Flair leaned half her body over the counter, her eyes narrowing into a stern, highly pointed stare as she locked her gaze directly onto him.
“You better not mess up this trial mission, okay?
I am highly tracking your performance, Mr.
E-Minus.”
Kaelen simply looked away, completely unbothered by the jab as a smug, highly confident grin of pure anticipation spread across his face.
He held his closed fist up to his chest, his eyes burning with an intense, architectural resolve.
“I am completely ready for any scenario.
Just watch, Flair—I will return entirely unscathed, with those miners rescued if it kills me.
I will not fail.”
Beside him, Karen’s expression hardened with newfound courage.
Remembering Lisa’s advice from the night before, she gripped her magical staff significantly tighter, her posture straight and resolute, ready to fight alongside him.
Lisa calmly adjusted the hilt of her sword, ensuring her blade was perfectly secured.
With a quick movement, Pixel executed a high-velocity jump, landing perfectly onto Kaelen’s shoulder with a sharp, enthusiastic flick of her tail.
Lisa drew her fingers away from her pommel, her posture shifting into a dominant stance as she looked toward the massive exit.
Her voice dropped into a cool, measured cadence that vibrated with veteran authority.
“Alrighty then, team…
let’s go find the lost, and take down the host.”
The cool cadence of her catchphrase hung in the air, instantly setting the rhythm for the entire squad.
In perfect synchronization, the Vanguard pivoted away from the mahogany desk and marched out toward the grand exit.
As they pushed through the towering doors, the warm, blinding glare of the mid-afternoon sun hit them, anchoring the time at exactly 12:00 PM.
The dry plaza breeze caught Kaelen’s dark cloak, billowing it outward as they stepped into the bustling streets of Oakhaven.
For a brief moment, the constant noise of the busy city marketplace seemed to fade into a dull hum, completely eclipsed by the heavy, unspoken weight of their very first official mission.
They walked side by side, their footfalls striking the stone pavement with a unified, unmistakable momentum—a squad of unranked rookies and a hidden elite, stepping out of the bureaucracy and directly into the fire.
The Vanguard stood assembled before the yawning maw of the cavern, framed like an elite, legendary faction about to execute a historic operation.
Kaelen stood at the apex, his dark cloak catching the jagged mountain breeze, his shoulders squared with supreme executive authority.
Beside him, Lisa remained immovably rigid, her hand resting naturally on the pommel of her blade, her high-status posture radiating veteran dominance.
Karen stood with her feet planted firmly, gripping her magical staff tightly as her starry eyes focused on the dark threshold, while Pixel perched on Kaelen’s tactical bag like a majestic, high-tier guardian.
A chaotic rustling echoed from the shadows.
Out of the darkness came a bizarre, chicken-like bird, running at absolute high-velocity with its feathers completely ruffled in sheer, unadulterated terror.
It clucked hysterically—”Bwawk!
Cluck-cluck-bwaaawk!”—before losing its balance, stumbling directly into Kaelen’s shins, and flopping onto the dirt, completely passing out cold.
“Whoa…
is that a chicken?” Kaelen asked, his authoritative facade temporarily slipping as he crouched down, poking the limp bird with a stray wooden stick.
Lisa leaned over slightly, her sharp eyes scanning the creature.
“It seems so.”
“Oh, poor thing,” Karen murmured, her micro-expressions shifting into immediate, soft-hearted pity.
On Kaelen’s shoulder, Pixel’s tongue darted out as she salivated heavily, her eyes locked onto the bird.
“I see lunch.”
“Really?” Kaelen muttered.
Simultaneously, Kaelen, Lisa, and Karen shot an icy, razor-sharp look of absolute judgment straight at the familiar.
Pixel froze, her ears dropping flat against her head as an embarrassed, guilty flush crept across her face.
Suddenly, the bird jolted awake, its chest heaving in a state of total panic.
Kaelen quickly dropped the stick and scooped it up, trying to stabilize the chaotic variable.
“Whoa, calm down birdy.
Calm down.”
The bird’s eyes rolled around wildly, looking around the plaza threshold in absolute horror.
It let out a series of frantic, breathless chicken noises—”Cluck!
Bwawk!
Cluck-bwaaawk!”—before its frantic squawks abruptly morphed into an eerie, rapid-fire speech pattern.
Strangely, the acoustic frequency shifted so that only Kaelen and Pixel could actually decipher the metrics.
“Trouble…
trouble!” the bird gasped out, its tiny beak twitching.
“Humans are going to be eaten…
by big monsters…
goblins…
an absolute infestation!”
It sputtered out a barrage of chaotic words before its eyes rolled back into its head, passing out cold once again.
Lisa stepped forward, her brow furrowed.
“What did it say?”
