Claude didn’t waste time and so he began his training with Leonard one day later right after breakfast. It was just like Claude said earlier - Leonard struggled heavily to keep the pace at which Claude trained fighting with him, although Lunargand didn’t feel as heavy to him as it seemed. But as the days passed Leonard got used to Claude’s pace more and more and with that Claude held back less with every passing day. Claude was impressed about Leonard’s quick progress and about how fast he learned everything that was shown to him and Claude looked forward to having a real swordfight with Leonard soon because of that.
A moon phase later Claude thought Leonard was ready for a real fight, so he began attacking Leonard recklessly and as their swords met during the first strike, a loud metallic bang filled the air around almost half the forest and a shockwave rippled through the grass. Claude was surprised about this sudden burst of energy coming from Lunargand, but he kept on attacking regardless. He went a bit too much into it though and so it happened that he almost severed Leonards arm, but Leonard stopped Claude’s sword with his bare hand, after which a black stone-like struckture covered his entire arm‘s skin that crumbled away at his joints revealing a light blue structure underneath that glowed like lava. As Claude looked Leonard in the eyes, he noticed in shock that they were glowing blood red and his pupils were thin like those of a snake. Claude let go of his sword and stepped back, stuttering „L-Leonard… you… aren’t going to… attack me, right…?“ and with that Leonard came back to his senses, shouting „Whoa! What happened to my arm?!“, both out of surprise and in awe about his arm. Claude stared at Leonard, confused about his reaction, so he asked „You… weren’t even aware of this ability, were you…?“ and Leonard shook his head, answering „Of course not! If I was, I would’ve used it against those asswipe bandits, don’t you think?!“ Claude then sighed „Fair enough… we need to postpone the training a bit… I need to find out what this ability is about, wanna help me?“ and Leonard nodded as the structure on his arm dissolved into black smoke.
The two boys then went into Claude’s wooden hut near the lake inside rhe forest. Claude immediately went towards one of the two bookshelves in the living room and started looking through the books he had and Leonard helped him by looking through the other bookshelf. After a while Leonard stopped and asked Claude „What the fuck are we even searching for?!“, but he was ignored by Claude which upset him greatly, so he shouted „Hey! I’m talking to you!“, but still no answer, so he picked up an old ragged up, but very heavy-looking book and threw it right at Claude. Claude however caught the book effortlessly and looked at it, clearly happy about the find, as it was the exact book he was searching. Leonard raised an eyebrow, pointed at the book and asked „You wanna look something up in this old thing?! Must be ancient shit then!“
„Sure, I think I’ll find what this ability you possess was inside this book.“
„This rank-ass thing? I kinda doubt that!“
„Just wait and see, this book contains info about all kinds of stuff that has to do with magic!“
Leonard sighed. He anticipated this to take way too long for his liking and he just wanted to get this over with, so he could go back to training, but now he was supposed to sit around and wait, which wasn’t something he wanted to spend his time with. Several hours passed in silence after Claude threw the book on his work desk, only the turning of pages echoing through the room and in the meantime Leonard fell asleep out of boredom while sitting on a chair. As Claude jumped up and shouted „Leo! I found it!“ Leonard jumped as well and asked sleepily „is it morning already…? Where the heck am I…?“ while rubbing his eyes. Claude explained „In this book there’s really a description for your abilities! Apparently you possess demon powers!“ and then gestured Leonard to come over to him to show him the texts. Some time passed while the two boys were reading all about demons and their special kind of magic, which was referred to as battle magic that they used by infusing their limbs with their elemental Mantrum to deal highly powerful punches and kicks. They also found out how you could use these kinds of powers at your leisure and even about their consequences being not only the consuming of your Mantrum, but also taking physical damage leading to serious injuries when overused. Claude was in awe about the fact that Leonard seemed to posess such powers and Leonard also was speechless for a moment, but then he couldn’t wait to find out how to turn into a demon to use his powers.
