Insomniac Player

"Can insomnia be treated?" The question cut through the laughter so cleanly that even John had nothing to say for a moment.

Salma pulled the cigarette from her lips. For once the military doctor in her didn’t answer with an insult. "Possibly."

Damien stared at her. "That sounded dangerously close to hope."

"Don’t get emotional, Hapless. I said possibly." She leaned back, flesh-and-blood arm crossed over the mechanical one. "Ordinary insomnia, easy fix. Curses, damaged nerves, mental contamination, corrupted traits, we can handle most of that. But yours survived a system awakening, a hidden class, and a two-year coma. That either makes it genuinely complicated, or it means your body’s taking this personally."

"Most things eventually do."

Daria studied him, faint frown in place. "There are restoration spells that can rebuild organs and cleanse the soul entirely. One of those might work on it."

"Or we could just cut the sleeplessness out of him," Naked Nun offered. "I’ll volunteer to hold him down."

"You volunteer to hold everyone down," Salma said.

The blindfolded woman smiled. "Leadership starts with knowing your strengths."

Hamari raised a hand like they were in a classroom. "So the official diagnosis is... maybe?"

Imran nodded. "A strong maybe."

"I’ve survived on worse odds." Damien leaned forward. "Where do I find this strong maybe?"

Everyone answered at once. "Murim."

He looked around the room. "All of you agreeing at the same time is somehow less reassuring, not more."

Rahul leaned in. "Murim has the best medicine outside a handful of restricted healing worlds. Meridian pills, cleansing baths, breathing disciplines, internal-energy physicians, real cultivation."

"Wait." Damien held up a hand. "Since when does Murim have cultivation? You don’t mix wuxia with xianxia."

Rahul blinked, then looked at Imran. "He vanishes for two years and comes back worried about genre purity."

"Some principles matter."

"This isn’t the Murim from your old novels," Rahul explained. "The system just borrowed the closest word our language had for it. It’s a whole martial civilization out there. They don’t much care which shelf you’d file them under."

Daria lifted her chin. "I already told you to visit the Murim server for combat foundations. You should have listened the first time."

"I was distracted. People kept trying to kill me."

"An excuse only the unprepared reach for."

Salma snorted smoke through her nose. "Ignore the princess. Murim’s still your best option. Their physicians have spent generations turning pills and self-inflicted suffering into an actual healthcare system."

Hamari brightened. "Ancient wellness influencers."

"With swords," Naked Nun added, delighted.

"Naturally," Damien murmured. "It would be unreasonable for my doctor not to carry a sword."

John’s enormous palm landed on his shoulder. "Then it’s settled. I’ll come with you."

The room went quiet. Damien looked at the hand, then up at John. "No."

His mustache stopped moving. "No?"

"I’m going alone."

"Absolutely not."

"That sounded less like companionship and more like an arrest."

John’s brows knit together. "Murim is dangerous. Their young masters start blood feuds over someone glancing at a teacup wrong."

Rahul raised a finger. "That part’s exactly like the novels, at least."

"I can arrange an escort," Imran offered. "Discreet."

"No soldiers. No guild escort. No legendary human fortress trailing three steps behind me." Damien held John’s eyes. "I appreciate the offer. I need to do this myself."

John opened his mouth. Damien kept going before he could.

"You’re standing near the top of this whole world. I’m Level Twenty. If you come with me, every danger disappears before I even understand what it was. Every door opens because people recognize your face. Every mistake becomes harmless because you’re right there to pull me out of it."

"That’s the whole point."

"It’s a bad plan." Damien’s voice stayed calm. "I want to reach your level one day, John. I can’t do that using you as a moving fortress the entire way there."

"You used me as a moving fortress through the whole tutorial."

"You were Level Three back then. Character building."

Rahul covered his mouth, failing badly to hide a laugh.

Damien softened his voice a little. "Advice, fine. Information, welcome. If I’m dying, you’re allowed to say ’I told you so’ at the funeral. But the climb has to be mine."

John studied him for a long moment. Imran nodded first. "He’s right."

"Traitor."

"General," Imran corrected.

Rahul smiled. "We all had two years to become who we are now. Let him find out who he can become on his own."

John’s shoulders sagged in defeat. "Fine. But you contact me the second anything goes wrong."

"Define wrong."

"Damien."

"I’ll contact you."

"Every day."

"That negotiation ended fast."

John brightened instantly. "Good. Then I’ll stay here."

Damien paused. "...What?"