Kaelen slowly gripped his hand into a tight fist, his expression turning grave as he looked up at the squad.
“It’s the humans.
They’re about to be served.”
Karen blinked, her starry eyes widening in confusion.
“Like…
Pixel let out a dark, mocking laugh from Kaelen’s shoulder.
“No, darling.
They are the ones on the menu.”
The moment the gravity of the metric hit Lisa’s analytical grid, her stoic facade hardened into lethal focus.
“Come on, let’s go.
We don’t have time.”
With a crisp, metallic hiss, her hand blurred as she ripped her sword straight from its sheath.
Without a second of hesitation, she charged directly into the dark, yawning cavern, and the rest of the Vanguard moved out in perfect, high-velocity synchronization behind her.
An hour later, the operational parameters had devolved into absolute, chaotic friction.
Kaelen was sweating his life out, his shoulders slumping heavily as he bent over, breathing endlessly in a state of total physical exhaustion.
Beside him, Karen was completely drenched in sweat, her hands trembling as she clutched her staff, apologizing non-stop through frantic tears.
A few paces ahead, Lisa was breathing heavily, her face pale but determined as she held her sword—now heavily stained with dark, viscous monster blood—pointing it rigidly toward the far end of the chamber.
And lastly, Pixel was casually stretching her paws on a nearby rock, letting out a sharp, mocking laugh.
“Oh dear …
you just had to go ahead and buff the Troll King, didn’t you?
Our very last enemy is completely back to full health and double strength, while we all look weary and totally out of it.
Seriously, how much worse can things get?”
Lisa was gritting her teeth in absolute, simmering anger, trying with every ounce of her veteran composure not to openly blame Karen, but the furious tension tightly framing her face made it clear she was thoroughly pissed.
“Good…
good thing we have Pixel on our side,” Kaelen panted in a tired, ragged breath, wiped out.
“She’ll…
she’ll just have to freeze this thing for us.”
Pixel snapped her head toward him, her tail flicking aggressively.
“I’m also completely out of it!
My internal reserves are drained, Kaelen!
I can’t freeze anything within a twenty-meter radius anymore!”
Across the cavern, the massive Troll King began flexing its colossal, mutating muscles, letting out a deep, vibrating roar of pure triumph.
It was thoroughly enjoying the fact that Karen’s accidental healing buff had restored its baseline health, and it raised its massive, tree-trunk fists, ready to completely crush the weary intruders.
Kaelen’s eyes narrowed as a desperate, chaotic grin broke across his face.
“No problem…
I have a plan.”
Karen looked up, her face lighting up with fragile hope.
“You do?”
“Say it out,” Lisa commanded through gritted teeth, her eyes locked on the approaching monster.
“We don’t have all day.”
Instead of explaining the bureaucratic logistics, Kaelen moved with lightning speed.
He reached up, aggressively scooped Pixel off his shoulder, and with a powerful, athletic heave, he threw her like a football straight toward the charging Troll King.
Pixel went flying through the air, her limbs flailing wildly as she let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek of absolute betrayal.
“Nooooo!” Karen screamed in pure horror, covering her mouth as she saw the small familiar hurtling directly into the impact zone of a bone-shattering fist.
Everyone was completely paralyzed with surprise by the heartless trajectory—everyone except Lisa.
The veteran swordswoman slowly raised her free hand, slapping it against her face in absolute, exhausted anger.
Her expression screamed: Not again.
Do you seriously have to throw her every single time things get dire?
The Troll King smirked maliciously, its eyes locking onto the flying furball.
It stretched its massive arm all the way back, locking in the coordinates to deliver a devastating, terminal punch.
But the exact microsecond Pixel crossed into a precise one-meter radius of the monster’s face, a bizarre, echoey acoustic anomaly rippled through the chamber.
TICK.
The distinct, heavy sound of a giant clock clicking resonated through the space.
Instantly, the Troll King froze perfectly mid-air, its colossal fist locked solid in the middle of its punch.
Pixel landed splat right onto the center of its frozen face, clutching onto its nose.
“There!” Kaelen shouted, pointing triumphantly.
“Pixel froze it!
Now it’s your time to shine, Lisa!
Deliver a critical hit straight to the heart, because we are definitely not getting a second chance!”
Lisa let out a deep, heavy sigh of profound disappointment in Kaelen’s chaotic strategic formatting, but her veteran instincts took over.
She lunged forward, leaping high into the air with a fluid, lethal arc, and drove her blood-stained blade straight into the center of the frozen monster’s chest plate.
The structural integrity of the Troll King fractured instantly.
The frozen beast began shattering into thousands of phantom data fragments, dropping a large, gleaming crystal onto the cavern floorboards with a heavy thud.
“Yeah!
We did it!” Kaelen cheered, throwing his hands up in pure victory.
