Chapter 98: Aftermath II

Leon reached the medical collection point with two Warriors carrying the final stretcher from his assigned section.

A worker checked the patient’s tag and directed them towards a waiting vehicle. Leon allowed the Warriors to remain until the medics finished transferring the injured man, then called them back.

Lex was sitting with the academy group. His leg had been properly checked and wrapped again, while Bren sat nearby with his arm still supported in a sling. Linda had an open bottle of water beside her, and Nolan leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees.

Gareth stood with an official, comparing the expedition roster against the records of those taken to the hospital.

"Leon," Lex called when he noticed him.

Leon walked over.

"The search team took over your street?"

"Yes."

"Nice, nice, that’s good. Is anyone still following your summons?"

"One group. They’ve reached the pickup point, and I’m waiting for the scouts to return."

"Then sit down while you wait," Lex said as he nodded towards the open space beside them.

Leon nodded in agreement and sat down. He caught the look in Lex’s eyes, clearly he had heard something. He couldn’t bother with that now.

As for he himself, his feet hurt, the scrape on his hand stung whenever he closed his fingers, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything other than snacks from his side bag.

Luckily, Linda happened to walk by, passing him an unopened packet from the supplies.

"Thanks," he said as he accepted it.

Stretchers continued arriving at the collection point. Names were called, checked and written down before some people were taken straight to the medical vehicles. Others were directed towards the waiting area, where relatives stood up each time a new group came in.

A board near the shelter listed the areas that were still being searched. Several already had marks beside them, though Leon didn’t know if those marks meant the searches were finished or only that teams had been sent.

He opened the packet, and nobody said anything for a while.

"Did anyone find out what caused the earthquake?" Nolan eventually asked while looking towards the road.

"No," Bren answered.

"Could it have been this?"

"The Red Gate?" Linda asked.

"The timing is strange. We went into the dungeon, it collapsed around us, and then we came out to all of this."

"They weren’t even in the same place," Bren said as he carefully adjusted himself in his seat.

"We entered through a Gate," Nolan pointed out. "Where exactly was the dungeon?"

Nobody had an answer for that, at least not them. The others considered the possibility too, but it didn’t really make sense.

Leon didn’t know either. The dungeon clearly wasn’t sitting somewhere beneath the site, but that still didn’t explain how a Gate breaking in one city could affect passages inside another Gate. Gates were portals to whole different pocket dimensions atfer all. At least, that was what the explanation had been for a long time.

"Maybe they’re connected," Linda said. "I wouldn’t know how, though."

"Neither would I," Lex said, drawing their attention. "Include what happened and the time it happened in your statements. Let the investigators decide if it matters. Don’t turn a guess into something you remember seeing."

Nolan nodded.

An official approached Gareth with a tablet shortly after, and Leon caught part of their conversation while he ate.

"...the smaller openings reported before the break, all the green gates that had been popping everywhere? The investigation teams already pulled the earlier response logs."

"So they were connected?" Gareth asked as he looked at the screen.

"They’re treating the increase as an early sign of the Red Gate event. But they’re still trying to understand the order of everything."

"What about the disturbances inside other Gates?"

"Those reports are being collected separately. Nothing has been confirmed."

Lex glanced towards the students after hearing that.

Nolan quietly looked down at his bottle.

...

Time slowly crept by them.

Giving his statement took longer than Leon expected. The official had already received reports from the dungeon site, Lex and several of the rescue teams, but he still wanted Leon to explain where he had gone, which routes he used and what his summons had done.

"How many did you deploy?"

"Fifty."

"Fifty from the beginning?" The official asked, looking up from his tablet.

"Yes. Some were destroyed."

"What types?"

Leon listed them without going in-depth, even they didn’t really understand much of it, undead weren’t common monsters after all.

The official entered the numbers and checked the total before continuing.

"I already heard that your warning went through dispatch before you deployed them." He said as he wrote.

"Yes, Mr. Lex arranged it."

"Yes, we have that recorded."

The official turned the tablet towards him.

Large-scale civilian rescue and transport. Limited combat support during evacuation. Confirmed by multiple responders.

The report didn’t claim that Leon’s summons defeated the Grade Five at the workshop, which was all true anyway.

"That’s right," Leon said after reading through it.

"The academy will contact you for a formal follow-up. For now, inform the search supervisor before withdrawing any summons still assigned to a team."

"I will."

Nolan was looking at his phone when Leon returned to his seat. He turned the screen towards Bren, showing him a video of skeletons carrying people between abandoned vehicles.

Leon recognised the street immediately.

His name was written in the caption, not surprising that someone still had time to take a video in that chaos.

"Fifty?" Linda asked as she looked at him.

"Yes," Leon answered before sitting down.

She continued staring at him for another moment before looking towards the Great Swordsman waiting beside the collection point.

Nolan scrolled through more recordings. Some had been taken on entirely different streets. One showed a Skeleton Warrior lifting a child through a broken window, while another captured the Mage’s barrier breaking when the Grade Five forced its way through the delivery truck.

At least that recording made the difference in strength clear enough.

’So much for keeping them hidden.’

Leon leaned back in his chair.

At that moment, a Skirmisher reached the collection point and stopped beside the waiting Warriors. The others followed from the road shortly after, having finished their work for now.

Gradually, more than thirty undead skeletons had gathered, drawing all eyes towards them as all marveled. Their eyes also shifted to Leon, as he stood from his chair, they were all shocked of the number, no one really cared about the individual strength. They were literally witnessing the impossible before their very eyes.

For Leon, it was kind of embarassing, since majority of his summons were weaklings.

He checked with the search supervisor before returning them to his summoner’s space.

Once that was done, every seemed to remember their duty and returned to them. People were still calling out names around him, and he remained in his chair as the medical vehicles carried the next group away.