Chapter 55: Guilt, New Skills And A New Threat?
The darkness was total, but it only remained for a moment before David regained himself.
The bathroom had no windows and whoever had last touched the light switch hadn’t been him.
He came back into himself standing — which lasted approximately one second before his legs decided they were done with the arrangement. His knees hit the tile and he let them, one hand catching the edge of the sink on the way down, the other finding the floor. He stayed there. Breathed.
’Hmm...I’m back?’ he thought.
His eyes adjusted to nothing because there was nothing to adjust to. Just the dark and the faint ambient bleed coming from under the door.
He widened his knees slightly against the floor and waited for his legs to remember what they were for.
When he finally got upright, he moved by feel — sink edge, tap, wall — until his hand found the light switch and pressed it. The fluorescent tube above the mirror flickered once and held. He stood in the white light and looked at himself.
He looked fine. That was the irritating part. Nothing on his face that corresponded to what was sitting in his chest.
He pulled out his phone.
9:22 PM.
He read it once. Read it again.
’Nine?! What the- How? I was only inside a short while.’
Apparently not.
Because now that he was back in the real world, it didn’t take long.
The guilt hit him somewhere between the gym entrance and the pavement. What he’d done with Holly in that quest. It had felt fine at the time — more than fine, if he was being honest — but standing out here in the actual night air with his actual legs under him, it sat differently.
Wrong was the word.
’You’re overthinking it,’ he told himself.
He didn’t believe that either. He just kept walking, because right then, he felt like scum.
Not loudly. Just that flat, settled weight in the middle of his chest that had no plans to move.
[QUEST COMPLETED — TASK CLEARED]
[REWARD ALLOCATION IN PROGRESS]
He looked at the bracket in the mirror’s reflection.
"Yeah," he said.
[WOULD PLAYER PREFER THE REWARD NOT BE SENT?]
His jaw tightened. He pushed off the sink and killed the light.
He moved through the dark gym by memory — the training room door, the main floor, the shape of equipment he’d passed enough times that his feet knew the gaps without asking. The automated lights had run their cycle and shut off. Nobody. Just shadow and outline and the emergency strip along the base of the walls doing the bare minimum.
He reached the front door.
Through the reinforced glass, two security guards were mid-patrol, torchlight swinging slow arcs across the car park. David knocked. One of them turned, squinted, came over. The lock disengaged and the door swung outward into the night.
"Sir —"
"Fell asleep on the mat." Already stepping through. "Lost track of time. Sorry for the trouble."
The door closed. Lock turned. He heard them through the glass — the low exchange of two men deciding this wasn’t worth a report — and kept walking.
The night air hit him properly. Real air. Outside air, carrying the lower district at this hour — street noise, the distant hum of the upper city bleeding down into the skyline, the smell of the road after a full day of use. He pulled in a breath and let it out slow.
Then he took his first steady stride toward home.
The guilt walked with him.
[PLAYER EMOTIONAL STATE: CRITICALLY LOW]
David glanced at the bracket and kept walking.
[THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH WHAT YOU DID. IT IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A WET DREAM. WOULD PLAYER FEEL GUILTY ABOUT THAT?]
"It’s different."
[HOW.]
"I orchestrated it."
[PLAYER WAS AVOIDING A PENALTY. SMALL PRICE TO PAY.]
"That’s not healthy."
[THE SYSTEM IS NOT HERE TO BE HEALTHY. THE SYSTEM PROVIDES FACTS. FACTS MOVE THE WORLD.]
"Get lost."
He locked his screen.
Three seconds of silence. Then his eyes went wide.
Holly.
He pulled his phone back out. 12:02 AM. He stared at it the way you stare at something when you already know what it means and just need a moment before it becomes real.
Three hours. They were supposed to meet three hours ago.
He opened his call log. Her name was right there. He hovered over it and his thumb didn’t move.
’What exactly are you going to say.’
Not a question. More of an audit. He’d promised her he wouldn’t cancel. Those were the specific words he had used — I won’t cancel — and then he had spent three hours inside a quest being sexual with a system-generated version of a different her entirely.
He couldn’t tell her that. For all she knew he’d just stood her up, simple and clean, no explanation forthcoming.
He didn’t press call.
He was still working out the geometry of the apology — what angle, what wording, whether showing up at her door at midnight was better or worse than a text — when the system came back.
[QUEST REWARD ALLOCATED — ₩500,000 CREDITED]
[BONUS: THRESHOLD CLEARED AHEAD OF ALLOCATED WINDOW]
[REWARD: 1× C-RANK SKILL — ONE TIME USE]
David stopped walking.
C-Rank.
[WOULD PLAYER LIKE TO VIEW NEWLY ACQUIRED SKILL?]
"Yes." Then: "Obviously."
[ACQUIRING DATA — 20%]
He started walking again. Holly’s contact was still open in his other hand. He looked at it once, then at the loading bar, then at the road ahead.
[60%]
C-Rank was two full tiers above anything currently in his kit. D-Rank had been the ceiling until tonight.
[100% — SKILL ACQUIRED]
[SKILL NAME: ADRENALINE RUSH]
[RANK: C | CLASS: AID]
[ON ACTIVATION: 30% INCREASE ACROSS ALL STATS. SECONDARY EFFECT — AMPLIFICATION OF DRIVE AND FOCUS, MARGINAL SUPPRESSION OF PERCEIVED INHIBITION. DURATION: 1 MINUTE 27 SECONDS. USES: 1]
He read it twice.
One minute twenty-seven seconds. Every stat pushed thirty percent past its ceiling. One use to spend whenever he needed it most.
The guilt was still there. Holly’s name was still unanswered. None of that had changed.
But his mouth pulled slightly at the corner anyway.
He stared at the screen.
His finger moved toward it before he’d made the decision — stretched out slow, the way you reach for something you’re not sure is real — and then the air in front of him *cracked.*
A spark. Light blue, small, gone in an instant.
Then another.
David’s eyes came off the phone.
The sparks were coming from nothing — from the air itself, three feet in front of him, multiplying fast, each one bleeding into the next until the whole thing was humming with it. Blue-white light strobing against the dark street, throwing his shadow long behind him. He took a step back without deciding to.
The energy hit him before the gate fully formed. David’s heel caught the pavement and he steadied himself, one arm coming up on instinct.
The light collapsed inward and burst open.
And there it was... Now active and open right infront of him, was a dungeon gate.
