"Risk it all on a gamble, or run away to face death later..."
Lloyd asked himself one last time before his pale lips curled into a faint smile.
"A noob player would probably choose to retreat... But sorry, I never leave an SSR unit behind."
The former world champion made his final decision. He took a deep breath, gathered what little strength he had left, and strode through the fleeing crowd, heading straight toward Frank.
"My Lord! What madness are you doing?! That's the front line!" a middle-aged guard shouted in panic as he ran past.
Ignoring the warnings, Lloyd walked through the dust and smoke, stopping right beside the giant youth who towered over him by nearly twenty centimeters.
"Frank," Lloyd called out, his voice calm yet firm.
The hulking youth flinched slightly. He whipped his head around to look at the newcomer, his eyes widening in absolute shock when he saw who was standing beside him.
"M-My Lord? Lord Lloyd?" Frank instinctively dropped to one knee, a commoner's deeply ingrained reflex to respect nobility. "What are you doing here?! It's too dangerous. Please, run away quickly!"
"Stand up," Lloyd commanded curtly.
"But..."
"I said, stand up." Lloyd's voice wasn't a shout, but it carried an undeniable authority that forced Frank to slowly push himself back to his feet.
Lloyd looked up at the youth, clearly noting the large, cross-shaped scar on his left arm. The wound was deep and gruesome, a testament to a near-death struggle.
"The villagers have all fled. Why are you still standing here alone?" Lloyd asked, his gaze drifting to the rusted pitchfork in the youth's hands. "With a weapon like that, how many mutated wolves do you think you can pierce through?"
Frank lowered his head, dodging the young lord's sharp gaze. His hands gripped the wooden shaft tighter.
"I know very well, My Lord, that I probably won't be able to kill even one..." Frank replied softly but without wavering. "But if I run... if no one stands here to block them, they will charge straight to the Forest God Shrine. That's where... my little sister is hiding."
Lloyd listened silently, his mind racing.
Awakening conditions: The unit suffers from a severe lack of self-confidence due to societal suppression. Must receive 'Trust' in a leadership capacity...
Lloyd was beginning to grasp it. Winning someone's heart in under a minute wasn't about spouting sweet words or promising wealth; it was about 'seeing' what the rest of the world pretended to ignore.
"You want to protect her... even if it costs your life," Lloyd said slowly. "But I am curious about one thing. Just now, I heard the villagers calling you an idiot who only has brute strength. Why do they hate you so much?"
Frank froze. His muscular frame trembled slightly as if a raw nerve had been struck, and the scar on his left arm seemed to twitch.
"Because I... I am abnormal, My Lord," Frank answered bitterly. "In a world where everyone is measured by mana, I have only ten units—even lower than an ordinary peasant. Yet, I possess physical strength several times greater than a normal person."
The youth looked up toward the tree line, his eyes reflecting the pain of his past.
"Years ago, when I was ten... a stray pack of wolves raided our fields. My sister was just learning to walk. I had no weapons, no magic. All I could do was rush in and use my bare hands... choking it to death to protect her."
Lloyd raised an eyebrow slightly. "A ten-year-old child, strangling a wolf with his bare hands?"
"Yes, My Lord..." Frank smiled self-deprecatingly. "Since that day, instead of thanking me for driving the wolf away, the villagers feared me. They said someone with rock-bottom mana shouldn't possess such monstrous strength. They claimed I was possessed by a demon, a jinx, a disgusting freak..."
The sound of the approaching wolf pack grew louder, accompanied by the loud snapping of branches. Frank instinctively shifted his body to shield Lloyd.
"Please run away, My Lord. I'm just a stupid freak nobody wants. I'll block them here. You must go back..."
"Abnormal?"
Lloyd's soft laughter interrupted him, causing Frank's words to catch in his throat. The youth turned back to look at his lord in confusion.
Lloyd showed no hint of fear or disgust. On the contrary, his dark blue eyes shone with a brilliant light, as if he had just discovered the most precious treasure in the world.
"Listen to me, Frank," Lloyd said, stepping up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the giant youth, his slender shoulders squaring with elegant poise. "Those villagers who call you abnormal or stupid... they're just low-tier players who can't evaluate the potential of a top-tier unit."
"L-Low-tier players? Units?" Frank repeated the strange, unfamiliar words with a bewildered expression.
