Pumbo's voice came through the comms, the tone was hoarse and evasive.
"It's something personal, I-I don't hate you guys."
His words weren't bitter, just burdened. He wasn't the type to talk much, and when he did, it was usually with a rough sort of bluntness, but this time it carried something deeper.
The other team members didn't seem to think much of it, but Cain knew better.
There was a weight behind the voice that most wouldn't recognize. Cain didn't respond immediately. Instead, he turned toward the thicker part of the field.
With a smooth signal, he called over comms and told the half-beastman to follow him.
"Pumbo, come with me, let me know your thoughts about the matter."
The big man didn't resist. He veered out of his assigned sniping line and began to trail behind Cain's gliding path, feet pounding with a mix of force and restraint.
Cain's next call was to Beany.
"Cover us for a while, if we aren't out in five, employ more covering spells."
She didn't question it. With a flick of her staff, a cold mist bloomed around their movement.
The world vanished into soft silhouettes. Shots from Ricky and Tol still went silent, Cain never let them ran out of sound suppressing enchantments.
As he and Pumbo walked, Cain could see the storm brewing behind Pumbo's silence.
It was mistrust filled with rage from harrowing experience.
If he didn't defuse it now, it wouldn't matter how many bullets he fired, a teammate on the edge wasn't a liability just for tactical reasons, it was a fracture waiting to tear the team apart when it mattered most.
What's more, Pumbo would be left alone in this vast wilderness, making the morale of the team plummet.
'I couldn't allow the first team I handle to fall apart.'
Cain knew what had to be said, but more than that, he knew how it had to be delivered.
This wasn't about telling Pumbo what to do.
It was about making sure he didn't feel like he was being coddled like a child or cajoled into a scam.
Making him feel that he belong, that was what Cain was aiming for.
The difference was subtle, but for someone like Pumbo, it meant everything.
Cain let a second pass, then another. He didn't speak right away. Instead, he clicked on his helmet showing what was underneath the visor.
It wasn't his real face that appeared, but Cain wanted the man to think that way.
What flickered onto Pumbo's lens was something far more broken, a man twisted by burns and scars, barely recognizable beneath grafted plating and warped skin.
The expression was passive, unreadable, but it didn't need to say much.
The face alone made the half-boar pause, trying to catch his breath. He had never seen his Lobby Commander's face.
Not until now.
His hands on the handle of the gun started fidgeting, trying to steady himself in a moment he never expected.
"Lobby Commander, I don't care about your disfigured face. My father died through a contract, right in front of me. It wasn't even his own. Before he died, he said that contract was already thirty years old, and it still dragged him down. So no, I can't trust them, I still want to keep my life."
The half-beastman's sniper fire quickened as he spoke, each shot more rapid than the last.
He wasn't spraying aimlessly and his bullets still connected, but this revealed the anxiousness in his heart.
Then Pumbo added one more line.
"Please void our contract, Lobby Commander. I'll just leave a good review for you if that's what this is about."
It wasn't sarcasm. It was shame trying to mask itself with resignation.
Before Pumbo could speak again, Cain spoke up, not with command, but with caution.
His voice lowered, not by volume but by weight.
"The contract your father signed… did it burn after the job was done?"
He didn't ask it as a guess. He had seen Arthur make deals with demons more than once.
There was no reply. Cain let the silence settle, choosing not to interrupt his thoughts.
He waited until the final round clicked empty and the brief pause of reload forced stillness between breaths.
"What?"
Pumbo blinked behind his visor.
The question cut through the fog with eerie calm.
Cain's voice stayed steady.
"Authentic contracts with demons, burn up after the job's complete. Not just fade. They self-incinerate. If it didn't, the job wasn't done."
The words dropped like bricks into the silence, Cain didn't even need to raise his voice as the gravity of the topic was enough.
He took a slow breath and added.
"I lost my grandfather a few years back. Only family I had left. No skin, no organs. Now he's just a metal husk. I talk to him sometimes."
That wasn't a lie. Arthur's body had been reforged three centuries ago into something beyond human, he had become a cyborg forged by necessity or war.
Pumbo didn't reply right away. His primal instincts were better than most. He could sense rhythm shifts, breath intervals, and energy fluctuations without trying.
With a shallow intake, he felt Cain's words match their pulse. Cain wasn't faking it. There was no glamour spell.
Without missing a breath, Cain kept casting from outside the fog, while his left hand weaving a silence field while his right kept up coordinated sniping.
Pumbo reloaded, stabilizing his pace. His own hands, once twitching with restless anger, began to slow.
Then came the question from the half-boar, it was curious and sincere.
So… umm… how did you still keep going?"
Cain didn't dramatize the answer.
"I believed that I'm stronger than them. That's all."
Pumbo's chest tightened. The truth wasn't in the words, it was in their simplicity.
There was no appeal to pity. No guilt trap. Just a reason to keep moving.
With a long breath and a heavy exhale, Pumbo lowered his weapon slightly and spoke quietly.
"Thank you. I'm sorry for acting out like that. I'm in."
Cain didn't respond. He didn't need to.
The reason he hadn't let go of Pumbo wasn't sentiment.
It was tactical. If Cain allowed his squadmate to walk, the system's backend logs would tag him as a lobby commander who tolerated abandonment.
That label would follow him into future contracts, quietly reducing his recruitment prospects.
Some wouldn't care, but others, would see it as a red flag, marking him as empathetically incompetent.
He recalled the giant brothers he had once met. He would've recruited them, but mankind was at war with giants for hundreds of years.
Cain wasn't here just to make money but to build a team of his own.