Chapter 38
"Let's begin… did you spent the last four years alone on an island?" The captain asked.
"Yes," Leon answered.
The captain looked at Ryoko, and she nodded with her eyes wide open for some reason. It looked like she had seen something, but Leon couldn't tell what it was. Leon just hoped that she hadn't seen him doing something embarra.s.sing like flapping his arms to fly.
"… Did you survive an airplane crash after being attacked by a dragon?" The captain asked.
"Yes." Leon frowned.
It looked like the captain really just wanted to confirm what Leon had said. Leon started to feel bad because he was hoping to be asked about his abilities, but it was too soon to drop his guard.
"… Did you really kill hundreds of megalodons?" The captain asked.
"… Yes." Leon answered.
It took a while for Ryoko to nod, and thanks to that, Leon understood her skill. It looked like she could see what a person was thinking to some extent. Since by being asked about such things, Leon would immediately recall those same things. Regardless, Ryoko looked terrified after she nodded several seconds later. She probably had seen Leon's entire trip in that short amount of time.
"I see… you can go now, Ryoko." The captain said.
Ryoko got up and left the room while making sure that she followed the path more distant from Leon, he felt quite hurt by that. Receive a no from a pretty woman was fine, but receiving a no before even trying was painful. Although Leon wanted to compensate for the lost time, he wouldn't fool around until he returns home.
"It seems you don't really know anything…" The captain let out a long sigh. "Sorry for… the situation we caused. Here, let me take those handcuffs."
Leon did the right thing by being patient, even though he said some harsh words, it was clear that he didn't have bad intentions. In the end,
"That is fine. Rather than apologies, I want to know what happened to the world while I was trapped on that island." Leon said.
"Right… where to start. Well, before anything, you can call me Ren." The captain ma.s.saged his forehead while he recalled the events of the previous four years.
Although Ren's focused on things that happened to j.a.pan, he was very knowledgeable about what happened around the world. Just like Leon thought, suddenly, during the dawn of a particular day, monsters started to appear everywhere for unknown reasons. Small monsters killed humans in droves, while the big ones like dragons destroyed ma.s.sive buildings and structures. As if their actions were planned, they destroyed telecommunication centers and everything related to the executive power of most countries. In just a few hours, presidents, kings, and many other figures that had a lot of political power died, and those who survived lost their means of communication.
"Just like you said, dragons attacked airplanes in midair, and they also attacked airports," Ren explained. "You managed to react in time to survive such things, but you are the first person that I heard that survived that. Anyway, Dragons dominated the skies and Megalodons the seas. Swarms of those monsters destroyed the fleet of the most powerful countries, and since the chain of command had been lost very soon, no one managed to react."
"… And that makes me wonder how you people can use a port." Leon said.
"As you can imagine, now and then, a megalodon attacks our port and destroys our s.h.i.+ps," Ren explained. "But although we rarely kill them, we have the power to make them run and the skills to build s.h.i.+ps quite fast due to the fact that monsters now can drops tomes."
Leon nodded; even though those skills had some severe limitations, it was much more efficient than learning alone. If one could learn how to control trees, building s.h.i.+ps wouldn't be much of a problem.
Anyway, just on the first-day, humans lost the power to communicate over long distances and the power to move fast. Governments didn't manage to do anything, but some individuals managed to obtain the power to use nukes… when Leon heard that, he clearly imagined that many people who fought to survive died by the hands of those who used nukes.
"… How many of those were used in my country?" Leon asked while biting his nails. "Where were those used?"
"Since that kind of information could tell how weakened a country was, I can't say for sure…" Ren hesitated. "This is confidential information, but a few spies confirmed that at least twenty had been used… the locations… I can't give that information."
When Leon heard that, he felt his heart grow cold. Twenty nukes had been used, which meant they had destroyed twenty cities. The number of deaths caused by that could easily surpa.s.s dozen of millions of casualties.
Leon wanted to confirm if his hometown was fine, but he couldn't force Ren to tell more. He could only pray that Phoenix was right. After that, Ren explained that earthquakes and tsunamis became commonplace, and sometimes those earthquakes would form dungeons connecting earth to various worlds filled with monsters and chaos.
When Leon heard that, he recalled the earthquake and the tsunamis of three years ago. Most likely, that earthquake opened a path to another world, but since the dungeon was probably underwater, no human would ever explore. Not at least until the Megalodons, become extinct again.