"Gulp..."
Before Leon could even finish, Kureha tilted her head back and downed the whole mixture in one go, too eager to wait.
It seemed she had a lot of faith in Leon's craftsmanship. Of course... there was probably also a sliver of desperate hunger for a power boost mixed in there.
It was common knowledge that in the entire Familia, even Leon himself couldn't match Kureha when it came to sheer obsession with strength. By temperament she was a pure martial artist, a warrior who craved the blood-pumping thrill of battle and longed for an opponent who could go toe to toe with her...
Leon didn't approve of that kind of pure pursuit, but he respected it.
The reason? Simple. He personally preferred steamrolling people, especially the absolute dominance of a high level crushing a low one.
Leon's creed was: I'm already Lv.4. If I still have to trade blows evenly with some low-level chump, then what was the point of leveling up at all?
The strong are meant to thoroughly humiliate the weak!
"Tsss..."
While his thoughts were drifting, Kureha, having ingested the "Wild Mixture" prototype version 1.0, began to change.
"Mmnah~~~~~~"
A soul-snaring, seductive moan slipped out from between Kureha's lips.
And then...
Like a kettle coming to a boil, wisps of white steam rose up through her long silver hair. The snow-white skin exposed beyond her sexy midriff-baring camisole and denim hot pants took on a faint flush of crimson.
Add to that her flushed cheeks and her dazed, watery eyes, and the already alluring Sword Saint became all the more tempting in that moment.
"Hss...!"
Watching Kureha in this state, Leon sucked in a sharp breath while his body tensed up on its own.
That familiar expression, that familiar posture, those familiar little gasps...
Leon would just say... this was a Kureha he'd only ever seen in bed.
"Mmn~~~~~"
Kureha parted her lips slightly, her breathing growing more and more ragged. As time passed, fine beads of sweat seeped out across her skin.
Suddenly her whole body gave a light shudder, and she let out a short, exhilarated low moan as her legs buckled and she dropped to her knees. She panted in deep breaths, cheeks crimson, but her eyes shone with an unusually bright light.
She bit her lower lip, pushed herself up with the leverage, clenched her fists, and spoke in a voice she couldn't keep from trembling with excitement:
"Ngh... When I first took it, my body got so hot, like a feeling of being intimate with Leon!"
Everyone's faces went red, their eyes darting back and forth between Leon and Kureha.
Kureha, though, didn't notice everyone's awkward expressions at all.
Right now she was completely immersed in what she considered an absolutely sublime experience.
"And then at the very peak, my brain went a little blank from the shock, my whole body kept convulsing, and after that came this wave of limp weakness, as if... all my strength had just vanished without a trace!"
"And then..."
At this point Kureha's eyes lit up, her tone bouncing with delight:
"The strength just came surging back without any warning!"
"It was like... like my whole body had been rebooted. I couldn't feel even a hint of fatigue. It actually felt like... I was even stronger than before I took the mixture."
Jeanne shot a blank look at Leon, who had pushed Rose out in front of himself, then walked over to Kureha and reached out to lightly touch the faintly crimson skin...
"Ahh~~"
At Jeanne's touch, Kureha shivered with a delicate cry, gasping with a red face, the corners of her eyes practically welling up with water.
"Jea, Jeanne..."
"Don't, don't touch there."
"Uwah..."
"It's, it's really sensitive..."
Jeanne: "..."
Rose: "..."
Everyone: "..."
Leon, half-hidden behind Rose, listened to Kureha describe the sensations, and his eyes suddenly lit up.
Then, faster than anyone could cover their ears, he whipped out paper and pen from his coat and quickly jotted down every detail of this version's formula.
"It can even raise the body's sensitivity... mm, plus a lasting energizing effect on stamina."
"Haven't tested the exact magnitude of the Basic Abilities increase, but I'd estimate around 5%..."
"None of that matters, though."
"The sensitivity-boosting effect alone makes it priceless!"
