Regrets for Days Gone By
Herisia logged into Interrunner and turned to Leos.
"Whoa… Leos-nim, look at this! You're number one on the popular posts again? How many points have you stacked up by now?"
"Wait."
Leos connected to the site and checked his remaining balance.
"Seven thousand fifty-five points."
"No way… does that even make sense? You barely posted for a week and you've already piled up that much?"
[+] Additional points accrued for holding Popular Post #1 for over 15 hours
[+] Additional points accrued for achieving the highest comment count
[+] Additional points accrued for breaking the cumulative view ranking in the shortest time
Looking at the list, he could watch all sorts of bonus points piling up in real time—far too many to count. Clearly the system didn't raise points from views, comments, and recommendations alone; it was feeding in side bonuses as well.
Not that it was complicated. Keep the number-one popular post. Write things people would care about. Meet those two conditions and the secondary bonuses came along for free.
The world still hasn't released any real information on the Red Gates, and plenty of people need that intel just to stay alive. A few freelancers are selling whatever scraps they have for cash, but money's useless to me right now anyway. Better to spend points on goods when I actually need something.
With points starting to feel comfortable again, the urge to dive into the auction house washed over him. He pushed it to the back of the queue. There was something he needed to buy first.
Insufficient points. High-grade Artifact Blueprint cannot be purchased.
…Shame.
With nothing but monster byproducts, he could craft whatever artifact he wanted. High-grade artifacts in particular were packed with absurd survival boosts—exactly the kind of thing that had to be bought first, no questions asked.
The second the points stack up, I buy it. Absolute top priority.
With that thought, Leos stepped outside.
"Where are you going?"
"To kill some monsters and gather materials."
"Ah… because of that low-grade Artifact Blueprint you bought earlier?"
"Yeah. It says it can be made with three Red Wolf fangs, so it won't take long."
"Hyung-nim! I'll come with you!"
Bendict moved to follow, but Leos shook his head.
"Wait inside. There's no place safer than this bunker."
He left those words behind and walked out of the bunker. Climbing to the surface and pushing open the massive door, he found the wooden shack waiting above. Leos sat in a chair for a moment and let out a long breath.
I can't keep protecting them forever…
He knew it. Hiding Herisia and Bendict away and standing guard over them was not the whole answer. Letting them rack up real combat experience against monsters—pushing them into fights so they could grow—would be better for everyone.
If I did that, my burden would lighten. Life would get easier. But.
Quietly, Leos drew a photograph from inside his coat and stared at it, murmuring to himself.
"Garp. What do you think?"
How would I know? You're the one who decides, Hyung-nim.
"Back when I was freelancing instead of working for the government, I tried to train a mercenary company to fight mutants. Every last one of them died to those things. Teaching them, briefing them—none of it prepared them for the endless situations that came up. It only fed their arrogance. Your death was my fault too."
Come on, Hyung-nim, don't talk like that. We died because we weren't good enough. You walked us through everything, and we still botched the details and got wiped. How are you supposed to take the blame for that? Besides—thanks to you, our company had a hell of a good time. That's enough for me.
"When you asked me for countermeasures, I should have kept my mouth shut. Making you think you could handle them only put you in danger. If I hadn't told you how to fight them, you would have run instead of standing your ground…"
If you hadn't told us, we would've been massacred without killing a single one. At least we took a few of the bastards with us—that's a win. Official credit never came through, but I'm still proud of myself!
Leos stared blankly into empty air. Then he laughed, soft and quiet.
"Your problem is you suck up too much. Dying didn't fix that habit, huh."
Your problem is you stew over everything alone. That's exactly how your former Gatekeeper disciples stabbed you in the back—you kept trying to wrap them in cotton. Look at that Darek bastard. He had no idea what you'd been through, and the second you cleaned up every dangerous thing by yourself he ran to the Agency screaming that you were stealing credit. That little thug. Wonder if he's still kicking. If I hadn't died first, I would've wrung his neck myself. The rest of our dead company would climb right out of their graves if they saw you now.
"…My fault."
How is that your fault? Those punks got butchered by ordinary monsters that aren't even mutants. You could kill the same things while picking your nose, and they still got wiped. You think handing them mutant countermeasures would've helped? They should've been on their knees thanking you for clearing the dangerous ones alone. I'm certain of it—if you'd thrown them at the mutants, total annihilation. Every last one of them.
Leos snorted a short laugh, stood, and started walking.
Heading out already, Hyung-nim? We finally get to talk and you're cutting it short?
"Enough. I need to leave the past behind. You're just another attachment I made for myself."
Ah—that Bendict guy. His personality's a lot like mine, isn't it? At least you won't get bored. That's a relief.
"Yeah. Similar. Same kind of dumb and thick-skulled."
Hey, if I'd been weaker than him, you'd be the one dead right now—not me.
"What?"
Heh. Just saying, Hyung-nim.
