The dark, heavy silence of the room held its breath, thick with the scent of dried lavender and the sharp, metallic tang of local herbal catalysts.
Slowly, the dense fog inside Kaelen’s head began to recede, his consciousness booting up at an excruciatingly uncalibrated pace.
He didn’t move.
He simply allowed his eyes to crack open, staring blankly up at the rough-hewn timber beams crisscrossing the white-stone ceiling of an unfamiliar room.
For a few seconds, his internal processor failed to log his coordinates.
Where am I?
The thought fractured against the dull, throbbing ache pulsing directly behind his forehead.
A sudden, rhythmic pressure on his chest answered him.
Pixel was curled up right on top of the coarse linen bedsheets, her small form rising and falling with a slow, deceptively innocent purr.
Her tufted ears twitched the exact millisecond Kaelen’s breathing shifted, but she didn’t look up immediately, maintaining her posture of absolute, unbothered comfort.
Testing his motor metrics, Kaelen cautiously lifted a heavy hand, his fingertips tracing the contour of his face.
His jaw felt aligned, the structural damage repaired, but as his hand moved upward, his fingers brushed against a thick, square plaster pinned tightly over the bridge of his nose.
An immediate, high-velocity spike of pure panic shot through his system.
His executive composure cracked.
Was his face wrecked?
Was the trajectory of that flying projectile so devastating that it had permanently wiped out his aesthetic layout?
Was he…
ugly now?
Beside the bed, two figures shifted in the dim light.
Pixel and Lisa exchanged a swift, silent glance—a flawless, instantaneous data link of mutual, chaotic understanding.
They saw their window, and they executed.
Lisa dropped her gaze, her shoulders slumping forward in a masterclass performance of deep, sorrowful regret.
She crossed her armored arms, her boots scraping heavily against the floorboards as she let out a long, hollow sigh.
“The doctors tried everything, Kae,” Lisa murmured, her voice dropping into a somber, tragic cadence that echoed off the stone walls.
“They exhausted every single healing catalyst in the inventory.
But the structural impact…
the distortion…” She shook her head slowly, refusing to look him in the eyes.
“I’m so sorry.
We just couldn’t recover your original face.”
Pixel’s eyes instantly lit up, seizing her moment to shine.
She stood up on the sheets, stretching her front paws forward as she stared down at him with a look of manufactured horror.
“Master, it is a complete system failure,” her telepathic voice wailed inside his mind, dripping with exaggerated, mocking grief.
“The asymmetry is catastrophic.
You look like a low-level goblin that got run over by a rogue merchant chariot.
Your facial metrics are thoroughly corrupted.
It’s over for you.”
“What?!” Kaelen freaked out, his cold Architect persona vanishing into thin air as he scrambled backward against the wooden headboard.
His heart hammered against his ribs, his eyes widening in pure terror.
“Give me a mirror!
Where is a mirror?
Bring it to me right now!”
Before the two pranksters could push the crisis any further, Brenda stepped out from the shadows near the door, her face a mask of absolute confusion.
She completely misread the high-stakes comedic layout of the room.
“Uh…
what are you guys even talking about?” Brenda blurted out, breaking the rhythm of the joke completely.
She pointed an innocent finger at Kaelen’s bed.
“He looks completely the same.
The plaster is just covering a tiny scratch from the glass.”
The entire room fell dead silent.
Lisa’s head snapped toward Brenda, her posture stiffening.
Pixel froze mid-stretch, her tail twitching in absolute, high-velocity fury.
Both of them glared at the tavern girl with dead, homicidal eyes, thoroughly disgusted that she had just breached their peak entertainment protocol.
“Oops…” Brenda whispered, her shoulders instantly shrinking as she realized her massive tactical error.
She looked entirely embarrassed, her face flushing as she awkwardly pulled her hands behind her back.
Kaelen cleared his throat, his posture instantly re-aligning as he forced his fractured composure back into a cold, authoritative grid.
Shaking off the residual panic from the facial crisis, he locked back into his standard Architect persona, shutting down any visible traces of weakness.
Brenda took a hesitant step forward, her fluffy ears completely flattened against her head in a display of intense, heavy remorse.
Her fingers twisted frantically at the hem of her apron as she approached the edge of the bed.
Before she could even open her mouth to deliver a heavy, guilt-ridden apology, Kaelen flicked his wrist.
He flicked his hand through the air in a sharp, completely dismissive gesture, waving her words away before they could even breach the room’s audio space.
“Save your breath,” Kaelen said coldly, his voice dripping with an unbothered, executive detachment.
“A minor trajectory calculation error from a rogue projectile is baseline static.
It means absolutely nothing to my system.”
To emphasize the absolute lack of impact, he deliberately turned his head completely away from her, fixing his gaze on the opposite white-stone wall to signal that the conversation was officially terminated.
But Brenda didn’t drop the subject.
Instead of backing away under his cold authority, she dropped straight to her knees, bowing her head so deeply her forehead nearly brushed the floorboards.
