The pig-leader’s snout flared as his tiny, rage-filled eyes locked onto Kaelen.
He stomped across the dirt, the rusted plates of his iron armor clanking aggressively, and thrust the tip of his heavy broadsword right against Kae’s throat.
“You there!
The scrawny kid talking to a cat!” the pig-man roared, a spray of saliva flying from his mouth.
Kae slowly stopped chewing, blinked, and looked around the empty road with mock confusion.
“Uh…
who?
Me?”
“Yes, you!” the pig-man shouted, his face turning a vibrant shade of angry pink.
“The scrawny one with the dumb look on his face!
Why aren’t your hands up?!
Do you wanna have serious trouble with me?
I can easily slice that throat and end your little life right now!
Don’t you realize how dire this situation is?!
Your lives are at stake and you have time to sit here and eat bread?!
Really, how stupid can you get?!”
Kae didn’t flinch.
He slowly raised a single hand, palm flat, gesturing for the massive demi-human to pause.
“Wait.
Hold on a minute.”
With absolute, agonizing slowness, Kae chewed his final piece of bread, swallowed it, and thoroughly licked each of his fingers.
He then adjusted his stance, leaning back against the boulder as he looked up at the bandit leader with a cold, demeaning glare.
“I couldn’t quite get what you were saying,” Kae said, his voice dropping into a smooth, high-fidelity corporate tone.
“Yes, I could hear the acoustic sound coming out of your face, but I couldn’t actually make out the words.
There’s a highly unoptimized way you speak through your nose—like a congested exhaust pipe—and it completely ruins your vocal clarity.
Can you tell your dog, or fox, or wolf friend over there to translate for you?”
The pig-leader froze, a loud, ragged snort escaping his snout as his brain tried to process the absolute disrespect.
*Behind him, the wolf demi-human bandit snapped out of his stance, waving his daggers frantically.
“Hey!
You there, daydreaming!
Can’t you see we got you completely surrounded?!
You’re supposed to be fearing for your miserable life!”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down, piggy,” Kae sighed, casually reaching up with two fingers to gently push the sharp blade away from his neck.
“No need to get all aggressive and make things ugly…
well, uglier than your face, at least.”
“Arghhh!
He’s insulting me!” the pig leader stormed, his eyes bulging as he lost his absolute mind, shoving the sword right back into Kae’s space.
“Who are you calling ugly, you little brat?!”
Lisa, standing a few paces back with her hands high in the air, began sweating under her visor.
“Psst!
Hey, Kae!” she whispered frantically under her breath.
“Would you please stop antagonizing the heavily armed folks?!”
Karen, watching the pig-leader shake with pure rage, completely freaked out, thinking out loud, “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?
This is the end.”
“No need to get all angry, boys,” Kae said, his voice completely unbothered as he stood up from the boulder, adjusting the collar of his new phantom-black cloak.
He looked the pig-leader up and down with supreme executive detachment.
“You aren’t just regular ugly, Porky.
You look like a digital asset the Creator gave up on mid-creation when they completely lost interest in the project and just hit ‘export’ anyway.”
Pixel instantly collapsed onto her side on the flat boulder.
Her front paws clutched her stomach as she began rolling around in absolute, hysterical convulsions, her mouth wide open in a silent, breathless laugh that broadcasted nothing but pure, unadulterated static and wheezing giggles directly into Kaelen’s brain.
She kicked her back legs in the air, completely unable to contain herself as her white-tipped tail whipped the dirt in total synchronization with her amusement.
The other three bandits went completely rigid.
One of the spearmen clamped his hand tightly over his mouth, his shoulders shaking violently as he tried to suppress a massive laugh.
The wolf demi-human bit his lower lip so hard it started to bleed, desperately trying to maintain his tough mercenary persona.
Even Lisa and Karen, despite having their hands raised in total surrender, let out a tiny, involuntary chuckle.
