The echo of the future past

"I need some help over here!" 

Rob's shout didn't have a single hint of desperation or pressure in it. It wouldn't be a lie to claim he shouted… only to make sure his words would cut through the noise of the ongoing fight, nothing more, nothing less. 

"On it!"

Replying in a similar fashion, Tina rushed up, pathing slightly at an angle to Rob's position only to suddenly dig her feet into the ground, still a few steps away from where the two boys held up the line, and raise the gun in her hands. 

Ba-Bang! Ba-Bang!

Two-tapping both of the targets that threatened to outflank their formation, Tina then… vanished, only to appear exactly three paces to the back. 

Thump. 

A heavy mace of a huge orc struck the place where the girl was just in. 

"You are outside!" Millie joined the shouting match, carefully tracking the position of each of the party's members while adjusting the location of her Mystic Zone skill to both keep the others within its edge while also keeping herself out of harm's way. 

'I guess that's the downside of picking a fully supportive class,' Leo thought, observing the battle from just behind Millie. 

He didn't really have to worry about any of them. 

With the fiends of this level, the simple shield that he cast on everyone was more than enough for a safety measure. And while this barrier was going to stop anything the fiends of a green portal could throw at his wards… 

There wasn't a single member of Leo's group that took their own safety lightly. After all, even just a slight tap on the shield would mean losing their right to accompany Leo to the orange portal!

Still, his brothers and childhood friends didn't have Leo's undivided attention. 

'At this rate…' the young man thought, stealing a quick glance at a simple watch on his wrist. 

Conquering the first of the two green portals he planned took a lot longer than he expected. Without his help, just the four of them took nearly ten hours to finish the horde and then struggled for three more hours to defeat the boss that came at the end of it. 

Even though it was nowhere near the danger level of the abomination that they encountered in the very first portal and more in line with the boss-level fiends they faced in the next two portals the latter half of which Leo conquered on his own… They were, by no means, an easy opponent. 

'Still, that pretty much settles it,' Leo thought, watching how Tina retreated within Millie's buff zone before switching over to a military combat knife to ward off the two green-caps that somehow snuck past the front of the two boys and attempted to charge Millie down. 

Even though those fiends could still do quite some harm to a fragile human body… Against an opponent of this level, Tina simply didn't want to waste her limited bullets, especially with how they weren't all that easy to restock. 

It was a problem that only existed now, while their cooperation with the city was in its infancy. 

"How much longer do we have?!" Mark suddenly shouted, his voice being the one exception when it came to the rest of the group, given how it was inherently full of rage. 

No one could blame him, though. 

Being of a berserker class, he innately consumed his rage to fight, putting him quite on edge during the battle. 

"We are late already!" Leo shouted back, only for his eyes to draw to the watch again. 

Indeed, they were late. 

With a total of thirteen hours to complete the first of the two green portals, fourteen if he were to count the time it took them to get to the portal and then from the portal back home, adding up the necessary time for rest and an hour or two for leisure and a meal… The time they had until the agreed date for challenging the orange portal was drawing pretty damn near. 

'I guess I will have to cut this expedition short…' Leo concluded, watching how Mark, in response to his words, started to push forth through the constant onslaught of the horde of fiends. 

On its own, it wasn't a bad thing, especially with how his abilities only served to reward such an aggressive approach. Yet, as his one-handed axe swung to the left and right, casting streaks of greenish blood to fly all over the place only to then turn into blades that skewered enemies further down the horde… 

Bit by bit, Mark pushed ahead, inherently forcing Rob to follow at the same pace, a feat his abilities weren't really suited for. 

Ting!

A charge of an orc pushing its way through the horde came to a complete and utter end when it swung a long, jagged sword, only for Rob's simple steel pipe to redirect the edge away from his flesh and knock the weapon out of the massive fiend's hand. 

The very next moment, Rob's pipe struck the side of the Orc's head, sending him stumbling through the rest of the horde only to trip on the mass of green-caps and fall down, crushing a further few of them underneath its heavy body. 

Ba-bang!

While Rob's riposte could only deal blunt damage due to the nature of his weapon, Tina's follow-up shoot was more than enough to finish the stunned opponent off. 