"Unbeatable!"
Leon grew more and more excited as he wrote, completely failing to notice that Rose had already turned around and was pressed against the side of his face, quietly watching the words flying off his pen.
The head steward's eyes were narrowed slightly, her expression full of meaning.
Someone else had also caught Leon's little maneuver: Persephone, who had been leaning against the fireplace with her arms crossed the whole time. Knowing Leon as well as she did, how could she fail to guess what this guy was recording.
She spat a curse under her breath and silently called him "scum."
But then, struck by some thought, her hands unconsciously gripped her own upper arms and her body gave a faint shiver.
A thin flush quietly spread across her cheeks too.
...
Over here, Laurier was circling around Kureha, urging her on excitedly:
"Quick, Kureha! Go test out the effect!"
"Sure!"
Laurier and Kureha, both fixated on the mixture, didn't notice the awkward looks on Leon and the others' faces at all. The two of them, still in their camisoles and hot pants, feet shoved into fuzzy slippers and long bare legs on full display, bounded out of the house. On the way they grabbed wooden training swords from the weapon rack in the corner and headed straight for the practice posts in the courtyard.
"Hyah!"
Whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack went the blade against the post.
Leon bundled himself up in a cotton coat, breathing out clouds of warm air, watching with a twitching brow as Kureha hacked at the practice post in a blood-boiling frenzy, feeling utterly speechless.
This scene... why did it look so familiar?
Mm... it was just like when he was playing a game and got a new piece of gear... then ran off all fired up to beat on a training dummy and test the DPS.
"Kureha, how's the effect?"
"Holy Sword!"
A sharp hum cut the air.
A keen, razor edge sheathed the training sword as Kureha leaned forward, her long, slender, pale legs taking a step ahead, and she swung a brutal horizontal slash.
"Thwip...!"
The post split apart on the instant, its cross-section as smooth as a mirror.
"Phew..."
"I can feel there's a boost, but it's not too significant."
"Probably about the same as the Monster Hunter Special, around 5%."
After saying that, she thought for a moment and added:
"Although the stronger a person is, the clearer they should be able to sense it."
"After all, the more skilled you are at controlling your own power, the easier it is to detect changes in your Basic Abilities."
With his test pilot's firsthand feedback, Leon now had a rough grasp of the first version's effects, along with its pros and cons.
He closed his notebook and addressed everyone:
"So it looks like the mixture still needs more optimization. This version hits the expected effect, but this little side effect, uh... you all get it, it's still kind of dangerous down in the Dungeon."
"I need to head back down and make some adjustments."
With that, paying no mind to the loaded looks coming from Jeanne, Rose, and Persephone, he hurried back to his basement workshop.
"That scumbag Leon... he's definitely squirreling this version of the formula away in secret."
Jeanne said it in a tone of near-total certainty.
Rose suddenly reached out, wrapped an arm around her waist, and leaned in close to her ear, her voice soft enough that only the two of them could hear:
"Want to make a bet? My guess is... this improved mixture, the first person Leon tries it on..."
"Eight out of ten, it'll be you."
Jeanne's cheeks heated up and she protested in a small voice:
"...It could be you too!"
The corner of Rose's mouth lifted slightly, her eyes narrowing, a warm smile in her voice as she admitted it openly:
"If it's me... that wouldn't be so bad either."
"Conveniently, I've been wanting to experience that feeling of heightened sensitivity myself."
"It should be pretty thrilling!"
Looking sideways at the anticipation on Rose's face, Jeanne's mind went briefly blank.
"Rose, you..."
Rose looked at her, smiling sweetly:
"What about me?"
Jeanne's cheeks went red enough to bleed. She glanced left and right, then quickly asked in a low voice:
"You, you don't actually love that feeling of Leon tying you up, do you?"
"Yep, that's right!"
Jeanne: "..."
Persephone, eavesdropping: "..."
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