"Garp. I want to stay with these two for a long time. I don't want them to die. They're all I've got left. You know everyone else abandoned me. I thought I didn't feel loneliness—turns out I was wrong."
…Then just protect them, right?
"I'm afraid they'll resent me the way my old disciples did. Part of me wants to throw them into situations where they can fight mutants themselves."
Are you insane? Bendict might scrape by, but that girl Herisia is dead for sure. Dead. Hell, Bendict would probably die too.
"I can load them up with artifacts. High-grade ones are hard to find even in the Empire."
You're going to hand those to Herisia and that thick-headed Bendict? Something that rare? Is that why you've been flooding Interrunner with posts?
"Yeah. I don't need them if I'm surviving alone. But the people walking with me will."
Ugh. Even if you do all that, you'll be lucky if they don't treat you exactly like the old disciples did. The second something goes wrong it'll be 'you didn't teach us enough about mutants,' 'you never trained us properly.' You give them your liver and gallbladder and they just suck the honey out. If I ever come back to life, I'm staying under you and sucking honey myself—no more dangerous work. You're a total soft touch!
"You do that."
With those words, Leos stepped outside.
A man painted head to toe in blood rummaged through a corpse and shouted.
"Found it! This one was packing a solid stash of food—hid it inside the body."
"Good work."
A silver-haired man approached. They claimed the goods, then flung the corpse far toward where the monsters waited.
A raider band. They called themselves Ulderic.
"Boss, looks like we've cleaned out every bastard in the area. Even the monsters around here are starting to thin out."
While the Ulderic members were talking, a mutant appeared. The man casually pulled a corpse from his inventory and tossed it forward like an offering.
Crunch… crack…
The mutant monster began devouring the human body. Kyler, captain of Ulderic, gestured and spoke.
"We can't handle mutant strains. Use the opening and run."
In a flash, the Ulderic raiders sprinted with sharp, practiced movements toward ground free of mutants. Before long, stretches of land with no monsters at all began to appear.
"Boss. This is weird. Why aren't there any monsters?"
"How would I know? Almost nothing's known about the Red Gates. But this is luck. A safety zone with no monsters means people will gather."
"Heh heh heh—figures, right? Let's kill them fast again, strip the food, stash the bodies in inventory, and feed the mutants later. Who would've guessed? Toss a human corpse and the mutants prioritize eating that first."
Kyler, leader of Ulderic, smiled in satisfaction as he eyed the inventory packed with corpses.
"We've got all the bodies we need, and we're inside a Safety Zone. Now all that's left is the harvest."
"Right. Ah—but Boss, we might need to be a little careful."
"Why?"
"You know that community, Interrunner? It's the only network still running, so everyone's piled into it."
"I know. It's the only place to get information right now."
"Yeah. But because we've been hitting people so hard, folks have started talking about Ulderic. Looks like some people are watching us. Warnings are going around—be careful of us, that kind of thing."
"They're still worthless trash who can't do a thing. What's scary about internet warriors who just dump posts?"
"True enough. That LEO guy? The weirdo's been farming aggro lately writing Red Gate posts. If he were such an expert, he could clear every Red Gate himself and bleed the Empire for a fortune. People are idiots for believing that garbage. Looks like a novel to me. Whoever wrote it is probably some bottom-feeder too."
Kyler snickered and nodded, then pressed a finger to his lips for silence.
"Oh… a person. Looks like he's carrying a lot of gear. We can strip him clean."
"Approach quiet."
The Ulderic raiders began closing in on a lone man. Before long the distance had shrunk to under twenty meters.
"Why isn't he moving?"
The Ulderic men held their breath, waiting for their target to stir—but from the moment he entered the dense woods, the man had gone still, silent, doing nothing at all.
Slowly drawing his sword, the man—Leos—spoke toward the brush where the Ulderic members hid.
"You've been tailing me for a while. Why?"
Kyler was certain they hadn't been spotted. No one answered. They waited.
"If you don't come out in three seconds, I'll assume you followed me with hostile intent."
A few of the Ulderic raiders snickered.
"Listen to this bastard talk. Acting like he's somebody, throwing weight around."
"How many of us are there versus that idiot?"
"Hyung, let's mess with him a little before we kill him. What're you gonna do if we followed you with bad intentions, you son of a bitch?"
Even with his subordinates running their mouths, Kyler didn't rein them in. He knew that would only make more noise. Like a snake watching prey, he simply held still and waited.
The terrain was bad. Wait until the target bolted out of the brush, then kill him. That was the plan—until.
Whiiip!
Something cut the air. A dagger punched straight through one Ulderic member's skull, leaving a clean hole.
"Ghk…!"
The raider collapsed in the undergrowth without even managing a proper scream. Leos spoke toward them without a trace of emotion.
"You ignored the warning. I'll treat you as enemies and kill every last one of you."