The Claes family's life had once been a peaceful one, a portrait of a small, harmonious household in a quiet corner of Orario, until the head of the family, Huey, tried his luck at the gambling table. What began as idle curiosity quickly curdled into an addiction that ate away at his better judgment, pulling him into a spiral of events far darker than he had ever imagined.
"I had no choice... At that point, there was nothing else I could do! Why else would I have put Anna, my own daughter, up as collateral?" Huey said in a hollow voice. His battered frame seemed to sink further into the chair, a physical reflection of the collapse happening inside him.
In halting, broken sentences, Huey described how he had reached the lowest point of his life, how the daughter he and Karen had raised together had become a bargaining chip, and how he had lost everything.
"..."
Charlie made no effort to conceal the contempt in his gaze.
(Why do people never understand the simple truth that no one gets rich from gambling except the house?)
As a former police officer in his previous life, Charlie had dealt with countless gamblers who had lost everything, not just their assets, but their humanity along with it. He knew all too well that once a person was truly trapped in the depths of compulsive gambling, the decision-making parts of their mind had already broken down. They no longer saw moral value or love. They saw only assets that could be placed on the table for one more chance.
"..."
Syr rested her hand on Karen's shoulder in quiet comfort, her eyes glistening with restrained sympathy.
Around them, Anya and the other waitresses had stopped working, staring with expressions of disbelief at the ugliness of what they were hearing.
"What do you mean you had no choice?! This happened because you played with fire from the very beginning!" Karen snapped, turning her remaining strength into blame directed squarely at her husband.
"B-but at first they said it was just a casual game! Then I kept losing, and the mood shifted completely! They threatened to kick down our door if I couldn't cover my losses. One thing led to another, and I couldn't back out anymore..."
Catching the tears beginning to well in Karen's eyes, Huey swallowed the rest of his excuses. It was plain enough. He had lost the final and most important gamble of his life, his home and his daughter in a single hand.
That morning, a group of thugs had come and dragged Anna away. Karen, disoriented and thrown out of her own home, had nowhere else to go but the one place that felt safe to her, the Hostess of Fertility.
When Huey followed and filled in the rest of the details, a fierce argument had broken out between them, and that was where Charlie had stepped in.
"The others involved in this bet, were they by any chance adventurers?" Syr asked gently, though her tone carried a quiet thread of investigation beneath it.
"Yes, a group of troublemakers from several different Familias." Huey answered wearily. "They kept threatening me, staring at me with these hungry, bloodthirsty eyes. They said that if I was wagering my beloved daughter, they would give me one final chance to turn things around."
Hearing that candid but devastatingly foolish admission, Karen folded forward over the table again, her face buried in her hands as the sobbing returned harder than before.
"You have absolutely no shame..."
Karen's weeping became the only sound filling the uneasy silence around their table.
Huey, fully aware of how deeply he had failed as a father and as a husband, could only lower his head over and over again into a torment of quiet.
(Wait a moment... something about this is deeply wrong.)
Charlie had seen patterns like this before in his past life, an entrapment scheme far too neat to be coincidence.
Ryuu, who had remained standing behind Syr, appeared to be arriving at the same conclusion. She had caught the irregularities in Huey's account and stepped slightly forward to confirm what she was beginning to suspect.
"Your daughter, Anna... could you tell us a little more about her?"
Karen and Huey lifted their heads at the same time, exchanging a brief glance before answering.
"Well, as I said before, she's the pride and joy of our lives." Huey said quietly.
"She's beautiful and kind-hearted. A little reserved, but truly a good girl." Karen added, dabbing at her eyes and speaking with a warmth that was entirely genuine.
Syr gave an encouraging nod, prompting them gently to continue.
"In the western district, she has quite a remarkable reputation. Several gods have even approached her directly in the past. She always turned them down politely, with something like, 'Please don't tease me,' and so on." Karen said it with a small flicker of the pride she still carried.
Hearing that, Ryuu began fitting the pieces together in her mind.
"A pleasant nature and striking enough to catch a god's eye at a glance. And her work takes her through the city regularly, often enough to be noticed by anyone keeping watch..."
Charlie tapped his finger slowly on the table, drawing the thread he had been suspecting toward its logical conclusion.
"They were never after your money, Uncle. Anna was their target from the start." He said with certainty, his eyes cold and sharp as they settled on Huey, who now looked stunned by the weight of his own obliviousness.
The words landed like a blow. Karen and Huey went rigid. The grief and regret that had filled their faces shifted into something rawer, into real horror. The idea that their daughter had not simply been an unfortunate piece of collateral but a planned and deliberate target made the blood drain from their faces.
"A t-target? You mean... they set me up on purpose so they could take Anna?" Huey asked, his voice shaking, the full measure of how thoroughly he had been led into someone else's trap finally becoming clear.
Charlie leaned back, his eyes fixed steadily on the couple.
"Ma'am. Uncle. Think about it clearly. Anna's beauty is extraordinary. She holds her own against the most well-known female adventurers in this city, and honestly, she surpasses most of them."
He paused just long enough to let that settle.
"But beauty without strength is a curse in this city. It makes her an easy mark. To people with bad intentions, Anna is a valuable commodity that would fetch a high price, especially since she's an ordinary civilian with no Familia standing behind her."