Claude then read something about a runestone that could determine which elemental Mantrum a demon possesses and even saw a picture of one, which looked awfully similar to something he got as a quest reward that he since used as a paper weight. He grabbed the runestone and asked Leonard to hold it and at first Leonard was confused about this request, but still did what he was asked. He felt a tug as if something invisible was drawing blood from his wrist, then a crackling sound was heard which brought Leonard to drop the stone which then broke in half, so Leonard said „Oh shit, I think I broke it… sorry Claude!“, but Claude only shook his head and said „You didn’t, just watch!“ Both boys watched the stone as one half of the stone engulfed itself in flames, while the other was covered in black smoke. Claude scoffed and said „Lucky you… seems like you possess Mantrum with proportions of fire and darkness, which are perfectly combinable to cast even more powerful magic… you could even give your battle magic a cool name then… something like shadowflame magic!“ and Leonard excitedly shouted „That sounds dope!“, but then he asked „Wait… what other elements are there? I know about the elements of the four moons, but are there more? And what exactly is Mantrum?“
„You’re having a habit of asking more than one question at once, huh? But sure, aside from those four there are the elements of water, earth, lightning, wind, metal, poison and light… all of these could also be used for combat, as well as for battle magic, but yours are those two I just mentioned, so you can only use those two, as far as the book tells us… and Mantrum is the source for every magic there is to use.“
„I see… well, that’s pretty awesome, thanks for the explaination!“
Leonard grinned, eager to test his abilities, but first he needed to find out how to transform, since the book didn’t tell that info for some reason. Maybe their research didn’t include halflings like Leonard? Leonard was aware though that his training would be double as hard as it was before, because he had way more to learn now, so he trained much harder and even abandoned sleep every third day. After the ninth day passed, he was way better at swordfighting, but progress regarding his other abilities lacked, due to the fact that he still wasn’t able to transform yet. Then Claude remembered something and said „Hey, Leo! Remember how you felt when I almost chopped your arm off? Try to recreate this feeling, maybe that’ll help!“ Leonard nodded and said „Would be worth a try!“, then he concentrated, trying to recreate the feeling he had during the first real fight and soon after a black substance covered his arms. He joyfully shouted „Hey, it works!“, but then the substance lost its form and dissolved into black smoke. Seeing this just infuriated Leonard, so he banged his fists together yelling „DAMMIT!!!“ while he unknowingly engulfed his fists in purple flames, mere milliseconds before they connected. Suddenly those flames bursted out in a wild fire, covering Leonard’s whole body in the same purple flames and instinctively he ripped through them with large, bat-like wings and blew them away, revealing that his skin turned ash-grey, his arms covered in the same rock-like structure as before, his hair turned from pitch black to pure white, two pointy black horns were coming out of his forehead and from his butt a whip-like tail had formed.
Claude widened his eyes in disbelief of what just happened, but then cheered „You finally did it, Leo, you just transformed successfully! And let me tell ya, you look badass to say the least!“, which made Leonard look down on himself with the same red eyes he had during the incident. As he saw his arms transformed, he was filled with joy over this huge progress and Claude decided to make Leonard a few targets for practising his demon abilities on. Two years passed quickly as Leonard tirelessly trained moonphase after moonphase and for each moonphase that passed, Claude fought with Leonard for real, testing his progress. Claude was feeling more and more like a parent that taught his offspring, although as it turned out he was only ten years older than Leonard.
When the day came that marked the end of Leonard’s training, he couldn’t wait to get back home, although he had lots of fun while training with Claude, so both walked back to Garmun right after breakfast. The villagers were filled with joy to see Leonard again after such a long time and his mother and the parents of his friends organized a giant celebration party that would start in the afternoon. Everyone was in a good mood, music was playing, some people performed folk dances and there was even lots of food and drinks for everyone. The celebrations took place until dawn of the next day and even the children were allowed to stay up as long as they wanted to enjoy the celebrations of the day as much as possible.
