A New Foundation
Dinner at the Harris household was an exercise in practiced normalcy.
The scent of a savory meat stew, a recipe Laura had perfected over the years, filled the small dining room. It was a familiar comfort in a home defined by a quiet, unspoken history.
From his seat at the table, Cole observed the quiet, intersecting orbits of his new family. He wasn't just a son and brother; he was a project manager analyzing the components of a complex, pre-existing system.
Eight years.
It had been eight years since the Dungeon Break that had shattered their world and reforged it into its current shape. The raw edges of grief had long since been smoothed over by the relentless grind of daily life.
Death, in this world, was not a shocking anomaly. It was a known occupational hazard, a variable to be factored into every long-term plan. This family had learned to build on the ground they had left.
Leo, his younger brother, was a testament to that philosophy. He attacked his food with the same single-minded focus he applied to his training dummies in the backyard.
He was a straightforward machine of input and output: calories and practice went in, and tangible physical strength came out.
His dream was as clear and unadorned as polished steel: to become a swordsman who surpassed their father.
It wasn't a chase for glory or fame. Cole could see that clearly. It was a purely practical goal. In a world where dungeons could spill monsters into a city street, a strong sword arm was the ultimate form of security.
It was Leo's chosen method for ensuring the variable that had deleted his father from the equation would never affect his remaining family.
Across from him, Mia moved with a quiet, deliberate efficiency that represented a different kind of strength.
She was an archer by training, a discipline that perfectly mirrored her personality—precise, analytical, and focused on hitting a distant target. The bow she practiced with daily was a symbol of her methodology.
Her parents, the Campbells, had been the strategists of their party, renowned logistics specialists who understood that a battle could be won or lost long before the first sword was drawn.
Their deaths alongside David Harris were, in Mia's analytical mind, proof that even the best-laid plans could be shattered by a flawed overarching system. She had been adopted by the Harris family at eight years old, a girl left with nothing, and had spent the next eight years building a fortress of control and competence around herself.
Therefore, her long-term goal was not on the battlefield. She aimed to secure a high-ranking administrative position within the Hunter Association.
She would not be the sword; she would be the hand that guided it, the mind that supplied it. She intended to be the person who ensured the system never failed its hunters again.
At the head of the table sat Laura, the anchor of their small world.
She was not a grieving widow lost in the past. She was a retired Upper C-Rank veteran who had pragmatically transitioned to a new phase of her life.
Her current job as an instructor at a local, low-tier hunter preparatory school was the perfect fit. It utilized her years of hard-won experience, provided a stable income to supplement the Association pension, and, most importantly, kept her far from the high-risk dungeons that had claimed her husband.
Her dream for her children was the simplest and perhaps the most difficult of all: for them to live. For them to find happiness and stability on a path that didn't lead to a hero's grave.
This was the complex, interconnected reality Cole had inherited. A family of planners and practitioners, each pursuing a different path born from the same tragedy, all orbiting a quiet center of shared loss.
Later that night, long after the house had settled into a quiet hum, Cole locked his bedroom door.
The profits from his Aetheric Solutions venture, a silent and steady stream of credits, had been successfully wired to an anonymous account. His first major purchase had been delivered discreetly a week ago: a personal, low-grade Index scanner.
It was time for an objective assessment.
He held the cool, metallic device to his chest. A holographic screen flickered to life, its blue light sterile and impartial. It displayed his status with the cold, unforgiving logic of a machine.
[Cole Harris]
Rank: F
Strength: F
Constitution: F-
Dexterity: F
Stamina: F
Mana: F+
Spirit: D-
He stared at the screen, a slow, clinical smile touching his lips. It was exactly the contradictory mess he had expected.
A project manager's joy was in seeing the data, no matter how flawed, because data could be analyzed. It could be acted upon.
The physical stats were a brutal but honest report on the body he'd inherited. A pathetic F across the board, with a Constitution so low it was actively detrimental to any serious training.
The original Cole had treated his body like a disposable container for his mind.
The F+ in Mana was the only legacy of that boy, a slight attunement gained from years of obsessive theoretical study.
But the Spirit stat was the anomaly. A D-.
It was the ghost of his past life, quantified. It was the hardened resilience of a twenty-eight-year-old project manager who had weathered corporate ambushes, stared down impossible deadlines, and managed teams of cynical developers.
His soul was an overclocked, modern processor shoved into a decade-old motherboard. It was an advantage no one in this world could have predicted, a line of code they didn't even know existed.
This was his true starting capital.
He navigated to the device's diagnostic sub-menu, the place that showed the raw data beneath the letter grades, the numbers the public-facing system didn't bother to display.
Mana Recovery Rate: 0.8 units/minute.
There it was. The synergy.
His D- Spirit, a remnant of his past life as a project manager, provided the unwavering focus needed to perfectly execute the complex pathways of [River Flows]
In turn, this technique allowed for a mana recovery rate nearly triple the average for his F-Rank core.
It was a perfect, self-sustaining engine of growth, hidden under a hood of absolute mediocrity.
Cole shut down the scanner, the blue light vanishing into the darkness.
The data confirmed his path forward.
Leo could have his sword. Mia could have her bow and her bureaucracy. They were playing the game this world had set out for them, following established paths to power.
He, however, was going to play a different game entirely.
A game with rules only he understood.
He had the family for a foundation. He had the funds for resources. And now, he had the hard data for a blueprint.
The foundation was set.
It was time to build.