'We really don't have time for this…' Watching how the battle unfolded, Leo fought a battle of his own, against his own thoughts. 'I guess I really should just wrap it up…'

The plan was simple. By conquering two separate green portals, Leo's group could prove they were capable enough to challenge an orange portal. After all, while they struggled a bit, they could still, more or less reliably, clear the green rank portals. 

And that could only mean, according to the rules laid down by the alien circuit at the very least, they were now capable of challenging greater dangers in order to fulfill whatever it was that their circuits were missing in order to advance below the cap of level fifteen. 

With that in mind, having them fully clear the second portal… Wasn't really necessary, it was nothing more but a precaution Leo used to make sure they were actually prepared and well-accustomed to the constant danger of a battle. 

"Okay, fuck it," Leo spoke out only to step out from behind Millie and move towards the front. 

Thanks to the system robbing only a part of the mana contained within the monsters instead of fully absorbing their cores, the last few portal raids were akin to a farming run for the young returnee. And with all the monster cores he could ask for turning into a mist of magic in the subdimension of his fourth legacy core, dealing with a small horde of fiends like that couldn't be any easier. 

"I'm sorry guys, but we are actually late," Leo called out loud enough to snap Mark out of his battle frenzy. "I'm going to finish it up, so gather all up and stand behind me."

In theory, it wouldn't be a problem for the young man to just pick out all the enemies from within the crowd, separate them from the friendlies, and then kill each and every last one of those fiends with a dedicated spell. 

It was theoretically possible… but practically idiotic. 

"On it!" Tina was the first to shout back… and ultimately, the only one. Millie was already where Leo wanted her while Rob followed his order silently… But rather than retreating as soon as he heard his brother's words, he pushed forward and slightly to the side instead, grabbing Mark by the collar of his shirt and only then retreating while dragging the youngest of the Pesterny household along. 

"NO! LET ME GO! I CAN KILL MORE OF THEM!" Mark struggled at first, still flailing his short axe at the fiends nearby, keeping up with the consecutive attacks of his "flurry of strikes" ability, only calming down when there simply weren't any more targets for him to attack, thus breaking the chain of the skill. 

"Now then," with the two brothers being the last to retreat behind Leo's back, the horde finally managed to push through the imaginary line they established with their mere presence. 

Yet, as they rushed to take revenge on all their fallen comrades… 

Leo simply swept his hand from the left to right, as if he was chasing away a mere fly. 

A gust of wind flew past the horde, cutting the strings of a puppeteer that controlled all of them. Or, that's how it looked when a mass of invisible, poisonous mist rolled over the horde, taking the fiendish lives with no regard for their size, rank, or biology. 

After all, what this mist poisoned wasn't their flesh, but the mana that allowed their flesh to operate despite having no biological and physical right to do so. 

"Now then, we wait a moment for the boss…" Leo muttered while taking a quick look at the rest of his group. 

They were all tired, for sure, but only on the surface. 

After the proper rest of yesterday and with the benefits of having their physical statistics grow several times beyond what they were formerly capable of, just the few hours they spent fighting the current horde wasn't enough to really drain them. 

'I guess they will be in a shape good enough after resting in the car for a bit…' 

Before long, the small valley where the portal's entrance spat them out started to shake. A moment later, a roughly six-meter-high abomination came from behind a huge boulder.

'An ogre, huh?' Leo thought, watching how the massive fiend stepped towards them, endless rage burning in its eyes. 

Snap. 

With just a bit of an effort to construct a flitting spell, Leo bound its activation to the simple motion of his fingers. 

What happened next was… even weirder than the way the horde came to meet its end. 

At first, like an invisible fuse, an extremely thin and narrow line of fire stretched out from where Leo snapped his fingers, reaching all the way over to the Ogre's belly… Only for the six-meter-high fiend to suddenly collapse inwards, squashed down, and sucked into a singularity that appeared within its stomach. 

"Okay, we are done here," Leo merrily reported when he saw the rest of the group twitch and then lock their eyes on some indefinite point out in the distance. 

There was no chatter or talking when they moved over to the portal, nor did anyone speak out when they emerged back in their own world, only to be welcomed by an assistance group of the military consisting of several guards, a few observers, and an extremely stressed mayor's secretary - their point of contact. 

"Do you know how late it is?" the middle-aged yet extremely young-looking, oriental-looking woman struggled to keep her voice professional. Regretfully, while she managed to keep a hold over the tone of her voice, this restraint didn't apply to the words she used. 

