A few hours before Luke, Ellios, and Anastasia arrived in front of Naiccos…
"Guards! Heed my command! Kill them all!" the captain ordered from atop the castle walls.
Although the captain deduced that most of the people in the crowd standing outside of the western gate were spies, he obviously knew that not all of them had such a role.
After he uttered the order, he felt the fear of the people looking at him from below. The children, the teenage girls and boys, pregnant women, and their fathers. They trembled all the same.
No one liked seeing women and children put to the sword, not even a battle-hardened veteran such as himself.
'I'm sorry, Milo. It has to be done,' the captain apologized inwardly, as if his thoughts would reach Milo, his infant son, who had been murdered by the Empire's enemies along with his wife in their own home, merely for being associated with him.
Even in a world full of monsters, most humans, elementalists or otherwise, died fighting, killing, and cursing each other. Instead of choosing the difficult option of putting their differences aside, they chose the easy way out – violence.
"For the good of the Empire and this city, these spies all have to be purged from the face of this earth!" the captain roared, drawing his sword and holding it high.
He was unsure of who he was trying to convince with his words—himself or the guards.
Nevertheless, the guards had to obey, for if they were to decline, they'd be marked as traitors and executed on the spot. Such were the laws of the Exul Empire.
The crowd of people realized that the captain's order had been serious the moment the guards started drawing their steel swords. Mass pandemonium ensued.
The people in the front were the most desperate to escape, as they'd be the first ones to be slaughtered.
But ordinary people, spies or not, stood no chance of escaping from trained guards in the first place, except for the few lucky or fast ones, especially those all the way in the back.
Those that managed to get away from the slaughter couldn't even catch a breath of relief, as they were shot down by the archers on the walls. There wasn't a need to use any elementalist guards.
Women, children, and men.
The guards did not discriminate between them.
They were cut down one after another during the following hours, until no one was left standing.
The corpses had to be taken care of; otherwise, the monsters would easily sniff out the stench of blood in the air and swarm the gate.
It was somewhere during this cleanup process that Ellios and Anastasia arrived in front of the gate, along with the unconscious Luke.
The moment the guards noticed their presence, they unsurprisingly drew their swords.
One of them charged at Ellios, who stood in front of Anastasia with Luke on her back, causing Ellios to snort in pity.
Just as the guard was about to swing his sword at Ellios, he extended his index finger towards him.
"Too slow," Ellios smirked, but frowned immediately after.
He retracted his hand and amplified his speed using the wind elemental, easily avoiding the guard's sword swings.
But the frown still wouldn't leave his face.
Ellios once again pointed his finger at the guard, who kept trying to strike him while throwing out nasty insults.
'Why?! I can't feel it! What the hell is wrong with me?' Ellios cursed himself.
The strongest weapon in his arsenal, the gravity elemental, wasn't responding to him. It felt like a limb he'd had for his entire life suddenly disappeared without him even realizing it or knowing the reason it happened.
While Ellios was trying to activate the gravity elemental, Anastasia extended her free hand, and the mana channeling through it molded into the shape of a metal club.
Holding Luke with one hand and swinging the club at the guards with the other proved to be no trouble for her, as the two guards attacking her laid unconscious below her feet in less than five seconds.
She obviously didn't strike to kill, as killing their own country's guards without a good reason was out of the question.
"…What are you doing?" Anastasia asked, with the question clearly meant for Ellios.
Instead of getting an answer, she just heard him clicking his tongue while he kept pointing at the guard as he dodged.
More and more guards heard the commotion and attacked them, but Anastasia quickly dispatched all of them to the land of dreams.
After swinging his sword around repeatedly for more than ten minutes, the guard attacking Ellios grew tired. Ellios still refused to accept what he realized right away – he no longer possessed the gravity elemental.
In his rage, he grabbed the guard's head by the face and smashed him into the ground, using just his raw physical strength.
"Fuck! How did this happen?! Think, goddamnit!" Ellios shouted in self-doubt as he senselessly kept punching the guard with his fists.
"Stop it!" Anastasia yelled as she dragged Ellios away from the bloodied, unconscious guard.
He didn't stand up and remained seated on the ground, so Anastasia put Luke down and crouched next to him.
"Tell me, Anastasia! Why did this happen?! Why did I lose the gravity elemental?!" he asked with gritted teeth and bulging eyes.
