My Students Regret It After I Retired

10 – Belin Bowed His Head, Leos’ Unparalleled Ability

Leaving the collapsed Knight Commander Terepian behind, Keltazar began to check all the communication and recording artifacts in the vicinity. Videos that should have been used for public relations, intended to show the knights brilliantly clearing out Red Gate and publicizing it to the masses – he had never imagined that they would become the last testament of the knights.

But at least, luckily, the fact that they had been recorded meant they could figure out how the assault had gone wrong.

‘They must have been ambushed. What vermin dared raise a sword against the Empire’s knights?’

Thinking that, Keltazar played back the artifact. But then, gradually, he lost the ability to speak. No, he even forgot how to think.

“What now…”

Keltazar’s pupils dilated, taking in the corpses of countless knights. And the one who had created that mountain of bodies was a single monster.

“Liarad…?”

Mantis-type mutant monster. Liarad, as Leos had named them. But according to Leos’ assessment, their danger level was ‘low-grade.’ It was unheard of for even ‘lower-grade’ knights to be taken down like this.

“Bring me all of Leos’ past combat records, now.”

Keltazar commanded, and several men scrambled, beginning to retrieve Leos’ past records. Artifact data was discovered, recordings of the man fighting Red Gate mutant monsters, and among them, a record of combat with a Liarad.

“That son of a b*tch, he dared submit a false report to the Empire? Labeling a monster like a Liarad as low-grade.”

The man gnashed his teeth as he reviewed the footage. Surely, Leos had struggled and suffered to take one down. That’s what he was certain of.

[Red Gate Liarad Capture Footage: Leos]

[Video Length: 57 seconds]

A disbelieving laugh escaped him at the absurd length of the video. It had to be either a fake, or perhaps the wrong footage, swapped with a different monster subjugation. He made a mental note to severely punish the man in charge of gate-related materials, but with a sliver of doubt, Keltazar began playing the artifact’s recording.

“…What the…”

Keltazar couldn’t believe his eyes. The Liarad that had slaughtered 34 knights, and even butchered the Imperial Knight Captain Terephion, was being taken down by Leos in less than a minute, recorded in vivid detail.

Keltazar replayed the footage, again and again. He analyzed the difference between the knights and Leos.

“…He knew their habits, right from the start.”

The conclusion was simple. Leos knew every trait of the Liarad. He just took the less threatening attacks head-on, and dodged the dangerous ones. And when a certain attack pattern emerged, he slipped into gaps as if he’d been waiting for it, lunging toward the Liarad’s abdomen. He repeated this process several times. And finally, he pierced its abdomen, and the Liarad fell.

A veteran. Those who watched the past footage would have thought the Liarad was pathetically weak. Wouldn’t they? A monster over 3 meters tall, not landing a single solid hit on a human and dying in less than a minute? They’d see it as just a big bug.

But this was a huge misjudgment. Keltazar reviewed the knights’ subjugation footage again.

Unlike Leos, the knights didn’t understand which attacks were dangerous, which were merely threatening. They tried to block every attack without exception. This scattered their formation and created distance. The Liarad, having gained this distance advantage, butchered the knights with the incredible reach of its arms.

The knights’ desperate attacks, even as they died, were focused on the Liarad’s incredibly hard carapace, not its abdomen. Looking back at Leos’ footage, Leos never even touched the Liarad’s blades or outer shell.

‘He knew that the sword couldn’t pierce it, that’s why he acted like that.’

Only after watching the footage countless times did Keltazar sigh. It was perfect. A perfect victory without any unnecessary moves. Hidden within the 57-second video was a level of detail so overwhelming that it was difficult to even judge. Not a single movement was wasted.

Monster. The real monster wasn’t Lyre, it was Leos.

‘He wasn’t said to be this outstanding.’

The empire hadn’t properly grasped how dangerous the monsters coming from the Red Gate were, nor how exceptional Leos himself was.

Keltazar sighed and shouted.

“Why the hell! Why didn’t anyone say Leos had this much power?”

The aide beside him, with a look of panic, answered quietly.

“Keltazar-nim. The Gatekeepers are listening.”

Leos’s former disciples, the Gatekeepers who’d been called back, began to murmur amongst themselves. Keltazar had been watching the footage for over an hour, and then suddenly called out Leos’s name.

Keltazar calmed his excitement and spoke quietly to his aide.

“Leos is a talent the nation absolutely needs. But why hasn’t this been reported properly until now? Why did the higher-ups drive him out?”

“…Keltazar-nim. The empire simply disposed of the department that became unnecessary after the gate closed. You know how many departments are created and dissolved daily within the empire. As monsters started to disappear, there was a natural consensus from above that the gate management headquarters should also be eliminated, and they followed that. We don’t scrutinize every single department and consider how talented each individual is, what roles they perform, before getting rid of a department…”

Keltazar gritted his teeth.

The aide added, seemingly wronged.

“And actually…in the footage, doesn’t it look like they’re taking down monsters way too easily…? Leos even took care of all the mutant monsters emerging from the Red Gate, so from our perspective, we assumed they were a kind of monster that anyone could easily defeat. Nobody had actually tried it, and the footage looked far too simple.”

Keltazar, too, stopped blaming his aide. If he’d only seen the footage of Leos, he would have also dismissed Lyre as some low-intelligence bug that couldn’t even attack properly.

