Former Disciples Contact Leos Again
“Guh… gaaah…”
Pakol never even managed a proper counter before Leos’s chain sword smashed him into the dirt. He had known he needed to react, yet the merciless barrage of long-range strikes left him no chance to defend himself.
Leos stripped every useful item from the corpse and stashed them in his inventory, then walked toward the Distance whose record button he had left running.
Got a clean take.
He reviewed the footage that captured both his face and his back, then carefully edited it so his identity would stay hidden. He stripped the audio entirely. Even after several layers of distortion—enough that Herisia and Bendict would never guess it was him—Leos only then began calmly clearing the bodies one by one.
“You filthy things sure do love a free meal.”
He hurled the corpses far away. Monsters swarmed them at once, like a pack of wild dogs that had just found dinner, tearing into the flesh.
Do they eat because they’re hungry, or do they attack simply because they hate humans?
Even Leos did not know why monsters were so hostile toward people. Every monster attacked humans without exception. A few mutants might behave differently, but the rest acted exactly like this: if it was human, even a corpse, they bit, tore, and devoured whatever was closest.
If it were purely for survival they would show the same interest in other animals and plants, yet they did not. Monsters never ate one another either. So the best guess was pure enmity, not hunger.
No point thinking about it. It’s a question with no answer.
To learn the real reason, someone would have to ask a monster itself. But how do you interrogate creatures that cannot even hold a conversation?
Once every body had been completely eaten, Leos made his unhurried way back toward the secret bunker.
No people left in the area. Pushing it a little was unavoidable.
The raider gang that had called him Drelpra had not only exposed the existence of the Safety Zone; they had shared its exact location. Interest would explode.
Sitting dead-center in the Red Gate vortex, the place was unreachable for anyone starting from a distant major city—they would never punch through the outer layers. But anyone who had already been nearby when the Red Gates first opened could reach it without much trouble.
A handful of newcomers would not matter. With the information now loose on Interrunner, however, every survivor in the vicinity might pour in. The posts already proved it.
Leos agreed with the last comment. There was a name for it: the broken-window effect. Leave one piece of trash in a clean public space and before long the whole place becomes a dump. One rotten person starts a snowball that cannot be stopped.
If the Safety Zone gained a reputation as raider territory, every other raider would flock there. Worst case, they might even form an alliance—an unprecedented disaster.
The solution was simple.
This time he uploaded video of the actual fight instead of a photo. Graphic, yes, but more than enough to burn a clear impression into every viewer. The reaction exploded at once.
Positive reactions dominated, but a few uneasy voices still appeared.
Because the dead men had been vicious raiders, almost no one defended them. Still, a handful viewed Leos’s brutal response with uneasy irony. They were a tiny minority; most people began openly praising him.
Public opinion crystallized in minutes. Even Leos’s older posts were buried under an avalanche of upvotes until the entire Top 10 was filled with his threads. Watching the numbers climb, he posted once more.
Leos skimmed the replies one by one, then slowly surveyed the surroundings.
They think I’m fighting for them?
Ridiculous. The Safety Zone was already public knowledge; people would come whether he liked it or not. The next-best option was keeping raider gangs away—or, more fundamentally, keeping them from ever approaching the bunker itself.
Human shields.
Once ordinary survivors flooded the area, their screams or the posts they frantically uploaded to Interrunner would give him instant situational awareness. When trouble started he could react fluidly. In short, living, breathing human CCTV cameras.
This is better. If I hadn’t posted that, only the strong, nasty ones would have flocked here.
The more weak people gathered, the better. They would absorb the raiders’ attention and serve as a buffer for the bunker without ever knowing it.
—Creeeak
The moment Leos opened the bunker door, Bendict erupted into applause.
“Hyung-nim! I saw the video! Why didn’t you tell me you fight that well? And that chain sword—first time I’ve ever seen it!”
“Of course you’ve never seen it. I only use the thing when I’m killing people.”
While Bendict laughed like an idiot behind him, Herisia spoke in a worried tone.
“Leos… people are going to pour into this area now. What if friction breaks out…?”
“Then I kill them. That’s obvious. In a situation like this you keep killing if you want to stay alive. The soft ones who can’t do that are already dead under someone else’s blade.”
“…”
Herisia started to protest, then simply nodded.
“You’re right. Most of the Empire’s citizens never believed in you to begin with. Except maybe the people from Leos Gallery…”
Something occurred to Leos and he asked,
“What’s the Leos Gallery admin doing these days?”
“Oh! I traded comments with them. They followed the advice you gave and managed to secure food. They left a thank-you comment—didn’t you see it?”
“Too many notifications. I can’t check them all.”
“Ah… yeah, that makes sense. By the way, every single popular post is yours now. How many points have you stacked up?”
Leos opened Interrunner and checked his remaining balance.
A faint smile touched his lips as he murmured,
“I can finally craft a high-grade artifact. With that, it won’t matter how many people show up.”
“Nnngh… nnnngh…!”
A man groaned in agony inside the cave. Enas frantically bandaged his arm, trying to stop the bleeding.
“Just hold on a little longer! I’m using an artifact to heal you as much as I can…!”
“Don’t leave me… please… I’ll recover soon…”
“I’m not leaving anyone. Why would I abandon a comrade?”
The Gatekeeper Management Headquarters survivors who had barely escaped the mutant Minotaur had found a nearby cave and hidden themselves. Most of them were now combat-incapable from the horrific injuries.
In a corner, Belin muttered in despair.
“Why… this can’t be happening… it wasn’t supposed to go like this…”
Her face was deathly pale, her mind clearly elsewhere, as if something had gone terribly wrong. Enas urgently asked the others,
“Does anyone know anything about the mutant Minotaur?”
“…”
“We don’t… Leos would, maybe.”
At that name Enas flinched and glanced at Belin. Belin only buried her head against her knees and stayed silent.
“Don’t worry about me.”
Once Belin gave permission, Enas spoke.
“Master Leos… he killed that monster before. It didn’t even take a full minute. How on earth…?”
“Back then both heads weren’t attacking at the same time…”
“No. Even when they did attack together, Master Leos still killed it like it was nothing.”
The former disciples of Leos, clueless about what to do next, stared at the ground in despair for a long time before someone murmured,
“If we stay like this we’re all dead… if we go outside and run into that thing again it’s total wipe… maybe we should just try contacting him…”
“Contact… who?”
When Enas asked, Belin answered.
“Contact Leos… He won’t pick up if I call… but if it’s him… if it’s him he’ll definitely know a way.”
Enas looked at the half-broken Belin with a complicated expression.
“Belin, you said even hearing Leos’s name hurts. So why…?”
Kozarik cut in quickly.
“Because our lives are on the line! Belin doesn’t want to die either, right? Enas, you were the closest to him. You call. He might actually answer if it’s you.”
“…”
Enas stared at her Distance, then slowly entered Leos’s unique number.
…
Holding her breath, she gazed at the number and pressed the call button.
Please, she prayed. Please let him pick up.