Belin's Bowed Head, Leos's Unparalleled Ability

Leaving the fallen knight commander Terepion behind him, Keltazar began a thorough inspection of every communication and recording artifact in the vicinity. The footage had originally been intended for external propaganda—images of a flawless Red Gate purge, meant to be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠broadcast to the public as proof of imperial strength. He had never imagined those same recordings would instead capture the knights' final moments.

The one small mercy was that the artifacts had been running the entire time. At least now he could learn exactly how the operation had failed.

It had to have been an ambush. Which vermin dared raise a blade against the Empire's knights?

With that thought, Keltazar activated the artifact. What followed stole the words from his mouth—and then the thoughts from his mind altogether.

"What in the world…"

Keltazar's pupils filled with the sight of countless knight corpses. The mountain of bodies had been built by a single monster.

A Lyard…?

A mantis-type mutant beast. According to the name Leos himself had given it, a Lyard. Yet by Leos's own assessment its threat level was Low-grade. For knights of that caliber to fall to something so low was, by every ordinary measure of sense, impossible.

"Bring me every record of Leos's past battles. Now."

At Keltazar's command several men scrambled into motion, hauling out Leos's archived combat records. Among the artifact footage of the man fighting Red Gate mutant beasts, they found recordings of him against Lyards as well.

"That son of a bitch… He dared submit false reports to the Empire? Rating a monster like a Lyard as Low-grade?"

Keltazar ground his teeth as he reviewed the footage, certain that even Leos must have suffered horribly to bring the creature down. That certainty did not last long.

The absurdly short length drew a hollow laugh from him. The recording had to be faked, or swapped with footage of some lesser beast. He made a silent vow to punish the archive keeper severely—then, almost as an afterthought, played the artifact anyway.

"…What is this…"

Keltazar could not believe his own eyes. The same Lyard that had slaughtered thirty-four knights and butchered even Knight Commander Terepion of the Empire was being cut down by Leos in under a single minute. Every second of the fight was recorded in vivid, unforgiving clarity.

He rewound the footage again and again, searching for the difference between the knights and Leos.

"…He knew every habit from the very start."

The conclusion was simple. Leos had already mapped every trait of the Lyard. Lesser attacks he simply tanked with his body while charging forward; the truly dangerous ones he evaded by any means necessary. Whenever a specific attack pattern appeared he slipped inside its guard as though he had been waiting for that exact opening, driving again and again toward the creature's abdomen. One final thrust into that soft underbelly and the Lyard collapsed.

A true veteran. Anyone watching the old footage would have thought the Lyard laughably weak. How could they not? A monster over three meters tall that failed to land a single clean hit on a human and died in under a minute—nothing more than an oversized insect.

That impression was a catastrophic mistake. Keltazar returned to the knights' own subjugation footage.

Unlike Leos, the knights had no idea which of the Lyard's attacks were lethal and which were merely threatening. They tried to block everything. Their formation broke. Distance opened. Once the Lyard gained that range advantage, its absurd reach carved the knights apart. Even the desperate counterattacks of dying men struck only the creature's impossibly hard carapace instead of the vulnerable abdomen. When Keltazar turned back to Leos's recording, he saw that the man had never once touched the Lyard's blades or outer shell.

He already knew a sword couldn't pierce it. That's why he fought the way he did.

Only after watching the footage several more times did Keltazar finally let out a long, ragged sigh. It had been perfect—an absolute victory without a single wasted motion. Inside those fifty-seven seconds lay a density of detail so overwhelming it almost defied analysis. Not one gesture had been superfluous.

The real monster was not the Lyard. It was Leos.

I never heard anyone evaluate him this highly.

Neither the true danger of the monsters pouring from Red Gates nor the sheer height of Leos's own ability had ever been properly understood by the Empire.

Keltazar exploded.

"Why?! Why did no one ever report that Leos possessed this level of skill?!"

The aide standing beside him answered in a carefully quiet voice, eyes wide with alarm.

"Lord Keltazar. The gatekeepers can hear you."

Leos's former disciples—the gatekeepers who had been summoned back—began to murmur among themselves. For over an hour Keltazar had been locked onto the footage; the sudden shout of Leos's name had startled them all.

Keltazar forced his breathing under control and spoke more quietly to the aide.

"Leos is a talent the nation absolutely requires. So why was this never properly reported? Why did the upper ranks cast him out?"

"…Lord Keltazar. Once the gates closed, the Empire simply disposed of a department that was no longer needed. You know how many departments rise and vanish inside the Empire every single day. As monsters began to disappear, public opinion among the higher-ups naturally turned toward abolishing the Gate Management Headquarters, and we followed that current. No one sits down and weighs the excellence of every individual talent or the exact role each person plays before dissolving a department…"

Keltazar ground his teeth until they squeaked.

The aide added, almost defensively:

"And honestly… when you watch the footage, killing the monsters looks almost too simple. Every mutant that appeared from a Red Gate was hunted down by Leos alone, so from our side it was easy to assume they were the kind of beasts anyone could handle. No one else had ever actually tried, and the videos made it look effortless."

Keltazar no longer had the heart to blame the man. Had he seen only Leos's recordings, he too would have dismissed the Lyard as nothing more than a dull-witted oversized bug that couldn't even land a proper blow.

