“Every aspiring executive inherits two challenges: the potential they possess, and those who would seize it first.”

  — Kallum Inc., Executive Ascension Handbook

  I didn’t move from the bench.

  The compatibility measurer sat in my lap, screen still glowing with that damning number: 80%. The variance reading, or rather: drain, blinked at me like an accusation: -66%.

  Sixty-six percent of my compatibility, just... gone. Siphoned. My fingers tightened around the device until the plastic casing creaked.

  Six months.

  Half a year of crawling through mines, ignoring teachers’ warning I should find classmates to fight with, watching Mom’s eyes grow more worried every time I came home. Six months of my old classmates leveling up, learning skills, becoming more while I stayed stuck in the dark. Six months of being called a failure, of proving I could survive without a system because I thought I had to.

  Because someone decided I didn’t deserve one.

  “AI,” I said, voice flat. “Pull up everything you have on system manifestation. Compatibility measurements. Variance readings. System-Drain.”

  My cheap earpiece crackled. “Searching local database... no results found for ‘System-Drain.’ Searching Terminal databases... access denied. Grome notes to stop, or they will report you. Tries remaining: 2.”

  “Of course it is,” I cut it off.

  The governments and corpos controlled everything about the System. Every scrap of information was locked behind paywalls, army or corporate clearances, or straight-up deleted. If you wanted to know how systems actually worked, you hoped you were already important enough that someone told you, or you were a prominent member on the alt-net.

  And I was neither.

  I stood up, shoving the measurer into my pack. The bench groaned as I pushed off, armor clanking with each movement. My newly repaired rifle sat heavy across my back, the weight somehow comforting now.

  I needed information, actual information. Not the sanitized, corpo-approved explanations they’d fed us at System Prep.

  And I knew exactly where to find it. But first… home.

  [Paid: ￠2]

  The train ride and subsequent walk home felt longer than they actually were. Mostly because, as usual, Tago’s Central Sector was so clean it was offensive.

  Sidewalks gleamed like polished stone, every crack filled in by drones before it even had a chance to widen. Billboards hovered overhead, sleek corpo-discs rotating slowly and smugly in the sunset.

  

  “Proar Biomed: Upgrade the Body. Outlive the Weak.”

  “FutureTech Systems: The Future You Deserve.”

  “The best security in Sol Alliance. Midorikawa.”

  Neon glass towers stabbed into the pink-and-orange sky, reflections flickering across my visor. Each window was a mirror of wealth. It was the kind of district where people smiled with their mouths, but not with their eyes. Where the air tasted clean and even the pigeons wore trackers.

  I probably looked like a glitch in reality: armor patched together with grease and scorched polyflex, boots kicking up little clinks of street dust.

  But no one stopped me… because I belonged here.

  Eventually, I turned onto a side road lined with biosculpted trees and silent serv-bots trimming the hedges with soft humming blades. A single car passed me… mirror shell, hovering two meters off the ground. It didn’t slow down.

  At the end of the road stood our house.

  Well. Maison.

  Two stories of techno-pristine architecture, all smooth panels and soft-blue lighting strips lining the curved angles. Glass and stone and chrome blended into a structure that looked like it was 3D-printed by a bored artist with too much budget. Well, great-grandpa used to be loaded, so that fit. Clear enough to reflect the sky. Big enough to look empty.

  I didn’t head to the main entrance. Not yet.

  First, I went around the side, boots crunching softly on the white gravel path that circled the property. Past the biosculpted hedges and the automated fountain that cycled through six different “natural” water sounds.

  To the statue.

  Great-grandpa’s monument stood in the back garden, impossible to miss. The figure towered three times my height; not counting the pillar beneath it. He was cast in dark bronze that had aged to a deep, oxidized green, one arm raised high, gripping a micro-torch that still flickered with a faint, eternal plasma flame.

  His other hand held a hammer.

