Q: Can I ask about Leona and Azul’s contract?

Early on in Chapter 3 Leona says that he has “made a few deals” with Azul and has “never” put his power up for collateral, insinuating that he has had multiple contracts with Azul, one of which was the potion for Ruggie in Chapter 2.

But at the end of Chapter 3 Ruggie (on EN) says that Leona has made “a contract” (singular) with Azul before, and helping Jack and the others is a way for him to get rid of “it” (singular), as if the potion contract from Chapter 2 is Leona’s only experience with Azul.

So which is it?

This might be an EN-server continuity error, or it might be hinting at something else.

The Japanese language does not really have plurals in the same way that English does. In the cafeteria scene, for example, the first part of Leona’s sentence just says that he has made a deal/deals with Azul before, not specifying whether he has only done so once or multiple times.

The latter half of the sentence confirms that he has done so more than once, as he says he was forced to fulfill unpleasant conditions “every time,” so there seems to be a history there that is being hinted at but not explained.

When the topic comes up again with Ruggie it is not technically specified within his sentence that Leona has contracted with Azul more than once, but we know he has from that earlier conversation.

The EN server translated this scene as Leona getting rid of just a single contract, despite confirming earlier in the same chapter that he has made more than one.

The EN server does not have a very good track record with continuity, so this might just be an example of the importance of proofreading.

But if Azul doesn’t keep contracts that have been successfully fulfilled, this might not be a mistake.

If Azul’s 500 to 600 contracts represent every deal that Azul has ever made, then EN-Ruggie was a victim of translation: Leona wasn’t taking the opportunity to get rid of just one contract, he was getting rid of all proof that he has ever contracted with Azul at all.

But if Azul doesn’t keep fulfilled contracts, only those that enable him to hold onto collateral, and EN-Ruggie is right, that means that Leona’s contract from Book 2 was never complete: he either failed to fulfill the terms and Azul confiscated his collateral, or his contract was still ongoing. Grammatically, JP Ruggie can technically go both ways.

If the disintegration of a contract that has sealed away someone’s talent returns that talent to its owner, does the disintegration of a contract that was arranged through another form of collateral return that collateral as well?

Or will the owner never know that now they can go get their pen back from Azul? The introduction of his unique magic only specifies that he can take people’s talents from them (translated as “power” on EN), but taking Ramshackle from the Prefect opens a lot of doors.

Would Azul have technically have been able to keep Ramshackle Dorm if the Prefect failed in their task, even though the original contract was gone? The prefect fulfills their conditions by the deadline, so we do not see this tested.

It all hinges on what those 500 to 600 contracts are: every deal that Azul has ever made in his life, or just those that failed. 

Arguments in favor of them being his entire collection are: 

1) Up to 600 people failing to fulfill their contracts with him over the course of two to three years (Azul perfected his unique magic in middle school) seems like a lot. If those are all the contracts he has ever made, he has to have been making an average of 1.8 contracts a day, every single day since he was 15 years old, which is already intense. That number increases exponentially if those contracts are only the ones that failed.

2) The contracts could technically be future blackmail, if there is someone like Leona who really does not want the details of his dealings to be revealed, making them another form of power that it seems unlikely Azul would voluntarily throw away.

3) Amongst native speakers playing the original game the general consensus is that they are supposed to represent every contract that Azul has ever made.

4) Ruggie mentions Azul getting bent out of shape because something he’s been “building up for years” was ruined.

In favor of them being only failed contracts:

1) 600 might seem like a lot, but 225 of those are just from the opening of Chapter 3. It’s insinuated that this is the first time Azul has gone this big this quickly, but we don’t actually know: it’s possible he’s been experimenting with increasingly large groups of people for months or years leading up to Chapter 3.

2) The risks of holding onto completed contracts seem like they should outweigh the benefits. We don’t know what happens to a contract once it is fulfilled, but it seems unlikely that Azul would keep them unless they held some form of power: the more contracts he is protecting, the larger his only weakness. It seems like he wouldn’t want to keep superfluous contracts around and draw more attention to his weak point unless he absolutely had to, in which case, what kind of power do they hold after their conditions have been met that justifies that risk?

3) Azul does not seem to suffer any consequences from tearing up his own contracts despite how they are powerful magical artifacts, making it unlikely that he would have been holding onto every contract he has ever made unless there is something going on that we don’t know about, which is always possible; even if they don’t hold any power, maybe he just enjoys the nostalgia.

To return to the questions:

1. One of the contracts that Leona has made with Azul is the same that acquired that Chapter 2 potion for Ruggie. That is not the only contract Leona and Azul have made together, but it might be the only one that Leona disintegrated, if Azul does not keep old contracts and if Leona’s contract was still ongoing or he failed to fulfill it–we don’t actually know. It’s possible that Azul was holding onto all of their past contracts together, and Leona seized the opportunity to erase all proof of what he’d hired Azul to do, which is a common interpretation on JP.
   
2. A lot has been going on that we don’t know about. How long has Leona been contracting with Azul? What has he been putting up for collateral? Has he always met the conditions of these contracts, or has he failed? If he has ever failed, was that mysterious collateral returned to him when he disintegrated Azul’s contracts, or was he only destroying evidence? Is Azul somehow forced to return collateral that is a physical object when a contract is annulled? Does Azul even keep successfully fulfilled contracts and, if so, why, when the contracts themselves are his only weakness?

Awaiting in-game confirmation as of this update.