RSTUM 110 (Patreon)

110: Learning from the Best

Seeing how Annabelle operated, Leon could pick up a thing or two.

"So the lesson was not to stick my dagger in them but rather hold on to a weakness they have and keep them down?" Leon asked.

"You just figured out politics." Annabelle said.

"You, my lady, were bullying them." Leon said while attempting to talk the aristocratic way.

"Hah!" She laughed, "I hope you don't have a problem with that."

"Not at all." He shook his head but the look on his face changed a bit.

"What's the matter?" She asked.

"I have a bad feeling. I was thinking of running off somewhere far away and planned to make an easy living with my talent. Now, I feel like there will be more headaches in my life."

"You don't have ambitions?" She asked.

"Simple things satisfy me. It is hard to have ambitions when you don't have attachments." He replied.

"Am I not an attachment?" She asked with a bit of a saddened voice.

"Before I knew you, you were not. Just meeting you awakened something inside me."

"Then why did you spend two and half months on the road to get to me?"

"Because…" Leon spoke but he couldn't continue his words.

"Because deep down, you knew something would awaken."

"I just hoped."

"Your hopes have become true, son." She said while smiling before going for another topic, "How was it like before?"

"Me? Well… since I woke up in the Royal Academy that day…"

"Not… you now. The other man… the one who was not my son. How did he live and die?" She asked.

"You've seen the titles." Leon replied and took out the ID Plate once again, "I was called Black Cobra, a world-class thief."

"A world-class title means that the value of his achievements can ruin a nation." She said.

"Oh… a few nations in fact."

"He was not a simple man then."

"The best of the best as some called him. Stole for a cause, fought for a nation, died for love."

"He died for a woman?" Annabelle asked, "Sounds like a classical."

"No, the woman died with me." Leon laughed, "At one second, I was facing the world alone, fearing nothing, ready to die, then she came back for me, telling me to run together, it was too late… I killed her with me."

"I see why it is hard for him to be attached to anything."

"You kept saying (Him) rather than referring directly to me." Leo said.

"Just like how you are not fully Leon, you are not fully that man either. You even took on Leon's name."

"I took the face and something told me a name like Shady would stand out like a sore thumb." Leon said.

"Still, you took something from there and another from here. You are the best of both worlds."

"I greatly doubt that."

"Don't sell yourself short." She smiled and nodded, "Well, your identity is yours to determine. Once you settle on it, I'll be happy to hear from you but for all its worth, I wish to keep what is left of my son."

"And I don't wish to take it away from you either." Leon said.

"It's settled then. Until things calm down, we will make ourselves busy. You still haven't rested from traveling and I've got a lot to say and hear from you."

"As you wish." Leon said and walked up behind her chair.

He took its handles and the two walked around to the main building.

***

Life continued quietly for the following three days but everyone could tell this is the calm before the storm. But from which direction the storm will come, no one could tell just yet.

Vadim and Eleanor departed to Dandarus. Vadim was going to his home and Eleanor chose a safe passage from the mountains back to her duchy. News has reached her that her daughter has slipped from the Capital safely as well.

As for Erielle, she originally lived in the city of Stormdale but due to the current political climate, she was staying at Annabelle's Palace where the two could teach and observe the fast-learning Leon.

Most of the things Annabelle and Leon spoke about were secrets among them only. The trust level between the two deepened and they could find kinship in one another even though they weren't really mother and child.

In a sense, it felt like Annabelle was adopting the new Leon and accepting him the way he came to be. It may sound illogical to some but this was the only way she could get what is left of her son back.

As for Leon, his feelings were conflicting all the time. On one hand, he is partially her son. On the other hand, he is a complete stranger. Still, he could find a new way to be fascinated by that woman every time they sat together and spoke.

She took him as a son while he took her as a mentor. This sort of emotional anchoring to her was almost the same as he had with his mentor as Shady. As a lethal weapon, the Black Cobra needed someone to switch him on and off and ever since his transmigration, he was always on. For now, it seemed that Annabelle was getting a sense of how this Leon worked and started to nurture him as she saw appropriate.