"Not going back to my mansion. Too many empty rooms. Too many staff asking if I need anything." He spread both arms wide, nearly clipping Rahul in the process. "You’ve got empty rooms. I’ll live here."

Hamari leaned toward Daria and whispered, "Did a global legend just invite himself to a sleepover?"

"Apparently."

John looked at Damien expectantly.

Damien glanced around the enormous penthouse. It had felt impressive the first night he’d seen it. After one night alone in it, it had turned into a collection of quiet rooms that only reminded him nobody else lived there.

"Fine." He set his glass down. "Conditions."

"Anything."

"No breaking furniture. No hosting guild meetings in my kitchen. And if you snore, you sleep on the floor."

"I do not snore."

Imran, Rahul, and Damien answered together. "You snore."

For the next several hours the penthouse turned into an information exchange. Imran laid out military borders, unstable gate locations, and names Damien should never mention inside a government building. Rahul handed over maps of the Multiverse Platform, guild contacts, and a list of Murim merchants only moderately likely to scam him.

Daria gave him the routes to the First Sanctuary and the Murim server twice, on the grounds that she didn’t trust him to remember them the first time. Salma sent over medical files and threatened to amputate something unnecessary if he swallowed anything unidentified. Hamari started a group chat named Damien Support Squad (He Will Hate This). Naked Nun renamed it Damien Restraint Squad before Salma changed it right back.

They talked regions, classes, raids, politics, people they’d lost along the way. They argued about which tutorial story was the most embarrassing. John voted for the time Rahul screamed at a wolf. Rahul insisted it had been a tactical warning shout. Imran quietly pointed out the wolf had already been dead by then.

By the time city lights started reflecting off the dark windows, goodbyes couldn’t be put off any longer.

Salma pointed her cigarette at him. "Get checked out before you leave for Murim."

"You make basic healthcare sound like a threat."

"With you, it is one."

Daria told him not to embarrass their party. Hamari hugged him and declared his comeback arc officially underway. Naked Nun requested one farewell duel, three farewell drinks, and a farewell kiss. She received none of the three.

Imran gave him a firm embrace. "Call if you need intel. I won’t send soldiers unless you ask for them directly."

Rahul hugged him next. "And call me before you buy anything to wear there. Murim robes are a trap."

"Clothes are just cloth."

Rahul stepped back, wounded. "Two years missing and he comes home a barbarian."

At last the doors closed behind everyone. Quiet settled over the penthouse, but it no longer felt empty the way it had before.

John and Damien sat by the windows, each nursing a drink, Viremont glowing quietly far below.

John went unusually still. Damien waited. He’d learned not to interrupt rare natural phenomena.

"I had a son," John said finally.

Damien turned toward him.

John kept his eyes on the city instead of Damien. "He died five years before the system ever showed up. About your age when it happened." A small, worn smile. "Your voices sound almost identical. First time you spoke to me around the neighborhood, I actually thought grief had finally started making me hear things."

The words sat there between them for a moment.

"That’s why I talked to you so much, at the start anyway. I wanted to hear you answer me back. It eased something in me that hadn’t eased in years." He rubbed his mustache, a little embarrassed by his own honesty. "Then I found out you were kind underneath it. Irritating, suspicious, far too comfortable with traps, but kind. Talking to you stopped being about him and just became a habit."

"A powerful habit."

John laughed, quiet. "You never liked my rambling. I always knew that. But you never once answered me with disrespect. You complained, sure. You ditched me smartly whenever I got going. But you were never cruel about it."

They both laughed at that. Then Damien looked down into his glass. "I never had a father," he said. "Saint Mary’s had caretakers, teachers, priests. Some of them were genuinely good people. None of them were that."

John said nothing. Damien looked over at him. "You were the first person who defended me like one would. From monsters. From officials. From politicians. Human and otherwise."

John’s eyes went red. Damien lifted his glass. "Though, honestly, the monsters were usually easier to reason with."

A laugh broke out of John before the tears could take over entirely. He raised his own glass and tapped it gently against Damien’s.

"My boy."

"Mr. John."

"You can just call me John."

"I know. It annoys you more this way."

Their laughter carried through the whole penthouse.

They kept talking until the city lights dimmed and dawn began painting the horizon. John told stories. Damien pretended to object to most of them. Neither one of them said out loud that the empty place had quietly started to feel like a home.

And for once, Damien didn’t mind at all that the whole night passed without a single hour of sleep.