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.
Pixel instantly rolled onto her back on the wooden floorboards, her front paws clutching her stomach as she let out a piercing, hysterical string of meows that translated into absolute, mocking laughter directly inside Kae’s skull.
“HAHAHA!
Oh, holy system metrics!
You fool!
You absolute, egotistical peasant!
You actually thought she was about to confess her undying love to you!
What an absolute, monumental bummer!
I am saving this memory in my permanent data storage!”
Karen’s eyes widened in pure worry as she saw Kae collapse into the footwell.
“Oh no!
Kaelen!
Are you okay?!
Did your stamina bar bottom out again?!”
“Right…
yes, I’m perfectly okay,” Kae grumbled, a bright, flustered red painting his ears as he aggressively hauled himself back onto the driver’s bench, straightening his phantom-black cloak to salvage whatever microscopic shred of dignity he had left.
He cleared his throat loudly, refusing to look at the howling cat.
“Back to your question, Karen.
It’s actually a highly advanced, passive linguistic tracking skill.
It seems I possess the architectural profile to naturally comprehend and translate the vocal frequencies of all beasts in this realm.
In short…
yes, I can talk with them.” He offered a tight, forced smile.
“Whoa, you can really do that?” Lisa asked, her eyes lighting up in genuine amusement from the back of the cart.
“That is a seriously cool utility asset, Kae.”
“Wow!” Karen smiled brightly, clapping her hands.
“That’s amazing!
So, are you like…
a beast tamer or something?”
Kae crossed his arms, offering a dry shake of his head.
Nothing that formal.
Just basic system compatibility.”
Karen’s smile shifted into a look of sudden realization as her eyes darted between the boy and the black feline.
“Wait…
so all along, you guys could—and were—communicating with Pixel through telepathy this entire time?”
Kae offered a casual, silent nod of confirmation.
“Then why didn’t you let us know about this secret?” Karen pressed, her brow furrowing as she leaned forward.
“And why hasn’t Pixel been talking with us up until just recently?”
Lisa nodded along rigidly beside her, her arms folded tightly across her steel breastplate as her sharp gaze locked onto Kaelen, demanding an immediate diagnostic report.
Faced with the sudden double-interrogation, Kae’s confident posture faltered slightly.
He shifted his weight on the wooden planks, feeling completely cornered.
“I don’t know, okay?
Ask Pixel yourself.
I honestly thought she could only talk with me since our profiles are connected through the core system layout.”
In unison, Karen and Lisa slowly turned their heads, fixing the black cat with a heavy, deeply suspicious look.
‘What?’
Pixel’s sharp telepathic voice suddenly rang out inside all of their heads, instantly breaking the tension with its familiar, haughty friction.
The cat puffed out her chest defensively, though her white-tipped tail gave a nervous twitch.
“Don’t blame me!
I also didn’t know I could speak with the rest of you until I was so thoroughly vexed by that four-eyed healer that I ended up transmitting my voice out of pure irritation.
Imagine my surprise when I realized you actually heard me!
Up until that exact millisecond, I was as clueless as they come.”
With a dramatic huff, the feline broke eye contact, turned around twice, and curled herself tightly into a small, defensive ball on top of the travel pack.
Karen and Lisa exchanged a quick glance, their tense expressions softening as they slowly nodded in agreement.
“Oh…
that actually makes sense,” Karen murmured, tapping her chin.
“That’s a valid explanation.”
“Yeah,” Lisa agreed, loosening her stance.
“Magical constructs can be unpredictable when processing localized data under stress.”
For a brief moment, the quiet rhythm of the rolling chariot returned as the wheels clattered against the dirt road.
But then, a sudden, jarring calculation crossed Karen’s mind.
Her eyes widened behind her round glasses, her posture snapping back to full alert as she locked her gaze onto Kaelen.
“But wait…” Karen began, her voice rising in a mix of confusion and sudden realization.
“If you can talk to animals, why didn’t you just talk to that house-sized Behemoth-Elephant this morning?