First, he underwent a rigorous concentrated course on how to act and speak with a level of class which he absorbed very rapidly thanks to his mad spy skills. What he struggled with was some of this world's unique etiquette and the sophisticated sense of fashion which he hated with passion.

After a lot of negotiations, Leon finally arrived at a style of fashion that was deemed okay by Annabelle and the butlers who assisted him. It consisted of pants, shirts, vests, and coats. He fought a senseless battle against neckties and old-fashioned hairstyles, only to win on the hairstyle front at the price of submitting to this world's trend of cravat neckbands.

Still, as there are no t-shirts or sweatshirts in this world, he may have won a battle but it was a losing war either way.

After resting for the remainder of the day, Leon's bad habit of wandering around at night for a night snack kicked in, and he spotted a couple of human-sized golems walking at a very careful base in the garden but as soon as they turned around, he noticed the Duchess Annabelle was walking between them, holding their arms and carrying herself on her legs.

She seemed like she was trying to rehabilitate herself to walk.

Long ago on the day Leon was taken from her son, Annabelle faced off against her husband, Duke William Dark, and the two were outside the duchy at the palace of the Godfrey Duchy at that time. Annabelle was hurt when the Duke pushed her strong enough for her back to hit something hard and be unable to walk ever since.

While Leon was watching, Erielle came by and had a brief conversation with Leon in which he learned that despite her physical injury healing long ago at the hands of the best healer in the eastern duchies, High Minister Charles Cage, it seemed that the psychological impact of losing her son kept her from walking, not the physical injury.

According to Erielle, this is the first time she sees Annabelle doing this kind of therapy on herself, the thing which made Leon smile a bit before heading back to his room.

On the second day, Leon received a lecture from Annabelle about some of the liberal arts he will need to be proficient in. At first, she feared that Leon would start using the "Read" spell on those books and harm his head, as he informed her about his incident with the Arcane Theory book, but Leon told her that he already tried it on some other books especially those that deal with geography and the lay of the land.

After recommending many books, aside from the ones he took with him when he escaped the Royal Academy 5 months ago, Annabelle found that Leon was already very proficient in subjects she couldn't foresee.

Aside from Geography, Leon picked up subjects like Herbalism and Natural Fauna in order to be knowledgeable about what he sees during his journey to the Dark Duchy. Other than that, he was extremely good at mathematics and mechanical physics as well as engineering and natural chemistry. These skills came from his past life since an agent of his caliber needed to calculate the trajectory of bullets based on wind speed and other environmental elements as well as how to deal with heavy barriers and dig holes around fortified structures to infiltrate them. This came in hand with some of his experience in chemical gasses and explosive material.

With this much liberal and scientific knowledge, Annabelle was impressed and praised him a lot. She even added that he will be considered an honor student at the Silver Peaks Academy.

Later that day, Leon was put into his combat evaluation against Butler Lestrade who was an expert in unarmed combat. This was the moment when Leon was supposed to shine but what shocked him was the fact that he couldn't land a single hit on Lestrade.

The difference here was purely based on Stats. When Magic is not involved, Leon's Skills can make him stand his ground against any low-leveled enemy but when it comes to an expert, things won't go his way.

What he needed was extra base stat points at Strength to Endurance to excel at melee combat, Agility and Wisdom to excel at ranged combat, or Wisdom and Intelligence to excel at magic combat.

The cliche of fantasy was now laid in front of him, either he should go melee, ranged, or magic.

"Of course, Magic."

Leon didn't even hesitate with his choice.

He has the highest talent in the world for magic, why waste his time training things he already knows?

The term "Skill" in this world wasn't something so common any man would have. Having a skill meant having a talent at something that came with sweat, tears, and hard work.

Shady transmigrated as Leon with all 6 skills which are: Acrobatics, Artillery, Athletics, Blades, Riding, and Stealth. During the previous five months, he awakened 6 other skills which are: Archery, Heresy Resistance, Pain Resistance, Poison Resistance, Polearms, and Reflexes.

