Chapter 55: Promotion
He looked at Rol and Claire with the bright, terrifyingly relaxed expression of a man who held the lives of millions in his hands and found it all rather amusing.
Rol on the other hand was confused. "What do you mean by that? That thing isn’t human... I know I wrote that i saw a human shaped mana at the starting, but it might very well be the other person. There were two of them in that dungeon." He gritted his teeth. "When I saw that thing it had dark mana inside of it..."
"His name is Hide Volter," Maddox said, letting the syllables roll slowly off his tongue.
Rol’s brow furrowed. The name meant absolutely nothing to him, but it did mean that it was a human and this bastard commander knew about it. But why was he telling him this right now?
"He is just, eighteen years old," Maddox continued, picking up a sleek silver pen and twirling it between his fingers. "Awakened just a few weeks ago at the AAA facility in Area 17. An unregistered independent. He has a Unique class—an infinity symbol, to be exact—with an S-Rank potential."
Rol’s breath caught in his throat. An eighteen-year-old kid? The entity that had stood in the center of a blood-soaked citadel, wearing a crown of black metal and commanding an aura that made Rol’s instincts scream... was a teenager who had just awakened?
"But here is the truly fascinating part," Maddox smiled, pointing the pen at Rol. "When he awakened, the boy had absolutely no talent. A complete blank slate. He was, by all government metrics, functionally useless in combat."
"Was?" Rol repeated, his voice tight.
"Was," Maddox confirmed. "As of two days ago, our registry picked up an automatic ping from his official status ring. The talent field that previously read ’None’ has been updated." Maddox’s smile widened, revealing bright white teeth. "It now shows that he has a five-star talent."
The office fell dead silent. Even Claire looked at Maddox with a confused expression, even she didn’t know about this.
Rol stared at the Commander, his mind struggling to process the sheer absurdity of the statement. Five stars.
It was the absolute ceiling of human capability, a tier reserved for monsters and legends. And this kid had walked into a spot dungeon as a talentless nobody, only to walk out a few hours later with the head of a Calamity Lord and a five-star rating.
"As a confirmation, it was not the dungeon completion reward." Maddox nodded, "First time in humanity, someone has awakened a talent days after awakening their class. Isn’t that fascinating. Well, unique classes never fail to shock us, do they?"
Rol slowly turned his head to look at Claire.
She was leaning against the panoramic glass window, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression an impenetrable, professional mask.
"You knew," Rol said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "You knew exactly who he was, and you let me stand there talking about him like he was an anomalous beast."
"My report was classified directly to the Commander, Rol," Claire said softly, her red eyes meeting his without a hint of apology. "I was doing my job."
Rol’s hands curled into tight fists at his sides. Shigo had died in that dungeon. His flesh had been torn apart by rotted wolves while Rol had been forced to turn his gun on an unknown entity that turned out to be a human kid. A kid Claire knew about.
"Enough bickering, you two," Maddox sighed, dropping the pen onto the desk. He reached into a drawer and pulled out two thick envelopes stamped with the NEA’s golden crest, tossing them onto the polished wood.
"We have a more pressing issue," Maddox said, his tone shifting. "The World Exterminator Ranking Tournament is taking place in exactly two months. It’s an open category this year. I want a full NEA team entered, and the two of you are going to be on it."
Claire blinked, pushing off the window. "The World Tournament? Sir, we usually only send our top and most powerful Exterminators—"
"This year is different," Maddox interrupted, his voice leaving no room for argument. "And Captain Rol—" Maddox looked at him, his youthful face completely serious for a fraction of a second. "You survived a mutated spot dungeon and brought back invaluable field data. Effective immediately, you are promoted. You’re a Major now. Try not to look so depressed about it."
Rol stared at him, the sudden promotion hitting him like whiplash. Major. It was what he had been working toward for four years. But right now, it felt like a bribe to keep his mouth shut.
"Now get out," Maddox said cheerfully, clapping his hands together and looking at his reflection in the dark screen of his monitor to fix his hair. "I have a meeting with a very special client in ten minutes, and I need to look my absolute best. Dismissed."
The hallway outside was long, opulent, and suffocatingly quiet.
Rol and Claire walked side by side toward the executive lifts. Rol held the golden envelope in his hand, his knuckles white from how hard he was gripping it. The anger he had been suppressing inside Maddox’s office was beginning to boil over, hot and bitter in his chest.
They reached the elevator. The thick metal doors slid open, and they both stepped inside.
The moment the doors sealed shut, cutting them off from the rest of the world, the heavy silence shattered.
Rol moved. He stepped squarely into Claire’s space, his larger frame blocking the overhead light, and slammed his forearm against the glass wall right beside her head.
He pinned her there, not violently enough to hurt her, but with a sudden, overwhelming intensity that made her breath hitch.
Claire looked up at him, her piercing red eyes widening slightly. They were inches apart. He could smell the faint scent of her floral perfume, the same scent that had distracted him back in the academy.
But right now, there was no secret crush fluttering in his chest. There was only the raw, bleeding grief of losing a man under his command.
"You knew who he was, huh," Rol growled, his voice a low, dangerous rasp through clenched teeth.
Claire didn’t look away, nor did she push him off. She just stared up at him, her expression softening into something complicated. "Rol..."
"Shigo died in that dirt," Rol said, his voice trembling slightly before he forced it to harden. "I don’t care about the old man’s tournament. I don’t care about the promotion." He leaned in a fraction closer, his grey eyes boring into hers. "I wanna meet this Hide too. For some quiet talk, that is."
Claire held his gaze for a long, heavy moment.
"You will," she whispered.