Bombardment
Keltazar rose from the desk where he had been sitting and spoke.
"Have you finished every investigation I ordered?"
Jareid, commander of the Imperial Exploration Squad, gathered his documents and submitted them as he answered.
"Confirmed. Given the volume of eyewitness testimony, the protected zone in the central region appears to be real. The cause of the phenomenon remains unknown for now, but it is safe to treat as fact that there are pockets of space in the center where the gates have closed."
"You didn't use the exploration artifacts? I want to see it with my own eyes."
"We did. Every last one was shot down by mutant monsters. The area is impossible to survey with ordinary artifacts. Nothing short of a high-grade artifact would survive the attacks."
"High-grade artifacts... are there no floating high-grade artifacts left in the Empire?"
"There are, but they require His Majesty's personal authorization. Under the present circumstances he has refused. As you know, every floating high-grade artifact is currently devoted to scouting the vicinity of the Imperial Palace..."
"His Majesty is entitled to worry about his own safety. A Red Gate could open near the palace at any moment."
Keltazar said the words, yet his teeth ground together. Even if high-grade artifacts were rare, to monopolize every single one solely for the preservation of his own hide... Recognizing the disloyal thought, Keltazar forced it aside and continued.
"In the end we have no choice but to go ourselves."
"Leave it to us. The Imperial Exploration Squad exists precisely for moments like this, does it not?"
"Can you handle it?"
"Of course."
Keltazar considered for a moment, then tapped the desk several times and spoke again.
"A Safety Zone has formed inside the Red Gate vortex. It could be a natural occurrence, or someone may have created it deliberately. If it was deliberate, the culprit is almost certainly that bastard Leos. The center should be thick with high-grade Red Gates, and he is the only one capable of sealing them."
"Do not concern yourself. I am familiar enough with the man called Leos. He once displayed overwhelming power when monsters were rampant, but that was the past. Trust our search unit."
"Feredin, thirtieth division team leader of the Imperial Shadow Group, lost contact while searching for Leos some time ago. He would never have fled; someone almost certainly killed him. An ominous thought keeps surfacing—that Leos might have been the one who did it."
"Impossible. Feredin was an exceptional operative."
"...True. Nothing has been proven, so idle speculation is pointless."
Jareid addressed the grim-faced Keltazar.
"Lord Keltazar. Even if Feredin did die at Leos's hands, it would not be a serious problem. You know the power of our Exploration Squad. Searching, fleeing, hiding—and killing when the opportunity arises—those are our specialties. In this field we are the experts. Leave everything to us."
"Very well. I will trust you this once."
Keltazar stood, handed Jareid several lumps of gold, and watched the man grin as he pocketed them.
"When the job is finished I will give you three times what I just paid."
"It is an honor. Even without pay I would gladly lay down my life for the Empire."
"Spare me the empty platitudes and get out."
Jareid was still chuckling as he turned to leave, then paused as if something had occurred to him.
"Ah—any word from the Imperial Execution Squad?"
"Paron, the man I planted among them, reported in. They claim they are exploring the interior of the Red Gate vortex. I ordered them to find Leos and bring him to me."
"Is there any need to double the effort when you are already sending us?"
"I would be delighted if you found Leos first, but your primary mission remains to verify the Safety Zone at the center of the vortex with your own eyes. Running parallel operations costs me nothing. And I did not order the Execution Squad out—they moved on their own."
"Strange. I truly cannot fathom what Lacart, commander of the Execution Squad, is thinking. The man is forever poking his nose into everything yet never reveals his own intentions."
"Whatever his reasons, he is acting for the Empire again this time. Paron reported nothing suspicious, and Lacart has always been a loyal dog of the Empire."
"Then all is well."
Outside, Jareid, commander of the Exploration Squad, clenched the gold in his fist and muttered.
"Haa... this is why I do the work. Gold is wonderful. Even while the nation collapses around us, its value never changes. Karek, once this job is done we get three times the pay we just received."
