Kaiden leaned back into the couch, arms stretched behind Aria and Luna as Rae and Riven wrapped up their unexpected info drop. His smile lingered, but his thoughts drifted.
Level 72. A-Tier Awakened. Both of them.
That put the twins just below the true monsters, the rare S-Tiers that sat at the top of the food chain. Powerhouses capable of shifting battlefields by themselves. It was an elite bracket that only a handful of people in the country could even dream of.
Kaiden exhaled slowly.
Riven and Rae were strong. Incredibly strong. But not invincible.
That was important to remember.
Still, Kaiden wasnât ungrateful. Quite the opposite. For what it was worth, the government had done a lot. Theyâd provided this high-tech house. A reinforced bunker disguised as a basement. Equipment, surveillance protections, a direct line to federal support... and now these two absurdly powerful bodyguard twins.
But Kaiden wasnât naĂŻve enough to think all of this was purely for his safety.
They werenât just protecting him and the girls.
They were watching them.
The USA got next to nothing from him or his team. Not loyalty, not allegiance, not taxes, not even direct cooperation. They werenât registered members of any domestic guild, association, or research initiative. Just private citizens with too many unknowns.
So really, from the governmentâs point of view, this whole setup wasnât charity.
It was containment.
A comfortable cage with nice furniture.
Kaiden glanced toward the hallway. It wasnât just a bunker: it was probably lined with enough scanners, sensors, and passive surveillance tech to feed a monthâs worth of data into whatever black site lab had clearance for their case files.
And Riven and Rae?
They werenât exactly prison wardens, but they werenât here solely to play bodyguard either, he was sure of it. He liked the pair a lot, but if they didnât have instructions to âkeep an eye on them,â then he would be shocked to the very core.
Kaiden could swiftly decipher the thought process of the Awakened Association in assigning them these protections. If someone small-time came sniffing around, the twins would crush them before the alarm even blared. They could protect Valhallaâs Sinners from almost all threats, and they could sleep in peace in the bunkerâs safe walls.
But if something serious came knocking? A black-ops team. An S-tier threat. A foreign nationâs elite strike squad?
Then all theyâd be really good for is stalling.
Buy time. Raise the alarm. Hold the line just long enough for the real hitters of the USA to mobilize. Because giving a team like his 24/7 protection by true S-rankers? That just wasnât going to happen.
Scarlet, the Flame Monarch?
She wasnât going to spend her days standing on Kaidenâs porch with a clipboard and sunglasses. People like her were treated as national assets, used sparingly and strategically, not babysitting unaligned wildcards. Furthermore, she wasnât even a government agent but a free awakened, hiring her services for such a work wouldâve likely bankrupted the country sooner or later.
But despite this, Kaiden smiled faintly to himself.
Why?
Because this was fine.
He didnât expect to be given anything more. Not when they were still flying so far outside the systemâs lines. He was just glad the current arrangement didnât come with more strings or veiled threats.
The only thing he had to give up was privacy. And sure, it stung badly, but compared to being kidnapped, dissected, or drafted? That was a bargain. They could retake their privacy once they were strong enough to protect themselves.
He looked toward the twins again. Raeâs mischievous grin as she was sending little kisses to Rivenâs unamused cheeks, who was trying to throw the tanned woman off of her.
Kaiden gave a quiet nod to himself.
This was good. He could work with this.
Then, for just the briefest of moments, he mulled over the other information he learned about the newcomer pair.
Constructrix and Rendrix.
Kaiden turned the names over in his mind like puzzle pieces that didnât quite fit yet. He couldnât say much about what they were truly capable of, not without seeing them in action, but the way Riven had described their dynamic left no doubt.
A sync class duo.
Classes that werenât just complementary, but designed to function together. Like two halves of a living machine.
Riven built, Rae broke. One created order, the other thrived in chaos. Individually strong, maybe, but together? Something significantly more terrifying.
That kind of synergy wasnât common.
But it wasnât unheard of.
In a strange way... his own team was a version of that.
His Valkyries... their classes had been born from him. From his bond with each of them. Aria, Luna, Nyx... their strength didnât come from external awakenings. It came from him. From his system. His growth.
But their classes werenât tethered the same way he expected Riven and Rae to be. At least, not exactly.
They didnât need to be right beside him to fight at full strength. Their powers didnât short-circuit if he stepped out of the room.
If he had to guess... even if he died, theyâd probably still keep their powers.
Probably.
But there was no telling for sure. The system was unpredictable. And the bond they shared... it wasnât just emotional. It was something deeper. Magical. Structural.
He exhaled slowly, mulling over the contrast.
Riven and Rae were bound by blood. Structure. Specialization.
His Valkyries were bound by him.
By belief. By love. By whatever strange rules his system decided to follow.
âWell, with that out of the way... Letâs see,â he thought inwardly, glancing at the clock on the wall.
âItâs been about 12 hours since I uploaded the video. Most of the world shouldâve already been notified of what had happened, as from what Iâd been told, weâve been making the news all over the globe... Well, some dictatorships did do their best to censor the news, such as the damned Chinese... So no 1.4 billion viewers by default...â
His hands formed into tight fists, and he suddenly felt a very strong urge to deliver a strong punch to a certain Winnie the Pooh-looking prime minister, but he calmed his heart.
âDonât get greedy, Kaiden... You canât have it all... Well, you can, but only once you become strong enough. Anyhow. Thanks to the widespread media coverage, the biggest burst of views my monster subjugation video gathers will have already arrived. Of course, itâll keep growing greatly in the future, too... hehehe...â
Having finished his inner thoughts, Kaiden stretched his arms with a lazy grin.
"Alright, girls... Letâs do this together."