Incited Public Opinion
There are famous sayings about lies.
A lie that is one hundred percent false is easily seen through. But mix one percent truth into ninety-nine percent falsehood, and people swallow it whole.
Agitation can be accomplished with a single sentence. Refuting it demands hundreds of pages of documents and proof—and by the time the rebuttal is complete, the public is already inflamed.
Leos was staring at the Interrunner site and feeling the truth of those words cut straight to the bone.
The Extermination Plan. Naturally, as a top-tier classified matter within the Empire, its appearance on Interrunner made some people suspicious. Yet the seals stamped on the documents, the real names of agency personnel, and the meticulously structured contents themselves were more than enough for most to accept it as truth.
Anyone still insisting the Empire would never do such a thing—that it would never risk a full-scale riot—was immediately branded an Imperial dog. And of course they were: the Imperial Execution Squad was systematically manipulating Interrunner opinion as one.
Lacart, commander of the Imperial Execution Squad, spoke to his men.
"Brand anyone defending the Empire as a dog of the Imperial agencies. Keep writing posts of rage and suspicion. Hit multiple galleries at once with varied patterns. Repeat the process for the next three hours. Watch your speech patterns, spelling, and sentence structure so no overlaps appear. Every time you pick up a new Distance, you become a different person."
At Lacart's order, hundreds of Distances were spread across the ground like a factory floor. Execution Squad members began hammering out posts and comments. Leos could only stare, dumbfounded by a method he had never imagined.
"What? Did you think that just because we're the Execution Squad we wouldn't use tricks like this?"
"Honestly, I didn't expect it. I figured you people barely knew how to use a Distance."
Lacart laughed.
"Killing someone is easy. Covering it up afterward is the hard part. If the target left posts on Interrunner or messages to acquaintances, you have to build an alibi around those records and then fabricate the crime scene and location. So we study Interrunner and Distance use constantly. Never thought it'd be put to work like this, though."
Organized comment manipulation. Posts flooding every gallery at an insane simultaneous rate—even watching it with his own eyes, Leos found it hard to believe.
Posts exploding every few seconds at a manic pace—all written by Execution Squad members. An anonymous community where a Distance let you become anyone made opinion manipulation lethally effective.
"That's enough. Stop."
After roughly two hours, the Squad no longer needed to post. The public's own volcanic rage was flooding Interrunner. Some users uploaded proof-of-life photos with weapons, swearing they would resist the Empire. The entire Interrunner TOP 10 was carpeted with calls for rebellion.
It was not only those trapped inside the Red Gate vortex. People whose families were sealed inside erupted in fury as well—and the Empire's own attitude had poured fuel on the fire.
The Empire's lukewarm response. They had attempted to clear the vortex several times and failed spectacularly, then quietly erased every failed attempt from the record to hide their humiliation. That decision had become the knife in their own gut.
From the citizens' perspective, the Empire had simply done nothing at all.
"Perfect."
Lacart watched Interrunner with a thin, bitter smile. Leos looked at the man and asked,
"You knew it would go this way from the start?"
"Of course."
"What if public opinion gets suppressed later? The Imperial side will release their own materials."
"Hahaha! Even if the palace releases materials, what changes? The large-scale slaughter plan was a last-resort contingency—but it was still one of the options the Emperor considered. The documents are real. If they tell the truth, will the public understand?"
"They won't."
"Exactly. So they'll have to distribute false materials instead—and that won't work either. Once opinion is set, every scrap of evidence they produce becomes suspect. Pinning the crime on someone else is easy. Proving your own innocence is thousands of times harder."
He walked slowly toward Leos, then raised a finger toward the sky.
"'The guilty meet a wretched end; therefore God exists.' Do you know how many tens of thousands of cases and tens of millions of characters it takes to refute that single sentence? Even if you drag every example into the light, you still can't refute it completely. Proving something exists is hard. Proving something does not exist is tens of thousands of times harder—that's why."
Leos stayed silent. He agreed. After Belin had pointed the finger at him, he had begged countless people that he was innocent—yet he had still been branded a filthy criminal and locked away. Even Leos, who had slaughtered tens of thousands of mutant monsters and could cut down dozens of men with a single stroke, had been powerless. Distance logs, every scrap of evidence—one word of "fabricated" and it all meant nothing. Agitation was an invisible weapon of war. The Execution Squad was demonstrating it with perfect clarity.
