"Hold the fuck up , you can destroy the world!?" opal asked with a panicked expression. leon shook his head "that wasn't what i said , what i actually said was that i had the knowledge on how to do so. not like i ever plan to use the knowledge or share it for that matter since you know i sort of live here after all." he said with a slightly joking tone. "thank the gods for the small mercies." opal said with a sigh of relief but leon gave her a funny look at that statement.
"You do know that the entire reason the world is covered in grim is because of a god right?" he asked seriously. opal was taken back by this "what do you mean?" she asked confused. "ozpin told me that apparently the grim were supposedly created by the god of darkness as an attempt to imitate life but obviously they were failures. after that rather than erase his mistake entirely he just ignored them despite the fact they began to propagate the entire world and later when he and his brother created humanity and the grim started to attack them in hatred he still ignored them."
"fast forward to today and now the entire world is infested with the damn things all because a god refused to fix his own mistakes." leon explained honestly. opal looked conflicted since despite how badly she wanted to believe that the gods wouldn't do something like that it actually explained where the grim came from. as an explorer she knew that the grim were completely different from literally every other creature on the planet and this explanation explained why. "then again ozpin seems to think these eyes of mine also came from the god of darkness so who knows." leon said with a shrug.
"Is that all you wanted to know?" he asked calmly as he went to start boiling some water in a pot over the bunsen burner. " pretty much yeah." she said honestly. "great , since that's out of the way help me with this stew. i have a bit of game left over and some seasonings but i could use some vegetables as well and i reckon you probably know all the tasty forages around here." leon said with a grin. "geez i literally just joined you and you are already putting me to work , i see how it is." she joked before walking digging through her own rather large bag and taking out a few plants.
There were some purple tubers as well as some long red peppers and a plant with a green color and yellow smooth bulb at the bottom. "snake roots , xiachen chilies and wild onions." leon correctly identified each of the plants much to opals surprise. "did you even need my help?" she asked suspiciously. "not really but i just didn't feel like going to look for the plants myself and genesis would probably just go drag back a whole deer and call it a day if i asked him." leon said with a shrug.
"How are you so strong if you are both this lazy?" she asked exasperated. leon snickered "trade secret i'm afraid." he said with a wide smirk. "jokes aside i trained to the point of snapping my muscles to get to this point." he said honestly. "right , broken regeneration and all that." she said with a look of understanding. "pretty much , now to let all of this stew for about an hour so we can eat." leon said while waving a pocket knife through the ingredients faster than opal's eyes could follow and tossing them in the pot with the meat of the rabbit he caught yesterday.
The two of them sat around in a couple folding chairs leon pulled out of his bag. when asked about it leon explained that it was a magically expanded bag with separate compartments with different environments meant for preserving ingredients. opal was a honestly a bit envious since something like that would have made her job a thousand times easier. according to her the hardest part of being an explorer was finding yourself without any known resources to eat leaving little choice save experimenting with the local fauna.
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