But the celebratory metrics were completely dead.
No one else was cheering.
Kaelen paused, realizing the ambient atmosphere had gone completely cold, and turned to see Lisa, Karen, and a drenched Pixel all staring at him with expressions of absolute, unadulterated disgust.
“Really?!” Pixel shrieked from the floor, her fur puffing up in a localized electrical storm.
“Was that your master strategy?!”
“Kaelen, that was so completely heartless!” Karen scolded, her shoulders tense as she glared at him.
“Using Pixel as a literal throwaway weapon?!”
“Hey, there was no other way!” Kaelen argued in a defensive, fast-talking tone, raising his hands.
“We would have never gotten within that one-meter radius without getting crushed into paste!
I swear, it was entirely for the greater good!”
Lisa and Karen paused, exchanging a brief, calculating glance.
After a moment of heavy internal processing, they both let out a defeated sigh, nodding in unison.
The logistics, as brutal as they were, had ultimately saved their lives.
Pixel, however, was completely unappeased.
She marched over to a nearby boulder, turning her back to the squad as she sat rigidly on her paws, glaring into the corner.
“Oh, come on, Pixel,” Kaelen pleaded, walking over and rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.
“Don’t be like that, partner.
Listen, I’m incredibly sorry.
I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
Pixel’s left ear twitched slightly at the word partner, signaling that his administrative appeal was breaking through her defensive armor.
Kaelen leaned in, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“I’ll make you your absolute favorite meal tonight.”
Pixel’s ears snapped straight up.
She couldn’t just pass on a corporate negotiation of this caliber.
She slowly turned her head, narrowing her eyes at him with a sharp, demanding glare.
“You’re making it twice the size this time.
Deal?”
“Deal,” Kaelen chuckled, a wave of relieved laughter breaking across the entire squad, instantly melting the lingering combat friction.
With the threat level officially cleared, the squad immediately moved into the post-match cleanup phase.
Karen rushed over to the back of the cavern to untie and free the four captured, terrified miners, while Lisa began systematically gathering the dropped mana crystals from the floorboards while Pixel was napping.
As Lisa knelt on one knee, sweeping the glowing crystals into her pouch, her brow furrowed in deep, analytical calculation.
How did this many high-tier, mutating monsters get packed into a standard Level D dungeon?
she wondered silently.
The initial guild reports explicitly stated the hostile parameters were weak and baseline.
Suddenly, Kaelen’s boots clinked against something unusual.
He stumbled slightly, looking down to see a strange, deep crimson stone partially buried in the dirt.
It pulsed with an eerie, high-velocity internal light.
Curious, he reached down and scooped it up.
“Hey, Lisa, look at this,” Kaelen called out, holding it up to the light.
“What’s this red crystal doing here?
It doesn’t look anything like the rest of the drop metrics.
What does it even do?”
Lisa froze on one knee.
In a fraction of a microsecond, the words red and different echoed through her mind like a catastrophic database error.
Her internal processing went into overdrive, instantly linking the anomalies together: The unexplained presence of high-tier monsters…
a ruined dungeon balance…
a red crystal…
Before she could even voice the deduction, one of the freed miners behind them frantically yelled to Karen, “…the hostiles…
they came through a portal—!”
Wait…
The final piece of the puzzle snapped into place within Lisa’s mind, and her eyes dilated in absolute terror.
She vaulted to her feet with explosive speed, twisting her frame toward him as she screamed at the absolute top of her lungs: “DON’T TOUCH IT, KAELEN!
THAT’S A TELEPORTATION CRYSTAL—!”
But her veteran warnings were completely eclipsed by the timeline.
It was already too late.
Kaelen’s thumb had already pressed firmly into the pulsing, crimson surface.
Instantly, a blinding, high-fidelity flash of brilliant blue portal light erupted from the stone, completely engulfing Kaelen’s entire frame.
The violent, radiant illumination painted the walls of the cavern, casting stark, terrified shadows across the faces of the entire party.
Everyone stood completely frozen in pure, unadulterated shock.
Karen screamed, throwing her body forward in a desperate, high-velocity sprint to grab his hand, but her fingers closed on empty air.
By the time she reached the coordinates, the blue localized portal had already violently pulled Kaelen through the dimensional rift, snapping shut with a concussive boom that left nothing behind but a lingering trace of ozone.
The remaining members of the Vanguard stood paralyzed, their terrified, horrified expressions illuminated only by the dying embers of the cave’s regular crystals.
Kaelen was completely gone—ripped away from his party and violently displaced to an entirely unmapped, dangerous, and unlocked region of the world.
Ozone lingered where Kaelen stood.
The Architect was gone, the dungeon rigged.
Was Sunday’s mission a routine run—or a setup?