Heroine-Saving System: Reborn In A Third-Rate Manga As The Protagonist

"I heard the guy dropped ten million in cash just to kick the Trade Syndicate delegates out of their suites," a female guard with short-cropped black hair replied, clipping a pair of mana-infused combat daggers to her tactical belt. "And get this... the kitchen server on the 85th floor told me he casually wrote her a hundred-thousand-Crown cheque just for delivering a fucking dessert tray!"

The third guard, a tall guy leaning against a rifle rack, let out a dry bitter laugh.

"A hundred grand for delivering cake? Fuck’s sake. If I knew the guy was handing out life-changing money for basic room service, I would’ve put on a maid dress and brought the tray up myself. Hell, I’d sell my body to him if he threw a million my way."

The guards chuckled, though the laughter carried a heavy underlying bitterness that hung thick in the air.

All of them were graduates from ALI Academy’s last semester.

In Keropolis Supercity, graduating from ALI Academy was supposed to be the golden ticket to an elite untouchable life.

But reality was far harsher than the recruitment brochures suggested.

The prodigies from Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 were immediately snapped up by major continental megacorporations, imperial military units, or high-tier noble houses.

Class 4 graduates secured respectable positions in regional guilds.

But Class 5? Class 5 was the trash heap.

These four guards had barely managed to scrape through their final evaluations.

They were three-liners and four-liners... Awakened whose Crest potential had hit a hard insurmountable ceiling.

Their mana channels were too narrow, their physical output capped and their spiritual cores incapable of higher expansion.

When the emergency call went out for Awakened graduates to join the front lines in the Outer Zone monster war, they panicked.

They lacked the talent, the guts, and the strength to survive in the wilderness against feral beasts.

So, instead of risking their lives against monsters like real Awakened, they took the easy, cowardly way out... signing corporate security contracts with The Sovereign Grand Hotel.

They got to wear shiny white armor, stand in air-conditioned hallways, and pretend to be "elite protectors" while their true combat potential rotted in the mud.

"Man..." the female guard sighed, leaning her head back against the locker and staring up at the fluorescent ceiling lights. "I wish Amagi Koya had been born a few years earlier."

The other three guards quieted down, nods of wistful agreement rippling through them.

"Right?" the tall guard agreed, his voice filled with deep envy. "If Koya had been in our graduating year... man, Class 5 wouldn’t have been a joke. Did you see the videos? The guy literally carries his entire class on his back. If we had someone like him leading us back then, we wouldn’t be stuck working security for rich snobs..."

"He’s a monster," the first guard muttered, adjusting his helmet. "Guys like Koya are born under lucky stars. People like us? We never had a chance... Talent is everything in this world. If you aren’t born with it, you’re just trash."

Standing near the far weapon rack, silently strapping on her elbow guards, was the fifth member of their security unit... a quiet woman named Emi.

She stood with her back turned to them with her short black hair shadowing her face.

But as she listened to the four guards endlessly whine about their lack of talent, blaming the universe, and wishing for a savior like Koya to carry their useless weight, a subtle violent twitch touched her jaw.

Slowly, Emi turned around.

When she raised her head, her face was completely emotionless.

But her eyes... normally a dull lifeless brown were glowing with a cold lethal intensity that didn’t belong to the timid girl they knew.

"How pathetic," Emi said.

Her voice wasn’t her usual soft stuttering tone... It was a razor-sharp alto that cut through the quiet room like a cold steel blade.

The four guards froze, turning their heads in surprise.

"What did you say, Emi?" the tall guard asked, frowning in confusion.

"I said you are pathetic," Emi repeated, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. Her gloved hands rested casually near her thighs. "You sit here in your expensive hotel armor, making pathetic excuses for your own laziness... You invalidate every single shred of effort you’ve ever made in your miserable lives, whining that ’talent is everything’ and wishing Amagi Koya had been born earlier to carry your useless weights."

Her glare hardened, dripping with utter contempt.

"Amagi Koya... who gives a damn if he’s talented?! Who cares if he’s a four liner?! The world doesn’t owe you a savior! If you want something in this life, you take it with your own hands! You need to be confident in your own strength, you sniveling cowards!"

The female guard’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "Emi... what the hell is wrong with you? Did you hit your head or something?"

