Chapter 33: THE LEGACY APPLICATION
The high-sector glass towers of the Vance Clan headquarters gleamed like monolithic ice spires against the dark midnight sky.
Inside the executive wing on the top floor, the air was pristine, chilled to a precise, luxurious temperature, smelling faintly of expensive ozone filters and roasted coffee. Massive panoramic windows overlooked the endless, glittering neon expanse of Sentinel City.
Evelyn Vance stood before the primary central pedestal of her private clan office.
She had not even paused to change out of her midnight-blue combat uniform. Her pale-blue hair was still damp from the sector’s rain, but her glacial eyes burned with a bright, triumphant fire. Across her mind, the memory of Noah Kurtz’s quiet, unflinching guidance amidst the Cinder Hound swarm played on a continuous loop.
She opened the high-level corporate interface, her slender fingers tapping rapidly against the glowing glass pedestal.
[Vance Clan Executive Board - Vanguard Integration Protocol]
Form Type: Direct Executive Sponsorship
Sponsoring Authority: Evelyn Vance (A-Rank / Legacy Heir)
Candidate Name: Noah Kurtz
Proposed Allocation: Personal Vanguard Unit - Lead Tactical Strategist
Priority Override: Grade-1 (Bypasses Clan Elder Preliminary Vetting)
Evelyn didn’t hesitate. She pressed her golden legacy authority card into the pedestal slot, authorizing the priority override with her own bloodline credentials.
Her heart traced an eager, rapid rhythm beneath her uniform. For years, her family had treated her as nothing more than a living weapon, a high-yield A-Rank metric designed to elevate the Vance name. But with Noah by her side—a man who saw through the chaos of the wilderness with terrifying, ancient clarity—she felt an intoxicating sense of purpose.
She was going to pull him straight out of the lower-district mud and place him on the high frontiers beside her.
"Processing sponsorship request," the gentle, automated voice of the office terminal chimed softly.
[System Status: Accessing International Hunter Association Mainframe]
Query: Target Profile Verification (’Noah Kurtz’)
Target ID: #8092-NK-Sentinel
Retrieving Systemic Evaluation Data...
Evelyn turned toward the window, a soft, breathtaking smile touching her lips as she looked down at the glittering city below. In her mind, she could already picture Noah standing right next to her in this office, his worn coat replaced by an elite Vance Clan uniform, his calm gray eyes looking at the high frontiers with her.
Beep.
A sudden, sharp red warning light flashed across the office walls.
The soft ambient lighting of the executive room dimmed, replaced by the harsh, mechanical pulse of a systemic validation error.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM REJECTION: Executive Sponsorship Invalidation]
Candidate: Noah Kurtz
Official System Rank: F
Registered Trait: Memory Cabinet
Evaluation: Archival utility skill. Zero combat application. Zero evolutionary growth potential.
Reason for Denial: Section 4, Clause 12 of Corporate Clan Charter — Sponsoring an F-Rank utility awakener into a frontline A-Rank vanguard unit is strictly illegal.
Evelyn Vance froze.
The soft, triumphant smile on her face vanished in a single microsecond. Her body turned completely rigid as she slowly turned her head back toward the holographic screen floating above her desk.
The giant blue letters [Rank: F] glowed with a static, unyielding finality, casting a cold, garish glare over her pristine office.
"F... Rank?" Evelyn whispered, her voice cracking as if she had been hit by a physical strike to her chest.
Her mind short-circuited. She blinked rapidly, her slender fingers reaching out to touch the glass interface as if expecting a technical malfunction, a system glitch, or an error in the International Association’s database.
"No... that’s impossible," Evelyn muttered, her breathing turning shallow and ragged. "The system... the system made a mistake. He guided my casting vector! He read the thermodynamic friction of Sector 21 with 100% precision! He... he handled absolute-zero pressure without flinching!"
She frantically tapped the pedestal, forcing the mainframe to re-run the systemic background check.
[System Re-Verification Complete]
Status: Confirmed.
Registry Record: Late-awakening evaluation verified at Seoul Branch. Baseline mana output: Non-variable. Evolutionary cap: Absolute.
The cold, uncompromising reality of modern civilization slammed into her chest like a mountain of ice.
An F-Rank. The absolute bottom of the evolutionary ladder. A man whose official talent was nothing more than a glorified mental filing cabinet for paperwork.
In her world—the performance-driven, legacy-obsessed hierarchy of the elite corporate clans—an F-Rank was not just weak. An F-Rank was a definitive evolutionary dead end. It was a label that drew mocking laughter from rival guilds, a badge of uselessness that doomed a person to spend their entire life organizing dusty boxes in lower-district archives.
The romantic, breathtaking illusion that had built up inside her mind across the past few weeks shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
The image of the "hidden tactical master" who stood outside society crumbled instantly, replaced by the brutal, modern truth: Noah Kurtz was simply an uncoordinated, late-awakening commoner with a stable mind and a lucky knack for reading structural terrain.
Evelyn felt a wave of nausea wash over her, followed by a sudden, violent surge of deep-seated humiliation.
She had stood in a black-market lounge with him. She had opened her heart to him. She had trusted his whispers in the dark, completely convinced she was standing beside an unranked legend—and she had just submitted a Grade-1 Executive Override to her family council for an F-Rank logistics clerk.
If the clan elders saw this form, she would become the ultimate laughingstock of the entire eastern megacity. Her position as the legacy heir of the Vance Clan would be permanently tarnished.
"An F-Rank..." Evelyn spat out, her pristine voice dropping into a terrifyingly cold, trembling whisper.
The soft, vulnerable warmth that had bloomed inside her chest during their quiet moments in Sector 21 froze over completely. In its place, the rigid, status-obsessed conditioning of her bloodline surged back with venomous, unchecked authority.
Her pride, her legacy, and her family name could not tolerate a stain like this.
Evelyn slammed her gloved palm down onto the pedestal, violently terminating the sponsorship application.
[Executive Sponsorship Request: CANCELED]
She stood alone in the cold, dark executive office, her knuckles white as she clutched the edge of the glass pedestal, her glacial blue eyes burning with a bitter, ice-cold fury directed straight toward the dark streets of District 7 below.
"A PATHETIC F-RANK TRASH"