Chapter 81
Still masked up, Ray froze for a second. He squinted, feeling like the tall girl he’d just bumped into looked kinda familiar. But his head was already spinning and he didn’t want any drama, so he decided to just let it slide.
"Sorry," Ray muttered under his breath from behind his mask. He abruptly hung up on Sonya, shoved his phone into his pocket, and brushed past the girl without a second thought.
Meanwhile, the tall girl just stood there. She didn’t chase after him, but instead stared straight ahead—or rather, at the empty air in front of her. Her eyes darted left and right, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. She raised her right hand, trying to touch an invisible thing floating before her, but her fingers just swiped through thin air.
She let out a heavy sigh, her broad shoulders slumping a bit. "So it’s true... I really am the only one who can see this hologram screen... man... am I losing my mind?" she whispered to herself before finally walking away, her mind a total mess.
On the flip side, Ray was already a good distance away, heading toward the mall exit. His pace was steady, but for some reason, his brain suddenly replayed the collision. A buried memory out of nowhere popped up.
’Tall girl... athletic build... blonde hair...’
"Ah!" Ray thought to himself, his eyes widening behind his mask. It finally clicked. That girl was the basketball athlete whose ass he’d grabbed back at the convenience store. It happened a while ago and nothing came of it, but her height was so iconic it was hard to completely forget.
Ray tried to wrap his brain around her name. He squinted, tapping his forehead as he walked. ’What was it again? Started with an S? Or an A?’
After two minutes of racking his brain, he got absolutely nothing. Her name just wouldn’t hit him.
"Ah, screw it. Doesn’t matter anyway," Ray muttered. Plus, she didn’t even recognize him with the mask on.
Ray figured he’d just head straight home. He pulled out his phone, opened an app, and ordered an Uber. This time, luckily or unluckily, the driver wasn’t Cindy anymore, but a middle-aged guy who just focused on the road the whole trip without making small talk. Ray was incredibly grateful for that, since his battery was completely drained.
Long story short, the ride pulled up to his apartment lobby. Ray got out, took the elevator up, and the second he stepped into his decent apartment unit, he face-planted straight onto the plush couch.
He pulled his phone out of his pants pocket. The screen lit up with a few notifications. The first one immediately caught his eye: a new DM from Asmoldking.
Ray opened the message. Getting straight to the point, the account had sent a set of location coordinates along with the studio hours for their upcoming podcast recording. Ray skimmed the details and gave a slow nod.
"Alright, cool..." Ray mumbled. Just as he was about to rest his phone on his chest, a WhatsApp notification popped up at the top of his screen.
From Christy.
[We’re still hanging out tomorrow, right? What time? So I can start getting ready.]
Ray read the text and his eyes instantly went wide. He reflexively sat straight up on the couch.
"Shit, tomorrow’s Sunday?" Ray blurted out to the empty living room.
He massaged his temples, which suddenly throbbed with a headache. Ray had completely lost track of time. He felt like his life lately had been moving on fast-forward, packed with too much crazy shit happening back-to-back—from the Global Alter, easy money, going viral, the drama with Sonya, Cindy, to his plans with Asmoldking. It was all rolling in non-stop to the point where he didn’t even know what day it was.
Ray slumped back onto the couch, staring at the ceiling while holding his phone, screen still glowing. Tomorrow was Sunday, and he had to deal with Christy, while his brain hadn’t even fully recovered from all the wild fantasies he’d been having today.
----
Ray let out a sharp sigh. Ignoring Christy’s text for a second, he tapped his phone screen and tried to whisper in his head, calling out to the entity that gave him this absolute power.
"Yo System, just curious. What exactly are the core systems inside that piece-of-shit slot machine you came from?"
A few seconds of silence went by before a transparent text notification popped up in his mind in a cold, rigid font.
[High-level information cannot be provided to the user at the current authorization level.]
