Riot
After Leos was thrown into prison, he resented his disciples at first. It was a thoroughly human disappointment that they had refused to believe him. But the feeling did not last. The only thing that angered him about them was that they had not trusted him, so there was no room left for anything as heavy as revenge. Cutting them off completely and never seeing them again for the rest of his life—that was the full extent of what he felt. The Empire, however, was another matter entirely.
Imperial Shadow Group…
When he killed Feredin, the man had told him. That he belonged to the Imperial Shadow Group, and that Belin belonged to it as well.
I never understood why they did that to me. I had never wronged Belin in the slightest. But if she was part of the Imperial Shadow Group, everything changes.
The Imperial Shadow Group was the kind of organization that would cheerfully commit any atrocity imaginable so long as it served the Empire’s interests—more precisely, the Emperor’s. And so Leos finally settled the long, gnawing question that had haunted him.
Why had Belin done it? The answer, he no longer doubted, was orders from the Imperial Shadow Group. More precisely, orders from the Empire itself.
He still did not know why they had ordered the downfall of a man who had been rising so smoothly. But one thing was certain: Belin, a member of the Shadow Group that obeyed the Emperor’s every word like a dog, had cast him into the abyss. And from the courtroom onward, every imperial institution had been complicit in the process.
Therefore, the target of Leos’s revenge was not the former disciples who had failed to believe him.
I still have no intention of taking revenge on the disciples. From now on I’ll simply never contact them again. As if we had never known each other from the beginning. But the Empire… the Empire is different.
They had stripped him of every honor and every fortune, then cast into hell a man who had worked like a dog for their sake. Neither the Shadow Group nor any of the Empire’s subordinate agencies could be dismissed with a mere severance of ties. He had offered his life for the Empire, and in return they had orchestrated his social murder while pretending nothing had happened. Such a repulsive regime deserved retribution. That was how Leos saw it.
But I can’t do it alone.
No one understood his own combat power better than Leos. Surviving inside the Red Gate vortex was possible. Using the terrain to slaughter any imperial vermin who wandered in was also entirely feasible. But if someone asked whether he could launch a coup and march straight into the Empire itself, the answer was naturally no.
More than ninety percent of the Empire’s total military strength is guarding the imperial palace. The moment I invade, every last one of those forces will pour out.
It was not the sort of army that a few chain swords or high-grade artifacts could handle. And so Leos had buried his desire for revenge deep in his heart. Even knowing the Empire had used Belin to frame him, even without knowing the reason, he had been forced to swallow it all.
He had endured three long years alone, along with the gazes that treated him as human garbage. He had endured the nightmare of every disciple he once trusted turning their backs, and of everyone around him looking at him as if he were an insect.
That was when the man standing before him spoke.
He said he could give Leos revenge against the Empire. Not against the disciples who no longer had anything to do with him, but against the Empire that had engineered and manipulated this entire farce.
“First, explain how you plan to go about it.”
Leos swept his chain sword in a wide arc, checking the surroundings. Roughly twenty people, no more. No additional troops were stationed nearby. Every one of them was completely unarmed.
No variables. If they try any bullshit, I’ll kill them all on the spot.
The fact that Leos was even holding a conversation with people belonging to an imperial subordinate agency was already a miracle. Had they come armed with swords at their hips, he would have annihilated them with artillery before they ever opened their mouths. The commander of the Imperial Execution Squad, Lacart, was well aware of that fact.
“I am Lacart, commander of the Imperial Execution Squad. I’ve worked like a dog under the Empire. I’ll be honest. I, too, have served the Empire. But one thing must be made absolutely clear: I never involved myself in a single matter related to you, Leos.”
He took a few slow steps forward.
“To some people I may be nothing more than the Empire’s hunting dog, a bastard who deserves to die. But to you, at least, that is not the case.”
“Why are you wasting time with pointless talk? That wasn’t the question I asked.”
“No, it isn’t pointless. This is extremely important. We need to draw a clear line between friend and foe, don’t we? We are the Empire’s hunting dogs, yes—but we were used, just like you. The same way you went around clearing gates for the Empire, we went around slaughtering people the Empire no longer needed. The only difference is whether the target was a monster or a human. The path we walked is the same. I’m not trying to justify it. I simply wanted you to know that we are in the same situation, and that we want revenge just as much as you do. That is my motive.”
Lacart walked right up to Leos, lifted his chin, and spoke.
“Before we continue, if the mere fact that I once worked under the Empire makes you unwilling to join me, then kill me right here. I’d rather die than be used all over again.”
At the same time he called back over his shoulder.
“If my head comes off, the rest of you run. There’s no need for you to die with me.”
“Commander Lacart!”
Paron started to lunge forward, but Lacart stopped him.
“Paron, don’t do anything stupid. That’s an order.”
“…”
Paron ground his teeth and glared at Leos. When Leos raised his sword, Paron’s face went deathly pale and his hand flew to the hilt at his waist, ready to draw. But the chain sword Leos swung simply tore the entire scabbard and blade free from his belt and sent them flying.