When she heard this, Anastasia couldn't help but widen her eyes, "W-wait… What do you mean? You couldn't have lost it! It's impossible…"
Ellios spit on the ground, his tense expression still not letting up, "That's right. It's also what I thought. That's why I kept trying to activate it for that long…"
Letting out a hearty sigh, he stood up along with Anastasia.
His eyes couldn't help but be drawn towards the unconscious Luke.
'Ever since I met him… Yes, ever since I met him, weird and unexplainable things keep happening to me. Maybe he's the key to resolving this mystery as well…' He couldn't be completely sure it had anything to do with Luke, but it's what his instincts screamed at him.
"Let's just see what's going on here first. I can fight even without the gravity elemental, if necessary."
Anastasia nodded and followed behind Ellios with Luke on her back.
They quickly noticed the captain standing atop the gate. He simply looked down on them without moving a muscle.
Ellios and Anastasia knew how to discern the soldiers and guards' ranks merely with a single glance.
"Let's talk to him, shall we?" Ellios asked and enveloped his legs with wind. Anastasia nodded and did the same.
The pair of people scaled the 25-meter-tall wall in a single jump, making the captain widen his eyes and take a step back.
"You… Who are you people?" the captain asked, with dread apparent in his voice.
Ellios took out a small token from his storage elemental and tossed it at the captain.
Without even waiting for the captain to finish checking the token, Ellios demanded, "Speak. Why are all those people down there dead?"
The captain kneeled with a serious face. He didn't need much time to verify the validity of the token he received, as its image and what it represented were clearly engrained in all of the soldiers' minds.
'A griffin with a golden coat of fur and red jewels as its eyes… It's the Empire's insignia! This token is only granted to the direct members of the von Fortuni dynasty, the rightful rulers of the Empire since its very inception!'
"Sir, I apologize for my rudeness!" the captain said as he prostrated himself in front of Ellios.
"I asked you a question. Answer it," Ellios ordered with a slight frown.
And the captain obeyed without any hesitation. Ellios' face remained stern but calm during his explanation, even though the contents were slightly disturbing.
"I see… Report it to your higher-ups if you haven't already. And tell your men to stop attacking new visitors already. We had to personally take care of multiple guards on the way here."
The captain's face flushed red from embarrassment as he apologized multiple times while bowing up and down like a broken robot.
After finishing up their business atop the gate, they dropped Luke off at the embassy building and left for their inn to rest for the night.
"The Western Gate Incident," as it became known throughout the city in the coming days, received mixed reactions from the citizens. While some people agreed with the purge that took place, others argued that not all of the people there were spies or that at least the women and children should've been captured instead of killed. There were also other similar sentiments spreading against such a massive loss of life.
Luke had also heard of the incident but didn't have a strong reaction. He didn't want to concern himself with politics, at least not currently, so he just stayed out of it.
Over the upcoming weeks, Ellios wringed Luke through various training regiments, tempering both his mind and body. Endurance, strength, balance, the sense of hearing and smell… They were all rapidly improved in a short time thanks to Ellios' brutal yet very effective methods.
When they weren't training, the two of them went monster hunting, usually venturing into the Forest of N'Gool, where Luke killed Mother Gleems for their wind elementals.
Anastasia still remained in the dark when it came to Luke's abilities, so these hunts usually took place in secret, during the dead of night. That also worked out well, since Mother Gleems usually came out during that time.
Luke told Ellios about possessing a fire elemental as well, about which the latter was overjoyed.
In the end, Leon and Lala couldn't find any conclusive proof about Joseph's misdeeds. Each time a lead would show itself, it either disappeared just as fast or led into a dead end.
Because of that, Leon couldn't provide any meaningful help to Luke and Lala's future efforts to put Joseph down. Although he sincerely prayed for their success.
Ellios and Anastasia also heard all about Joseph but didn't care much.
He said something along the lines of, "Huh? Don't know that guy. Here's a free lesson though: Clean up after your own mess!"
And just as Luke and Lala put the finishing touches on their plan, a couple of sneaky rats were forced out of hiding by Luke. He had his improved sense of hearing and field of vision to thank for that.
Apparently, they were Joseph's subordinates. As they couldn't get much more than that out of them, they were left to rot in the embassy's specially improvised prison cell, courtesy of Marvin, the receptionist.
Another week passed after that. The time finally came.
"You ready, Lala?" Luke asked, a smirk clearly visible on his face even though it was covered with the hood of his black robe.
"Of course!" Lala nodded enthusiastically.
With everyone wishing them luck on their mission, the two of them left Naiccos.
Their destination?
The BHA (Bounty Hunter's Association) building in Millef.