"Yeah, we are running late, I know," Leo rolled his eyes, not even slowing his pace down for the sake of this exchange, heading directly for the car they commandeered from the mayor's garage instead. "There's no need to yell, we are going there now so you can just follow us."

Not sparing a further word for someone so disproportionally annoying to how insignificant she was in the young man's eyes, Leo continued all the way to the car, only breathing a sigh of relief once he and the rest of his group got inside and closed the doors behind them. 

"Was that snap really necessary?" Rob asked pretty much the very next moment before Tina could even start the car up. "If so, what was it for?"

Rob's eyes were shining as he looked at Leo's profile, suddenly making the returnee feel guilty about his initial desire to just ignore this unimportant question. 

"Theatrics," Leo replied with all the honesty he could muster while also doing his best not to sigh again… At least, not when directly addressing his brother's concerns. 

"Wait, that's all?" Millie joined, voicing out the same concern that was written on everyone's faces. 

"Once you go through as many battles as I did, you will learn to add some theatrics as well," Leo replied, actually taking some time to figure out the proper answer to the question. "If you won't, battling will grow mundane, natural. And the moment it does is the moment when you start lowering your guard."

After speaking out, Leo's face grew slightly darker as some of the more unsavory memories of his past lifetimes resurfaced before his eyes. 

'How long has it been since I came to that sort of conclusion? A hundred years? A hundred and fifty years?' he thought, not even going through the bother of properly counting. 

"Anyway, you guys better rest now. It's gonna take us some time to get to the place, and we don't really know what to expect from an orange portal. So, while you can, rest as much as you can."

It would be a hard sell to claim Leo's words were what calmed the insides of the car and turned the rest of their roughly half-an-hour-long journey into a silent trip. More likely, it was the somber look on his face, brought upon by his memories of the past, that acted as a hint his group took to humor him and keep their mouth shut. 

"You know what…" Rob spoke out right the very moment Tina pulled up to a huge gathering of people, all basking in the slight, orange hue of the nearby portal. "I held on to asking about this, but the way you speak about those past six years…"

Rather than getting out, Leo actually remained in his seat, waiting for his brother to finish. 

"It doesn't really sound as if you were talking about just six years."

Leo took a shallow yet long breath before leaning as far back into the cushion of the car's seat as he could.

"I…"

"No, I don't want you to explain it now. Not if you are uncomfortable doing so," Rob quickly added, cutting in before Leo could even utter a single word while blatantly ignoring the disappointed faces of the two girls. 

Clearly, this question was hanging in the air for quite some time already, and only Leo appeared to be unaware of the fact. 

"Will you explain it once we get back from the portal, though?" Rob then suggested with an innocent and slightly concerned look on his face. "I mean, this would give you enough time to think things through… To decide if you can and are actually willing to answer or something…"

This time, Leo's reaction was worlds apart from his earlier sigh. This time, he turned his head and stared directly at his brother with his eyes opening up wide while his facial muscles tensed up to their limit. 

"Why the fuck are you trying to set up a death flag for yourself?" Leo asked in a stern voice. 

As far as he was from believing in superstitions like that… Being a soldier of many years and just as many wars, he grew not to underestimate them. Leo even came to formulate a few theories on how certain phrases and sentences increased the likelihood of something bad happening… but none of them mattered now. 

"Ah, I didn't realize, I was just curious…" Rob quickly rushed to explain himself, only to then shake his head and ultimately lower it a bit. "No, I apologize. I shouldn't have said that."

"It's okay. With me, things should be fine," Leo concluded the small bit before grabbing the handle and pushing the car's door open. "Just don't do it again. Who knows, maybe we are all inside some stupid, feel-good story and its author is trying to set up some dramatic event just to raise the stakes?" he joked before shaking his head and getting out of the car. 

The air around the portal… was exactly the same as in the rest of the city, the courtesy of the winds constantly blowing it all around the place. Still, the atmosphere was as tense as it was full of certain, unpleasant tension. 

"So that's them…"

"Those bastards…"

"Who do they think they are?"

A bunch of whispers surrounded them as Leo dove into the crowd of people either dressed in the standard issue military suits or all sorts of casual outfits. 