  He wore working clothes: a heavy apron, rolled sleeves, boots planted wide. An outfit you wore when you built things, not when you posed for propaganda. His face was rough-hewn, stern but not unkind, eyes fixed on some distant horizon like he was measuring the world for upgrades.

  The pillar he stood on was twice my height, and all of it was cordoned off by a low decorative wall, chest-high, just enough to keep people at a respectful distance. From the street, you could only see the statue itself, imposing, floating above the wall like a patron saint of tinkerers.

  But up close, at the base of the pillar, you could read the inscription carved into the stone:

  Rest and contemplate, descendants.

  I glanced around. The garden was empty. The house’s rear windows reflected the sunset, but I couldn’t see any movement behind them. The serv-bots had moved on to another section of hedge.

  Good.

  I stepped over the low wall and walked straight to the pillar. Ran my fingers along the base until I found it… a slight depression in the stone, barely noticeable unless you knew where to look.

  I pressed.

  A metallic button clicked beneath my fingertip.

  The pillar shimmered.

  Not dissolved, or crumbled. It just... stopped being solid. The stone rippled like water, surface tension breaking, and the entire structure turned translucent. Definitely system fuckery. Through the ghostly outline, I could see a keypad glowing faint blue, floating in the space where solid rock had been a second ago.

  I punched in the code: 1-2-3-4-5.

  Yeah, great-grandpa had been many things. Creative, even with passwords, was not one of them.

  The pillar dissolved completely, but only for me. It folded in on itself with a soft whum of displaced air, stone and statue collapsing into nothing like a glitch in reality patching itself out.

  To anyone else watching, I’d just look like an idiot walking straight into solid stone. Including any camera. I’d tested it once, pointing my old junk FutureTech Pro recorder at myself. The playback showed me phasing through the pillar like a bad special effect.

  System fuckery at its finest.

  Where the monument had stood, a square opening yawned in the ground, stairs descending into darkness, just as he described it in the journal.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  To my bunker.

  I took one last look around, then started down.

  When we’d moved here a few years back, I’d found his journal in the library, tucked between History of Ducks and How to Build a Mechanical Duck. Yeah. We had an… amazing… selection of physical books, annoying to read, but at least I could still access them when my HUD glitched, because I tried to download more RAM.

  The journal had been leather-bound, pages yellowed and covered in his cramped handwriting. In it, he’d written that he built this place “to guide the family, and to save them when the time came.”

  Cryptic old bastard never said from what.

  I descended, and above me the pillar became whole again, even to my eyes. Artificial lights flickered on automatically as I moved, strips of cold white LEDs lining the stairwell. The air smelled stale but dry, good ventilation, at least.

  The room at the bottom wasn’t much.

  He’d built it as a bunker in case someone attacked Earth 2.0 hard enough to turn it into Earth 3.0. That was the plan, anyway. But he’d vanished before finishing. When I’d first found this place, it had been totally bare. Just walls, a non-working door, floor, ceiling, and one flickering overhead light.

  Now?

  Now it was mine.

  A makeshift workbench dominated one wall, a salvaged metal door laid across two stacks of cinder blocks. Scattered across its surface: circuit boards in various states of dissection, coils of wire, a half-gutted plasma regulator, three different screwdrivers (two broken), and a coffee mug I took from the house six months ago that now held bolts sorted by size.

  Tools hung on hooks I’d drilled into the concrete: wrenches, pliers, a micro-torch, my old helmet from Prep with the cracked visor I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

  I could only drill so deep before hitting the blast shielding beneath. That stuff was impenetrable, some kind of system-reinforced alloy that laughed at every tool I owned. I’d tried everything short of industrial cutting equipment.

  In the corner sat a beat-up folding chair I’d dragged down here, its fabric torn and patched with duct tape. Next to it, a plastic crate served as a side table, holding a small lamp, a half-empty bag of Jeup Protein-Rich Paste? (spicy flavor, because I hated myself), and a data pad with a cracked screen.

  The floor was littered with failed projects: a motion sensor that only worked when you kicked it, a targeting scope that somehow made your aim worse, and something that might’ve been a grenade but was now just a paperweight.

