Several hours passed and Chris inevitably ran out of stuff to read, craning his neck to try and see what Leon was reading without him noticing.
A sly smile on his friend's face indicated he wasn't doing too well, but Chris would drag himself naked through an A ranked Gate before he admitted defeat on this.
It had transcended mere principle and became a fundamental war he was fighting against his friend and time itself!
How could he just give up?!
Even though he was bored, he gave up on sneaking a peak and made a deliberate show of oohing and ahhing over the movies he could watch, or games he could play through his System screen, wondering how anyone could pass up such easy entertainment in favor of simple paper.
He even waved the stack of papers at his friend and said, "Look at how much effort this is gonna take to read through, who would deliberately choose to oh who are you?"
The papers had been snatched out of his hand by a man who walked up behind them as they waited.
As soon as the dossier left his hand, he immediately felt embarrassed.
What the hell was that?
Why had he been so aggressively against paper, of all things?
As quickly as the compulsion had come, it had left as soon as it was removed from his person.
"Pretty clever stuff. Anti-memetic properties to dissuade unauthorized reading without actually wanting to get rid of it. Haven't seen work this good in a while."
The man, who Leon called Nexus, snapped his fingers and a slight wisp of magic floated off the page and dissipated into the air.
"Contract magic this complex is pretty out of place here, but I get the general idea," he said as he mumbled.
Leon asked what he meant and Nexus continued, "The seal you mentioned is done in two parts. Dispelling the first seal primes the air and-" He made an obscure gesture with his hands and mana gathered in the air before he passive aggressively tossed the power at Leon.
"That is the second half. Not sure where he got hold of one of my sealing spells, but this Marcus clearly knows his stuff. You headin out on an adventure Leon?"
Nexus was essentially ignoring Chris, but that made sense as he was currently inoperable.
There were two Leons.
Nexus lacked the black patch around his left eye and similarly dark black hair, but beyond that the two were almost identical.
The question, once again, kicked him in the teeth.
What had he gotten himself into?
Clones or something more powerful seemed likely, but the two were so different in personality and temperament that it felt off the mark.
Obviously Leon knew his doppelganger, but Chris couldn't even begin to guess how they might be related?
Close family?
Long lost brothers?
"Should I be worried about him," Nexus asked with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
"Nah, he'll be ok. I'll ask him what's wrong when he settles down."
That shook Chris and he shouted, "You seriously can't think of ANY reason I might react like this?"
Leon and Nexus looked at each other and shrugged, responding "No, not really," at the same time.
"Don't do that!"
Nexus laughed and said, "All right, all right, enough games. You don't have to worry about me, this will probably be the only time you see me. If it makes it easier for you, you can think of me as a distant cousin who happens to be teaching some magic as a favor."
"You sure about this, Leon," Nexus continued with what felt like an uncharacteristic seriousness, "This thing doesn't seem easy to break. If something goes wrong, not even I'll be able to undo it fast enough to fix a problem, and I wasn't kidding last time we talked. I'm happy to teach you, but I'm not hanging around to protect you. Live or die, this is what your life'll be for a while."
Leon nodded without even a second of hesitation and said, "I need the challenge, and what good is a challenge without any stakes."
Nexus shrugged, his serious expression gone near instantly as he lifted his hand and thousands of glowing white lines lifted off the page.
The radiant lines flowed like water as they moved through the air, and several minutes passed before they imprinted themselves within Leon's non-black skin. They flowed and fought hard as though they were alive to avoid those black patches, but settled quickly and quietly within him otherwise.
Leon seemed to sink into himself for a moment before acclimating to his new, weaker, strength and stretched as he said, "Ah yeah, I can see how this might make Gate walking difficult."
The mission took them down south, to a town just outside of what was once Lake Pontchartrain that had been composed of multiple cities prior to the System integration. After the monsters and environment had shifted to become significantly more dangerous, they had slowly built toward each other until there was a sprawling megacity near the now colossal lake.
Unlike most missions run by the Bureau, which were run by multiple teams working in tandem, this one called for a single small group of ten people to investigate and hopefully solve the increasingly concerning amount of people going missing. Seeing as this had begun AFTER the Tutorial Tower exile, the matter was deeply concerning since multiple Gates and monster waves had allowed the Walkers of Heaven's Shore, the town, to have a higher than usual level of around forty five.