Still, between the soldiers and the civilians gathered in the place… it was the latter that drew more of Leo's attention. 

'They all seem to have roughly as much mana in and within their bodies as the kids,' Leo thought, only to shake his head as he realized the likely meaning. 'So, they are all at the level cap. Good.'

The orange portal was an unknown. A variable that humanity had yet to determine. As such, it didn't hurt to have more meat to throw at any potential grinder that awaited them on the other side of the orange passage suspended in the air just a fewteen meters away from the crowd. 

"You surely took your time," Homer forgo all the greetings in favor of a short scold when Leo and the rest finally reached the front of the crowd and met the man there. 

"Better late than never, isn't it?" Leo asked… Only to step right past the barriers that the military set in advance.

"Wait!" Homer screamed out, clearly unprepared for Leo to move towards the portal without any regard for whatever plans the military and the other groups made for crossing to the other side in advance. "The military should go first!"

Leo stopped and turned only to cast a long and judging glance at the mayor. Ultimately, though, he sighed and retreated the few steps he took beyond the barrier. 

"After you, then," he said before raising his head and scratching his head. "Just tell me who's in charge so I can stick close and help everyone if things get really bad."

A new series of whispers and murmurs followed Leo's haughty claim. And it didn't take a genius to figure out what all of those people were nigh instantly upset about. 

This was a gathering of people that, in one way or another, reached the current cap on the level. In other words, when they did some talking while waiting for Leo's group to arrive, they all realized the simple truth.

In this place, in general, everyone was pretty much equal in strength. 

Sure, their abilities varied and there were those more suited for battle than the others… But with all of their levels stuck at fifteen, it took some real arrogance for Leo to act as if he was supposed to be someone better or, for the lack of a better word, stronger than them. 

Homer's face contorted a bit in response to Leo's question. Yet, in the end, he passed on bringing that point up and only shook his head.

"Martin!" the mayor called, only for one of the soldiers with quite the collection of ribbons decorating his chest and a heavy machine gun weighing down in his hands. 

"Yes, sir!" the soldier stood at attention while making sure the muzzle of his gun would point down towards the ground at all times. 

In this messy gathering of military and civilians, gun discipline had to be at an all-time high. 

"This gentleman and his group will accompany you," Homer explained while throwing a salty glance at the young man in question. "It would be wise to heed his words," he added out loud only to lean over the man's shoulder and reach for his ear. 

"Seriously, this guy… he's different. While I don't know his intentions, he doesn't seem to be an enemy so again, heed his words," Homer whispered, clearly trying his best to make his voice as silent as he could without just mumbling some nonsense to the soldier's ear. 

Martin himself clearly understood the assignment, opting not to salute back to report receiving the instructions, limiting himself to just a simple nod of his head. 

"Okay, everyone! Cease the chatter and focus up!" After walking a few steps, Martin suddenly revealed to possess a seaman's voice, capable of both cutting through the noise of powerful waves on the sea… or the noise made by a huge crowd of undisciplined civilians. "We are about to start crossing, so clench your asses, grit your teeth, and prepare for the worst!"

Feeling a slight tap on his waist, Leo turned over, smiling when he saw a look of slight uncertainty in the eyes of, surprise surprise, his youngest brother. 

"You've heard the man," Leo spoke cheerfully while reaching out and resting his hand on Mark's shoulder. He then looked over his small group and nodded his head. "Don't worry. No matter what, I will do my best to keep you guys safe."

'I took way too long to return to allow anything to happen to them,' he thought before patting Mark's shoulder and turning back to face the portal. 

The crowd started to move. 

At first, a small group of soldiers stepped forth and blazed the trail, only to dive into the swirling lines of orange and vanish from everyone's sight. 

Then, a slightly bigger detachment followed. 

"Not yet," Martin, who appeared right next to Leo's side, muttered. "Let the mass pass first."

Leo looked over to the side before letting out a small sigh of relief. 

'While I can't judge the soldiers and have no expectations whatsoever for the civilians… This guy doesn't seem like the kind of a career idiot.'

In the end, they didn't have to wait long. The whole operation was ready to go for nearly thirty minutes before they arrived, after all!

And so, following Martin's slight tap on his shoulder, Leo took it upon himself to herald his group as he took a dive into the orange portal, suffering through the spatial uneasiness for a while only to then appear on the other side. 

