A Lion's Way Home

3. Another Mission

The Raging Bull's mobile phone demanded a password.

Leon shrugged. What was he? A mercenary who studied smithing, not gadgetry and stuff, for the academy's extracurricular.

He wasn't like his silly GS, who had always told him to try everything and take on the impossible. The Raging Bull, an expert in gadgetry, might just rig the phone. Maybe it'd blow up when Leon entered the wrong password. Or worse.

Leon kept the phone in his pants pocket and walked towards the wooden crates, intending to check them. As he moved, pain shot up from his chest. With a grimace and a hand on the hurting site, he turned to the crate on which his backpack lay.

Leon unzipped his backpack and searched its insides. Although tedious and time-consuming, tidiness had its merits; with his documents packed neatly inside plastic file bags and a fresh set of clothes - just in case he transformed and ripped his current ones - placed at the tail end of everything, it took only a few seconds to locate his stash of healing potion. The fabric pouch containing them rested beside his clothes.

Leon fished a vial of green fluid out of the pouch. Upon removing the cork stopper, he could smell the faint scent of lemon tea. Healing potion always had that kind of fragrance, but one could pay experienced pharmacists to alter it.

Experienced pharmacists. Leon thought with a long face, an image of a raven-haired girl emerging in his mind. Lyn...

Oh, forget about her! Lyn along with her cousin had disappeared without a trace after graduating from the academy, right after promising that she'd visit Leon once in a while. On top of that, her father, the academy's principal and Leon's boss, refused to say anything about it.

Leon downed the potion in one gulp, and a wave of soothing coolness washed away the burning, stabbing pain in his chest. The refreshing sensation lingered, but he went on with his work: plugging the empty vial and returning it into the pouch. The academy's recycling department would appreciate this plastic container and its cork stopper.

After zipping his backpack, Leon wore it and raised an arm. Silver ethereal energy radiated around his hand, and a metallic crowbar materialized in his grasp. This tool would never be as efficient as his destructive magic, but these crates might just contain fragile valuables.

Or maybe not? Leon thought as the energy faded. The Raging Bull probably won't hide anything here if he always invites people to duel him here.

Nevertheless, Leon began prying open the crates one-by-one. He didn't care how many crates he had to move or check; this task couldn't be worse than the lion's daily training regime: hunting zebras and buffaloes, digging up warthogs, fighting hyenas and stray lions, and sparring with the GS without any weapon or magic. He hadn't been doing any of those for almost a year, though, but hunting mechanical monstrosities in the academy training center and completing mercenary contracts worked as substitutes.

The crates contained nothing, at which Leon shrugged. He should've known it anyway. On the bright side, despite his burning, sticky, sweaty skin, he felt pumped up. Unfortunately, he had a better thing to do than training rigorously with his spear or magic.

This crowbar is my stuff. He looked at the heaps of empty crates and their damaged lids. Better not add more garbage there.

Leon held his crowbar two-handed and stared at it. Heat streamed down his arms, and the tool disintegrated. Then the metallic dust faded.

Leon took off his backpack, put it on the ground, and unzipped it. Behind the clothes and the pouch was a pocket, inside which Leon's mobile phone and charger resided. He sighed at the gadget's worn folding case; for Aedifex's sake, it was less than one year old! Maybe he should buy the case created by the mercenaries this time, even if it was several times more expensive than the standard ones.