  At least here, I had a place where nobody would look at me with pity because I didn’t have a system. Where I could take things apart and put them back together and not have to explain why. Where the only person judging my work was me.

  I glanced at the door on the far wall, the one with the same blast shielding.

  It was in pristine condition, although I’d tried everything short of explosives to get it open. Prying. Begging. I’d even tried the same 1-2-3-4-5 code, because great-grandpa wasn’t creative, but apparently he wasn’t that predictable either.

  The door hadn’t budged.

  I wasn’t crazy enough to try actual explosives.

  At least… not yet.

  My working theory was that great-grandpa had planned to build more rooms down here, a proper workshop, storage, maybe even living quarters, but he’d vanished before finishing. Putting a door that laughed at me every time I looked its way.

  A metal rack, salvaged from a scrapped locker room, stood against the wall opposite my workbench, and it was perfect for hanging armor. I started stripping off the plates one by one: chest piece, pauldrons, shin guards, each one clanking as I hooked them onto the frame. The rifle went on its mount beside the rack. Pistols on the shelf below.

  Sword last, resting in its scabbard.

  From a plastic bin underneath, I pulled out clean clothes, actual civilian clothes. A plain shirt, decent pants, nothing fancy but at least not dirty armor.

  I changed quickly, stuffing my underlayer into the bin for washing later. If I walked in wearing full armor reeking of plasma discharge and bug guts, Mom would have a stroke. This way, I could at least pretend I’d had a normal day.

  I dropped my pack on the workbench and pulled out the compatibility measurer, setting it down carefully next to the coffee mug.

  Someone was draining me.

  And I could already picture them. Some entitled corpo brat in a climate-controlled tower, sipping synth-coffee while their parents threw money at the problem. “Oh no, my precious angel only has 15% compatibility! We can’t have that. Let’s just... borrow some from these poor fucks. They wouldn’t know what to do with a system anyway.”

  Or worse, targeting me because I was Kallum. “Our corporation is stronger; we need to be Sol 15 for the greater good of humanity,” they’d say. Testing how much they damaged my grandma’s company before anyone noticed.

  Both scenarios were equally possible.

  Both equally infuriating.

  “DAMN THEM!” I yelled, and kicked toward the door.

  The moment my boot connected with the blast shielding, my broken system woke up.

  [Interface found!]

  [DNA marking confirmed!]

  [Message found!]

  “Uh, hello. I hope it’s recording. Oh, it is? Great. So, congratulations on getting a system! As if there were any possibility of you not getting one. Well, there always is, right? Like Palistra said… No, John, stay on topic. Yes, uh, kid? Person? Descendant? You have a system. Good. Now, why you’re here! I hope by now we have a family legend about your smiling grandpa giving goodies to people who find this place. Forget that crap Aurelia teaches about the system; she isn’t a goddess. I’ll teach you the real deal! Hah… Well, no matter. Behind this door is my gift to my family. It is… well, I don’t know what exactly yet, but I will install it later. Scratch that. Abort message! What? Conditions for unlocking? Character limit? Jeez, okay, I will—”

  I stared at the window, mouth hanging open.

  Great-grandpa’s voice had been... frantic. Scattered. Like he was recording in a hurry, or drunk, or both. And who the hell was Aurelia? Like Aurelia Inc., which had a monopoly on healthcare and whose ancestor was a literal goddess?!

  Then another window appeared.

  [Conditions for unlocking:

  

  
• 
  
    500ml of condensed mana (minimum 98% purity)
  
    


  
• 
  
    150g mana dust
  
    


  
• 
  
    36g void-iron shavings
  
    


  
• 
  
    1 intact warp coil
  
    


  
• 
  
    200g of crystallized spatial residue]
  
    


  

  I read the list once. Then again. Then a third time, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

  Condensed mana? Crystallized spatial residue?