You should have just told it that I didn’t mean any harm!
I only stepped on its tail by complete mistake while I was foraging!
I didn’t want to fight it!”
Kae let out a loud, highly sarcastic laugh, shaking his head.
“Well, it doesn’t quite work that way my dear, Karen.
Sometimes, certain high-aggro animals simply refuse to engage in diplomatic negotiations, and that’s that.
You can’t just talk a predatory lion into becoming a peaceful vegetarian.
Some systemic programming just can’t be rewritten.”
“Indeed,” Pixel chimed in dryly into Kae’s mind, finally stopping her rolling as she sat up and squinted her amber eyes at him.
“Just like you cannot rewrite the data of a hopeless romantic fool.
Tell me, master, were you truly expecting a cinematic kiss from the healer just now?
Is that why your face looks like a squashed berry?”
“No, I wasn’t, you obnoxious dust bunny!” Kae hissed back in a frantic, nervous whisper.
“Oh, yes you were,” Pixel dug deeper, her tail flicking with insufferable smugness.
“You completely like her, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!” Kae snapped aloud, his voice cracking comically as he aggressively whipped the reins to make the mechanical beast move faster toward the horizon.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t!
Shut up and go back to sleep!” Kae hissed in a frantic, embarrassed whisper, his ears turning a sharp crimson as he shot a panicked glance back toward the cargo bed.
“Hush it!
What if they hear you?!”
Pixel let out a slow, mocking mental purr, her amber eyes gleaming with absolute superiority.
“Worry not, lover boy, for I am executing a strict point-to-point data encryption.
I’m making sure it’s just the two of us having this conversation—they aren’t hearing a single word of your pathetic denials.”
“I told you, it’s just basic party optimization!
There is zero emotional data in this file!” Kae fired back mentally, his hands gripping the reins so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“Oh, please.
Your internal heart-rate metrics spiked by precisely twenty-four percent the moment she complimented your new cloak,” the cat countered smoothly, resting her chin on her paws with an insufferably pleased grin.
“Your data profile is completely compromised, Master.”
Up in the cargo bed, Karen was watching the back of Kaelen’s head with a thoroughly puzzled expression.
‘What on earth could those two be possibly bickering about in secret?’ Karen wondered in her thoughts, her cheeks dusting with a light pink.
‘Kaelen looks so incredibly flustered…
Wait, could it be because…
because he was sitting so close to me?
Is he really that shy around girls?’
Lisa leaned her back against the wooden sideboards, crossing her arms as her sharp gaze darted between the violently twitching cat tail and Kaelen’s stiff neck.
A amused smirk broke across the knight’s face.
“Hey, what are you guys scribbling in secret over there?” Lisa called out, her voice laced with heavy sarcasm.
“You two look like you’re plotting a corporate takeover in total silence.”
Pixel’s ears instantly perked up.
She slowly turned her head toward the front seat, her amber eyes flashing with pure malice.
“Should I tell them, Master?
I could easily broadcast your emotional data layout to the entire gang right now.”
“NOO!” Kae shouted aloud, his voice cracking completely as his face turned a violent, unadulterated shade of red.
He aggressively snapped the reins again, desperately staring straight ahead at the dirt road.
“There is absolutely nothing to report!
Focus on the road!”
Lisa and Karen shared a warm, laughing look as the boy and the cat continued to bicker over trivial nonsense, their chaotic voices echoing beautifully through the mountain pass as the carriage rolled faster and farther toward the edge of the valley.
But as the chariot finally topped the final, towering crest of the mountain ridge, the bickering instantly died out.
The entire party fell into a breathless, stunned silence.
Spread out across the vast valley below them, bathed in the brilliant, crystalline glow of a massive crescent moon, lay the bustling, multi-species metropolis of Oakhaven.
The view was absolutely breathtaking.
The city didn’t sleep; it pulled power from an entirely different grid.