“I’ve had enough!” the pig-leader shrieked, his voice hitting a comical, high-pitched octave as he whipped his head back toward his snicker-happy crew.
“Stop giggling, you idiots!
I’m the one running this syndicate!” He aggressively swung his blade back toward the front row.
“And you!
Who are you calling Ugly, you scrawny brat?!”
“The ugly pig standing on the mountain in France…
of course you,” Kae snapped back, his eyes narrowing into a smug, lethal glare.
“Who else do you think, pink-face?”
“That’s it!
You’re done, kid!” the leader screamed, the veins in his neck practically bursting.
“Men, surround them now!
Cut them all to pieces!”
Instantly, the layout of the battlefield shifted into a lethal enclosure.
The two spearmen and the wolf bandit lunged forward, locking their weapons against Lisa and Karen, while the massive pig leader leaped high into the air, bringing his heavy broadsword down in a brutal, vertical arc directly toward Kaelen’s skull.
“Any last words, brat?!” the pig roared mid-air.
Karen’s eyes widened to the absolute limit.
“We’re gonna die!”
But Kae just stood there, completely unbothered, looking like a high-tier model at a corporate beauty pageant who knew exactly how much he outclassed the competition in every single metric.
As the shadow of the blade fell across his face, a sharp, confident smirk broke across his lips.
He didn’t move. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
He just looked up at the descending bandit and calmly muttered a single word:
“Pixel.”
Tick.
The distinct, crystalline sound of a ticking clock echoed sharply through the quiet valley.
Instantly, the entire world slammed into a dead halt.
The pig-leader was frozen solid mid-air, suspended three feet off the ground with his sword caught an inch away from Kae’s face, his angry snout locked in a permanently ridiculous grimace.
The other bandits were frozen mid-lunge, their spears and daggers completely static against Lisa and Karen’s armor.
Karen, her eyes still squeezed shut bracing for death, slowly opened one eye.
She blinked at the frozen swords and spears hovering right against her neck, completely confused.
“Uh…
what just happened?”
Lisa let out a massive, long breath of pure, unadulterated relief, her shoulders slumping as she lowered her hands and smiled.
“It’s Pixel, wasn’t it?
Thank goodness we have that chaotic cat on our side.
Thank you, Pixel.”
“Oh!
It’s the time-freeze thing again!” Karen gasped, her panic instantly evaporating as she clapped her hands together.
“I completely forgot Pixel could do that!” She turned her eyes toward Kae, pouting slightly.
“Then why didn’t you do it earlier instead of scaring us half to death like that?!”
Kae cracked his knuckles, a devious grin spreading across his face as he walked around the floating, airborne pig-man.
” You know what they say Karen, it’s better late than never.
I just wanted to have some high-fidelity fun with them first.
You gotta manage the entertainment metrics of the journey.”
Karen sighed in deep relief, walking over to the boulder to gently pat the black cat.
“Thank you, little furball.
I am so incredibly glad we have you on our—”
Before she could even finish the sentence, her face scrunched up.
“Achoo!
Achoo!
Sniff…
Ah-achoo!”
Karen immediately stumbled backward, waving her hands in front of her face as her eyes began to water—a sharp, violent reminder from her system that she was strictly required to maintain a mandatory two-meter safety perimeter from Pixel’s fur at all times.
“Anyway,” Kae said, turning his back on the frozen thieves as his smile turned sharp and menacing.
He clenched both of his fists, his Void aura faintly rippling around his knuckles.
“These guys tried to rob us, asset-strip us, threatened to unalive us, and worse, they tried to delete us from existence.
It’s only fair corporate compliance to give them back exactly what they wished upon us.
They are in for a real, high-velocity beating.
What do you say, Pixel?
Wanna put those claws to work?”
Pixel hopped off the boulder, her front claws extending with a terrifying, metallic click as she gave a sharp, vicious nod.
The two of them lunged directly into the frozen crowd.
