“The labor was too brutal.
By the time I was born, my mother began to bleed out rapidly, losing far too much blood before George could ever make it back.
Rose held me close and carried me to her side, and despite the agonizing pain, my mother smiled.
Tears of absolute happiness flowed from her eyes as she hugged my tiny body against her chest with the last of her strength.”
“She started breathing heavily, her chest rattling,” Karen whispered, her voice crackling as she stared down at the dirt.
“Rose gripped her hand tightly, desperately comforting her and telling her she was going to be alright, but they both knew the truth.
My mother looked down at my pale white skin, wrapped in a torn piece of cloth from her own ruined garment, and wept.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, a heavy sob tearing through her throat before she forced out her mother’s final, fading words.
“My little girl…” Karen quoted, her voice dropping into a frail, breathless whisper.
“I’ll call her Karen.
That’s her name.
Rose…
please take good care of her.”
She leaned her head back, her fingers trembling violently against her staff as she recalled the exact moment the light left her mother’s eyes.
Karen wiped her face aggressively with her sleeve, her voice shaking uncontrollably.
“She smiled, even though life was draining from her body.
“She smiled, looking at Rose.
‘Thank you for everything.
Tell George I am eternally grateful.’ She looked up at the ceiling of that thatched hut, her vision fading.
‘I wish I had a chance to watch my little girl grow up…
I wish—’ and then, her heart stopped.”
Karen’s voice completely broke, the silence in the rain-slicked woods becoming absolute.
“Her breathing dropped to nothing,” she whispered, a tear splashing onto the wood of her staff.
“Her fingers went entirely limp.
Her hand let go of Rose’s, and fell heavily to the ground.”
Lisa’s breath hitched completely, her own eyes welling with fierce, empathetic tears as she stepped closer, unable to speak.
Even Pixel remained completely motionless in the dirt, her ears flattened in a rare show of silent respect.
“George and Rose raised me as their own daughter,” Karen whispered, her gaze dropping back to the shadows.
“They gave me an older brother and a big sister.
They gave me a beautiful, happy life in a quiet farming village on the outer rim of the territory…
until I turned ten years old.”
The warmth vanished from her face, her features suddenly locking into a rigid, hollow mask of dread.
“It happened in the dead of night—no warnings, no alarms.
Just the terrifying sound of splintering wood and screaming.
It wasn’t normal monsters…
they were Sabertooth Hell-Stalkers, elite vanguard beasts belonging to the Demon King’s army, carrying those awful, pulsating red cores in their chests.”
Kae stepped forward, his posture dead-set on her every word.
“My father ran to lock the front door, but the lead beast tore through the reinforced oak like it was paper,” Karen said, her voice dropping into a haunting, rhythmic monotone.
“I remember the red glow of its core illuminating our entire living room.
It was massive.
Horrifying.
My older brother tried to buy us time, charging at it with a rusted pitchfork, but…”
A jagged, broken breath hitched in her chest, preventing her from finishing the sentence.
“They shredded them right in front of my eyes,” she whispered, the raw trauma vibrating through her small frame.
“My mother threw herself over me and my big sister, screaming at me to run, to hide beneath the floorboards.
As I lay frozen in the dark, I could hear everything.
I heard the sound of claws tearing through fabric, the wet, heavy thuds against the floor, and the guttural, sickening purring of those monsters as they…
they unlived my entire family in cold blood.”
She snapped her head up, her amber eyes flashing with a sudden, terrifyingly violent energy.
The timid, clumsy girl completely vanished, replaced by a gaze of absolute, unadulterated fury that caused the ambient air pressure to shift violently around them.
“They sacrificed everything they had just so I could breathe,” Karen hissed, her knuckles turning a deathly white against her staff.
“I hid in that dark crawlspace for two days, surrounded by nothing but the suffocating scent of ash and blood.
I despise them.
I hate the Demon King, I hate his generals, and I absolutely loathe every single creature that bears his curse!”
“Every waking moment of my life, my soul burns with a desire to see his entire army vanquished from this world,” Karen hissed, her voice vibrating with a terrifying, raw frequency.
“I want to tear down his throne and erase his existence for what he took from me…
but…”
The fierce, blinding fire in her eyes suddenly flickered, drowning in a sudden wave of crushing helplessness as she looked down at her trembling, pale hands.
“…but I’m just a broken unit.
I have all this mana boiling inside me, a gift from my lineage, but my aim is trash.
I can’t even hit a target ten feet away without accidentally making it stronger.
How am I supposed to avenge them if I’m just a strategic liability?”
Kae stood in dead silence, his gamer-focus locking onto the heavy data of her trauma.
He didn’t offer empty, sugary platitudes or useless comfort.
Instead, his jaw set into a grim, architecture-level resolve.
He knew exactly what it felt like to watch your family suffer, carrying the suffocating weight of being the one who had to provide, to protect, while feeling utterly powerless against a broken system.
He glanced back at the rock, where Pixel was sitting dead silent, her tail perfectly still, not uttering a single sarcastic meow.
Even the haughty, arrogant Consultant respected the weight of a blood-debt.
