Establishing Relationships (3)
I had forgotten.
It was not merely a fleeting slip of the mind, either. Had Leon not brought it up, the memory would have vanished beyond the horizon of my consciousness forever. I had drawn a complete and utter blank.
Why did I forget?
I could have brushed it off with excuses about having too much on my plate or being run ragged lately, but even so, forgetting a favor I had requested with my own two lips made no sense whatsoever. I was not an ordinary human anymore. I possessed supernatural traits that directly enhanced my intellect and memory retention. How could someone like me completely blank on something that happened barely a month ago?
"It's not like I'm going senile."
It was bizarre beyond belief, but when push came to shove, that was not the real issue. Whether it was my own blunder or someone had wiped my memory, the undeniable reality was that I had broken my promise to Leon. That took precedence over everything else.
...How the hell do I clean up this mess?
Should I spin a long, pathetic tale explaining my circumstances, or should I just bow my head and apologize right out of the gate? Two paths diverged before me, but in truth, there was nothing to deliberate over. The blame lay squarely on my shoulders. Anything I spewed would amount to nothing more than self-defense and hollow excuses.
I need to reply immediately.
The moment I finished reading Leon's messages, my fingers flew across the interface to draft a response.
It took a grueling hour of agonizing over every syllable before I finally hit send on the novella-length reply. The body was crammed almost entirely with heartfelt apologies, seasoned with just a dash of context—a proper public-style apology letter in all but name. Once it was sent, a wave of apprehension and anxiety washed over me. I couldn't help fretting over whether I had phrased something poorly, or if certain lines came across as cheap justifications.
Yet completely betraying my anxieties, Leon's reply arrived at blinding speed. His response was written in a message so terse it sailed right past breezy and landed squarely on nonchalant.
The contents of Leon's message were simplicity itself. If I had to boil it down even further, it was essentially: Got your sob story, now dish on the Hero.
While it was an immense relief that he was not dwelling on my blunder, the abrupt spotlight swiveling toward Astrea stirred an instinctive prickle of suspicion. Granted, Leon was kindhearted—his personality ranked among the absolute best of any Demon Lord in existence—so there was likely no ill intent. Even so, casually blabbing about Astrea to someone else sat wrong with me. I had already spilled a few details previously, sure, but there was a massive gulf between "I picked up a stray female Hero" and "I took a Hero under my wing as my disciple and am personally training her."
"Hmm..."
After mulling it over for a moment, I arrived at a conclusion: I would tell Leon everything about what was going on. Part of this decision stemmed from lingering guilt over ghosting him, but honestly, there was not another Demon Lord on the forum as reliable and straightforward as Leon.
Take Odin and the Marquis of Wolves. Those two knew entirely too much and were far too accommodating, which made them inherently suspicious. Worse, both existed completely outside the scope of my perception and abilities. In short, I had zero clue what their true motives were. And Solomon? He was every bit as enigmatic and terrifying as Odin and the Marquis, if not tenfold worse.
Leon, on the other hand, was an absolute lunatic with unshakeable convictions. A madman, certainly, but a transparent madman whose behavior I could anticipate and grasp to a reasonable degree. Compared to the other Demon Lords who defied all logic, prediction, and comprehension, Leon was by far the safest bet. To put it simply: I had concluded that even if I spilled the story to Leon, he was not the kind of bastard who would exploit it maliciously.
Having made up my mind, I engaged the gallery's private room feature. It was obvious this conversation would run long. Rather than wasting an eternity sending PMs back and forth like pen pals, it made far more sense to spawn a private post and invite Leon into the thread. Incidentally, an assistant manager had granted me temporary permissions for this private board feature a couple of days ago and forgotten to revoke them. Whether it was intentional or an oversight, it worked out wonderfully for me.
To sum up the situation, basically, the Hero—
I drafted a concise summary of everything that had transpired up to this point, and the instant I finished, I shot a PM to Leon granting him access to the private post. A few minutes ticked by. Suddenly, notification alerts began pinging in rapid succession.
As if my transgression had already vanished into the ether, Leon's replies were as cheerful and upbeat as ever. What a relief.
My relief at Leon so graciously accepting my apology was short-lived.
"...Come to think of it, what do I do about the swordsmanship?"
The original reason I had asked Leon to teach me his sword style was simple: I had too much damn time on my hands. Back before Astrea plummeted out of the sky without warning, I had been searching for any productive way to fill the hollow, endless hours stretching before me, and Leon's swordsmanship was the tailor-made solution. It was brutally practical, infinitely versatile, and demanded an astronomical investment of time. In other words, it was the ultimate pursuit for killing time.
Except now, unlike back then, free time was a luxury I could hardly afford. I had to teach Astrea combat techniques, tutor her in history, forage books for her, instruct her on channeling her superpowers... Layer that on top of my usual daily grind—scavenging rations, clearing Gates, clearing urban rubble—and my spare hours dwindled to practically nothing.
"Ugh..."
After racking my brains, the best compromise I could muster was: I learn swordsmanship from Leon, and simultaneously pass it down to Astrea. But the more I chewed on that idea, the stupider it sounded. I was no prodigy. There was no way in hell I could master a transcendent sword technique on the fly and immediately turn around to instruct someone else. I had said it countless times before, but I was far closer to a dullard than a genius—merely a fake hero who had scraped by on the back of rare, overpowered supernatural gifts.
On the flip side, taking lessons entirely on my own felt absurdly impractical given my schedule. And simply telling Leon that I had to back out because I lacked the time felt like the worst possible cop-out. I spun my mental wheels for a while longer, but when no brilliant revelation struck, I had no choice but to lay it bare before Leon.
But to my dilemma, Leon fired back with a brisk and casual reply.
"Huh?"
His answer was so bafflingly simple and confident that it struck me momentarily speechless.
In response to my rapid-fire barrage of doubts, Leon smoothly tackled them one by one with brazen nonchalance.
For a split second, his solution sounded so clean and plausible that I almost thought, Wait, there really isn't a problem here! Which, in turn, meant Leon's answer still harbored one glaring, fatal flaw. A massive roadblock that several lines of his breezy typing had not addressed in the slightest.
Exactly that: the inherent dimensional property of the Demon Lord Gallery, which dictated that non-users could neither see nor hear anything originating from the forum interface. That single restriction was the sole reason I had not been able to come up with a viable solution in the first place.
"And here he sounded so confident, I thought he had some genius workaround or loophole."
Figures. As expected of a Hero collaborator—never thinking more than half a step ahead.
In the end, Leon and I failed to reach any consensus or find a feasible workaround that day, and our forum session wrapped up with zero accomplishments to show for it.
A few days later.
Right in the middle of coaching Astrea on applying her supernatural abilities in active combat, a sharp ping pierced my consciousness. A direct message had arrived from Leon, who had vanished from the forum for the past few days. And what was written inside shattered my expectations entirely.
"....."
What in the world was an "Interdimensional Data Delivery" now?