“What else? We’ll drag them to the unit and interrogate them. There seems to be someone behind this, so I’ve kept them alive for now.”
Iberis answered as if it were obvious. He bit his lip, recalling the words of the man he had knocked out last. A sense of unease rose as he wondered if someone had learned about his terminal diagnosis. Honestly, a person had come to mind as soon as he heard those words.
Livio Logan.
Iberis thought of Livio, who had recently made a surprise visit to the unit. He had just heard information that Livio was suspicious of his health condition. That day, he had also made meaningful comments about how Iberis’s complexion had improved and how he hoped Iberis would be healthy until the joint operation.
Suddenly anxious, Iberis clenched his fist. If Livio had noticed the abnormality in his body…
“Are they all alive?”
“Hm? Oh, some might be dead. I tried to keep as many alive as possible, but…”
Iberis, snapped out of his thoughts by Lucas’s voice, trailed off as he looked around at the motionless fallen figures. Just then, Brenda and the unit members, their faces pale, appeared in the open space.
“Major.”
“You’re here?”
Iberis greeted Brenda warmly as she ran towards him. It seemed she had just joined due to the distance between her patrol area and the terrorist attack site.
“What happened here?”
“As you can see. In the process of subduing the villains attacking me, a bomb went off. As a result, there were innocent victims.”
“Huh… Those guys targeted you, sir?”
Brenda sighed in disbelief. While there had been those who threatened Iberis’s life before, this was the first attempt on such a large scale.
“Yes. By the way, you came at a good time. You can take these guys back to the unit.”
“Pardon?”
“If you use your ability, we won’t need multiple people to transport them. We should lock up the bosses individually… and put the small fry together, I guess?”
Iberis muttered, lowering his eyes in thought. There were roughly a hundred villains involved in the attack. It would be better to detain them separately to prevent them from coordinating their stories, but there were too many.
“You’re not handing them over to the military police?”
Brenda asked, puzzled. While N-0 unit had a few solitary confinement cells for isolating problematic members, there were no prison facilities for criminals. There wasn’t enough space to accommodate that many people.
“Not the military police. We can’t trust anyone right now.”
“What?”
“These guys knew I would be patrolling this area.”
Iberis explained, shaking his head firmly. Brenda’s expression turned serious as she grasped the meaning behind his words.
“You mean information leaked from the inside…”
“That’s right. When I pressed the apparent ringleader, he said he received a request. He heard that something was wrong with my body?”
“Ah.”
“This was planned to kill me. Since it failed, they’ll surely try to silence them. So we can’t hand them over to the military police. I need to keep them until we find out who made the request.”
“Hmm.”
“The only ones who knew which area I would patrol today are the unit commanders who shared the schedule and…”
“Just our unit members.”
Brenda bit her lower lip with a devastated look. She didn’t want to suspect that there was a traitor among the unit members.
“I think one of the unit commanders might have talked… But we can’t let our guard down. Anyway, you’re in charge of transporting the terrorists. Put mana restraints on them so they can’t escape or cause trouble, and only treat them enough to keep them alive. Have reliable people watch them.”
“Understood.”
“Good. Take them away quickly before they regain consciousness.”
Iberis completely withdrew the mana that had been suppressing the villains. As the force pressing down on them disappeared, some of the fallen villains groaned. However, no one dared to attempt an escape.
“Major.”
Lucas called out to Iberis as soon as the conversation between the two ended, as if he had been waiting.
“Yes, what is it? Were you surprised too? And sorry for cutting off communication earlier…”
“I understand given the urgent situation. But don’t do that next time. More importantly, come here.”
“Huh?”
Iberis’s eyes widened at the warmth that suddenly grasped his hand. Nevertheless, he followed Lucas without much resistance.
Avoiding the crowd of rescue workers, police, and others who had rushed to clean up the scene, Lucas led Iberis behind a half-collapsed building. He then turned around and embraced Iberis.
“L-Luke?”
“Stay still.”