Kae took a slow, deliberate step forward, his boots crunching softly against the wet earth as he forced Karen to look up at him. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“In the gaming world, there’s no such thing as a broken unit,” Kae said, his tone dropping into a cold, authoritative frequency that instantly cut through her panic.
“There are only uncalibrated mechanics.
You think your negative-percent aim is a curse?
I see an S-Rank multiplier waiting for the right patch.”
Karen blinked through her round glasses, her breath hitching as she looked at his absolute, unwavering confidence.
“Shawn abandoned you because his low-tier brain couldn’t calculate your value,” Kae continued, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, strategic resolve as he stepped directly into her space.
He reached out, his hand firmly resting on the top of her wooden staff, grounding her trembling posture.
“A true Vanguard never treats their back-line like disposable trash, and we damn sure don’t leave our people behind to save our own skin.
We look after our own.
Period.”
Karen looked up at him, her breath catching in her throat as the raw intensity of his words cut right through her despair.
“If your mana expands when it misses, we don’t fix your aim—we change your targets.
If you can’t see the battlefield without those glasses, listen closely: we will be your eyes, calling out every coordinate on the map.”
A fierce, defiant grin broke across Kae’s face, his tone dripping with absolute, unyielding loyalty.
“And if your aim is so terrible that you can’t freeze the enemies in their tracks, and you accidentally buff them instead…” Kae let out a sharp, defiant chuckle, a fierce grin breaking across his face.
“Well, then we’ll get completely tossed.
We’ll get absolutely wrecked by the mobs.
But even if we’re bleeding out on the dirt, we still won’t ever give up on you.”
He tightened his grip on the staff, his tone dropping to a cold, absolute promise that echoed through the rain-slicked woods.
“We will personally rebuild your system from the ground up.
We’re going to optimize your broken mechanics until the Demon King’s generals learn to fear the very name they tried to erase.”
Kae stood in dead silence, his “gamer-focus” locking onto her.
As he studied her posture, the cool blue light of his internal HUD flickered aggressively, and Aegis’s mechanical voice chimed inside his skull, overlaying a translucent data matrix directly over the silver-haired girl.
[SUBSURFACE PROFILING: INTEGRATED MATRIX DETECTED]
NAME: Karen
AGE: 16
RANK: ??
(Mana Capacity: A-Tier / Control Index: E-Tier)
ABILITY: High-Output Restoration / Chaotic Buffing
[ANALYSIS: EMOTIONAL ALIGNMENT CONFIRMED.
RECOMMENDATION: RECRUITMENT.]
Kae’s eyes narrowed slightly as he read the floating metrics.
Rank question marks?
Her raw capacity is broken, but her execution is completely uncalibrated.
“Join us,” Kae said.
The casual, trolling teenager vanished.
His posture straightened, his shoulders squaring as his voice shifted into the absolute, low-resonance tone of a decisive leader deploying a high-stakes corporate solution.
“We’re heading to Oakhaven to form a proper guild entity.
We need a high-output healer, and you need a team that won’t treat its primary assets as disposable bait.
It’s a mutual merger.”
Karen froze.
She looked at Kae’s unwavering gaze, then at Lisa’s warm, supportive smile.
Her mouth opened, but no words came out.
She paused, her head lowering as she fell into a deep, agonizing hesitation.
The trauma of being kicked out of every single party she had ever joined clawed at her mind.
“I…” Karen stammered, her fingers wrapping around her robes nervously.
“I want to believe you…
but I haven’t mastered my magic.
My aim is completely wack.
What if we get into a high-velocity raid, and instead of healing you, I end up buffing a boss creature that squashes you all?
What if I hurt any of you in—”
“It’s okay,” Lisa interrupted gently, stepping forward and placing a reassuring, metal-gauntleted hand on Karen’s trembling shoulder.
“We all have our imperfections, Karen.
I’m reckless and I tend to dive headfirst into danger without analyzing the terrain.
But imperfection doesn’t mean giving up on your comrades.
There is always space for strategic improvement when you’re running with the right crew.”
Karen’s amber eyes instantly lit up.
The heavy, dark fog of her self-doubt seemed to crack under the weight of Lisa’s speech, a spark of genuine hope reflecting behind her round lenses.
Before the moment could turn entirely sentimental, Pixel who was sitting on a flat rock, stretched and let out a yawn, then sat down again looking at them with an insufferably smug expression.
“Oh, please, let’s not get overly emotional,” Pixel’s dry, mocking voice sliced directly into Kae’s skull.
“If we are discussing broken stats and unmastered mechanics, let’s be entirely transparent.
Kae here hasn’t mastered a single operational trick regarding his Void Energy.
He is completely defenseless.
Frankly, if a mildly agitated mad bull charged at him right now, my money would be entirely on the livestock.”
Kae went completely rigid.
Pixel’s words hit him like a direct nail to the head, slicing straight through his gamer pride because it was the absolute, bitter truth.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, you glorified dust bunny?!” Kae snapped, spinning around to confront the feline.
“At least I don’t hide in a backpack the second the atmospheric pressure drops!”