[A/n: Due to the system changes in season 2, some of these skills aren't in line with Chapter 1 of the novel. Still, they encompass it all with Leon before and after transmigration.]

Leon had a total of 12 skills which if looked at, is not a very impressive number. Still, Leon hadn't realized that the most talented people in the world have a maximum cap of 10 skills while he has no such cap.

Annabelle told him that rather than choosing which path to follow, he should rather choose which path to follow first. Based on his unlimited potential and skills, he can acquire them all if needed but this would waste him a lot of time early on. Magic was a good choice but in his case as Leon, he must be able to face all kinds of dangers and thus she advised him to gain one more life-saving skill, the Unarmed Combat.

Now here comes another strange thing that Leon noted in the system. He is already good at unarmed combat and was always praised for being an elite in CQC techniques. Still, the system didn't acknowledge him enough to give him the Unarmed skill.

After a lot of studying his technique with Lestrade, the middle-aged butler noted that Leon's style of combat focuses on stabbing the enemy with a series of knife attacks and wrestling moves if shooting them from a distance was impossible.

This was indeed the case for Leon as he was always obsessed with keeping a lot of crossbows ready and loaded in his Storage. He indeed shoots then stabs as he was taught in the military back as Shady. According to Butler Lestrade, Leon's Blade skill comes from this dedicated method of knife combat while his Wrestling skill is not that high either.

The System only acknowledges a skill when its user is proficient and adept with it rather than a beginner.

As for Leon's actual expertise, the Blade skills, it goes without saying that he is a wizard with daggers and shortswords. The weapon expert in this place, Head Main Rebecca, was impressed to the point where she saw it would be a waste for him not to invest his time in larger-bladed weapons and take on the "Swords" skill.

Leon finished the second day with an evaluation from Annabelle who made a road map for what he needs to focus on in the coming few days.

First, he should acquire the "Unarmed" skill primarily and the "Wrestling" skill if possible.

Second, he should train his Strength, Agility, and Endurance as training both Wisdom, which deals with senses and perception, and Intelligence, which deals with Mana and mental capacity, will require a non-physical approach.

Third, Leon was versed in many Liberal Arts such as Life sciences, Physical sciences, Mathematics, and had a rough Understanding of the Social Sciences. What he needed to learn more about were Theology, Philosophy, History, and some form of Creative Arts that is accepted by the standards of the noble society.

Last but not least is Magic. Leon needed to restart his magical learning process from scratch as all he did was copy what he saw from others by the "Read" spell and mimic it. Normal magic learning goes through the process of knowing how to differentiate between all types of Elemental Mana and focusing them through a regime of improving one's self in each application one spell at a time.

This meant that unlike how Leon understood it, one spell can vary from one person to another depending on how the caster applies it. Leon simply activates Mana like commanding a device to work without knowing the inner workings of the device.

Annabelle made Leon perform some of the simplest spells he knows that he copied from others. He cast the "Magic Bolt" spells a few times in front of Annabelle before she performed it in front of him and it was on a whole other level of mastery. She then told him to keep "Reading" her spell until he learns it from her all over again.

Leon didn't even know that a spell could be Re-learned with the "Read" spell but because she was knowledgeable about the nature of magic, Annabelle figured it out pretty easily. Once he copied her spell, his "Magic Bolt" evolved greatly.

If the Magic Bolt from before was like a 9mm round, his Magic Bolt now is akin to a .45 ACP round in what seemed to be a 30% increase in power. Still, he felt his Mana was getting drained faster.

Annabelle moved the magic training for the third day and Leon went to his new room with endless thoughts about magic applications and the things he learned from Annabelle to the point where he barely slept.

The next morning, Leon's third day in the Garden Palace, Lance and Lara returned to the Palace after a long preparation trip for legalizing Leon's stay. Leon and Annabelle were going to leave the palace for the first time together towards the Temple of Stormdale city in order to reveal Leon's new talent to the world… with a bit of censorship of course.