Anya, passing by with an empty tray, stopped and gave a grim nod. "That's true, nya. A sweet and pretty girl like her would be sold off to the Entertainment District or an underground auction straight away. Who knows what those scoundrels are doing to her right now, nya."
Karen gripped her husband's arm tightly, tears flowing again.
"Have you tried asking the Guild or Ganesha Familia for help?"
"There's no hope in that."
Karen shook her head slowly, without energy, dismissing Syr's suggestion of turning to the city's highest administrative authority or the Familia responsible for Orario's security.
"This city receives reports like ours every single day. Neither the Guild nor Ganesha Familia will be able to respond quickly to a missing person case involving ordinary civilians when there is no evidence of large-scale violence."
Even if they attempted to post an unofficial request to independent adventurers, it would only end in heartbreak. They had lost everything. They had no money to offer a reward worthy of the risk to an adventurer's life.
"If only... if only Astraea Familia were still here..."
At the sound of Karen's soft whisper, Ryuu, standing nearby, gave an almost imperceptible flinch. She fought hard to keep the storm rising inside her from showing on her ice-cold face as the name of her old home was spoken with such longing.
"Stop it. Don't talk about a Familia that no longer exists..." Huey cut in with a rough voice, trying to silence his wife's hollow hope.
"But if Astraea-sama were here, I know she would have helped people like us! She would never have allowed justice to be trampled like this! Why... why did such a kind and wonderful Familia have to disappear?"
The anguished cry left her trembling, and Karen clutched her chest as though her heart had just been wrung in someone's fist.
Huey turned his face away, staring into the middle distance with empty eyes, while the painful silence settled over their table once more.
Astraea Familia. A name that had once been a symbol of hope, its crest a winged sword of justice gleaming with light. During the Dark Age, when the chaos of Evilus ran rampant through Orario, they had stood at the front line upholding the law, standing against oppressors, and serving as a shield for the weak.
But that faction of justice had long since vanished from the city's history, leaving behind a wound that still had not closed in the heart of the one survivor left standing in this pub.
Ryuu stood motionless as Karen's weeping filled the room. Syr, Anya, and the other staff who knew the dark truth of her past watched her with complicated expressions, somewhere between sympathy and a sorrow they could not bring themselves to release.
Behind the busy counter, Mia kept working without turning around. She gave the appearance of someone who had gone deaf, making no acknowledgment of the conversation, as though keeping deliberate distance from the emotional weight that was beginning to saturate the air.
Ryuu questioned herself in the deepest and most private part of her heart.
(I stopped. No more acting the hero for strangers without cause. I decided I would only act for the people around me. Nothing more. Nothing less. I can no longer be the one who carries that heavy standard of justice.)
She thought back to the storm of vengeance that had once consumed her entirely. But then the image of her goddess's smile, warm and full of love for every lost soul, came back to her unbidden, alongside the faces of the familia members she had lost. And above all, the face of a red-haired girl, her closest friend, the one she had once quarreled with so fiercely.
"If you ever feel lost, stop overcomplicating everything! Just be honest with yourself!"
Without warning, the falna etched on her back gave a sharp, aching pulse.
Ryuu closed her sky-blue eyes and let out a quiet breath, unable any longer to hide behind her expressionless face the emotion that was spilling over.
But in the middle of that heavy silence, Charlie suddenly stood. His voice broke through the stillness of the pub and caught everyone off guard.
"Don't worry, Uncle, Ma'am. On the name of Hera Familia, I swear I will bring Anna back before sunrise."
The moment that bold declaration landed, Anya rushed over with a worried look on her face.
"Please, customer, don't be rash, nya! This is dangerous! There are surely many parties involved, and there are very likely Rank Two Adventurers among them!"
"Rank Two Adventurers? Are they worth calling obstacles?"
As he said it, Charlie tapped the earring on his left ear, canceling the transformation magic that had been concealing his identity. In an instant, the black hair dissolved back into gleaming white. In a single moment, everyone in the pub recognized the person standing before them.
"Nya! That's Solo Leveling!" Anya cried out, her eyes going wide.
Runoa rolled her eyes and elbowed Anya firmly. "Didn't you hear him mention Hera Familia just now? Who else in Orario right now has a reputation like that besides him?"
Syr moved quickly to wrap an arm around Karen's still-trembling shoulders. "Calm yourself, Karen-san. Everything will be alright now. Charlie-san is extraordinarily capable, and because he has given his word, consider it done. Your daughter will come home."
Karen looked up at Charlie, her tear-filled eyes suddenly bright with new hope. She took his hand and held it tightly. "Thank you... thank you so much, Charlie. It turns out Anna was right to have feelings for someone like you."
"Eh? Anna has feelings for Solo Leveling?!" Anya shrieked, even more startled than before. "Won't this rescue be incredibly dramatic for her then? Like a white knight riding in to bring a princess home from a dark tower, nyaaa!"
*THUD!*
Runoa knocked her knuckles firmly against Anya's head. "Use your brain, Anya! It's perfectly normal for plenty of women in Orario to have feelings for Solo Leveling. He's not only handsome, he's extraordinarily powerful. Who wouldn't fall for a man who can guarantee your safety in a city like this?"
"Leave it to me."
Charlie gave the Claes couple a single quiet nod, then walked toward the door. The easygoing air he had carried all evening was gone, replaced by the cold stillness of a predator stepping out into the dark of Orario's night.
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