Massive, ancient white-stone walls snaked around the perimeter, lit up by thousands of flickering amber torches that cast long, majestic shadows into the valley.
Inside the walls, an endless sea of grand spires climbed toward the starry sky, their stained-glass windows glowing with vibrant blues, purples, and emerald greens from the internal mana lamps.
Towering mechanical windmills spun lazily in the midnight breeze, their giant wooden blades silhouetted against the dark sky, while sleek, glowing airships drifted like floating lanterns above the high towers, leaving faint trails of glittering exhaust code in their wake.
Even from the mountain crest, they could see the sprawling marketplaces lit up by strings of warm fairy lights, a thriving hive of nocturnal activity where travelers of every shape, size, and species moved through the neon-tinted streets.
Kae leaned forward, his hands resting on the reins, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the complex layout of the city—a master-class in urban fortification.
He didn’t see walls; he saw potential.
He didn’t see crowds; he saw a vast, untapped network of high-value social nodes.
A shadow of intrigue passed over his face, a cold, sharp calculation behind his gaze.
Behind those gates lay thousands of stories, billions of data points waiting to be leveraged.
He slowly loosened his grip on the reins, his posture straightening as the cool night wind caught the fabric of his new Phantom Black Cloak, making it billow slightly around his shoulders.
He adjusted his cuffs with a sharp, deliberate snap of his wrists to reclaim his executive presence.
Looking down at the sprawling, illuminated civilization map below, his initial exhaustion completely evaporated.
A sharp, highly confident smirk returned to his face.
The chaos of the southern border was a warm-up.
This was the main hub.
This was where the real game began.
The mechanical beast pulled the cargo chariot down the final winding slope, the heavy iron wheels crunching loudly against the gravel until they finally joined the main cobblestone road.
As they neared the base of the valley, the towering white-stone walls loomed over them like an immovable mountain ridge, cutting off the view of the inner city and funneling all incoming traffic into a single, high-security checkpoint.
By now, the midnight air had turned absolutely freezing.
Up in the cargo bed, the knight had pulled a heavy traveling hood over her head, and even Karen was huddled tight beneath hers, her hands shivering around her staff.
At the front reins, Kae had pulled the deep hood of his Phantom Black Cloak all the way forward, letting the sleek dark fabric mask his profile from the biting wind.
The carriage slowed to a crawl, taking its place at the rear of a long, orderly queue of merchants, armored wagons, and weary travelers waiting outside the colossal main gates.
The entrance was flanked by massive, iron-reinforced portcullises and guarded by elite, heavily armed sentries whose steel armor reflected the cold moonlight.
But as the chariot rolled under the flickering light of the gateway torches, the atmosphere instantly shifted into a high-velocity threat layout.
Standing out prominently on the side panel of their stolen transport was the painted emblem of the Night Eagles mercenary guild.
Before the chariot could even cross the threshold into the archway, two tall guards stepped out from the shadow of the wall, their halberds snapping down in a clean, synchronized cross that blocked the path entirely.
Their expressions hardening into pure suspicion.
“Halt, travelers,” the lead guard commanded, his deep voice echoing under the stone archway as his sharp eyes scanned the kitted-out knight, the nervous healer, and the mysterious boy in the dark cloak.
“State your business in Oakhaven and present your clearance identification papers immediately for a mandatory subsurface profile check.
Every single one of you, hand over your IDs now.”
Kae didn’t have an ID card on him, and he was sitting in a stolen carriage.
By all normal rules, he was trapped.
But as he looked at the sharp spears inches from his chest, he didn’t feel any fear at all.
Instead, a dangerous, quiet excitement started to build up inside him.
The guards thought they held all the power, but they had absolutely no idea who they were messing with.
Kae’s mind was already racing, putting together a reckless plan that was either going to get them thrown into the deepest dungeon in the city, or blow this entire gate wide open.
Will Kae manage to talk his way past the guards using a brilliant lie, or is his crew about to start a massive fight before they even step foot inside the city?
Find out in the next episode of The Vanguard of the Void!