"Damn it… We need a plan. If a Low-grade is this dangerous, the moment a Mid-grade or High-grade shows up our forces will be annihilated no matter how many men we throw at it."

"What… do you intend to do?"

"Gather every single recording related to Leos. Every report he submitted of Red Gate monster subjugations—scrape them all together! Immediately."

The aide raced across the Empire, collecting every scrap of artifact footage that showed Leos fighting monsters. Even the smallest fragment was brought in. The final tally was staggering.

Over one hundred seventy-five thousand minutes. He had never imagined a single man could leave so vast a legacy.

Damn it all…

There was no solution. With Red Gates erupting across the Empire right now, they simply did not have the luxury of sitting the gatekeepers down for a hundred seventy-five thousand minutes of training. Every second of footage would have to be scrubbed frame by frame to extract the reason and principle behind each of Leos's movements; even with a full year they could never fully absorb the man's know-how. Yet Keltazar had no second-best option.

He hurriedly gathered the artifacts into one place and addressed the men and women who had once been Leos's disciples—now reorganized as Gatekeeper Team Two.

"From this moment you will watch the Red Gate footage. Minimum fifteen hours a day. Memorize every principle of movement before Team One is reconstituted. I will take no questions."

With those words Keltazar left. The aide's voice followed him, urgent and raw.

"Replenish the ranks at once. Prioritize physical ability and exceptional memory. If we fail to master the strategies Leos left behind, we will all be wiped out."

Keltazar was a man who decided quickly. Losing thirty-five knights had driven the truth home with brutal clarity: rather than throwing more bodies into the grinder for scraps of information, this was the correct path.

"Has Leos's location been confirmed?"

"There has been no contact from Feredin, Team Leader of the Imperial Shadow Group's Thirtieth Division… Something appears to have gone wrong."

—Boom!

Keltazar smashed his fist into the wall hard enough to crack stone.

"Find him immediately! Use any method necessary—just find Leos and bring him back!"

The former disciples clustered together, watching Leos battle monsters on the artifact screens.

"Why are they making us watch this…? That man did something terrible to Belin…"

A young girl asked the question with open confusion. Belin only kept her head bowed and said nothing.

"Exactly. Belin's right here—what is Lord Keltazar thinking? Does anyone know what Leos actually did?"

"Maybe we're supposed to learn from him? Whatever else he was, Leos was better at killing monsters than anyone. Especially Red Gate mutants—he wiped them all out alone. I think they want us to study his methods."

Opinions began to ripple through the group. Then one man strode forward and shut the artifact off.

"Darek! Lord Keltazar ordered us to watch these—you can't just turn them off—"

Darek rounded on the protesting girl with a shout.

"What kind of bullshit is that? Why the hell should we take help from that criminal bastard? Strategies? We don't need that crap. We can handle mutant monsters just fine without him."

"But… even the knights failed…"

"We're not the knights. We're veterans who've actually run real gate-clearing operations. If Leos could do it, so can we. Isn't that obvious?"

"…"

No one looked fully convinced, yet one by one they glanced at Belin and began to speak.

"…You're right. Belin would be uncomfortable. Better not to accept that man's help in any form."

At Sirna's words Darek nodded. He walked over to Belin and dropped heavily onto the seat beside her.

Belin spoke quietly.

"You… don't have to go that far."

A look of quiet torment crossed her face. Something felt more and more out of joint, a wrongness that kept growing. Darek, oblivious, only smiled and kept talking.

"Don't worry, Belin. I never liked that bastard Leos from the start. I'll protect you. Anything that damn Leos could do, I can do too. Oh, by the way—is that Kozarik still sniffing around you? I should teach him a lesson one of these days."

Belin ignored the stream of words and kept her head lowered. For a long while she could not bring herself to raise it again.

As Leos started walking out of the cave, Bendict called after him with open puzzlement.

"Hyung-nim, where are you going?"

"Time to clean up the Red Gates around us."

"Aww, that's dangerous—just leave them. I remember everything you told me. Some disciple framed you, right? The communities were all screaming that you're a criminal and worse. You don't need to help those bastards! Let the whole lot of them drop dead!"

Bendict shouted in frustration. Leos casually cuffed him across the back of the head and answered.

"You dense idiot. It's not about them—it's about you lot. When a mutant monster shows up, can you even run away properly? Do you know what kind of attacks they use, how they move, what their range is?"

"I… don't."

Leos glanced at Herisia beside them. She scratched her head with an awkward laugh.

"Hehe… I don't know either…"

"Right. Of course you don't. So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'm only going to close the Red Gates near us. I'll turn this immediate area into a Safety Zone and leave the rest alone. At best we'll get maybe a one-kilometer radius of safety. Everything beyond that, the Empire can live or die on its own."

"Ehh… still don't like it much…"

Bendict muttered. Leos fixed him with a flat look.

"Fine. We don't go. When the monsters show up later you can die running away. That work for you?"

"I'll trust only Hyung-nim! Please be careful out there!"

Watching Bendict snap into a perfect ninety-degree bow, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Leos let out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a short snort of laughter and started walking. Herisia called after him.

"Um, Lord Leos… do you really know the traits of every single Red Gate monster and mutant?"

Leos looked back at her as though the answer were the most natural thing in the world.

"I know them all. Every last one, without exception."