  These weren’t tinker parts you picked up at Eddy’s. These were materials for building... what? A starship reactor? Something that could punch a hole through reality itself?

  And great-grandpa wanted me to gather them as a condition for opening a door?

  I shook my head in despair, but I couldn’t stop the grin spreading across my face. Official channels said jack shit about the system. And here I could find answers. I just needed... well, some parts I’d never even heard of.

  It sounded insane. And insanely… expensive.

  “How am I supposed to find that? Need to ask grandma for sure, but… AH! Only incursions drop that shit, not weak bugs, and I can’t even find where incursions—”

  [JD: System compatibility outflow detected. Outside interference with descendant confirmed. Diverting reserve power possible. Descendant, do you wish for assistance? You will need to supply a quantum power cell after you lose the system drain.]

  I stared at the door again, then at the floating text. “Who... are you?”

  [JD: System-assisted AI your parental ancestor installed. That’s all I am allowed to tell you.]

  “Can you—”

  [JD: The system will shut me down if I tell you anything more.]

  I shut my mouth.

  The System didn’t like exploits. Push too hard, ask the wrong questions, and it’d delete the whole thing… JD included.

  I wasn’t about to risk that. “I need help,” I mumbled.

  [JD: Good. Diverting power. Use this well. Entering hibernation...]

  The text flickered, then faded.

  A new window appeared.

  [A new plugin detected! Incursion Predictor v39.54.2 edition 6.]

  I blinked at it.

  “Incursion predictor?”

  The window expanded.

  [Incursion Predictor v39.54.2 edition 6]

  Current level: 1

  Max level: 15

  Function: Predicts one location of incursion every 168 hours with danger level accuracy of 61%

  I stared at the description, reading it twice to make sure I understood. One prediction. Every week. 61% accuracy at level one.

  It was a thread I could pull. A way forward that didn’t involve blind luck or waiting for the world to explode around me. If I could level it up, get that accuracy higher, maybe unlock more predictions per week, I could actually hunt incursions instead of just surviving them.

  And hunting incursions meant materials.

  Materials meant opening that door.

  Opening that door meant answers.

  Answers about the system, the drain and about whoever decided I didn’t deserve what was mine.

  I let out a slow breath, feeling something settle in my chest. Not quite hope, I wasn’t that stupid. But determination, maybe. Purpose.

  “Alright, great-grandpa,” I muttered, glancing at the sealed door. “I’ll play your game.”

  The bunker felt smaller now, somehow. Less like a hiding place and more like a workshop. A staging ground.

  I grabbed the compatibility measurer and shoved it back into my pack, along with the now empty credit chip from the IC mage. It was probably a cut of the materials they’d collected from the incursion. Materials that should’ve been mine if they hadn’t swooped in and shut everything down.

  Killing bugs was not enough for quantum cores or crystallized spatial residue. Not even close. But if I hunted incursions? If I got there first, before IC claimed everything? Or tried somehow to dive into chaos shards?

  Maybe.

  Everything felt possible. Dangerous and expensive and probably insane, but possible. I turned toward the stairs, ready to head back up.

  But first...

  I needed to face Mom.

  My stomach twisted at the thought.

  She’d be waiting. She always was. Sitting in the living room with her tea, or pretending to read on her data pad while actually tracking the time since I’d left. Worrying in that quiet, suffocating way that made me feel like I was drowning and being smothered at the same time.

  And today? Today I had been through a war zone.

  She was going to lose it.

  I climbed the stairs slowly, each step heavier than the last. The pillar materialized above me as I ascended, stone and statue reforming with that same soft whum of displaced air.

  I emerged into the garden just as sunset had deepened to burnt orange; the sky streaked with pink and purple. The serv-bots had finished trimming and moved on. The house glowed softly in the twilight, warm light spilling from the windows.

  It looked peaceful.

  It looked safe.

  I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and started toward the front door.

  Time to face the final boss.

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Kallum Inc

  Join me on or

  On Patreon you can read 2 months ahead (~200 pages)