"Fuck it," Ray cursed, annoyed. Cheap bastard. He was just asking out of curiosity, wondering how a rusty casino gambling machine could birth a logic-twisting system this abnormal. Too lazy to argue with a rigid system, Ray switched over to his phone’s gallery app.
His fingers scrolled past the top folders until he paused after seeing the thumbnail of Julia, the tan-skinned hoe. The second he clicked it, Ray’s eyes locked onto her face. He just remembered he still kept the video of Julia giving him a blowjob.
Ray hit play. Rewatching the footage instantly made his throat tight. Damn it, he actually got a hard-on right there on the couch. Especially when it got to his favorite part of the video, where he dominantly slapped Julia’s face with his dick over and over—a rough face-fuck that left the toxic woman looking completely submissive and helpless.
Right next to that video was a picture from the double blowjob he got from Lena and Sonya at the same time. The photo, taken from a high angle, showed both women looking messy with his leftover fluids.
Ray swallowed hard, staring at the screen with hungry, glowing eyes. "Damn... feels like my collection is still lacking," he muttered with a low chuckle. His horny meter was suddenly through the roof again.
But amidst that biological tension, Ray’s chest suddenly tightened a bit. A flash of anxiety crept in out of nowhere. He remembered what Sonya said on the phone earlier about the possibility of Federal agents tracking his moves.
Ray knew that even if the Feds managed to hack his phone or snoop through his gallery, they still couldn’t just accuse or arrest him out of the blue. Legally and logically speaking, all those videos were consensual, and there was even the system’s manipulation effect making those women think it was totally legit.
However, what got Ray overthinking was a different scenario: ’What if the Feds played dirty? What if they secretly contacted Julia, Lena, or Sonya, and showed them these photos and videos during interrogation?’ If those women cracked under the pressure of high legal authority, things could get super messy.
Ray massaged his temples, pacing back and forth in the living room. Damn, just thinking about government agents was enough to give him a headache.
But then again, Ray was still Ray. His stubbornness and superiority complex quickly took over again. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart.
"I have the Common Sense Altering System. As long as I can twist their logic, I’m safe," he thought to comfort himself. But at the same time, Ray was starting to check himself. If he wanted to mess around or hunt for new pussy out there, he really had to use his head and be extra careful. He couldn’t just wing it anymore without a solid strategy. Federal agents weren’t just mall NPCs he could easily fool without a game plan.
Realizing how absurd his situation was right now, Ray suddenly burst out laughing all by himself on the couch.
"Holy shit... I already feel like a big-time movie villain," he cursed, shaking his head. "I’ve only face-fucked and smashed a couple of MILFs, my video collection isn’t even that big yet, but these fucking Federal agents... Talk about a pain in the ass!"
Ray shook his head, trying to clear his mind of all the messy thoughts about Federal agents. To take his mind off the stubborn boner throbbing in his pants, he decided to open X again. He needed a dose of stupid brainrot posts from netizens to bring his horny levels down.
But the second he started scrolling through his timeline, his eyes caught a video that was trending and going absolutely viral. The video showed a guy in a white robe loudly claiming to be a messenger of God. What made Ray furrow his brow was the next scene: the guy in the video raised his hand, and out of nowhere, actual flames appeared and danced right on his palm without any tools or gimmicks.
"Oh, come on. AI editing is getting way too clean these days. What bored-ass kids made this?" Ray scoffed, initially thinking it was just a digitally altered video or some high-level CGI effects.
But as he read the caption and the comments below, his brow furrowed even deeper. It wasn’t an edited video. It was a live clip from a national TV news broadcast that millions of people had watched in real-time. The comment section was blowing up with mass hysteria, theological debates, and literal global panic.
Ray swallowed hard. His throat suddenly went dry. "God damn it..."
"System," Ray called out in his mind, his tone no longer casual. "Don’t tell me that cool-ass power to summon fire... came from the core systems inside that piece-of-shit slot machine?"
The rigid, transparent dialog box suddenly popped up in front of his eyes.
[Ding!]