See? You're Just the Same
"See? You're just the same, aren't you?"
Alik clutched his pierced shoulder, analyzing Leos's full strength without even a moment to spare for the pain.
He's skilled with the chain sword. With that level of mastery, he'll swing it better up close than at range. Closing in is the wrong move—I have to attack from as far away as possible.
Against an enemy who launched ranged attacks, the standard tactic was to close the distance as much as possible. But a single exchange had already taught Alik that Leos handled a sword far better than he ever could. Get close and he would die before he even managed a proper counter. The only option left in this situation was to answer with the same kind of ranged assault.
Alik immediately used his uninjured arm to draw a dagger from his coat and hurl it with all his strength. Three daggers cut through the air at once. Whether Leos meant to defend, flee, or follow up with another attack, Alik had been ready to respond—yet he could only stare blankly, doubting his own eyes.
With nothing more than a single rapid spin, Leos had deflected every one of the three daggers flying at him in sequence.
Fuck… that's impossible. I didn't throw them all at once—I staggered the speeds by the tiniest margins. And he still knocked every single one of them aside without even a hitch?
Having swatted the daggers aside with a chain sword heavy with dangling links, Leos spun another full circle on the spot and used the centrifugal force to fling the weapon straight at Alik's head.
"Guhhh…!"
Alik barely managed to block the chain sword with his own blade, but the combined weight of the sword, the chains, and the rotational force crashing into him all at once was more than one arm could ever hope to withstand.
He gritted his teeth and clung to his sword, but in the end the weapon was wrenched from his failing grip and sent flying. The instant he thrust a hand into his coat for a spare dagger, Leos's chain sword came screaming in again.
—Thunk!
This time the strike aimed not at his arm but precisely at the top of his foot. The chain sword lashed out like a snake's tongue and punched clean through Alik's instep. Alik seized the chain with lightning speed, wrapped it around his wrist several times so that even if Leos yanked it would not come free, and then twisted his lips into a bloody smile.
"You stupid bastard… finally got you."
Alik had deliberately taken the hit, sacrificing his own foot to neutralize Leos's chain sword. With the main weapon sealed, all that remained was the counterattack.
"Kill that son of a bitch! All of you!"
At Alik's command the Imperial Enforcement Squad members began flinging daggers one after another at Leos. Leos simply abandoned the chain sword on the spot, drew a small dagger of his own, lowered his stance, and started scanning his surroundings at high speed.
He was not watching the daggers after they left the hand. He was reading the posture, the direction, and the exact trajectory the moment each enemy's fingers released the blade—right before it ever flew.
In less than a few seconds Leos registered the hands and stances of more than ten men. Then he began dodging and batting the incoming daggers aside all at once.
—Claaang!
—Clang!
What he could dodge, he dodged. What he could not, he knocked away with the dagger.
True to their name as the Imperial Enforcement Squad, every dagger flew toward a vital point—eyes, heart, throat, arteries—places where a single hit would mean instantaneous death. One failed dodge or block and Leos would become a cold corpse, yet his movements never faltered.
Barely three seconds passed before every last member of the Enforcement Squad was staring at him with eyes drowned in fear. Of course they were. Leos had avoided or deflected every single attack.
He discarded his own dagger—its edge completely ruined from batting the blades aside—onto the ground, snatched up the longsword still clutched by a fallen Enforcement Squad corpse, and charged.
Chain sword, dagger, and now longsword in succession.
Leos's weapons and stances shifted from one instant to the next, making any fluid response impossible and leaving the enemies utterly confused about where they stood and how they should react. Leos, for his part, never once let those openings slip away.
—Slash.
The distance that had seemed so great closed in a single breath. The enemies hurriedly tried to encircle him, but Leos was faster than they had imagined; the man holding the center of their formation took the sword before he could even move.
As the body hit the ground Leos immediately seized the dagger the corpse still held and launched it like a bolt.
A wet thunk sounded and another Enforcement Squad member collapsed. This time Leos began to spin as if he meant to throw the longsword itself; the charging enemies froze, terrified that the blade was about to come flying at them. The moment they hesitated, Leos stopped the spin cold and simply sprinted forward again.
With another series of wet cutting sounds two more men crumpled. The circular encirclement shattered completely, and before anyone realized it Leos had already moved into the open clearing where the mana bomb had detonated earlier.
No undergrowth, no obstacles—nothing at all. It was a battlefield that overwhelmingly favored numbers, yet it was also a death-match ring from which no one could escape in any direction.
Leos simply stood still in the empty clearing as if daring them. Then he raised the Spirel into the air and took control of it.
"Anyone who runs will be hunted down and killed. If you think you can outrun the Spirel, go ahead and try. If not, the only way any of you walk away alive is to rush me together and kill me."
Watching Leos's battle from a distance, Lacart, commander of the Imperial Execution Squad, murmured in something close to awe.
"This is… on the level of pure wonder. Paron, what do you think? If I fought Leos, who would win?"
"…"
Paron was silent for a moment before he spoke.
"No matter how blindly I follow you, Commander Lacart… I do not believe you could defeat Lord Leos."
"Right? We would have been in serious trouble if we had met him as an enemy. And that bastard Leos wasn't just fighting. From start to finish he kept scanning the surroundings with the Spirel, like he was checking whether anyone was trying to run."
"I was too focused on the combat to notice that far. The Spirel is a high-grade floating aerial artifact. Its difficulty of operation is notoriously absurd—how is he controlling it while fighting?"
"It means he wasn't pouring that much focus into the fight itself."
"What do you mean…?"