"I mean they are blind," Lloyd clarified, his tone so firm and sincere that Frank felt a sudden warmth welling up in his eyes. "The strength you possess, the courage to fight a wolf with your bare hands to protect your family... those things are not a curse, and they are not an abnormality."
Lloyd raised his hand and struck Frank's muscular shoulder with a heavy pat.
"It is a 'Talent' that this world simply isn't ready to understand yet."
Those words were like a sledgehammer smashing the wall of ice that had encased Frank's heart for over a decade. No one... not a single soul in his life had ever looked at him with admiration. No one had ever told him that what he possessed was a talent. Everyone had only pushed him away and trampled on him.
Yet the young noble before him... the high-born Lord, stood right beside him at the precipice of death and gave him the exact words he had yearned for his entire life.
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"My Lord..." Frank's voice cracked, manly tears welling up in his eyes.
Lloyd tightened his grip on Frank's shoulder, his eyes switching entirely into the mode of a supreme commander.
"I don't care if you only have ten units of mana, and I don't care if anyone calls you a freak," Lloyd declared loudly, his voice competing with the roars of the monsters emerging from the tree line. "But right now, at this very moment... I need you, Frank Howarth!"
"You need... someone like me?"
Frank repeated faintly. The eyes that were once dark and filled with suspicion toward the world were now trembling violently. He locked eyes with Lloyd, searching for any hint of insincerity or lies that nobles typically used to exploit commoners.
But what he found in those dark blue eyes was nothing but pure determination and untainted trust, completely free of doubt.
"Yes, I need you," Lloyd answered firmly, stepping fearlessly closer to the giant youth. "I command you, as the Lord of Verdant Territory, Frank Howarth... stand as my shield! Protect this land, protect your sister, and prove to those fools who fled that the man they called a stupid freak... is the hero who will save all their lives!"
Following that powerful declaration, Frank's heart pounded so fiercely it felt ready to burst from his chest. The blood in his veins, once cold with resentment and self-pity, now surged and boiled like an erupting volcano.
The suffocating weight of humiliation he had endured for nineteen years was completely washed away, leaving only a fierce loyalty, ready to lay down his life for the man who was the first to recognize his worth.
"I... I, Frank Howarth..." The youth gripped the rusted pitchfork so tightly that the veins on his hands bulged. "swear upon my life! I will never allow any monster to cross this fence to harm you or my sister, My Lord!"
Ding!
The system notification rang inside Lloyd's head, accompanied by an invisible wave of raw energy radiating from the youth's body. The golden holographic window that previously displayed the 'Locked' status now flared with brilliant light, forcing Lloyd to narrow his eyes. New text rapidly overwrote the air.
[Condition Met: Unit has received 'Trust' in a leadership capacity under extreme pressure.]
[Status: Awakened]
[Hidden Talent: Holy Vanguard (SSR-Rank) — Fully Activated!]
Whish!
The air around Frank warped momentarily. Ambient mana particles scattered in the environment were suddenly sucked into the youth's body like a raging vortex. Even though his internal mana capacity was only 10 units, it was compressed and refined through his legendary talent, altering his muscular structure and tendons to become exponentially stronger than before.
Lloyd's eyes widened as he watched the numbers on the system window update in real-time.
[Parameters Updated]
Strength: 85 -> 150 (Breaks human limits)
Endurance: 78 -> 120
Passive Skill:[Steel Bastion] Active! (Increases defense of self and allied units within a 10-meter radius by 300%)
"Holy hell..." Lloyd muttered, the corners of his mouth twitching into an uncontrollable smirk. "A stat spike like this, plus a passive AoE defense buff that requires zero mana to cast... If this were a ranked match, the game devs would be flamed into pushing out a nerf patch for this guy within a day. This is absolutely broken!"
But the former world champion had no time to admire the numbers. At that exact microsecond, the first mutated wolf burst through the brush!
It was twice the size of a normal wolf, its jet-black fur standing on end, and its blood-red eyes locked onto Lloyd, who looked the weakest. Opening its jaws to reveal razor-sharp fangs dripping with viscous saliva, it leaped toward the young lord's throat at an unbelievable speed.
"My Lord, watch out!"
Frank barked. His massive frame moved faster than Lloyd's eyes could track!
His newly unleashed talent had fully awakened his combat instincts. The youth didn't even swing to impale; instead, he used the side of the pitchfork's shaft to deliver a devastating counter-strike directly into the wolf's flank mid-air.