What followed was a few highly painful, chaotic moments of loud, crunching hits, flying teeth, furious scratch sounds, and a massive cloud of thick dust billowing up into the quiet morning air.
When the dust cloud finally settled and the temporal metrics returned to normal pacing, the layout of the road was completely altered.
The four elite “Eagles of the Night” were stripped of their weapons and armor, tied tightly around the trunk of a thick, sturdy tree with their own iron chains.
Their faces looked like absolutely swollen, rotting potatoes.
The beating had been thorough, completely bypassing their defensive tier-stats.
The wolf demi-human had two black eyes, the spearmen were sports-marked with crisscrossed scratch marks, and the massive pig-leader was a complete masterpiece of structural damage.
His nose was bleeding heavily, his pink lips were severely battered, and several of his front teeth were sitting on the dirt road below him.
Karen and Lisa stared at the tied-up bandits, both of them instantly biting their lips as they cracked into a little muffled chuckle, desperately trying hard not to openly laugh at the pathetic sight.
“Perfect,” Kae said, dusting off the sleeves of his phantom-black cloak with an air of immense executive satisfaction as he admired his handy work.
“You guys look significantly uglier than before.
In fact, your aesthetic parameters are so thoroughly ruined right now that we could easily make an absolute fortune if we put you on display in a zoo.
What an absolute masterwork we created, Pixel.”
Pixel strutted beside his boots, her tail held high as she gave a self-satisfied nod.
The pig-leader spit a mouthful of blood into the dirt, breathing heavily in severe pain, but a small, desperate smug broke through his swollen face.
“You…
” He coughed in pain…
“you think you’ve won, kid?
You brought this absolute disaster upon yourselves.”
Kae turned his back, pausing as he threw a casual look over his shoulder.
“Uhh?
What are you pigs mumbling over there?
The transaction is complete.”
“You beat us up, you strip us of our gear, and you take our luxury carriage and loot…” the pig wheezed, a dark, raspy chuckle rattling in his throat as the other three bandits nodded fearfully to back him up.
“You think our Boss is just gonna let that slide?!
Hahaha, nooo!
She is going to come for you!
She will keep sending more and more elite mercenary squads after you across this entire continent, and you’ll never—”
CRUNCH.
Before the pig-leader could even finish his threat, the atmosphere in the valley turned completely freezing.
Lisa, who had been completely calm and quiet, stepped forward.
Her heavy steel boot descended violently, planting itself directly onto the pig-leader’s face, instantly crushing his snout against the bark of the tree.
“Well, I’ve got a highly specific corporate message for your boss,” Lisa said, her voice dropping into a boiling hot, icy resonance that completely lacked any of her usual knightly warmth.
She squeezed her foot down, slowly rotating her metal boot on his swollen face with a terrifying, mechanical friction. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
The pig-leader let out a muffled, agonizing cry of pure pain, his eyes watering as the iron plates threatened to crack his jaw.
Lisa leaned down, her eyes flashing with a dark, suffocating authority behind her visor as she glared at the remaining tied-up thieves.
“Piss off, you freaks.”
She abruptly snapped her boot back, her armor clanking as she stood straight.
The angry knight looked at the trembling spearmen and the wolf bandit, her voice dropping into a deceptively soft whisper.
“Do you have something else to say?”
The three remaining bandits were completely paralyzed with absolute fear.
Seeing her raw, terrifying aura, they couldn’t even manage to formulate a single syllable.
They stayed entirely quiet, quivering in deep terror against the tree trunk as they violently shook their heads from side to side as a sign of no.
“Good,” Lisa said, her face instantly breaking into a bright, smiling, angelic expression as if she were a completely harmless, gentle maiden.
She clapped her hands together cheerfully.
“Now, I don’t ever want to see your unoptimized faces around this sector again.
Do you hear me?”
The bandits nodded frantically in pure fear.
Lisa was acting like a completely different person now—she looked infinitely more terrifying than the house-sized Behemoth they had faced at dawn.