"Keltazar certainly has an eye for talent. He knows how capable we are; that is why he invests so heavily."
"This almost feels like free money. We are not even fighting monsters—just heading to the center to confirm whether a Safety Zone actually exists."
Karek, listening, spoke with open unease.
"I advise against complacency. Reports of people being slaughtered by mutant monsters keep pouring in. Even if we avoid them, some casualties seem inevitable."
"Casualties? Only idiots get caught. Our squad is stacked with the absolute best light-footwork artists in the Empire. How is anything supposed to catch us? Unless they start dropping bombs from the sky."
"...True enough."
"If it gets a little dangerous we simply run. And if we happen to have the leisure to kill that Leos bastard along the way, we can collect an extra bounty. Even better."
Deputy Commander Karek merely nodded in silence. For all his caution, the Exploration Squad's mastery of light footwork was so exceptional that he believed they could adapt to any crisis and that their lives would never truly be at risk.
"By the way, I looked into Leos. The trial for assaulting his disciples was apparently an imperial conspiracy."
"So he never did those things?"
"Correct. Plenty of people in other agencies already knew. I simply never cared enough to check, but once you actually put the information network to work the truth is not hard to find."
"Why go through all that complicated trouble? They could have just killed him."
"Public opinion of him was already poor at the time, was it not? I cannot know His Majesty's heart, but I suspect he was wary of the man's influence growing any larger."
"Come on. As if the Emperor would bother fretting over a nobody like that."
"His Majesty is also extremely sensitive about Interrunner, is he not?"
"...Fair point. He rages about banning a single community site. I still do not understand why. Without catching the operator it cannot be shut down anyway."
"Because it is the only community that lies completely outside imperial control. If a riot were ever plotted from there it could become a serious problem. His Majesty has always been pathologically wary of anyone who refuses to swear loyalty yet still wields influence."
"That is exactly what I cannot grasp. Why go to such elaborate lengths over a mere community and over a man like Leos. And can they even ban Interrunner? Practically everyone in the imperial subsidiary agencies uses it."
With that, Jareid trudged into the Red Gate vortex. After advancing several dozen kilometers he began to sense a considerable number of human auras nearby.
A thought struck him. He instantly dashed forward, slaughtered the people who had been hiding, then checked their Distances.
"Ah... not this bastard either. Of course he would not have come out from the center to the outskirts."
He sighed, then began taking photographs.
"What are you doing?"
"Why? They would have been slaughtered by monsters anyway if we left them."
"I am not questioning the killing. I am simply curious why you are photographing them."
"Ah, some guy is doing something amusing. We have a long way to go and could use a little entertainment, right?"
After uploading the photos to Interrunner, Jareid continued.
"There is a little maggot on Interrunner who monopolizes every popular post and rules like a king. We calculated it—he racked up over ten thousand points in less than a week. We work our asses off and still cannot scrape together five thousand. If those points had been ours we could have bought a high-grade artifact blueprint."
"...Using the Interrunner shop without reporting to the Empire is illegal."
"I am not doing this because I am ignorant. If that bothered me I would never have used Interrunner in the first place. And someday the Empire might discard us too, right? We need to stockpile weapons for that day. Getting some entertainment on the side is just a bonus."
Jareid spread his comrades wide for the search and muttered,
"If we just kill that LEO bastard we can rake in a mountain of points in one go."
"Would it not be wiser not to provoke him? From the looks of it he is no ordinary person."
"What is he going to do? He is near the center and we are on the outskirts."
An alert popped up. Jareid checked it at once, curious how the infamous LEO would respond.
Unfortunately only comments from other users appeared. LEO himself remained silent.
"What a retard. His previous posts must have been fabricated too."
Several hours later a new post from LEO finally appeared.
The attached image showed a photograph taken of Jareid from high in the sky. The problem was what else the picture captured: something that looked exactly like a mana bomb, already falling.
"What the fuck is this...!"
The instant Jareid looked up,
"How...?"
dozens of mana bombs were raining down from the air.