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Dora, the girl who was small even for her age (sounds rich coming from me but you know), pulled us all the way to the living room.

"Why were you so late? I have been waiting for you all day!" She turned around and exclaimed after finally letting us go.

"Haha, she couldn\'t sit still the entire day," a woman standing in the kitchen connected to the living room chuckled warmly.

Hmm, was it just me or did I sense some displeasure behind her tone? It was really subtle, so I\'m not really sure.

"Good evening, Mrs. Miller," Jennifer respectfully nodded towards her.

Yikes. Respect and Jennifer don\'t mix so well together.

Oh wait, Jennifer ignored the child like I ignore drinks that are not chocolate shakes, so she did manage to be rude in some way. Marvellous.

"No need to be so formal. We are family, aren\'t we," Mrs. Miller waved her hand.

Huh, now this is making even me curious about what their relationship is with Jennifer.

Hmm, let\'s see... this place is a simple two-story house with normal wooden furniture to fill it, so it would be weird if this family was well-off or special in some way.

But given the number of magic devices and spells currently being employed inside and around this house to defend it, it would be even weirder if they were dirt poor or weren\'t special in any way.

The level of protection here is similar to the bloody bois guild house, not just in strength and variety, but also in mana signatures used in the defensive and offensive spells, which means they (Jennifer, to be more precise) are the ones handling the protection of this house.

For Jennifer to invest so many resources here, and for Mrs. Miller to call her family, these two parties must be very close.

"And this is?" A man, who I assume is Mr. Miller, asked from beside his missus.

"I am Samur. Pleased to meet you," I responded.

I\'ll ignore the reserved sparkle in Dora\'s gaze.

This little girl seems a tad too excited to be with a \'potential\' friend. Does she not have any friends,or is she an extrovert of a phenomenal level?

Frankly, I don\'t know what is worse.

"You can consider him Azell\'s representative."

So Azell is also significantly involved in this affair. How amusing.

Also, what does she mean by Azell\'s \'representative\'? Don\'t tell me that I\'m here only because that lazy fuck couldn\'t bother coming here himself. What a fucking asshole.

But that aside, Jennifer and Azell are being quite thorough to protect this family; either these people are very close to them or they have a vested interest in them.

I wonder which it is.

Let\'s try to find out as long as it only mildly inconveniences me.

"I see," Mr. Miller nodded in understanding.

He accepted immediately. He must trust Jennifer a lot.

By the way, Dora\'s excitement seemed to have died down (how fickle). She was now quietly observing the conversation between the adults while peeking glances at me.

At this point, my role would be to approach her and try to befriend her in some cringe way, but you know ya boi doesn\'t play by the rules.

Not to mention that contrary to how she acted at the door, Dora seems a bit wary of me now.

Jennifer also glanced at our little eye-to-eye interaction but didn\'t say anything which genuinely surprised me. I was sure she would try to force us to talk or something, but it would seem she has enough tact to not do that.

Maybe this small amount of tact is the reason why she\'s only a probationary member of the New Dawn Guild.

"Well," Mrs. Miller clapped, "the birthday cake is ready, so shall we get to it?"

Birthday cake? Earth\'s culture has had a significant impact on this world, it seems, or maybe all of them are Earthlings.

Actually, the latter would make more sense given how much dislike Jennifer seems to have for the natives of this place.

What is she, a European in the 1800s?

"Sure," Jennifer nodded.

"Yayy, cake!" Dora was also excited.

And together, we made our way towards the table on which the cake as well as several other snacks and dishes were placed.

"Are we the only ones here?" I whispered to Jennifer.

"Yes," she replied without looking at me.

What a lonely birthday party. Maybe Dora really doesn\'t have any friends.

I\'m probably the last person who should be saying this, but humans are social creatures so it\'s important to have close friends in your life, or at least people you can chill with.

Dora doesn\'t seem to have anyone like that; what a failure of a human. She should be ashamed of herself.

"Which is why I brought you here," Jennifer continued in her quiet voice.

She\'s acting wingman now? Wow.

"Well, don\'t blame me when I disappoint you," I shrugged.

My antisocial personality aside, I\'m just not interested in interacting more than necessary with a literal foetus; I would rather lie on my bed like a corpse.

"I won\'t."

Hmm, interesting.

"Cake! Cake! Cake!" Dora skipped around the dining table.