Mercenaries filled out the eight other slots on the team, and as the only Uplifter present, Chris was the tentative leader despite the likelihood of that mattering being next to zero.
Mercs listened to nobody but themselves and the leaders they felt most comfortable with, particularly since growing in power without the assistance of a Guild was a matter of trusting your team with your life.
Humidity in the area was so intense that Chris could feel his clothes damp against his skin within seconds of leaving the teleportation array, and with his now weaker constitution it was clear that Leon was feeling that pressure as well.
Heaven's Shore was bustling even though they arrived near midnight, with Walkers doing everything from preparing to set out for battle to late night leisure, with brothels and bars more active than even some locations in New York.
A storm brewed overhead as the pair made their way to the pre-chosen meet up point, a 'motel' located less than an hour's walk from the array. The building was an opulent affair that felt far out of place for a clandestine meeting between hidden agents, but perhaps that was the point.
A glance down the street at a different building that was practically glowing with mana and wealth quickly shot down the idea that theirs might be a Bureau run facility as it rapidly became obvious that Heaven's Shore was just gaudy and overbuilt.
The area around the teleporter hadn't initially seemed all that wealthy, but apparently that was a trick or something, because beyond the first few neighborhoods, the entire city followed the example created by the motels, hotels, inns, bars, and vast array of businesses out to make a few million dollars off of exceedingly wealthy Walkers traveling through.
It didn't make sense.
Chris was happy to see people thriving…but every report he'd read to this point painted Heaven's Shore as a calamity-stricken hellscape.
The meeting with the mercenaries didn't make things any better as it became abundantly clear that these madmen were locals and couldn't be more thrilled about the disappearances.
Less competition, some excitement 'finally', and everything in between were thrown out as reasons they'd joined up on the mission, and after a few hours Chris was happy to be lying face down on the floor in his room.
He'd never been more exhausted than he was trying to navigate that last meeting and was happy to know that he'd likely never speak to them again. All of them had indicated they'd be pushing their investigations among their existing contacts 'locally' at the various establishments, but Chris had a solid inkling they'd just be hanging out in strip clubs.
Why were there strippers in town after the exile?
Despite the apocalyptic quantities of money being thrown around, little signs were visible to show what Heaven's Shore had survived since the System integration. Guild presence, alongside anything even closely resembling outside influence, was practically zero in the wake of the megacity being forced to fend for themselves for who knows how long. Local gangs had sprouted up in their place, the groups run by uncommonly powerful Walkers who had bled for the populace and were now leisurely taking their time to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Even the weakest person on the street was level twenty five, having fought brutal fights for survival throughout their lives.
In the face of wildlife that had expanded and mutated even beyond what much of the old United States had faced thus far, monsters that defied nightmares, and Gates that were exceptionally powerful, even the town beggars had strength that might eclipse some entire regions up north.
Here, in the central part of town, the effects of this were rarely felt in any meaningful way but on the edges of the city, guards fought an unending battle against things that would carve through New York Walkers with little to no resistance on a good day.
All of this built up to a single question that had begun scratching at the edges of his mind.
"Why are we here," he mumbled into the carpet.
Leon, laying on his bed flicking through his System menus, said, "To figure out why those Walkers are going missing."
"Thousands of Walkers die here every week, so why is this so different," Chris asked, mildly annoyed to have his budding existential angst interrupted.
"The real question is how do they know the difference."
Chris pushed himself up to a sitting position, "What?"
Flicking away his menus, Leon asked again, "How do they know the difference between missing and dead?"
"Well obviously they don't find a body," Chris answered after thinking for a few minutes.
"They don't find bodies when the Walker dies in a Gate, and they're not really monitoring who goes into them down here."
Mulling over the idea, Chris started to answer and stopped, cutting himself short as he asked, mostly to himself, "When are you considered missing, but not dead?"
Leon sat up as well as he said, "When you know they should be coming back!"
"Did you figure something out," Chris asked excitedly.
Leon shook his head and said, "No, just…we figured something out. Not sure what, but something, right?"
It wasn't much, but Chris did agree even if he also had no idea what it meant.
There was a clear distinction between missing and dead, and whoever handed this mission down had reason to believe these people were missing. The mission details didn't have any information about what made that difference so important, but if they had those reasons, the two of them could figure them out.
He had to believe that or else this mission went from having one step toward completion back down to having no idea what the hell they were doing in the diamond encrusted thong of the United States.