We Need Leos — Bring Him Back
Belin stared blankly at her Distance.
That had been his only reply. Afterward, no matter how many calls she made or messages she sent, the man never answered. She had expected something like this — she was the one who had put him in prison, after all — but she had never imagined he would cut her off so completely, without even a single exchange of words.
"..."
She stood frozen in place. Then a man approached and spoke.
"Any contact with Leos?"
"No. He wouldn't take my calls, so I texted him — but it seems he's blocked my Distance ID entirely. The signal doesn't even go through anymore."
"I told you to reach out to the administrators still tied to the old Gate Management Headquarters as well. They said they'd been blocked too. Our mistake for trying to talk to that piece of trash in the first place. This is exactly what happens when a mere spare part starts developing a self."
"I sent him to prison. He probably hates me for it."
"Belin. Are you feeling guilty, by any chance?"
Keltazar drew a dagger from inside his coat and walked slowly toward her.
"Belin. Answer me."
"Guilt… no, nothing like that. We of the Imperial Shadow Group work for the Empire. His Majesty's orders are absolute, and there is always a reason behind them. If the Gatekeepers had to disappear, then he moved me for that reason."
"Correct. To dispose of the Gatekeepers who were no longer needed in one stroke, we required a justification. That man Leos was sacrificed for the greater good. So there is no need to feel guilty, and no need to apologize. Do not even think without permission. You already know what becomes of spare parts that start developing feelings. And you even received the Elixir you so desperately wanted, did you not?"
"…I'm grateful for that. It was… something I absolutely needed."
Belin murmured as she stared blankly at her Distance.
"You said the gates would never open again."
Keltazar nodded at that.
"Three years ago, that was true. No new gates had formed in a long time, and the Gatekeepers had sealed every one that already existed. But the situation has changed. Red Gates are spawning at random. A natural disaster. Completely unpredictable."
"You said the Imperial Shadow Group works for the Empire. Then what are we supposed to do now? If we leave this alone, countless people will die."
"We reassemble the Gatekeepers."
"Even if we call them now, will they come back?"
"When the Empire summons them, how could the likes of them refuse? Under Peren Empire law, failure to answer a wartime conscription order is punishable by summary execution. Whether they feel wronged is none of our concern. When we — no, when the Empire — issues a summons, they come. That is discipline. That is the law."
"The others, maybe. But Leos won't come. We need him. We absolutely need Leos. To seal the mana of the Red Gates, we need the trait he carries. We have to bring him back."
Can seal the mana of a gate once it has been cleared.
Keltazar, commander of the Imperial Shadow Group, stared hard at the trait written on the paper.
"So. Without this man's trait, the Red Gates cannot be sealed. Is that it?"
"Yes. With the others' abilities, we might manage gates whose mana is relatively weak. But a rampaging gate, or one whose mana is overwhelmingly strong — only Leos can seal those. Even back when the Gatekeepers were still active, sealing every gate was, as a matter of course, left to him."
"Then this is simple."
Keltazar looked at Belin and added, with a smile that made the skin crawl,
"We bring Leos in."
"Leos…?"
"Yes. Whether he refuses or not, he is a man of the Peren Empire. In the end he is nothing more than a spare part that must obey imperial law. So we bring him. If he resists, we half-kill him and drag him back as a corpse if we have to. As long as we can use his trait, we can handle the monsters inside the gates ourselves. All he has to do is seal them so no more can cross over."
Feredin, who had been listening as the Imperial Shadow Group operative in charge of reconnaissance, stepped forward.
"I'll bring him in."
"Can you manage it?"
Feredin smiled as he looked at Keltazar.
"Of course. You know I infiltrated the Gate Management Headquarters on your orders, Commander. I built a fair amount of rapport with Leos in that time. The man's nature is kind, and soft. No matter how unjustly he was treated, he is not the sort who would ignore a former disciple begging him to come back."
"And if you fail?"
Feredin flicked his dagger as he answered.