Lacart approached him and said quietly,
"You look disgusted watching public opinion get manipulated this easily."
"Because I got hit the exact same way."
"Don't take it too hard. We're just paying back the people who did this to you."
Leos recalled the past for a moment and twisted his face in anger. Even so, his voice stayed low.
"I hope those bastards feel exactly what I felt. How fucking miserable it is to get swept up in something like this."
"Rage all you want. And don't worry. The Empire will receive a punishment worse than anything they gave you. You got prison. The only sentence waiting for them is death."
"With this few people? Impossible."
"With you and us together, it's possible."
Leos almost snapped that it was ridiculous—then he remembered the opinion manipulation he had just witnessed, and his assessment of the man flipped completely.
The sheer boldness of approaching fully unarmed. The ability to watch me from a distance without me detecting him. Even using hundreds of Distances to agitate Interrunner opinion...
This was no ordinary man. For reasons he could not quite name, the absurd thought that he might actually be able to take revenge on the Peren Empire if he stayed with this person was starting to feel real.
Leos pulled rations from his inventory and tossed them over.
"Eat. Looks like you didn't bring any food."
Lacart shook his head and refused.
"We will not accept anything material from you. What we need is you—not your goods or resources. We'll find our own food."
"So you'll plunder the people around here?"
"No. We'll hunt monsters and eat them. That's how we got here in the first place."
Then Lacart added one more thing.
"As I said, throughout every step of striking back at the Empire, we will place ourselves in the most dangerous positions. We will accept no material support from you during that process. There is, however, one thing we will need from you."
"What is it?"
"Too early to say. Just promise me this: when we ask, you will help us once."
Leos was silent a moment, then turned away.
"Do whatever you want. And those rations are trash now—deal with them yourselves."
Lacart looked down at the jerky and water bottles on the ground, snorted a quiet laugh, and spoke to Paron beside him.
"Paron. Don't you think he's a better guy than we expected?"
"Hard to say. The man has killed countless people. We watched him cut down more than twenty ourselves. At first he was ready to slaughter every last one of us."
Lacart shook his head and bent to gather the jerky. Leaving it would draw monsters; he planned to collect it all and return it to Leos in one go.
Paron, mistaking the motion for an intent to eat, startled and tried to stop him.
"Lord Lacart—there could be poison in the food. Leave it."
The instant Lacart heard that, he changed course. Right in front of Paron he started chewing the jerky with loud, deliberate crunches. Only after a long while did he grin.
"Paron. Once I decide someone is one of mine, I don't doubt them. You know how I've lived."
"...Someday that will get you killed, and you'll regret it badly."
"Better that than regretting because I refused to trust. If I had doubted you, you'd still be standing on the Empire's side right now, wouldn't you?"
"You really could die."
"I've committed enough sins. If I die that way, I'll just consider it paying the price."
"..."
Paron, once an Imperial spy who had chosen Lacart's side instead, could find no rebuttal. The truth was that this foolish side of the man was exactly what had drawn him in.
"After nothing but garbage monsters, this actually tastes good. I'll have to repay him with better food later. I hate being in debt."
Emperor Vermon of the Peren Empire summoned Keltazar, commander of the Imperial Shadow Group. Rows of Shadow Group operatives stood behind him; among them were Kozarik and Belin.
Vermon's face was dark with rage as he roared,
"You've all received the reports. You know the situation."
He drew his sword and set the edge against Keltazar's throat.
"Exactly one week. Resolve this mess within that time."
"...Understood."
Keltazar bowed his head, cold sweat running down his face. The Emperor turned his icy glare on the Shadow Group lined up behind their commander.
"One week. If you fail to clean this up properly, every last one of you dies by my hand. Find the ones who distributed those documents and stirred up this false agitation! Bring me the heads of the shameless bastards who did this!"
Under the Emperor's frenzied bellow, Belin began to tremble violently.
I don't want to die...
The terror of death was closing in on her with absolute clarity.