The SSS class adventurer is a divine cleric

Neal was silent, but his jaw was clenched tight.

Alira spoke next. "So we abandon it? All of it?"

"We take what matters," Derek said. "Our lives. Our future. And maybe one day… when you're strong enough that even Dukes bow their heads, you can come back. But not now."

Silence fell again.

Then Kaelen muttered, "What about Johny? You don't meant to.."

Before he could finish his word.

Derek nodded. "Yes, don't worry I've already thought of that."

Then Kaelen gave a helpless smile. "Alright I'll go there myself."

The next morning, long before sunrise, Kaelen walked through the still-sleeping town alone and sneaked into Johny's room.

He carried a sealed envelope in one hand, and in the other, a small obsidian-black card, smooth and humming faintly with mana.

The letter inside read:

Johny,

Thank you for helping us build something we could be proud of. You kept our feet on the ground. You worked harder than anyone should at your age.

This is a small gift. In the card is a million XP. Use it how you want. Open your own tavern. Learn to fight. Start a new life. Just promise me one thing, feed your sister. Keep smiling.

And if anyone ever asks where you got it from…

Tell them it was the house special.

— Handsome brother Kaelen.

Kaelen slipped the letter and card into Johny's table. He knelt for a moment beside Johny, brushed his hair.

"You better grow up and become someone terrifying, you little punk."

He stood, adjusted his cloak, and turned back toward the empty road.

Kaelen strolled back into the tavern like a man who had just completed a very important, very heroic mission—chin high, shoulders squared, and an air of satisfaction radiating off him like cheap cologne.

The gang was all gathered, ready to make their grand escape via Derek's super-secret emergency teleportation array. Which was really just a fancy circle drawn in the cellar with some suspiciously glowing mushrooms arranged around it.

Derek, ever the responsible father figure, took one look at Kaelen's smug face and then at the empty space behind him. His eyebrow twitched.

"Son," he said, in that slow, ominous tone that usually preceded a lecture, "where's Johny and Mita?"

Kaelen blinked. "What are you talking about? Didn't you mean for me to leave them some money?"

A beat of silence.

Then, from the corner, Alira pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered, "Heartless idiot."

Neal, ever the diplomat, stepped in with the grace of a man explaining basic arithmetic to a brick wall. "Kaelen, how could you be so stupid? They're just kids. Orphans. Tiny, helpless, parentless children. How did you misinterpret 'pick them up' as 'throw money at them and walk away'?"

Kaelen crossed his arms, indignant. "No, no, it wasn't just money, I left them a million XP!" He said it like that somehow made it better, like handing a toddler a stack of gold coins and calling it parenting.

Derek's eye started doing that ominous twitching thing again. His hands clenched. His teeth ground together. And then.

"IDIOT!" he roared, loud enough to shake dust from the rafters. "Go pick them up this instant! GOOO!"

Kaelen flinched so hard he nearly teleported out of sheer panic. With a grumble and a dramatic sigh, he muttered something about "ungrateful brats" and "nobody appreciating good financial planning", before blinking out of existence in a huff.

Derek wondered, not for the first time, how Kaelen had survived this long without someone tying his shoelaces together.

A few minutes later.

Kaelen reappeared in the dim, musty shack that Johny and Mita called home, though "home" was a generous term for what was essentially a pile of termite-riddled wood held together by hope and stubbornness. The door creaked ominously as he pushed it open, half-expecting the whole structure to collapse in protest.

Inside, Johny was already awake, sitting cross-legged on the floor, clutching the letter in his tiny hands. Except he was holding it upside down. The boy's face lit up like a festival lantern the second he spotted Kaelen.

"Big Brother Kaelen!" Johny chirped, waving the paper excitedly. "Could you read this for me? I don't know how to!"

Kaelen's soul left his body for a brief second.

I left a million XP, and the kid still can't read what a waste.

He sighed, rubbing his temples. "Johny, my boi, we've got bigger problems right now."

Johny smirked. "Bigger than the men snooping around earlier?"

Kaelen froze. "What."

"Yeah! They were asking about the 'Wrymleaf's Dish' recipe! Super weird, right? I told 'em we just eat stale bread and rat stew like normal people." Johny beamed, clearly proud of his quick thinking.

Kaelen groaned. "Okay. Okay. Then there is no need to hide anything. We're leaving. Now."

Johny blinked. "Leaving? Like… on an adventure?"

"Like on a 'Duke Elrath wants to turn us into decorative rugs' kind of adventure," Kaelen clarified. "So grab your sister, your least-moldy blanket, and whatever dignity you have left. We're bouncing."

Johny gasped. "We get to live with you now?!" Then something crossed his mind. "Will I still be paid for work or at least food to eat?"

Kaelen opened his mouth to say something along the lines of "No, absolutely not, this is a temporary emergency measure," but the sheer, unfiltered hope in Johny's eyes made his words die in his throat.

"...Yes," he muttered, defeated. "But no whining. No asking for extra pay. And no setting anything on fire."

Johny pumped his tiny fist in the air. "YES! Mita, wake up! We're adopted!"

From a pile of rags in the corner of the next room, a tiny voice mumbled, hiding her head under an old worn out piece of cloth, "…Five more minutes…"

Johny went to wake his sister up, shaking her and pulling her piece of ragged blanket away. "No time for that Mita, we're getting free meals from now on. So get up."

Then Johny dashed towards the next room towards his bed and took a small piece of paper, it was the equivalent of a photo on earth. It was the only magical photo of his parents, a family group photo and the only valuable thing they had.

Kaelen sighed. "Kids are truly annoying."

But his eyes betrayed his emotions. He felt bad for the young kids who had lost their parents so early in life and it reminded him to become stronger and make sure that such a thing never occurs ever again.

And with that, he scooped up the drowsy Mita, nudged Johny toward the door, and prepared for the most chaotic teleportation escape of his life.

Somewhere, in the tavern cellar, Derek sneezed. "That idiot better not be traumatizing those kids already."