Chapter 79: Chapter 79
Ray let out a long-ass breath, trying to clear his head that felt like it was about to split open. After all the batshit crazy stuff today—from Julia’s threats, Christy’s wild confession, to finding out about that other system owner—he really needed to chill the hell out first.
He dragged himself to the kitchen, poured some cold water into a glass, and chugged it straight down. The cold helped a little with the storm going off in his chest. Ray leaned on the kitchen counter, suddenly bored out of his damn mind. His room felt way too small, and he had this strong urge to just dip outside, maybe catch some fresh air or grab a coffee from the corner store down the street.
But the second he peeked out the window, he killed that idea real quick.
"Ah, for real I’m bored as hell... but if I head out now, shit’s just gonna get even messier," he muttered.
He was going mega-viral. Stepping outside without any prep was basically handing himself over to a bunch of random strangers ready to shove their phones in his face.
Finally, Ray flopped onto his bed. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and opened the X app. The second it loaded, his phone started buzzing nonstop. Notifications flooding in like a damn machine gun.
Drrrtt... Drrrtt... Drrrtt...
Ray frowned. Buried in all the thousands of mentions and tags, one DM stood out. It was from Asmoldking. That bald streamer who once invited him on a Zoom podcast was hitting him up again. Short and straight to the point—he wanted to collab again, but this time he made it clear they had to meet up in person, privately, not through a screen.
Ray stared at his phone, thinking hard. On one hand, moving around in public right now was super risky. But on the other, this could actually be a solid stepping stone. After weighing it for a sec, he typed back a quick reply and agreed.
But before he could even close the chat with Asmoldking, a fresh wave of DMs slammed into his inbox. This time from female streamers. One by one, blue-check accounts with those aesthetic profile pics were sliding into his DMs, and every single one was basically saying the same thing—they all wanted to do *collabs* with him.
It didn’t stop there. Ray’s whole situation had already caught the attention of the big-league streamers. When he switched over to the search tab, his name was sitting right at the top of *trending*. A bunch of huge streamers who were live at that moment got caught reacting to Ray’s livestream video. Even short clips of him were already everywhere, chopped up with dramatic edits by fan accounts.
Ray let out a soft laugh and shook his head at the screen.
"Damn, that was fast. Already got clippers out here making bank off my face," he said, half amused.
But the laugh didn’t last. Ray remembered how things actually were. Going this viral was a straight-up double-edged sword. On one side it was good, but on the other, the feds were definitely posted up in the shadows, eyes and ears wide open, watching his every move. One wrong step and everything could go to shit real quick.
Ray killed the screen on his phone and stared up at the ceiling.
"Better play it safe today," Ray thought, making up his mind. "I’ll just stick to easy missions for now. No crazy shit today while I wait for things to cool down a bit."
With federal agents on his ass and his level still sitting at sixteen, Ray knew he had to move smart.
"System."
Ray raised his right hand. Without hesitation, he pressed his thumb right onto the imaginary fingerprint scanner floating in the air.
[Ding!]
[Loading Daily Mission List...]
The screen interface shifted instantly. Three big tabs with contrasting colors popped up in front of him, each giving off a different vibe:
[Simple]
[Medium]
[Hardcore]
Sticking to the plan he’d made earlier to stay off the feds’ radar, Ray wasn’t trying to take any unnecessary risks today. His eyes went straight to the green tab. With one tap, he picked the first option.
[Ding!]
[Daily Mission Category: Simple has been selected.]
[Displaying Mission Details...]
[Objective: Alter one Common Sense (general social norm) related to the process of "Getting to Know Someone."]
[Time Limit: 24 Hours]
[Reward: 10 Exp, +10 Alter Points]
[Failure: -10 Alter Points]
Ray squinted at the text. "Getting to know someone, huh?" he muttered, tapping his chin.
Without wasting any more time, he opened the *Global Alter* menu. A big empty input box appeared in front of him, ready to take whatever insane command he wanted to inject into humanity’s collective consciousness. His thumb hovered over the virtual keyboard, ready to type something extreme.
But right before his finger touched the screen, Ray’s hand froze.
He went quiet. The memory of the massive chaos he caused last time flashed through his head. Fuck, he couldn’t afford to be reckless again. If he made a change that was too destructive or too perverted on a global scale all at once, the feds watching him would immediately notice something supernatural was going on.
"I can’t go overboard like last time," Ray thought, eyes sharp with caution. "Gotta make something stupid but useful—nothing that’s gonna make the world end in a day."
A sly little smirk crept onto his face as an idea clicked in his head. This was a *Simple* mission, so the change needed to feel natural but still have a steady impact.
He started typing the instruction into the Global Alter input box:
[The polite and respectful way to greet or get to know someone is by giving them a cynical, intimidating stare.]
This way, if any new person tried to approach him—whether it was those female streamers or random curious people—they’d hit him with a cold, sinister look instead of some fake-friendly smile. It’d make it way easier to tell who was actually genuine and who was just pretending.
Ray read the sentence one more time, double-checking there weren’t any fatal loopholes, then hit [Confirm]
[Ding!]
A cold mechanical chime echoed in his ears, followed by a golden flash of light spreading out from the holographic screen.
[10 Alter Points have been consumed!]
Ray leaned back into his pillow, his signature smirk spreading across his face again. The alteration was done without any visible ripples in the real world, but the foundation of human social behavior had just been shifted by his thumb.
"Shit, I still haven’t checked how much money I got left in the ATM," he muttered.
He quickly opened his mobile banking app. The second his main balance loaded, the number staring back at him was painfully thin—straight-up depressing for someone living in an apartment. The old Ray would’ve been freaking the fuck out right now, already stressing about how to pay next month’s rent.
But now? Ray just scoffed. He wasn’t worried at all. That leftover balance didn’t mean shit compared to the massive piles of cash from yesterday’s livestream subs and donations. He could cash that out in the next few days, and the amount was more than enough to fatten his account right back up.
Feeling chill, Ray opened his social media app again. He casually scrolled through his X timeline, half-hoping to find some entertainment or at least see how far his viral moment had spread tonight. Instead of seeing posts about himself, the algorithm decided to bless him with something completely unhinged.
It was a tweet from a blue-check account with tens of thousands of likes:
[Y’all realize this city is literally cursed by the universe right now? Everything’s going to shit, crime’s up, the whole vibe is negative as hell. Of course it is—this is karma ’cause the city government is still stubborn and dumb enough to ban same-sex marriage! The universe is pissed!]
Ray read it and swallowed, blinking in pure disbelief.
"People like this actually exist..." he thought, slowly shaking his head. Sometimes the mass stupidity on social media was way scarier than federal agents.
Before he could even scroll past it, the reply right underneath was somehow even more unhinged. An account with an aesthetic vegetable profile picture wrote with full passion:
[So true bestie! But don’t forget, this is also God’s punishment for all the restaurants in this city that are still heartless enough to cook meat from animals that have families! Imagine how the cows and chickens feel being separated from their babies just for human greed! Their sadness and tears definitely made God so disappointed in us! #AnimalsAreFriends]
Pfft—!
Ray exploded into laughter so hard he had to grab his stomach. He was straight-up cackling alone on his bed, eyes watering, until he started coughing in between laughs.
"Holy shit, that’s actually insane! How the fuck do you connect completely unrelated shit like marriage laws, city disasters, and crying chickens losing their moms?!" Ray wheezed, still laughing.
The mental gymnastics required to link government marriage policy, urban misfortune, and emotional poultry was truly next-level. Meanwhile, here he was having to use his system to forcefully alter people’s common sense... while random people on the internet were happily destroying their own common sense for free, no magic required.
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