His eyes locked onto the wooden post ahead.
"Ice Lance!"
A flick of his wrist, and the ice spike in his palm shot out like an arrow loosed from a string.
The wooden post, thick enough to need two people's arms to encircle, was bored clean through by the Ice Lance without the slightest resistance, and the spike's momentum didn't even slacken... it gouged a chunk of rubble out of the stone wall behind the post.
"Penetration's decent, speed is pretty average, magic cost... uh, negligible."
Leon paced forward, fingertips brushing over the smooth bored hole in the post, then glanced at the shattered mark on the wall. Surveying the damage the spell had done, he summed it up coolly.
"The only real advantage is the cast speed. Lightning fast. Almost the instant the thought forms, it's already out."
"But that's just the attack power in plain auto mode."
"If it lands while they're under Blizzard's 'Freeze' or Ice Ring's 'Freeze'..."
A trace of thought crossed Leon's eyes, and he stood there sinking into a brief contemplation. It wasn't until the bone-deep cold wind, laced with snowflakes, jolted his senses that he gave a sudden shiver and got yanked back to reality.
"Holy shit, it's freezing!"
Only once the cold hit him did it slowly dawn on him... that he'd been standing here like an idiot, shirtless, letting the wind blow over him for ages, on a winter morning at twenty below zero.
"Goddammit!"
Leon's face fell. Shivering all over, he hurriedly hugged his arms and bolted back inside, taking three steps at a stride.
Fumbling in the dark, he yanked a padded coat off the rack in the reception room and wrapped it around himself, finally letting out a long breath.
With the chill easing a little, he didn't stop. He got up and went to the fireplace, stirring the faint embers back to life, then hauled in firewood from the shed in the back courtyard and fed the flames, raking at them a few times to get the fire roaring. After that he turned and put a kettle on to boil, and only then did he finally sink into the sofa.
The fire crackled and leapt, warmth slowly wrapping around him.
As his body gradually warmed up, Leon's thoughts settled out of the magic training he'd just done.
"Might as well read for a bit. Charging back out there to mess around would just make me look like a real airhead."
He calmly brewed himself a cup of coffee, put on the Gale-Force Reading Glasses, then immersed himself in analyzing the formula for the 『Wild Mixture』 and that thick tome of 『Pharmacology』.
The reception room fell completely silent, leaving only the occasional rustle of a turning page and the faint crackle of the firewood burning in the fireplace.
...
Time slipped quietly by, and outside the window the sky shifted from heavy dark to pale gray, gradually letting through the morning light.
The deep toll of a bell rang out from the bell tower near the Colosseum, carrying across the whole of Orario.
The bell was like a signal to wake. The city, fallen silent through a night of midwinter snowfall, began little by little to recover its life and sound as smoke curled up from chimneys here and there.
"Mn...!"
Margaret and Irisviel, dragging their still-drowsy bodies along and rubbing at the corners of their eyes, appeared in the second-floor hallway in their pajamas and fuzzy slippers, half-asleep.
The two padded down toward the lower floor, only to halt at the same moment at the turn of the stairs.
Downstairs the fireplace was blazing, the dancing firelight steeping the living room in warmth. And Leon was sitting on the sofa beside it, long legs crossed, quietly leafing through the tome in his hands, his profile looking especially calm in the firelight.
Iri blinked, doubting she was fully awake, and lifted a hand to rub her eyes again. She looked once more. Not a hallucination.
"Huh? L-Leon?"
She murmured it under her breath, still trailing sleepiness and obvious confusion.
"That's so weird... how is Leon up this early...?"
"I must still be half-asleep."
Margaret watched in silence beside her, not answering, though a faint glint of understanding passed through her eyes.
Last night? Ah, that explains it...
...
"Mm... Leon, good morning."
Hearing the movement at the stairs, Leon slowly raised his head from the pages. By the dim lamplight, looking at the two still-sleepy figures, he gave a small smile.
"Good morning, Margaret, Iri."
"And also... Merry Christmas."
"Same to you."
After the simple exchange of greetings, Margaret took the hand of the still-not-fully-awake, bleary-eyed Iri and led her down the stairs.
Watching Iri kick off her slippers, plant her bare feet, and the moment she sat on the sofa grab a cushion and curl up as if to catch a few more winks, Leon poured each of them a cup of coffee, then asked gently.
"Up this early. Why not sleep in a little more?"
Margaret took the cup, thanked him softly, then glanced at Iri beside her, who was nearly nodding off again, and a trace of a smile touched the corner of her mouth.
"Her? She heard the custom on Christmas morning is to open presents, so..."
She didn't finish, but the meaning was clear enough.
Leon followed her gaze. Iri was hugging the cushion, lips slightly parted, her consciousness teetering right on the edge of dreamland. He couldn't help a stifled laugh.
Right, how had he forgotten... given Iri's past, this was probably the first time she'd ever properly celebrated Christmas.
So her excitement and anticipation over the gifts only made perfect sense.
"Iri, the gift you've been looking forward to is right under the Christmas tree. Want to go take a look?"
"Huh?"
At the word "gift," Iri gave a jolt and finally remembered the whole reason she'd forced herself awake and dragged herself up.
"Right, presents! Christmas presents!"
Her eyes lit up, and she looked in the direction Leon was pointing.
In the corner of the reception room, beneath the Christmas tree glittering with ornaments, ribbons, wreaths, and stars, the gift boxes were piled high, all different sizes, their wrapping paper glowing with soft, varied colors in the morning light and the firelight.
"Wow! So many presents!"
"...And they're so pretty!"
"Margaret, quick, let's go look!"
"Uh..."
Yanked up by Iri, Margaret froze for a beat, then, caught up in that excitement under Leon's smiling, encouraging gaze, jogged along after her.
Watching the two of them go, Leon smiled faintly.
Half of these gifts he'd quietly prepared himself in the dark. As for the other half, those came from other people. The goddess Demeter's divine friends, for instance, along with the friends both inside and outside the Familia they were close to.
"Margaret, look! Every box has a little note with our names on it! Here, this one's yours, this one's for big sister Jeanne, this one's for big sister Rose..."
Iri knelt down beside the pile of gifts, eagerly digging through to find the ones for her and Margaret. Before long, a tidy little mountain of presents had stacked up beside the two of them.
Gazing at that rather impressive "little mountain," Leon raised an eyebrow.
This many?
Looking at it this way... showing off a bit of his strength to the outside world wasn't entirely a bad thing after all.
At the very least, the Christmas gifts had come pouring in until his hands were full.
In years past, the gifts he'd have received would never have topped ten, and most of those... would have come from inside the Demeter Familia.
"Huh? What gorgeous earrings!"
"This couldn't be... a piece of jewelry-type magic item, could it?"
"Whoa, who's this generous?!"
Leon was still reminiscing about the old days when Iri's hushed cry of surprise suddenly pulled him back to the present.
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