Even Kaelen, Karen, and Pixel stood completely rigid by the boulder, their eyes wide as they stared at her in utter, silent horror.
The knight’s internal shadow was massive.
“Right…” Kae muttered, clearing his throat nervously as he quickly turned toward the chariot to break the tension.
“Moving on to asset acquisition.
We got ourselves a ride.”
They began tossing the bandits’ stolen gold pouches, iron weapons, and extra gear onto the back of the cargo chariot, which was now officially their property.
Kae hopped onto the front wooden driver’s seat, grabbing the leather reins of the mechanical beast.
“Ask and you shall receive,” Kae smiled, a wave of profound relief washing over his exhausted frame as he looked down at his team.
“We officially have ourselves a high-fidelity ride.”
With Lisa’s terrifying aura fading back into her usual stoic knightly demeanor, the group eagerly climbed onto the back of the newly acquired armored cargo chariot.
Karen scrambled to open the large, iron-reinforced storage crates bolted to the vehicle’s floor boards.
The moment she lifted the heavy lids, her amber eyes widened to the absolute limit behind her round lenses.
“Oh my goodness!” Karen gasped, her voice bubbling with pure excitement.
“Kaelen, look!
There is an absolute mountain of premium supplies in here!
Smoked meat, fresh flatbread, multiple barrels of clear water, and look at all these currency pouches!”
Kae leaned over from the driver’s seat, his eyes scanning the layout of the loot.
“The transactional metrics look incredibly solid.
Give me an assessment, Lisa.
How does this alter our travel time?”
“It’s a complete game-changer,” Lisa said, a warm smile returning to her face as she sat comfortably against a crate, biting into a fresh piece of jerky.
“With a high-velocity mechanical transport like this and a full stock of stamina-restoring rations, we won’t just survive out here.
We will cut through the mountain pass effortlessly.
We will make it to the gates of Oakhaven within half a day.”
“Perfect,” Kae smirked, snapping the leather reins as the mechanical beast ahead let out a low snort and began pulling the luxurious chariot smoothly down the winding road.
“Setting travel speed to maximum efficiency.”
As the carriage rolled steadily away from the cursed southern border, the tension finally began to dissipate.
The gentle clacking of the wheels created a soothing rhythm.
Karen sat on a bench across from Kaelen, fidgeting nervously with the hem of her white robes.
Her face slowly began to flush into a deep, crimson red, her body language radiating intense, shy vulnerability.
She peeked up at him through her eyelashes, her posture screaming pure, unadulterated romance.
“Um…
Kaelen?” Karen called out softly, her voice barely a nervous stutter.
“Can I…
can I ask you a question?
It’s…
kinda personal…”
Kae’s heart instantly spiked to an absolute, high-velocity 180 BPM.
His posture stiffened against the wooden driver’s seat.
‘Oh no,’ his mind raced frantically, his teenage gamer instincts short-circuiting.
‘This is it.
The classic anime trope.
The sunset, the carriage ride, the shy look…
her entire body language is screaming romance!
Am I ready for a high-fidelity relationship declaration?
What is the correct corporate protocol for this?!’
Kae swallowed hard, gripping the leather reins tightly as he tried to maintain his cool, executive architect persona.
He nodded solemnly, his voice dropping into a low, resonant murmur.
“Yes…
go ahead, Karen.
Ask away.
I’m listening.”
Karen’s eyes locked onto his with sudden, wide-eyed, completely innocent excitement.
“I’ve just been wondering this whole time…
can you actually talk to all animals in this world?
We always see you bickering with Pixel.
Is it a real magical translation skill, or is it just a weird, funny act you do to cope with the stress?”
Kae’s entire romantic bubble violently burst into a million pieces.
The sheer data deflation was so massive that his arms went weak, causing him to slip off the bench and almost tumble completely out of the moving chariot onto the dirt road.