Isn\'t this child a bit too enthusiastic?

"Dora," Mrs. Miller, with a gentle tone but a firm gaze, called out to Dora.

The failure of a child instantly stopped and looked back at Mrs. Miller with a slightly trembling gaze, "...I-I\'m Sorry."

Wasn\'t that reaction a bit over the top? Mrs. Miller must hold some serious authority in this household if just a word and a gaze was enough to calm down an excited child.

Also, wasn\'t Dora\'s last name Palatine? Yet the other two are the Millers.

Hmmm.

"Just sit quietly-"

"Oh, come on!" Jennifer interfered with a jolly tone. "It\'s her birthday!"

"...You\'re right," Mrs. Miller slowly nodded.

"..." Dora silently observed their exchange with a nervous gaze.

"Well!" Mr. Miller suddenly clapped. "Let\'s cut the birthday cake, shall we?"

Déjà vu.

"Sure," Jennifer smiled at him, but her eyes didn\'t.

Why the strange sense of distance between the two parties? In fact, Jennifer is wearing her hostility right on her sleeves; anyone (assuming they are on my level) can see that she\'s not too fond of them.

Hmm, maybe what I have in front of me is a classic drama where Jennifer likes the incompetent child but not her parents? What could be that reason for that though?

Perhaps long ago, Jennifer and this man, Mr. Miller, were in what seemed to be a loving relationship. However, contrary to Jennifer\'s overflowing love for this man, his heart was filled with greed and he was only using her to move up in life.

So as one would expect, after getting what he wanted out of his relationship with her, Mr. Miller abandoned Jennifer, then later settled down with Mrs. Miller, achieving his happily ever after.

However, Jennifer wouldn\'t have let such a betrayal go unpunished. So maybe, one day she barged in on their home to take revenge by unaliving them, but just before she could give them a classic sword in the throat, she heard the wail of a small child.

The crying child might have forced her to let them live, but I wouldn\'t be too surprised if she started hatching a master plan involving the child aka Dora to exact an even sweeter vengeance on the man who betrayed her.

The rest isn\'t that hard to imagine. Once she started interacting with- and maybe even taking care of- Dora, Jennifer started having doubts in her heart about her Operation Revenge; she wasn\'t too sure if she should use an innocent child to hurt the Millers.

So while she still hates the Millers, she cannot bring herself to do anything to this family because of her motherly love for Dora, and so they currently maintain a passive aggressive relationship.

Her backstory would get 7/10 from me. The potential is there, but the events so far have been cliché and nothing of note has happened yet.

Of course, it\'s entirely possible that this is just a slice of life story, which would mean the Millers had a legit reason for abandoning Jennifer which the latter would learn later down the line.

Somewhere along the way, Jennifer would meet another man/woman/it (depending on the level of progress of this world) and slowly develop feelings for him/her/it.

Then Dora and her love interest\'s unconditional love would heal Jennifer\'s broken heart, leading her to finding it in herself to forgive the Millers and finally move on.

And then they would live happily ever after.

If this is indeed how her story would go down, then I\'ll have to reduce the score to 5/10.

I mean, I don\'t really have anything against slice of life stories featuring themes of love and redemption, but the pacing is usually slow, so you get bored of them quickly and start looking for something else to read.

Sure, a slice of life story would lead to the happiest ending of Jennifer\'s life considering she\'s the Sword of this world and has gone through a lot in her past, but her happiness is not above my entertainment.

In other words, I really hope that the Millers are nothing more than fucking assholes who pissed Jennifer off in some way which is why she\'s cross with them right now; nothing more, nothing less.

Anyway, the tensions subsided in the short amount of time I thought up of a random backstory I mean I used my trillions of years\' of experience to predict Jennifer\'s life story, and the celebration resumed.

"Happy birthday to you!" We sang the birthday carol as Dora blew on the candles and cut the cake.

She took the piece and looked at Jennifer, seemingly wanting her to take the first bite, but turned her gaze towards Mrs. Miller.

Just then, the large slice of cake slipped from her hands and fell down on the table.

As they say, don\'t cut more than your hand can hold.

"Ah..." Dora\'s face instantly paled as she fearfully turned her gaze to Mrs. Miller.

"It\'s alright," the recipient of her gaze gently replied, but there wasn\'t any semblance of warmth in her eyes.

Huh...

Interesting.