"Even while handling the Enforcement Squad he still had mental bandwidth to spare—enough to operate the Spirel at the same time."
Paron swallowed dryly. Just watching the battle had already made the man look like a monster, yet in the middle of it he had been moving a Spirel that drained mental strength at a insane rate and scanning the area on top of that.
If we had met as enemies…
Had Paron not betrayed the Empire and come under Lacart, he would eventually have faced Leos as an opponent. He ran the simulation in his mind—how he would even begin to respond if he stood against that man.
Three exchanges… no. Two, maybe…
No matter how many times he ran it, no result in which he won ever appeared. From range Leos would close the distance and skewer him with the chain sword; once close he would switch fluidly between dagger and longsword and aim for vitals. He dodged or deflected almost every attack, and he even possessed a Spirel capable of mana bombardment.
At least several knight orders would be required.
Assuming the battlefield was not an open clearing, and assuming Leos prepared and responded with care, Paron judged that even several knight orders would be unable to kill him.
Absurd.
Paron completely revised his earlier assessment. After hearing that Leos had once slain every mutant monster alone, he had assumed the mutants of the past must have been somewhat weaker than those of today.
Was that not reasonable? Today's mutants included monsters that could wipe out an entire knight order by themselves; no single human should have been able to handle them all. Therefore he had concluded that the mutants must have grown stronger in the present era, and that the ones Leos had faced alone in the past had simply been weaker. The Imperial Family itself treated that assumption as established fact.
The Imperial Family has been focusing on the wrong thing from the very beginning.
The Emperor of the Peren Empire claimed Leos was needed only to seal high-grade Red Gates. Paron saw it differently. Leos was necessary for the monster subjugation itself.
In other words, in the current Red Gate crisis the value of the single individual named Leos outweighed that of several knight orders.
And they cast someone like this out with their own hands.
According to the story, Leos had been driven from the Gatekeeper position by a scheme of Belin of the Imperial Shadow Group. Paron felt a certain pity for them. The more Leos's abilities came to light, the more the Emperor's rage would swell beyond control.
He may have ordered the expulsion himself, but this is the kind of vermin who will still scream about why they carried out the order without properly investigating first.
Thinking that, Paron looked back toward Leos.
"Shouldn't we go help him?"
"Does he look like he needs help? And earlier Leos told us to hold this path. He said he wouldn't let it slide if anyone else got through."
"Why this path…?"
"Leos's companions are in the bunker behind us. He's worried Enforcement Squad members might try to move that way. So we guard it. Not a single one gets past. Of course, if Leos takes even the slightest wound I'll run in to support him right away."
Paron felt sweat suddenly bead on his palms.
"If you let any of the enemy through this path, I won't let it slide."
It had probably been nothing more than emphatic phrasing, yet the weight behind those words—I won't let it slide—was simply too heavy.
Leos looked out over the remaining enemies in the empty clearing. Roughly ten were left, including Alik, whose leg and arm no longer functioned properly.
He spoke while watching them.
"You said the sacrifice of the few for the many is inevitable."
Alik limped toward Leos without even bothering to stop the blood streaming down him and answered.
"Yes. For the greater good, the sacrifice of the few is only natural."
Leos gave a crooked smile.
"What a fine-sounding justification. But why is it that the people who always spout that line never count themselves among the few?"
"…?"
"I've never once seen someone who preaches sacrifice for the greater good actually sacrifice himself. Most of them thrash and scream for their lives the second they find themselves in the 'few.'"
"That is only because you possess a narrow way of thinking. Because you are steeped in egoism and care only for your own safety."
"Ah…"
Leos sighed and gestured toward Alik's subordinates.
"Every time you kill one of your own men with your own hands, I'll seal one Red Gate for you."
"What are you talking about…?"
"Exactly what I said. Sacrifice for the greater good. Can you still act the same when the 'few' are your own subordinates?"
"It's not difficult at all—provided you swear to keep your promise."
The surrounding subordinates trembled as they stared at Alik, their eyes asking whether he truly meant to sacrifice them. Alik raised his sword without hesitation.
"Swear it on an artifact. Do that and I'll kill them right now."
As if he had been waiting for exactly that, Leos turned the offer toward the subordinates instead.
"If you kill that commander of yours, I'll seal twenty Red Gates. Come back after you kill him and I'll swear it on an artifact."
"How are we supposed to trust a word you say?"
One of the Enforcement Squad members demanded. Leos casually swung the chain sword as he replied.
"Do you even have a choice? I can kill every last one of you right here, right now. Whether my words are true or false, you're not in a position to question them."
The subordinates suddenly adjusted their grips on their swords and looked at Alik. He staggered backward, shouting.
"F-Fuck… what the hell are you doing?! Th-this is treason! This is treason!"
"Commander. Even if all of us die, only twelve Red Gates can be sealed. But if you die, twenty can be sealed. When you weigh the greater good, your death is the more correct choice."
"D-Don't you dare spout that shit!"
Alik swung his sword wildly in every direction, screaming.
"Come any closer and I'll kill you! I'll kill you all!"
Leos left the chain sword lying on the ground, took a throwing knife in hand, and walked slowly toward Alik, speaking in a low murmur.
"See? You're thrashing just the same. Why? You said the few must sacrifice for the many—so why can't it be you? Does your conviction change the moment you're the one on the chopping block?"
As if they had all agreed in advance, not a single subordinate moved to stop Leos as he approached Alik. Leos came to a stop directly in front of him, leveled the thin blade, and spoke.
"I despise narrow-minded humans like you. And one more thing. Don't thrash around begging to live."
"…"
"Because I've never once left a piece of shit like you alive."