The tall guard took a step toward her with his hand dropping to his shock-baton. But as his eyes swept over her neck, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

Beneath Emi’s white armor collar, a dark line of dried blood was visible. And more importantly... the subtle mana frequency vibrating off her body was completely different from Emi’s weak three-liner signature.

It was sharp and dripping with raw killing intent.

"Wait..." the tall guard gasped, his blood running cold. "You’re... you’re not Emi!"

"Where is she?!" the first guard barked, drawing his mana-blade with a metallic sound. "Where’s Emi, you bitch?!"

The impostor didn’t answer with words. A cold vicious smirk stretched across her stolen face.

She was Val... the dagger specialist from the Night-Hound Strike Unit.

Two minutes ago, while the hotel was initiating its emergency lockdown, Val had silently ambushed the real Emi in a dark service corridor outside the security room.

She had driven a razor-thin dagger straight through Emi’s throat from behind, killing her instantly, stripping her of her uniform, and applying a high-grade flesh-shifting illusion mask to take her place.

"Emi is rotting in a linen closet..." Val spat coldly.

"YOU BITCH!"

The tall guard exploded forward with explosive speed with his black crests igniting on his right cheek.

His four-liner physical enhancement surged through his muscles as he raised a heavy armored fist, swinging it straight at Val’s face with bone-shattering force.

BOOM!

Val didn’t have time to fully dodge in the cramped quarters of the prep room.

She raised her armored forearms to cross-block, but the raw force of the four-liner guard’s punch smashed through her guard.

The heavy fist struck her cleanly across the left side of her jaw.

CRACK!

The flesh-shifting illusion mask shattered instantly under the impact, peeling away in a shower of glowing magical sparks to reveal Val’s true face... her sharp fierce eyes, spiky short hair, and the jagged scar running along her lip.

The force launched Val sideways across the room. She crashed violently into a heavy reinforced steel mana-tank mounted against the wall, bending the thick metal inward with a sickening dent.

"Ghk—!" Val gasped with a spray of bright crimson blood bursting from her lips as she hit the hard concrete floor.

Her left cheek instantly swelled, the skin torn and bleeding profusely.

The four hotel guards immediately formed a tight battle line, drawing their weapons... two heavy alloy riot shields, a crackling lightning-infused spear, and twin mana-daggers.

Their eyes burned with furious vengeful rage.

"Infiltrating our security room and killing our teammate?!" the female guard spat, her lightning spear humming with lethal blue voltage. "You dirty, bounty-hunting scum! You think you can just walk in here and look down on us?!"

"Kill her!" the lead guard roared. "Tear her to pieces!"

Val lay on the cold floor, coughing up a mouthful of dark blood with her vision swimming from the severe head impact.

She looked up at the four hotel guards charging toward her in perfect veteran synchronization, their weapons raised and their mana auras flaring together.

’They’re strong...’ Val thought, her teeth clenching until her gums bled.

Even though these guards were failures who had given up on the front lines, they were still veteran black crest users.

They possessed years of squad coordination, superior hotel-funded equipment, and pure physical stats that outclassed Val’s raw output.

SWISH!

The female guard thrust her lightning spear straight at Val’s throat, the crackling blue electricity ionizing the air with the smell of ozone.

Val threw her body to the right in a desperate frantic rolling dodge.

BOOM!

The spear tip struck the concrete floor where Val’s head had been a second prior, blasting a crater into the stone and sending a wave of electric backlash surging through the air.

The stray voltage caught Val cleanly across the left side of her face.

"AAAAAAAGH!" Val shrieked in agony.

The high-voltage lightning seared through her left eye, scorching the optical nerve and burning the surrounding skin to a charred black crisp.

Her vision in her left eye went completely, utterly black, replaced by a blinding, white-hot wall of unbearable pain.

Before she could recover from the shock, the lead guard stepped inside her guard, bringing his heavy alloy riot shield crashing down like a sledgehammer onto her chest.

WHAM!

"Ghk—!"

Three of Val’s ribs shattered instantly with a sickening crunch.

The breath was violently blasted from her lungs, and she was slammed flat onto her back, blood pouring from her blinded left eye and spraying from her mouth.

"Look at you!" the lead guard sneered, raising his heavy combat boot and stomping hard onto her wounded shoulder, pinning her to the ground. "You talk big about confidence and strength, but you’re just a weak pathetic little rat! You’re nothing!"

