Leon sat alone at a bar a few blocks away from one of the Bureau entrances, an uncommonly solemn expression on his face as he played with a cup, its warm brown liquid spiraling around the glass.
Brandy, the bartender had called it.
It tasted good to him, but didn't seem to be very effective.
Sighing, he flagged the guy down and asked for a cola, figuring if he was going to drink something tasty, it might as well be cheap.
Taking his cup, the bartender typed something into his computer screen and said, "You know, it might be better for you to go to a restaurant or something man, these are pretty expensive here."
Leon shrugged and said, "It doesn't really matter."
He tapped at his system and sent over a few hundred credits and said, "Just let me hang out here for a while."
The man walked away and Leon dove back into his thoughts, remembering the events of the last few hours.
Not long ago, Gala had begun her tests and analysis of his body and abilities, none of which seemed very hopeful.
He was still at level one, which while that in and of itself was concerning, all the more concerning was the fact that his body functioned like someone who was much higher level.
None of her researchers could figure out why or even provide a theory as to what it could mean, which was saying something since even Gala believed the System couldn't lie.
If that were true, which Leon wasn't entirely sure of for some reason, it meant that he might well be stuck at level one forever given the sheer quantity of Gates he'd cleared and bosses he'd killed.
Beyond these details, there was the most recent problem that his mind couldn't be scanned. Well it could be scanned, but the end result of that seemed to be either the absolute insanity of the person scanning it or the destruction of the device attempting to do so.
Director Gala had discovered a long time ago that while there were plenty of technological ways to analyze a mind, a much more useful method involved a skilled mind mage delving into the subjects mind directly and through methodically designed procedures gather the information desired.
This method had never once failed and Gala had absolute faith in the practice, but for whatever reason it seemed to be a waste of time and personnel with Leon.
To make things worse, Marcus and several others had started hinting that maybe Leon should start taking breaks from clearing Gates. There wasn't much for him to do beyond that, but they were becoming more insistent without directly telling him that he couldn't.
The problem, he supposed, came from the perspective.
To many people in the Bureau, clearing Gates was a job that needed to be done, a responsibility to be upheld for the greater good and to Leon, especially after he'd been taught how important clearing Gates was for the people around those Gates, it was something he actively wanted to do.
It was like an itch under his scalp that someone might get hurt if the Gates were left alone and there was something he could do about them.
He sighed and barely looked up as his soda arrived, switching from the brandy almost instantly.
Maybe he had been exaggerating to himself when he'd said it tasted good. It had a nice flavor, sure, but the burn as it went down didn't suit him and since he wasn't getting drunk like the people around him, it really did seem like a waste to keep drinking it.
As he nursed his soda, a woman came and sat down a seat or two down and asked for her usual.
"Another bad night, Lilac?"
She nodded and said, "Lost another team tonight. I'm really not sure this is for me, you know?"
The man nodded and said, "Maybe not, but I think those guildies appreciate having someone in charge that actually gives a damn."
She laughed and fiddled with an eyepatch as she blushed and said, "They do seem appreciative."
The man smirked and said, "You know, uh, getting too involved can make it harder, right?"
Sighing heavily, she put up a false show of resistance as she said, "I know, but how can I help it if they're putting their lives at risk for all of our safeties, right?"
The man made a dismissive sound and said, "Safety, sure. The only people left right now are all more than strong enough. Give yourself a break and take a vacation or something. That Guild leader of yours has to be understanding enough to grant you some leave."
She looked down and let her smile drop as she mumbled, "Yeah probably."
The pretty woman seemed familiar, but Leon couldn't quite place her as he decided he'd probably stewed long enough.
Ultimately his problems were a little too unusual to have this kind of conversation and that put him off just a little. They say misery loves company, but seeing someone with much more normal problems made him feel uncomfortable staying there for long.
The man waved at Leon and said, "I'll see you later man."
Nodding and smiling back, Leon left the bar and stepped out into a heavy rain.
He'd been there an hour or two, and after the sun had set apparently some kind of intense storm had swept on through.
Apparently this kind of weather shift was much more common now than it had been before the System update, but he wouldn't really know anything about that.
Since it had been sunny and clear before going into the bar, he didn't have an umbrella, and since he couldn't use the mana he felt pulsing throughout his body he couldn't cast any kind of magic to stop it from drenching him near instantly.