To Lisa and Karen, the entire scene devolved into instant chaos.
They couldn’t hear Pixel’s telepathic roars; all they saw was a black cat standing on a rock, letting out a series of aggressive, continuous, mocking meows, while Kae shouted back at it like a madman who was clearly losing a verbal argument.
Realizing he was completely outmatched in the linguistics department, Kae abandoned diplomacy.
He lunged forward, scooped Pixel up into a headlock, and began aggressively pulling and pinching the cat’s furry cheeks.
“Say that again!
Come on, say it to my face!”
“Unhand me, you corporate tyrant!
Defilement of the consultant’s assets!” Pixel screeched mentally, fighting back with absolute, feral ferocity.
Her back paws blurred into motion, scratching wildly at Kae’s wrists.
“Ouch!
Son of a—!
I’m going to kill you, you demonic furball!” Kae yelled, spinning around in circles as the cat latched onto his hand like a furry, clawed gauntlet.
Karen watched the boy and the cat scrambling across the dirt road, tumbling over rocks and completely losing all sense of professional dignity.
A small, involuntary gasp escaped her lips, followed by a quiet, bubbling giggle.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel the suffocating pressure of being judged or the cold isolation of being kept at an arm’s length.
Looking at this bizarre, chaotic duo and the smiling knight beside them, she felt a strange, sudden warmth in her chest.
She felt, for the very first time, as if she had finally found a party where she actually belonged.
She wiped a lingering tear from her eye, turned to Lisa, and nodded with absolute certainty.
“I want to join you.
Please let me ride with your party.”
At that exact moment, Pixel finally managed to break free from Kae’s grip.
She hopped onto Lisa’s shoulder, smoothed down her ruffled fur with a dignified lick of her paw, and let out a single, clear, resonant meow.
Kae, nursing his freshly scratched hand, grumbled as the system translated the feline’s final verdict: “Welcome to the Vanguard.”
And thus, beneath the bruised violet sky of a corrupted realm, the wandering diamond was officially brought into the fold.
They were a team of completely broken units—an unranked architect, a reckless knight, a blind-aim nuke, and a cynical feline time-god.
They were not a registered party within the legal bureaucracy of the world…
yet.
But as they turned their eyes toward the distant spires of Oakhaven, the fundamental architecture of the Void had already begun to shift.
The journey continued down the rocky, winding pass, turning into a prolonged tactical lecture mixed with absolute, unmitigated humiliation for Kaelen.
“If we are going to operate like a high-impact corporate syndicate, I need a complete breakdown of the local financial infrastructure,” Kae said, nursing his freshly scratched knuckles while trying to walk with professional authority.
“Lisa, how does the capital flow in this economy?”
Lisa unhitched a small leather pouch from her belt, letting it clink heavily against her armored thigh.
“The base currency is Silver, Kae.
Most common folk, tavern keeps, and low-tier adventurers live and die by silver.
Ten silver pieces make a single day’s decent wage for a farmer.
If you want real economic leverage, though, you look for Gold.”
“Gold?” Karen chimed in, adjusting her round glasses.
Lisa continued with her explanation “Gold is extremely rare.
One gold piece is worth a hundred silver pieces.
Usually, only S-rank or A-rank heroes ever see them directly from high-stakes royal bounties.
The rest of us take up gigs from the Silver-Sieve notice board.
Slay a basic pack of monsters, bring back a fragment of their core as proof, and the guild master pays you out in silver according to the threat level.”
“Gigs are strictly hard-coded to rank,” Lisa added, her tone turning instructional.
“Snake-level threats are for E-ranks—mostly boring escort missions or gathering herbs.
Tiger-level threats go to D and C adventurers.
Dragon-level targets are strictly for C and B squads, and Demon-level threats are reserved for the absolute monsters of A and S class.”
“Fascinating,” Kae murmured
Kae’s eyes flickered as his gamer-brain instantly categorized the tiered reward system.
Snake, Tiger, Dragon, Demon…
A faint, confident smirk touched his lips.
The system rules were identical to his old mental layouts; he already knew how to deconstruct this playbook.
“The power of wealth in any system is driven entirely by leverage,” Kae murmured, his tone dropping into a cold, calculating CEO frequency.
“We aren’t going to spend our lives mindlessly grinding low-tier silver gigs.
We are going to use every available resource, talent, and person on this roster to make the money work for us.
But first, I need to understand the loot mechanics.”
“Monsters drop cores, which are basically crystallized mana,” Lisa explained, tapping her gleaming chest plate.
“But rare-drop monsters can drop fully synthesized gear.
Such as the one I’m wearing myself.
My guild master, Lora, found this impenetrable armor from slaying A ranked monsters in the dungeon.
And she gave it to me on my birthday.”
Kae and Pixel both stopped walking, turning their heads slowly to look at Lisa, then at each other.
The same unified deduction flashed across their minds: That explains why she’s so completely reckless and jumps into every battle without a single defensive strategy.
Her gear is literally carrying her build.
“Hey!
What is that supposed to mean?!” Lisa barked, her face flushing red as she caught the judgment radiating from the cat and the strategist.