"Then I half-kill him and bring him in. His skill is impressive, but at the end of the day he's alone, isn't he? And Leos's last active years were three years ago. That trash who hasn't had proper training or real combat experience in prison is on a completely different level from someone like me, who's spent a lifetime honing killing techniques in the Imperial Shadow Group. The man has probably never even properly killed a human being."
Keltazar nodded.
"True enough. Fighting monsters does not make someone skilled in actual combat. Unlike stupid monsters, humans are cunning."
Feredin turned to Belin.
"Belin. Want to come along?"
She hesitated a moment, then spoke slowly.
"Are you going to kill him?"
"No. We need him alive so we can use his trait, don't we?"
She was silent for a beat, then said,
"…If you're going, there's no real need for me to tag along as well…"
Feredin laughed heartily.
"Right. With me — team leader of the Imperial Shadow Group's 30th Division — the likes of Leos is nothing."
Then he looked to Commander Keltazar and asked,
"Commander. Do we have his location?"
"We tracked him from his last Distance signal. There's a margin of error, but there's only so many places he could be. Search every bunker in the vicinity."
"As ordered."
Behind Feredin, roughly nine men in shadow garb began to walk forward. He looked each of them over in turn, then tucked his dagger at his waist and said,
"Look forward to it. I'll beat that bastard who won't listen to the Empire and drag him back myself. If he still won't crawl out, I'll cut pieces off him until he does."
Inside the bunker where Leos was living, the man spent a moment looking at the Leos Gallery, then asked Herisia,
"Herisia. Do you know anything about the admin who runs this community?"
"MainAdmin? …I don't really have any info on that person. But there is one weird thing!"
Herisia tapped rapidly at her Distance and held it up for him.
"See how the way she talks is weird? When she's fighting she cusses and everything, but when she's just posting about daily life she writes like that. The diary-style posts, the polite speech… she might be a girl like me…"
"Anything else?"
"Hehe… I don't know…"
Herisia scratched her head awkwardly, and Leos let out a sigh.
"I could figure that much out myself."
"W-well, yeah… But MainAdmin is weirdly good at not revealing anything about herself. She's been posting a lot of diary entries lately, but normally she only ever talks about you, so there's just nothing to go on."
Leos nodded at that. Then he entered LEO — the front of his own name — as a nickname, and slowly left a comment on MainAdmin's post.
The way she was hanging on by a thread did not look good. I asked for her location, thinking I might be able to offer some real help — but her reply did not come for a long time.
After that, the man took his hand off the Distance. From here on, it was up to MainAdmin. The person who ran the Leos Gallery and believed in Leos for nothing in return.
For some reason, he found himself hoping she would not die.
Watching the gallery admin bicker with the latest troll who had shown up yet again, a dry laugh slipped out of him. It felt like watching a comedy sketch.
I wonder who this BIUN is.
There was no need to dig into the identity of someone who hated him. For the first time in three years, he had laughed. So for now, he would set the useless thoughts aside and hold on to that feeling for a little longer.
Or so he thought.
— Beep… beep… beep…
After Herisia had first approached the bunker, Leos had scattered detection artifacts around the perimeter in case other raiders showed up. One of those artifacts.
— Beep… beep… beep…
The detection artifact was screaming.
What it meant was perfectly clear. There were humans nearby.
I opened the bunker door slowly and looked outside. Voices carried from a distance.
"Fuck! Why have all the bunker locations around here been disposed of? Who the hell managed the records? Just search the whole damn area!"
A familiar man was out there.
Feredin.
The man who had once been a disciple at the Gate Management Headquarters. Shadow-clad men stood around him. The moment I saw the insignia on their clothes, I knew.
Imperial Shadow Group.
Watching him, I tightened my grip on the dagger.
"Leos! Leos!"
The man shouting my name did not look like he was here to do anything kind.
If it came to a fight, I would fight without hesitation.
I had already decided that my own survival came first now.