"Just another desperate bounty hunter dying in a dark room for cash!" the tall guard mocked, stepping up and raising his glowing mana-blade above her heart for a final thrust.

Val lay pinned beneath his boot with her chest heaving in ragged gasps, her remaining right eye staring up at the descending blade through a thick haze of her own blood.

Pain screamed through every single nerve ending in her body. Her ribs were broken, her left eye was blinded, her jaw was cracked, her shoulder crushed.

’Is this... where I die...?’ Val thought with her mind spiraling into the dark abyss.

Why was she doing this? Why was she risking her life in these suicidal infiltration missions? The other hitmen in her squad were chasing bounties for greed, for luxury cars, for cheap thrills.

But Val?

Val wanted to go to ALI.

She had missed the admissions cut-off years ago because she lacked the immense tuition money and political connections required for commoners.

Every single Crown she earned from bounty contracts went straight into a locked, high-security savings vault... a fund to pay for private entrance exams, high-tier mana elixirs, and combat tutors.

She refused to accept that her potential was capped at the bottom...

She refused to rot in the slums like a nobody!

She wanted to stand on the grand stage. She wanted to prove to the entire world that she... Val, an orphan with no noble name could become a great Awakened.

’I am NOT like you!’ Val roared in her own mind, her right eye igniting with a fierce unyielding crimson light. ’You gave up! You accepted your failure and hid in a luxury hotel! BUT I WILL NEVER GIVE UP!’

"GET OFF ME!" Val screamed.

She didn’t reach for her daggers.

Instead, she slammed both of her blood-stained palms flat against the concrete floor.

ZRRRRRRR!

From the tips of her fingers, thousands of razor-thin invisible crimson filaments erupted like a sudden explosive web.

This was Val’s unique magic upon reaching four liner status... Crimson Razor Thread Magic.

The microscopic filaments shot outward in every direction, instantly wrapping around the legs, arms, and weapons of the four hotel guards before they could even register the threat.

"What the—?!" the lead guard gasped, trying to pull his boot off her shoulder.

"CUT!" Val roared.

With a violent, desperate twitch of her wrists, Val yanked the threads tight.

SHING-SHING-SHING!

The condensed mana threads, sharper than monomolecular wire, bit deep into the guards’ armor, flesh, and bone.

"AAAAAAAH!" the lead guard shrieked as the threads wrapped around his right leg tightened, cleanly slicing through his white armor, muscle, and bone like hot wire through butter.

His lower leg was instantly severed, spraying dark blood across the floor as he fell backward.

"My leg! MY LEG!"

"She’s a wire user! Get back—!" the tall guard yelled, raising his sword to cut the threads.

But Val was already in motion.

Driven by pure adrenaline and survival instinct, she ignored the excruciating pain in her broken ribs and pushed herself off the floor.

She blurred forward like a crimson shadow, slipping inside the tall guard’s reach.

SHING!

She drew her dual combat daggers from her thighs in a reverse-grip arc.

The right blade drove straight up beneath the tall guard’s chin, punching cleanly through his jaw and into his brain.

At the same time, her left blade swept horizontally, slicing open the throat of the third male guard who was desperately trying to raise his rifle.

SQUELCH!

Blood sprayed across the walls like a crimson fountain.

The two male guards collapsed to the floor, gurgling on their own blood, dead before their bodies even hit the ground.

That left only the female guard.

The female guard was trembling violently with her lightning spear dropping from her numb fingers as she looked at her three dead teammates pooling in blood around her.

She looked at Val... a blood-drenched, one-eyed demon covered in broken bones and razor threads, standing in the center of the carnage.

"N-No... stay away from me! STAY AWAY!" the female guard shrieked, backing toward the wall, drawing a sidearm with shaking hands.

Val didn’t speak and she didn’t hesitate.

She leaped forward, dodging the wild panicked gunshot, and tackled the female guard to the floor.

Val mounted her, pinning her shoulders, and brought her right dagger crashing down with all the remaining weight of her body.

SHHHH!

The heavy steel blade punched straight through the female guard’s forehead, pinning her head to the concrete floor.

The guard’s body twitched once, twice, and then went completely still.

Silence descended over the security room.

Val sat atop the dead guard with her hands still gripping the hilt of her dagger.