Lacart immediately stepped between Paron and Leos with his own body.
“As I said earlier, if you refuse to work with us, I would prefer that my neck alone be enough to satisfy you.”
“Why go this far?”
“Because I want you to understand that we are not the Empire. Unlike those insects who treat every human being as a disposable tool, I genuinely value my comrades. It may sound paradoxical coming from the commander of an execution squad that has killed countless people, but I truly mean it.”
“You’re disgusting. You slaughter everyone else without a second thought, yet your own comrades are suddenly precious?”
“LEO. You’re the same, aren’t you?”
At Lacart’s words, Leos fell silent for a moment. LEO was the nickname Leos used on Interrunner. On that site he had posted proof of countless kills.
“We observed you from a considerable distance for several days. You have comrades.”
“Is that a threat? With numbers like these I could kill every last one of you in under a minute.”
“Leos. I’m not threatening you. I’m saying I’m the same as you. There were things I had to do to keep my comrades alive. The same way you killed those other plunderers.”
Leos met Lacart’s eyes for a long moment, then slowly lowered his sword. It was not because he had been persuaded. He simply judged, after weighing various factors, that the man was worth using.
First: they had come unarmed. That alone meant they already understood his temperament to some degree, however they had learned it.
Second: he did not casually abandon his comrades. Unlike the usual idiots, this man—commander though he was—stood at the very front and took the risk himself.
Third: his subordinates were willing to stake their own lives to protect their superior. If Lacart had been a piece of trash, they would have moved only out of duty; they would never have charged forward in genuine outrage the way the man named Paron had done from the rear.
And most important of all, the fourth:
They observed me. And they managed it without me ever detecting them.
Lacart had said they watched him and then approached. They knew he had comrades, and they even knew he used the nickname LEO on Interrunner; that much was clearly true. But it also meant something else.
They knew I had comrades, yet they never used that knowledge to launch a surprise attack.
Lacart was saying as much, indirectly.
With numbers like these it would not have been difficult to draw Leos’s attention and then strike at his comrades. Gathered all together as they were now, Leos could wipe them out easily. But if they had approached in groups of five while he was forced to protect Herisia and Bendict, the moment their positions were revealed the outcome would have been far less certain.
Of course, if they had tried that, I would have killed them all in the end anyway.
Lacart had never stated it outright, yet in that brief span Leos absorbed every piece of information and reached his conclusion.
He’s useful. And even after discovering my weak point, he chose not to exploit it. Instead he disarmed and came at me head-on.
Lacart had deliberately taken the troublesome path that put his own life on the line rather than the easy one. Therefore Leos decided he would at least listen to what the man had to say.
“I promise I won’t betray you. But that promise only holds as long as you don’t do anything suspicious. I will not share the same living space with you. I will keep Spirels watching you at all times, and you will live on the outer perimeter of the Safety Zone. If we ever strike the Empire, you will take the front line. No matter who else joins us later, the ones standing at the front will always be you. Keep those conditions and I’ll consider working with you, as you suggested.”
“Is that all? That’s more than fine with me.”
“…”
Caught off guard by the ready acceptance, Leos was still processing when Lacart’s expression turned grave. He began pulling documents from his coat and laying them out on the ground one by one.
“These are records of the filthy things the Empire has been doing. Including official orders that came down to us as well.”
Leos looked down at the papers and could not suppress a jolt of shock.
“Is this real?”
“It’s only a plan; it hasn’t been carried out yet. The Emperor of the Peren Empire realized he could never seal every Red Gate, so he started looking for a way to prevent any more from opening. One of the options was to drop mana bombs across this entire region and wipe out every person, every gate, and every monster in a single stroke.”
“Even if you drop bombs, monsters will keep spawning unless the gates themselves are sealed.”
“Then you just keep raining them down on every sector, once every twenty-four hours. That was the Emperor’s thinking. Of course this proposal was only drafted as a last-resort contingency—something to keep on the shelf until every other option was exhausted. The Emperor isn’t so far gone that he wouldn’t realize using it would trigger a massive riot. That’s why he left it as a final contingency.”
“Why tell me about a plan that has no chance of being implemented?”
“Because we’re going to use it.”
Lacart began scanning the documents, then opened a Distance window and started uploading the annihilation-plan file to Interrunner.
“What the hell are you—”
The document Lacart was uploading no longer bore the title [Red Gate Vortex Isolation Personnel Annihilation Plan]. It now read [Red Gate Vortex Isolation Personnel Annihilation Execution]. Portions of the content had been altered as well, as if the planning stage were already finished and only the final order remained.
“It’s a forgery we created. I told you—I’ll let you take revenge the exact same way they did.”
“People won’t believe it.”
“They will.”
Lacart smiled as he watched the uploaded file.
“People are simpler than you think. They get swayed far more easily by what they see right in front of them than by reason. Just like the way they condemned you when you hadn’t done a single thing wrong.”
Leos remained skeptical. Could a handful of documents really move people?
But roughly five hours later—
“Empire! Stop the massacre of the innocent!”
—a massive riot erupted across the Peren Empire.