“It was everything to me,” Brenda insisted, her tone thick with a raw, unyielding gratitude that completely shattered the room’s formal cadence.
“Truly…
thank you, Kae. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
You threw yourself into the trajectory of that bottle when you didn’t owe me a single metric of protection.
I will never forget it.”
The sheer, unfiltered weight of her sincerity hit Kaelen’s internal defenses like a high-velocity data breach.
For all his calculations and tough, bad-boy framing, Kaelen’s system completely short-circuited under direct appreciation.
A violent, deep crimson flush crept rapidly up his neck, flooding his ears and cheeks with an undeniable heat.
He kept his face turned stubbornly toward the wall, but the thermal spike on his skin betrayed his sudden vulnerability.
He had completely accepted her thanks, and his executive armor was officially cracked.
Pixel’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits as she witnessed the data malfunction.
She slowly stood up on the sheets, a wicked, chaotic grin practically reflecting in her eyes.
“Oh, look at this,” her telepathic voice purred inside his mind, dripping with absolute, unadulterated roasting protocols.
“The cold, calculating Architect has a hidden ‘soft hero’ sub-routine.
Your facial temperature is spiking, Master.
Should I log this emotional vulnerability in our permanent archives, or are you going to keep pretending you’re a dangerous rogue while blushing like a high school protagonist?”
Kaelen gritted his teeth, his jaw tightening as he desperately tried to suppress the redness before Lisa or Karen could log the data.
Desperate to redirect the processing power of the room away from his burning, crimson ears, Kaelen cleared his throat and finally swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
Brenda rose from her bowing posture, lifting her head as a sudden, bright spark of excitement completely replaced her tearful remorse.
She paused, smoothing down her apron with an air of grand, dramatic significance.
“In the courtesy of saving me from that absolute disaster…” Brenda started, her voice trailing off as she built up the suspense.
Instantly, Kaelen and Pixel’s internal grids synchronized in a flash of pure, unadulterated greed.
Their eyes literally morphed on the spot, expanding into massive, gleaming, hyper-detailed gold coins that practically cast a metallic glow across the sheets.
Kaelen’s analytical mind immediately began calculating high-tier payloads—perhaps a legendary sack of sovereign gold coins, an administrative key to the city’s secret archives, or a vault of rare, high-velocity magical assets.
Pixel’s tail whipped through the air like a weapon, her mind already visualizing an endless mountain of premium, seared beast-meat delicacies.
They braced themselves for the ultimate payoff.
“…you guys are going to be living right here in the tavern completely for free, and I’ll be catering for absolutely everything for a full week!” Brenda announced proudly, puffing out her chest as if she had just handed them the keys to a kingdom.
“Everything is on me!”
The entire universe instantly died.
In a brutal, instantaneous flash, every single ounce of vibrant color drained from the room.
The warm orange torchlight, the deep brown timber beams, and the colorful blankets vanished into a static, freezing gray.
Kaelen and Pixel’s physical profiles completely turned black and white, their figures locking up into a rigid, expressionless animation freeze-frame as the reality of her words crashed down on their processing units.
The silence in the gray void was deafening.
After all the high-velocity chaos…
Kaelen’s thoughts drifted through a hollow, pitch-black vacuum of absolute disbelief.
The devastating physical trauma…
the literal, brain-rattling concussion…
the near-permanent shutdown of my processing core…
and this budget lodging voucher is all she can offer?
Right next to him, Pixel’s black-and-white form looked completely hollowed out, her eyes flat and dead as she stared at the tavern girl.
“Free rent?” her telepathic voice drifted into Kaelen’s mind, completely stripped of its usual chaotic energy, sounding utterly exhausted by humanity.
“Really?
How incredibly cheap can this mortal possibly get?
Master, let me bite her.
Just a small, administrative bite to balance the ledger.”
Brenda, completely oblivious to the fact that she had just turned the two greediest entities in the room into monochrome statues of despair, simply smiled brightly, waiting for their applause.
The monochrome freeze-frame slowly shattered, the drab gray tones peeling away as the vibrant colors of reality flooded back into the room.
But the atmosphere remained completely dead silent.
Kaelen and Pixel sat frozen, their faces locked in an expression of sheer, unadulterated frustration, staring at Brenda with dead eyes.
Brenda blinked, looking between the two irritated faces.
“Uh…
what’s wrong with you guys?” she asked, her voice dropping as she took a tentative step closer to the bed.
“I thought free lodging for a week was a pretty great—”
Before she could utter another word, the heavy wooden door creaked open.
Karen stepped into the room, completely oblivious to the fact that Kaelen’s system was fully awake.
Her face was almost entirely obscured by two massive, overstuffed brown paper bags that she carried like an unguided logistical payload.
Using her foot, she nudged the door shut behind her, letting out a long, exhausted breath.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Karen sighed, her voice muffled behind the wall of groceries.
“It took me forever to find my way back.
I got completely lost in the massive city—it’s just so tremendous!
I asked some guards for directions, but they sent me to a completely different tavern on the other side of the district.
So I just kept walking deeper into the town, and then the—”
“Hey, Karen.
