Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1082: Bronze-Skinned Warrior

”I can’t give you your old lives back. I’m afraid no one ever will. But a chance to start again...”

He smiled warmly. ”Now that... That might not be impossible.”

Milo waited for him to explain how.

He wanted that chance, even though he couldn’t picture what starting again would look like. Tomorrow he would still wake in this classroom. His parents would still be gone. Yet Kaiden was smiling at him from beneath that bright sky, speaking as if there was something he could do.

Milo was afraid to believe him, but he couldn’t look away.

”When I met Calypso, some of you might remember the indigenous people living where her dungeon broke,” Kaiden continued. ”Just ordinary, non-awakened humans. They had children to raise, people to look after, and no way to protect them from the monsters around their settlement.”

Milo glanced toward the classroom door. He could still hear the other children playing in the gym.

”After the encounter was over, I’d become a Dungeon Master, so I invited these people whose homeland was ruined to come with me.”

He’d taken them home?

Milo looked back at the trees behind Kaiden, trying to imagine the families who had been invited there.

”The land around our palace has room to grow food and build houses,” Kaiden said. ”That’s where they live now, inside my dungeon.”

The dungeon. Milo drew his knees closer to his chest. He knew Kaiden owned one, but the clips he watched showed warriors going into dungeons to kill things. Sometimes they came out carrying people who couldn’t walk anymore.

He couldn’t imagine putting his bed in one.

”I thought I was merely giving them somewhere to live under my protection,” Kaiden continued. ”Then the dungeon offered them something I hadn’t known was possible. A way to become part of that world and grow stronger themselves.”

Milo’s attention returned to his face.

”People who had never awakened were being offered a future with powers of their own. They chose to accept, and they’ve been building that future ever since.”

Kaiden turned toward someone outside the view.

”Taigi, would you join me?”

Sunlight flashed across bronze armor as a warrior strode into view. The plates fitted her powerful shoulders and torso, leaving the muscles of her arms bare. Luminous markings ran along her forearms, bright against her skin, while a saber moved at her hip with every purposeful stride.

”Whoa...”

The word slipped out of Milo before he realized he had spoken. She was magnificent, carrying herself with a confidence that made him watch every step.

Kaiden had been talking about people who needed rescuing. Milo had expected someone who looked frightened, someone he could recognize himself in. The woman approaching the steps filled him with awed admiration; he could imagine running straight to her if a monster came into this room.

At the foot of the steps, Taigi halted before Kaiden and brought her fist against her breastplate in salute to him. Metal rang beneath her knuckles.

”I am at your service, my lord.”

Her voice carried clearly through the broadcast, firm with the same conviction that held her upright before him. She was proud to serve Kaiden, and Milo could hear it in every word.

”Thank you, Taigi.”

At his acknowledgment, she lowered her arm and took her place on the lower step to his left. She remained standing as she turned to face Nyx, who shifted her view to include the warrior beside the seated Dungeon Master.

Milo couldn’t stop looking at her. The saber, the shining armor, the luminous marks on her strong arms... He wanted to know everything about how she had become this woman.

”Taigi leads that community,” Kaiden explained. ”We call them the Dungeon-Born. She’s agreed to let me show you how her life changed after we met.”

”We’re going to play some of Kai’s recordings, using his first-person perspective,” a woman’s voice explained from behind the view.

”Thank you, Nyx.” Kaiden turned to Taigi. ”Would you like to introduce the first one?”

She looked down at her hands before answering.

”It is from the day we met. I would ask you to watch it, even though...” Her fingers pressed together. ”It is difficult for me to see myself there.”

Kaiden waited until she looked toward Nyx and nodded to her.

The sunlit steps vanished.

Firelight filled a crowded hall, where an older man sat with a pipe in his hand. Beside him stood a woman wearing so little that Milo could see her legs shaking. It took him a moment to recognize Taigi without her armor.

”Apologize for your mistake,” the man told her.

She dropped to her knees before the person whose eyes supplied the recording, bowing until her forehead touched the floor.

”I-I... I beg forgiveness. It was my fault. Please... forgive my ignorance...”

Her voice sounded horribly frightened.

Milo waited for someone to explain what she had done. The recording showed the man with the pipe watching her, his expression making the boy wish she would get up and move farther away from him.

Then Kaiden spoke from behind the view.

”I’m not angry with you. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Taigi lifted her head.

The clip ended before she could answer. In the live broadcast, Taigi stood beside Kaiden’s step with the same face as the woman who had begged on the floor. Milo struggled to reconcile them as she began to speak.

”Our chief ordered me to entertain his guest,” she said. ”When it went badly, he blamed me. I was afraid of what would happen after Lord Kaiden left.”

Kaiden’s smile had disappeared.

”Their chief controlled the protection they depended on,” Kaiden explained. ”Leaving him meant facing the monsters outside on their own.”

”He made certain we remembered that,” Taigi added.

Milo looked at the saber at her hip.

”Even after he died, the elders thought they could keep us afraid,” she continued. ”For once, I could speak knowing someone would protect me.”

The next recording showed her standing among a crowd, facing a group of elders. A young woman held her hand while one of the men threatened her for speaking to outsiders.

Taigi’s reply shook at first. As she accused them of helping their chief hurt the people they were meant to protect, other women began speaking too.

Milo found himself leaning toward the image.

She had been so scared in the first recording. He could still hear that fear when she spoke, but the elders kept trying to interrupt her, and she kept going.

The footage changed to a green clearing. People stood beneath the trees, looking at things Milo couldn’t see. Taigi was among them, staring at an unseen window until she lifted her face.

”Combatant.”

Light spread over her hand and climbed her forearms, leaving bright markings against her skin.

”That was when I chose to become a fighter,” Taigi said over the recording. ”Until then, I had never possessed a single combat ability.”

An ape’s furious roar burst from the next clip.

Bronze shields braced across the view as the monster charged. Behind them, archers drew their bows, waiting while Taigi raised her saber.

”Fire!”

Arrows struck the ape as it threw itself against the front line. Its fist crashed into the overlapping shields, forcing the defenders back with a screech of metal, but their companions drove spears through the gaps before it could strike again.