She was gasping for air with ragged wheezes tearing from her throat.

Blood was pouring from her blinded left eye, running down her neck and soaking her stolen uniform.

She had won... Barely...

By the skin of her teeth, riding the razor edge between life and death, she had slaughtered an entire squad of veteran four-liners.

"Haa... haa... haa..."

Val let go of the dagger, tumbling off the dead guard’s body and collapsing onto her side on the cold blood-soaked concrete floor.

Her whole body was screaming in agony. Her shattered ribs felt like glass grinding inside her lungs, her left eye throbbed with white-hot fire, and her mana channels were completely exhausted.

CLICK!

A small glowing holographic circle materialized near her right ear as her tactical earpiece activated.

"Val! Val, do you copy?!" her tech specialist’s frantic voice echoed in her ear. "I saw the suit telemetry drop! Your vitals are in the red zone! Are you alive?!"

Val gritted her blood-stained teeth, letting out a weak, raspy groan. "Alive... barely. The guards... are dead."

"Holy shit..." the tech specialist breathed out. "Okay, listen to me! You need to apply the suit’s emergency medical fluid immediately before you go into shock!"

Val reached down with a trembling blood-soaked hand, tapping a hidden release latch on her suit’s thigh compartment.

A small pneumatic syringe filled with a glowing vibrant green liquid popped out.

Without hesitating, Val jammed the syringe straight through her suit and into the muscle of her neck.

PZZZZT!

The high-grade military-restoration fluid injected directly into her bloodstream.

"AAAAAAAGH!" Val screamed with her back arching off the floor as her eyes bulged.

The healing process was an agonizing nightmare.

The high-potency formula didn’t gently soothe wounds... it forcefully accelerated cellular regeneration at a violent unnatural pace.

Inside her chest, her three shattered ribs popped and snapped violently as the bone fragments forcefully aligned themselves and fused back together.

The torn flesh on her left cheek burned as if doused in acid, new tissue knitting together with agonizing heat.

And in her blinded left eye, the scorched optical nerves and damaged tissue throbbed with excruciating pressure as the fluid forced the eye to repair itself, her vision slowly, painfully returning from pitch-black to a blurry blood-tinted haze.

Val collapsed back onto the floor, covered in cold sweat and fresh blood, panting heavily as the agonizing heat faded into a dull manageable ache.

"Haa... haa... it’s done," Val wheezed, pushing herself up onto her knees.

"Good!" the tech specialist instructed urgently through her earpiece. "Val, look at the far left wall! There’s a primary security circuit gearbox mounted near the power conduit! You need to plant the override bug directly onto the main bus-bar so I can hack into the hotel’s suit networks and defensive grid!"

Val dragged her battered exhausted body across the blood-slicked floor.

She reached the metal gearbox mounted on the wall, pulled a small spider-like electronic bug from her belt, and slammed it onto the panel while spitting a mouthful of blood and cursing under her breath.

"Planting the bug now!" Val grunted.

CLICK! BZZZZT!

The spider-bug attached itself to the gearbox with its legs drilling into the metal casing as glowing blue code began flashing across its surface.

"Got it! Signal acquired!" the tech specialist cheered in her ear. "I’m bypassing their firewall now! Give me two minutes to override their suit controls—"

CREAK!

The heavy reinforced double doors of the security room suddenly swung wide open.

Standing in the doorway was an eight-man squad of heavy hotel security guards, clad in full riot gear and holding heavy mana-shotguns.

The lead guard stepped into the room with his voice booming.

"Squad B, report status on the emergency—"

His words froze in his throat.

The heavy guards looked into the room.

They saw the floor covered in a literal lake of blood.

They saw their four elite teammates lying slaughtered, dismembered, and impaled on the concrete.

And standing in the center of the carnage, right next to the hacked security gearbox, was Val... a blood-drenched, scar-faced demon staring back at them with wild eyes.

The lead guard’s eyes widened in utter, absolute shock.

Val’s heart dropped into her stomach.

"Fuck..." Val whispered.

"INTRUDER! OPEN FIRE—"

KABOOM!

Before the lead guard could even pull his trigger, a catastrophic explosion shattered the gearbox on the wall behind Val, rattling the entire room and throwing hot fire, shrapnel and blinding smoke across the hallway.

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