CRACK!!
The impact sounded like a heavy log smashing into a stone slab. The massive body of the mutated wolf was sent flying back into the forest like a ragdoll. It slammed into a large tree with enough force to crack the trunk before collapsing to the ground, twitching a few times before going completely still.
A simple strike with a rusted weapon... yet it generated such terrifying destructive power!
Frank stood panting lightly. He looked down at his own hands in absolute shock, unable to comprehend where the immense strength surging through his body had come from. "Is this... truly my power?"
"The real deal, without a doubt," Lloyd said, stepping up to pat his first subordinate's shoulder. The headache from his low mana state began to subside now that he had closed the [Inspect] skill. "But this is just the beginning, Frank. Their scout is dead, but the main horde is coming. We can't afford to fight them out in the open like this. The fence is broken across too wide a stretch."
Lloyd turned back toward the village, his brain transitioning fully into [Micro-Management] mode.
"We will fall back to the narrow alley between the storage depot and the blacksmith workshop. The terrain there will choke them, forcing them to come at us one by one. Your defense buff will be most effective there... Move, fast!"
"Understood, My Lord!" Frank replied robustly, a confidence he had never possessed now shining clearly on his face.
However, just as the two were about to turn and sprint back to set up their defensive line...
Rustle! Snap!
The sound of stumbling footsteps echoed from the bushes not far away. A middle-aged man burst out of the tree line in a wretched state. His leather vest was shredded and soaked in fresh blood, his left leg bearing long, deep gashes from a beast's talons.
"That's Uncle Ben! The village hunter!" Frank exclaimed, immediately rushing forward to catch the man before he collapsed face-first. "Uncle Ben! What happened in the forest? Did you get surrounded while hunting?" Frank asked anxiously.
Lloyd quickly caught up. He observed that the hunter's wounds weren't deep enough to be fatal. What made Uncle Ben deathly pale and trembling like a fledgling wasn't physical pain... it was sheer, absolute terror.
"Run... Frank... My Lord... Y-You must flee right now..." Uncle Ben stammered, his voice hoarse and shivering. His blood-stained hand desperately clutched Frank's collar.
"Calm down, Uncle Ben. It's just a dozen or so mutated wolves. Frank can handle them. We are heading back to establish a defense line..." Lloyd tried to soothe him to bring him back to his senses.
"No! This isn't just a normal pack gathering for food!"
Uncle Ben's eyes widened so far the blood vessels were visible. He shook his head frantically in panic. "I was watching them from a tree! They aren't even from the same pack! Mutated wolves from the north, iron-armored bears from the west... they're running together! They are running as an entire army!"
Lloyd frowned deeply. "Different monster species running together? Impossible. By nature, they are highly territorial and would tear each other apart."
"That's exactly why I'm telling you to run!" Uncle Ben coughed up a mist of blood. "They didn't intend to raid our village in the first place... they are being 'driven'!"
"Driven?" Frank repeated, utterly confused.
"Yes!" The old hunter struggled to piece his words together through deep-seated dread. "I saw... I saw strange markings carved into the foreheads of some of them. Jet-black magic tattoos! Someone... or something deep within the forest is using magic to force these monster hordes to breach our territory!"
Lloyd froze, his breath catching in his throat.
This new piece of intelligence completely shattered the strategy board in his mind.
If it were just a wandering pack of starving monsters, using a defensive unit like Frank to choke a narrow path would be enough to stall them until they gave up. But if there was a 'mastermind' behind them... it meant they wouldn't stop attacking until their objective was met, or until one side was completely annihilated.
"Who the hell would use magic to control monsters just to attack a worthless territory like Verdant?" Lloyd gritted his teeth, his mind racing.
Someone was using his village as a testing ground... or could this be a political backstabbing plot by nobles from the capital?
Consecutive howls echoed back and forth from every direction deep inside the forest. This time, it wasn't just ten or twenty beasts. The deafening cacophony indicated a number large enough to completely trample Verdant Village into flat earth!
Countless dark silhouettes began to manifest along the edge of the woods. Blood-red eyes lit up one pair after another... pair after pair... until they practically swallowed the darkness.
The survival game Lloyd thought he was controlling... had just had its rules completely ripped away.
(End of Chapter 3)