploys but the man simply couldn't be in two places at once.
She had sent an ancient grim to kill the beast god at one point only for the man to reverse kill the titan in the only known instance of someone felling such a monster. such prowess forced salem to hole up in the dark lands in fear of getting sealed away should she be discovered. salem was fairly arrogant but she knew that even if killing her was nigh impossible , sealing her on the other hand was a much easier prospect.
If someone could ever overpower or catch her off guard they could rip her apart and seal the separate pieces far away from each other effectively removing her till she was released somehow. the fact leon appeared to be another such monster growing steadily made her slightly nervous but since she knew he was corrupted she was fairly certain she could bring him to her side over time. unfortunately even now her bad habit of not sharing her plans was coming to bite her since cinder is scheming up a plan that leon killed nearly a thousand people previously for planning.
Meanwhile leon stood before his class with a smirk at how rough they all looked but satisfied at their progress. much like the previous lesson leon and his assistants set up an ambush on the path to his teaching area but all of the students became vigilant when they felt their auras warning them. even though none of the students were caught off guard they still made it to the teaching area where they relaxed thinking they were safe and had passed the test only for the dirt below them to grow chains and capture all of them. "uh oh! looks like you activated my trap card!" leon said from hiding with a mad cackle.
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