That’s an awful lot of stuff you’re carrying there.”
Karen’s mind froze for a full second.
The processing unit in her brain completely halted.
Thud.
The massive paper bags slipped from her arms, dropping straight to the floorboards as fresh apples and potion vials spilled in every direction. This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.
Karen didn’t care about the logistics payload.
Tears of pure joy instantly welled up in her eyes, spilling over her cheeks.
“K-K-Kaelen…” she stuttered, her voice cracking in absolute, overwhelming happiness.
Without warning, she launched herself forward, sprinting across the floorboards and jumping straight onto the mattress.
She threw her arms around Kaelen’s neck, hugging him with a high-velocity grip that threatened to crack his ribs.
“Oow!
Aww—Karen, I can’t breathe…”
Kaelen gasped, his executive windpipe completely crushed under the sudden impact.
But Karen just hugged him even tighter, burying her face into his shoulder as she wept openly.
“I thought I had lost you!
I tried my absolute best to stop the bleeding, but I didn’t know if I could do it…
I was so scared!”
On the sheets, Pixel’s ears perked up.
She unleashed a sharp, telepathic bark directly into Kaelen’s mind.
“You total dork, hug her back!
Can’t you see how worried she was about your measly survival?
Stop acting like a cold brick!”
Short-circuiting slightly under the sudden emotional protocol, Kaelen slowly lifted his arms and wrapped them around Karen, anchoring her securely.
“There, there,” Kaelen murmured softly, his voice dropping its cold edge as he swiftly and gently caressed her hair.
“I’m okay, Karen.
I’m okay.
No need to worry anymore.
I am right here.”
Karen gradually pulled back, sniffing loudly as she wiped her eyes, her face flushing a soft pink.
She sat at the edge of the bed and picked up one of the stray apples that had rolled onto the sheets, pulling a small silver knife from her pocket.
The room grew quiet again, except for the rhythmic, crisp sound of Karen peeling the apple for him.
Taking a slice, Kaelen leaned back against the headboard, his analytical gaze moving across the group.
“By the way…
what exactly happened after I collapsed?”
Lisa shifted her weight, leaning her shoulder against the stone wall.
Her eyes narrowed playfully as she looked at Pixel.
“Oh, it was a complete catastrophe, Kae.
Let me lay out the data metrics for you.”
The room seemed to fade as Lisa spun the recap, painting a picture of high-stakes cinematic drama.
According to Lisa’s grand narrative, the tavern had descended into absolute, high-velocity chaos the millisecond Kaelen hit the floor.
The patrons were scrambling over the overturned tables, shouting in terror.
Lisa had stood over his body, barking orders at the top of her lungs: “Is there a healer in this venue?!
He’s losing too much blood!
We’re losing him!”
Lisa paced across the room, gesturing dramatically.
“People were sprinting in every direction, bringing anything they could find to stop the torrent of blood.
Brenda was freaking out like someone was about to meet the Grim Reaper or something.
She literally ran to the kitchen and came back holding a tiny plaster and a single ball of cotton!”
Lisa threw her hands up, mimicking her own past frustration.
“I looked at her and asked, ‘What on earth is that for?!’ And Brenda, completely hysterical, shouted back, ‘You said to bring anything!’ So I barked right back at her, ‘That’s not what I meant!
What could that tiny thing even do against a fatal hemorrhage?!’ Brenda shrieked, ran back, and dragged a whole spool of heavy bandages next!”
Pixel hopped up on the edge of the bed, her eyes gleaming as she picked up the narrative thread, taking her turn to shine.
“Oh, but Master, that wasn’t even the peak of the crisis,” Pixel’s telepathic voice wailed dramatically in Kaelen’s head, ensuring the entire room could feel the ‘epic’ weight of the story.
“Karen was completely losing her mind!
She was screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘Darling!
Don’t die on me, my love!’ She was thoroughly terrified that you would fade away due to extreme blood loss because there wasn’t a single medic or high-tier healer within a five-mile radius.
She was the only option left!”
Lisa nodded solemnly, completely playing along with the cat’s ridiculous hyperbole.
“It’s true.
I looked at Karen and demanded, ‘Heal him!’ But Karen was panicking, crying out, ‘You know I have no control over my power!
I might end up blowing up this entire room, or worse, injuring Kaelen even more!
I can’t risk his life!’ But I grabbed her by the shoulders and said, ‘We need to take the risk!
You’re the only one who can save him.
You just have to trust in yourself.
Anything is possible for someone who has faith!
Please, he needs you right now!”
Pixel struck a heroic pose on the mattress.
“Then, Karen took a massive, trembling breath.
She closed her eyes to concentrate, summoning every ounce of her latent magical reserves.
Suddenly, BOOM!
She cast a massive, legendary spell!
Blinding green lights flashed violently around the entire room, illuminating the dark timber beams, magically re-aligning your bones and fixing your face in a glorious burst of divine energy!”
Kaelen stared at them, his eyebrow twitching slightly at the sheer, cinematic intensity of the recap.