This time, however, the portal's entrance didn't spit them out in some sort of relatively open area populated by nothing but fiends of all kinds. 

No. 

This time, they all appeared safely on a stone-paved ground, amidst a gathering of people many times greater than the crowd Leo saw before entering the portal. 

'Huh?' Weirded out, Leo nearly missed a step when he started to look around. 

A huge tower to the left, overlooking the city sprawling down the bottom of the hill upon which the ducal palace stood. A long line of columns separated the massive courtyard from the roofed passage hidden in the shadows of said columns. A mighty gate shielding the entrance to the palace proper and a line of servants standing along the edges of the stairs leading up to it. 

Leo, for the very first time since he returned back to his homeworld, froze. 

'This is…' the young man gulped his saliva down. 

"Everything okay?" Martin asked as he suddenly appeared right at Leo's side, magically forcing the people who stood there before to shift away without a single hint of them realizing what they just did. 

But Leo didn't listen. 

No, instead, his eyes shoot from one place to the other, confirming that, indeed, this place was more than familiar. 

This was a place he could easily remember, for it was here where one of the highest, most dramatic points of one of his past lifetimes played out: the duke's palace located directly at the border of the royal lands and the ducal domain. 

The arrangement of the servants was the same as during that day, with a mighty army of them making sure to greet all the nobles and make sure to prevent any disorder. 

And just a little bit ahead, at the very front of the servant army stood a man Leo could actually recognize. 

'Don't fuck with me like that…' Stunned, Leo couldn't find it in himself to answer Martin's question. And with the rest of his group appearing right behind… 

"Leo?" Rob whispered, instantly realizing that something had to be terribly wrong for his brother's face to turn as white as it did. 

Leo gulped his saliva down. 

"Tell me," he muttered while the crowd forced them to move another step ahead, getting closer and closer to the line of servants tasked with the job of greeting all those invited and turning away all those who were not. "Does your circuit say anything about our mission here?" 

Leo's voice trembled a bit… And this was enough for both the girls and both of his brothers to confirm that indeed, something was terribly wrong. 

And it was likely their reaction that finally drilled that very point into Martin's mind. 

"Man, speak up," the soldier whispered, his fingers in a "ready" position, indicating the man was ready to unleash hell at a moment's notice. 

"We are to…" Mark spoke out, only to turn silent for a second as his eyes locked on some unspecified point in the distance. "We are to prevent the coup d'etat aimed at the royal prince."

Leo took a deep, long breath. 

"What's going on?" Martin's insistence made him speak a bit louder than he likely intended, attracting some stares from both their fellow portal challengers but also the population of this space. 

Leo took another deep breath and shook his head. And by the time he looked over at Martin, all the emotions, all the confusion, all the shock… they all washed off his face, replaced with a perfectly dead-pan stare and an expression unblemished by a single hint of thought. 

"Do we have comms with everyone?" Leo asked, ignoring all the questions both Martin and his own group asked. 

"What?" the soldier squinted his eyes a bit, hesitating for a moment. "Well, yeah, we do, but the procedures…"

"Give me an open channel to everyone," Leo requested in a voice so flat and calm that it perfectly matched his empty face. 

A voice that couldn't be any different than the casual and happy-go-lucky behavior he showcased up to this point. 

"Sir, I cannot. Swarming the comms like that is… No, the procedures…"

"Just two sentences," Leo insisted, even going as far as to reach out with his hand and let it hang in the air. 

Martin struggled to decide. His mental battle didn't take long, though. And in the end, with extreme reluctance painted all over his face, he detached a simple radio from his belt before passing it over to Leo's stretched hand. 

'As expected from a proper soldier,' Leo thought, doing his absolute best to dispel the coldness that was quickly taking over his heart. 

He then took a deep breath to calm the chaos of his soul down and pressed down on the radio's trigger. 

"This might sound weird, but if anyone even thinks of interfering,-" 

Leo sighed all the air out of his lungs while opening the rift to the subspace and pumping mana into all of the legacy cores he unlocked… along with the fifth legacy core that he held back on touching up until now. 

For a moment, he considered using some sort of drastic threat, using some fancy words or spelling things out in an extremely detailed way… In the end, though, the charm of simplicity prevailed. 

"-I will kill you all."