Salem grimaced as she felt the [devil's due] directly anchor itself to the energy that had cursed her with immortality. until now she had no idea what exactly this energy was but since a few of her people had made deals with leon in the past she roughly understood it as life force since leon explained it that way when making deals. speaking of deals , salem was in love with this ability of leon's since despite the draw backs it had it was the single greatest loyalty guarantee she had ever seen. dying a painful death for reneging on your side of a deal was basically the best motivator to not do that you could find.
Sure some people might not value their own lives in the face of freedom but that was the best part of the ability , it only enforced the terms of the deal so anything outside that was fine. the ability simply didn't enslave another person against their will but required consent while not under duress so they likely would break the deal to begin with. as far as salem was concerned leon was a walking treasure trove when all of his abilities were on display.
Leon left the meeting calmly since he had a gut feeling that the next year will be very much to his advantage even if he didn't know why this was. glenda was less ok with the situation since when leon explained it it sounded like he was abandoning tabitha. leon shook his head at her idea and explained that thanks to his magic he could return briefly to check up on her whenever he wanted so he would only be a bit more absent in the girls life. translocation was an easy thing to set up for leon with the only reason he hadn't already being that he would need to have been to both sides of the connection before he set it up.
Leon also didn't want to deal with the people constantly asking him to set up circles between cities and kingdoms for trading purposes. if he did do that then the people of the kingdoms would start to slack off when it came to hunters and that was a lethal mistake for them. if the grim waited long enough to gather into a massive horde and attack while the kingdoms were short staffed with skilled hunters that was basically game over.
Sure there would be a massive boom in the economies but the long term effects simply weren't worth it to leon. glenda was still upset that leon was leaving but she couldn't use tabitha as an excuse anymore. leon knew why she was truly upset but he didn't care about it since he had made it clear that he wouldn't be tied down for any real length of time. it may have seemed that way since tabitha was born but the truth was that he left plenty of times for days on end to train.
The only reason he may have been mistaken for being tied down was that he always returned at some point to check on his business's and daughter. still leon reckoned that he would get much less chances to do this while he was with salem so he informed all the relevant parties. once that was done he had genesis join him outside the city where salem was waiting with her minions. amongst which was cinder fall and a huge man leon didn't recognize that had several scars in his arms that seemed to be from where something had stabbed into them several times.
"That took less time than i had assumed it would." salem said with a curious expression. leon shrugged " it's not like i can't return whenever i want so i only needed to inform my people of any prolonged absences." he said calmly. salem raised an eyebrow at that in surprise "oh? and how can you do such a thing?" she asked with interest. "i can travel between two points i have been to before almost instantly with little regard for distance. this means i can return during my free time settle matters here and then go back with no problem at all." he said without hiding anything since he saw no reason to.
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