Lucas immediately released his mana while holding Iberis in his arms. A warm energy, like spring sunshine melting the last snow, gently enveloped Iberis’s body.
“Here…?”
Iberis’s lips quivered as he felt the warm energy seeping into his chilled body.
“I thought it would be better to do some guiding, even if just for a moment.”
Lucas explained the reason as he proceeded with the guiding. The place where they were was too narrow for cars to pass. Moreover, with several buildings collapsed due to the explosion and rescue teams having entered, it was difficult to leave.
“Do you know how pale your face is right now, Major?”
“Me?”
“You’re shaking like this.”
Lucas gently chided Iberis and pulled him closer. The cold and trembling transmitted through their bodies made him feel uneasy.
“I’ve been struggling to hold back from guiding you since earlier. If Lieutenant Cali hadn’t arrived, I would have done it sooner.”
Lucas grumbled in a low voice, resting his chin on Iberis’s shoulder. His large hand cupped the nape of Iberis’s neck, and his long fingers burrowed into the black hair.
“Ah.”
Iberis hunched his shoulders as the slender fingertips brushed his earlobe. The body heat slowly melting his goosebump-covered skin made his mind hazy. He unconsciously let out a moan and looked around guiltily.
“If people see…”
“They can’t see, so don’t worry. Even if they could, what of it? They’d just think you’re receiving guiding.”
Lucas replied dismissively and tightened his arms around Iberis. Then he took off his coat and draped it over Iberis’s head.
“This should hide your face, right? Your clothes got a bit dirtier from the dust, but please bear with it.”
“No, this looks even more suspicious…”
Iberis grumbled as if incredulous, but didn’t push Lucas away. Instead, he closed his eyes and savored the mana flowing into his body. The hot breath tickling his ear and neck gave him a strange feeling, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Rather…
“…!”
Iberis, who had been intoxicated by Lucas’s mana, suddenly opened his eyes wide. He turned his head as if sensing something and his eyes hardened.
“Just now…”
“Major?”
“Didn’t you feel that? The vibration?”
“I felt something… but isn’t it from the aftermath of the explosion?”
“No, this is…”
As Iberis was about to say it wasn’t a simple vibration, the ground rumbled like thunder and shook violently. Soon after, screams of people sensing something amiss rang out.
“Huh? What’s this?”
“Aah!”
“E-earthquake! Run!”
Realizing the situation wasn’t normal, Iberis rushed out and stretched out his hand. A thick ice barrier appeared in the air, blocking the building debris raining down on the open space.
“Huff!”
“Th-thank you.”
The police officers who avoided being crushed by concrete chunks thanks to Iberis thanked him. But there was no time to relax.
“Here it comes again!”
Following someone’s shout, the ground vibrated once more. This time too, Iberis calmly supported the collapsing buildings with several ice pillars.
“If you don’t want to get hurt, come in here!”
“Get down!”
Lucas, who followed, also created a mana barrier to block the rebar pieces and glass shards raining from all directions. Brenda and other unit members did the same.
“I-is it over?”
“We’re alive…”
“Thank you so much.”
As the earthquake subsided, people who had been crouching on the ground began to raise their heads one by one. They kept bowing to Iberis and the unit members who had saved them, expressing their gratitude.
But Iberis’s face was even more rigid than before. He slowly moved forward, pushing aside the dust that filled the open space. Soon, as the hazy dust settled, a cracked ground was revealed.
“…It’s a rift.”
Iberis said in a low voice, confirming the massive gap that had appeared in the open space. The alien mana seeping out from inside was that of beings from another dimension.
Kneeling on one knee, he examined the newly formed rift with an utterly serious expression. Although dimensional distortions and rifts occasionally occur in residential areas, it was rare for them to appear suddenly without any warning signs.
No, perhaps there had been precursor phenomena. They might have gone undetected due to the increased mana density from his clash with the villains.
Because of me…
Gritting his teeth, Iberis stood up and shouted to Brenda. Now was not the time for self-blame.
“Brenda! Contact the observation team and intelligence department immediately! Tell them to assess the rift as quickly as possible!”