He sighed and started walking back to the Bureau as a flash of lightning brightened the world in front of him.
Closing his eyes on reflex, he was surprised to find a figure standing less than ten feet in front of him.
Unnaturally red eyes glowed from under a hood that obscured his face as he lifted a hand and made a finger gun.
Leon's eyes widened as his black eyes made direct contact with the intruder and his pointing finger flashed white.
Instinctively Leon leapt straight up as a bullet of light shot at where he was standing, followed by a trail of shots traced his path up into the air.
Doing his best to continue evading, Leon kicked off of fire escapes and walls to get up above the buildings and escape.
As he flew up and landed on the closest rooftop, he saw another man with glowing red eyes waiting for him.
Covered by a trench coat and a baseball cap, the man lifted a hand up and smacked the air down.
Leon felt the air around him condense into solid feeling mass and smack him down into the top of the building, holding him in place as the first man appeared and landed next to Trench Coat, as Leon decided to think of him.
"Auros, you know we can have fun with this right? He just asked us to catch him and talk with him."
"Right, and I don't have better things to do than play tag with you," the man, Auros, responded sarcastically.
"Hey come on man, tag can be fun."
Auros rolled his eyes and moved his hand in complicated ways, making the air wrap around Leon and lift him into the air.
"You're no fun, you know that right," the first man said, a deflated tone to his voice.
Deep within a Bureau facility located just off world, Gala forced her way through a door, using spatial magic to make it simply disappear after having wasted the last few minutes banging on it.
"Marcus, I know you're in here, and you WILL answer me."
Turning away from watching a now empty test chamber and glowing monitor that had life signs that had disappeared, he said, "Difficult day, Gala?"
"What the hell did she find in that Gate, Marcus?"
He took a deep breath and said, "You want the truth or a fun lie?"
She glared at him and he said, "Got it, the truth."
Marcus leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie. His outfit, a tan business suit, seemed to slacken as he did so and he said, "The truth is I'm not a hundred percent sure. He's directly related to the Founder in some way, but all I have are theories and suspicions at this point."
Looking her in the eye, he cut to the point and asked, "How many?"
Taken aback, she looked away and asked, "How many what?"
Sitting up a bit, he said, "Now's not the time, Gala. I just lost fifty people in a test, so I'm not really up to playing this game with you."
Looking back at him, her frustration came back in full force, "Ten. I set ten of my best mind mages on him, and they're all gone."
"I take it they haven't gone mad then."
The term mad, among the Bureau, was considered to be a more accurate term for the Crimson Affliction, and one rarely uttered under even the most dubious circumstances. It was important, after all, to keep the knowledge that it could happen to literally anyone under the right circumstances under wraps.
"Only one did. He immediately killed himself."
"Ah."
Gala rushed up to Marcus's chair and shouted, "Ah?! AH?! That's all you have to say about this?!"
Marcus took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he said, "What did I tell you?"
Still angry and glaring, Gala looked away from him again and whispered, "Leave his mind alone."
"Want to run that by me again?"
She looked at him and said, her voice firm, "Leave his mind alone."
"Did you?"
Pulling a chair from beside him so she could sit and look at him, Gala said, "You know I didn't."
"I do."
Maneuvering through her System notes, she sent him videos of the tests and said, "You didn't tell me this would happen."
Watching the videos unfazed, Marcus watched as multiple powerful people, good people, used magic to dive into Leon's mind and almost instantly have their minds broken. They dropped to the floor in a heap and were unresponsive to even Gala's strongest attempts to snap them out of it."
"Huh, just broken. That's better than I expected I guess. Tell me Gala, what's your position here at the Bureau?"
The abrupt question caught Gala off guard and she answered uncertainly, "I'm a Director, Marcus."
"That's right, and do you know what that entails?"
Gala rolled her eyes and said, "Get to the point Marcus."
Nodding, he said, "Director means you make your own choices. It means you lead your own experiments. You set a task for your team, had some information and warnings and went ahead with what you thought was necessary. You made those choices, so I don't expect you to blame me for the consequences of them."
He had this conversation a few times a year with his various Directors, so he wasn't mad, but it had been years since she'd been brought in and this was the first time he'd needed to do it with her.
Frankly, he was impressed.
Leading departments in the Bureau was difficult, and while it didn't happen as often as you'd think, it wasn't all that unexpected that a Director would break under the pressure and leave them. Hell, more than half of his Director appointments were to fill the lead positions of existing departments, which spoke both to the difficulty of the position as well as the fortitude of those who did stay.
