There was so much grim essence that as his mangekyou devoured and burned it as fuel for growth the pattern in his eyes began to slowly but surely shift. the four black dots that made up leon mangekyou rotated slightly as the center pupil started to grow four points in the cardinal direction. unfortunately before this transformation could actually finish the amount of grim essence smoke coming from salem stopped. it had taken much longer for salem to be purified than both of the other two combined at a whole twenty minutes.
Leon could only grimace at this since if the pattern held this meant salem would need to endure suffering for an entire hour. without the influence of the grim essence leon was surprised to note that salem turned much more attractive than before. she now had a pale but slightly tan skin tone and even though her hair was still gray it was now shiny and eye catching like silver. the black striations were also completely absent from her body so now she simply looked like a fairly normal woman rather than having the sort of eldritch vibe she gave off before hand.
The pattern did hold by the way as salem spent the next hour gritting her teeth and clenching her fist from the pain. leon wasn't surprised at how strong her will power was considering how she maintained her sanity for so long despite being a normal person before getting cursed with immortality. contrary to what many would say salem had not actually started performing cruel acts until ozpin betrayed her while killing their children , who she still grieves for by the way. in fact according to the true story after she failed to get him back originally she actually made a small hut far from anyone to be alone for millennia.
Leon knew that if salem lost her edge because of this purification he may need to kill off most of her people who only served her because she was the strongest person with goals that aligned with their own. cinder may in fact fall in this category as leon had gotten a very good read of the girls personality in this last year. cinder was a ruthlessly ambitious individual who originally came under salem in order to fulfil that ambition which she partially did by stealing a maidens power.
Tyrion might go either way to be honest since he practically worshipped the ground salem walked on before this but considering how twisted his mind is it was difficult to gauge him. the maid was safe however since she was absolutely loyal to salem in the same way a good dog might be. 'still none of that matters until salem finishes her suffering and awakens.' he thought shaking his head to clear his mind. once a hour passed salem stopped showing signs of pain and it was now a matter of waiting for her to wake up now.
The stress of being tortured for an entire hour had clearly exhausted salem so leon gently picked her up and carried her to his room to rest. it was an unusual feeling for salem when she was getting purified , like some unknown weight had been lifted off her shoulders. she knew that this feeling wouldn't last and that an old friend of hers was going to visit her after it ended. indeed just as it was expected pain flared up throughout her whole body and even soul. she resisted it's effects fairly easily since she was all too familiar with pain thanks to the uncountable amount of times she tried to end her life.
Yes it was stated by the genie of the artifact of knowledge when telling ozpin's story that salem had sought to end her life by any means necessary. she of course tried poisons , weapons , drowning , burning , dismemberment , jumping into a volcano , freezing in a blizzard and when nothing worked she thought that since the god of lights power was what fueled her curse she would use his brothers to break it hurling herself into a grim pool. this was the origin of her terrible corruption and without it no one knew what she would be like anymore , not even her.
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