“Damn it… we need to come up with a plan. If the lower levels are like this, our forces, no matter how many we have, will be annihilated the moment mid or high-level monsters appear.”

“What… what are you going to do?”

“Gather all the footage related to Leos. Every record of him subduing monsters in the Red Gate, every single one of them! Bring it all here, now.”

The aide moved busily, scouring every corner of the empire, bringing back Leos’s image recorded on artifacts one by one. As a result of gathering even the smallest piece of data that was related to monsters.

[Total footage length: 175,700 minutes]

Over 170,000 minutes of footage, all piled up. Unbelievable. Never imagined one man could leave behind a footprint this massive, working alone within the company.

“Shit…”

There was no answer. Not a damn chance they could use the time to teach the Gatekeepers by showing them 170,000+ minutes of video, not with Red Gates erupting all over the empire right now. They’d even have to analyze each second of the footage to figure out Leos’s motives and tactics. Hell, you could give them a year and they still might not fully grasp the man’s know-how. Still, Keltazar had no other choice.

He quickly gathered the artifacts with the videos, and addressed Leos’s former disciples, now reorganized into the Gatekeepers’ Team 2.

“Start watching these Red Gate videos now. A minimum of 15 hours per day. Memorize every single principle of action before Team 1 is reorganized. I won’t be taking questions.”

Keltazar said that and left. His voice was urgent.

“Bring in more personnel, immediately. Focus on physical ability, select those with exceptional memory first. If we don’t master Leos… Leos’s strategies, we’re all going to be wiped out.”

Keltazar was a man of quick decisions. Losing 35 knights had made it brutally clear. This wasn’t the time for a desperate rush of warm bodies to die for information, this was the only way to tackle this head-on.

“Any update on Leos’s location?”

“No contact from Pheredine, the team leader of the 30th Imperial Shadow Squad… Something seems to have happened.”

– *BANG!*

Keltazar punched the wall hard and yelled.

“Find him NOW! I don’t care how, just find Leos and bring him back here!”

*

The former disciples huddled together, watching the footage of Leos battling monsters.

“Why are we being made to watch this…? He’s the one who did terrible things to Bellin…”

One of the girls asked, her face showing her confusion. Bellin just lowered her head in silence.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. With Bellin right here, what is Keltazar-nim thinking? Maybe he doesn’t know? Maybe he doesn’t know what Leos did?”

“Maybe it’s for us to learn from it? Leos-nim might not have been good at other things, but he was better at fighting monsters than anyone else. Especially the Red Gate Mutants – he was completely dominant. It must be to learn his strategies, I think.”

The disciples began to voice their thoughts, until one of the men stepped forward and turned off the artifact recording.

“Darek! Sir Keltazar told us to watch it, why’d you suddenly turn it off…”

Darek shouted at the girl who was talking.

“What the hell are you talking about? Why should we take help from that criminal b*stard? Strategy? We can catch mutated monsters without any of that.”

“But… even the knights failed…”

“Knights are different from us. At least we’re veterans who’ve been deployed on actual gate-clearing operations. If Leos can do it, we can do it too. Isn’t that obvious?”

“…”

The atmosphere was unagreeable, but one by one, they looked at Belin and began to speak.

“…Yeah, it’d be better not to get any help from him, since it will make Belin uncomfortable.”

At Sirna’s words, Darek nodded. And the man slowly walked towards Belin, plopping down next to her.

Belin quietly said,

“You really… don’t have to do that.”

Belin looked pained. She began to feel like something was constantly going wrong. But regardless of the girl’s feelings, Darek spoke with a laugh.

“Belin, don’t worry. I never liked Leos from the start anyway. I’ll protect you. If that damn Leos could do it, then I can do it too. Oh yeah, is that Kojarik still hitting on you? I should deal with that guy too.”

Belin ignored his rambling and bowed her head. For a while, she wouldn’t lift it again.

*

As Leos began walking out of the cave, Bendict asked, bewildered.

“Where are you going, Brother?”

“I’m going to clean up the Red Gates around here.”

“Hey, that’s dangerous, just leave them alone. I remember all your stories, Brother. Didn’t that disciple of yours frame you? They’re yelling about you being a criminal in the communities too, you don’t need to help those guys! Just let ’em all die!”

Bendict shouted frustrated, and Leos smacked the man on the head before speaking.

“You dumbass. It’s not about the others, it’s about you guys. When those mutant monsters show up, can you even run properly? Do you know what attacks they use, how they move, what their attack range is?”

“N-no… we don’t.”

Leos looked at Heresia next to him, and she scratched her head, replying,

“Hehe… I don’t know either…”

“Yeah, of course not. So, we’re just going to close the Red Gates around here. We’ll just make this area a safe zone, and not touch anything else. At best, maybe a 1km radius will be safe. The rest? Let the Empire b*stards deal with it, I don’t care.”

“Ehh… still don’t really like it…”

Bendict mumbled, and Leos spoke to the man,

“Okay. We won’t go then, like you said. Later, when the monsters come, you can just run away and die. Is that okay with you?”

“I trust you, boss! Be careful out there!”

Watching Bendict bow 90 degrees, Leos smirked and started walking out, step by step. Heresia asked the man walking away,

“Um, Leos-nim… but… do you actually know all the characteristics of those countless Red Gate monsters and mutants?”

Leos looked at her and answered, as if it was obvious,

“I know them all. Every single one.”