Despite what little she'd deigned to tell Leon, the tests had given her a lot of data to work with, even if the vast majority of it didn't seem to make any sense at the moment.
The last little bit she thought she needed was in his head and the results of trying to pry it out had been disastrous. Losing ten people to a mere analysis was heartbreaking and it had been the first time she'd had her resolve shaken in all her years at the Bureau. Not that she hadn't lost people before, but those had all happened during tests or experiments, times when you should expect to lose at least one or two people.
This was…this was different.
So what did it mean?
What was it all for?
Perhaps if she'd gotten answers to even just those two questions, it might not have hit her so hard, but she hadn't gotten those answers. In fact she'd actually stumbled onto several dozen other questions that were harder to answer than even those two.
The only comfort thus far had been Amy, who had been assigned to work with Gala by Marcus after her little vacation had ended. The woman had multiple insights into the data Gala had collected that led her to even the few extrapolations she'd managed to reach thus far.
She seemed to be struggling with something as well, though it seemed far more personal than Gala was willing to involve herself with. Marcus had mentioned it was something like growing pains, but refused to go into detail.
"Leon is unique, Gala. The things I do know are contradictory at best, and while I have those guesses, I can't get into them just yet. I'm not really hoping for you to find out what he is, as much as what he's capable of."
Leaning back into her chair and looking up at the ceiling she said, "Well I can at least tell you a little of that."
Nodding for her to go on, Marcus sat all the way up and focused on her.
"For starters, he doesn't seem to have any mana in his body, even though he swears he can feel it. His stat screen showing zero seems to be accurate, but there is some kind of energy in his body.
His physical strength is off the charts and his mental resilience is unparalleled."
"That checks out," Marcus said as Gala gave him a look of frustration. Again, Marcus clearly knew more than he was telling, but it was clear that pushing for more confirmed information was only going to be met with a shrug and the suggestion of more tests.
"His memories are…fractured, but that makes sense considering the unreal quantity of seals."
That caught Marcus's interest, something Gala noted and filed away for later in her mind.
"What seals?"
"That black patch around his eye? The pitch black hair? Those are seals."
"Like individual seals," he asked incredulously.
"No, its much, much stranger than that. There are trillions, hundreds of trillions of seals there. They seem to be carved into the molecules of those spaces, so detailed and interconnected that even if I had a clue of where to start, I couldn't undo them."
Marcus looked down and mumbled, "Seriously? What was he thinking?"
Gala, not noticing or perhaps understanding that asking would be a waste of time, continued, "They seem to be sealing power, memories, hell, even concepts. Honestly, I've never seen anything like it, and my team has had to unseal spaces that have been locked down by the world itself."
While things seemed to slide into place for Marcus, Gala felt like his responses had just created more questions for her.
"I'm going to stop running these tests, Marcus."
Seemingly unsurprised, Marcus asked, "Why's that?"
"There's nothing more I'm going to be able to discern without figuring out at least a little of what we have now. We're looking at almost a million pages worth of data and almost no answers to show for any of it."
Marcus nodded and leaned back again, pushing the conversation to the back of his mind. The situation with Leon, ultimately, didn't require much of his input with this update from Gala which, while more aggressive than usual, did give him the information he'd needed to mostly round up his own theories.
Significantly more pressing were the results of his own tests.
His batch of fifty had, in fact, actually been the tenth he'd just finished today.
All in all, five hundred people across all demographics.
Gone.
He had been trying to introduce more personalized System concepts into the System, customized screens, specialized stat and class windows.
Separating them from the System while maintaining their System access was a pain and a half, let alone the sheer amount of money and time spent updating their windows.
Knowing how to do it, a thing he'd NEVER let anyone have access to, didn't make implementing it any easier, let alone convincing the System itself that they were changes worthy enough of updating universally.
He had done it before, just as the Founder had before him, and the endeavor always took immeasurable resources and effort, but had always been worth it in the long run.
The people disappearing though…that was outside of his expectations, and he was fairly certain that would come to bite him in the ass eventually.
As Gala watched, he had nothing to hide from his peers, he cued up the next batch of fifty to walk in and be reintroduced to the System proper.
It would be a long day, but the work never ended and he had twenty five hundred other people ready for this experiment.
Work until it works was one of his personal mottos.