Chapter 275: System Upgrade
Stan waved them goodbye at the door of Maya’s apartment, the morning light still soft against the building’s exterior, then made the short walk to the parking area where he’d left the Huracán.
He slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and let out a long, slow sigh.
It had been a night.
For a moment, he simply sat there with both hands resting on the steering wheel, letting the quiet morning settle around him.
Then the system notifications began to appear.
[Ding!]
[Maya Zimmerman: Favorability has crossed 100]
[Ding!]
[Sophie Youngs: Favorability has crossed 125]
[Sophie Youngs, current favorability: 125]
Stan’s eyebrows rose.
A third notification followed almost immediately.
[Congratulations. You have brought a target’s favorability past the 120 threshold and unlocked the criteria for additional rewards.]
[Ding!]
[Hidden criteria triggered. System is upgrading.]
[Additional rewards will be issued once the system upgrade is complete.]
Stan stared at the floating notifications for several seconds.
"...Huh."
Leaning back against the headrest, he reread them.
That was unexpected.
The 120-point threshold had been on his radar for days. When Amelia had first crossed one hundred favorability, the system had quietly hinted that another reward tier existed beyond it. Given her circumstances, a recovering coma patient who had awakened to discover that her rescuer was a billionaire shareholder who had personally spent thirty million dollars on her care, Stan had assumed she would be the first to reach it.
Apparently not. Sophie had hit 125. And she’d done it overnight.
Maya crossing 100 was almost as surprising. Her favorability had already been climbing steadily, but now the rate seemed to have accelerated dramatically. At this pace, she would likely break through 120 within days, perhaps even sooner.
Thinking back on it, the previous night had clearly carried far more emotional significance for both women than he had fully appreciated at the time.
For Sophie, it had represented a deliberate decision to set aside possessiveness and choose trust instead, a conscious choice to share rather than compete, made after her own private conversations with Maya.
For Maya, it had been something else entirely: validation. A long-delayed acknowledgment finally made real.
Whatever emotions each woman had brought into that night, they had both emerged from it feeling closer to him than before. The system’s metrics had registered that change immediately.
Still, the favorability increases weren’t what held his attention. The upgrade notification was. The system had never announced an upgrade before.
It had distributed rewards, enhanced his physique, improved his capabilities, and altered various aspects of his body, but it had always done so quietly, without fanfare.
This was different.
An explicit announcement, coupled with delayed rewards, suggested something more fundamental than another incremental improvement. It sounded less like an adjustment and more like a structural change.
Unfortunately, there was no way to know how long it would take.
He would simply have to wait.
Stan shook his head, pushed the thought aside, and started the engine.
The Huracán rumbled to life.
He had a meeting with Grayson.
The drive into central Inksea took a little under forty minutes.
The Wanhai Group’s Inksea branch occupied a sleek twenty-eight-story tower in the heart of the financial district, a clean glass-and-steel structure that anchored the eastern end of the city’s central commercial avenue.
Stan had passed the building countless times before he had ever set foot inside. He could still remember standing at a bus stop across the street months ago, staring up at the illuminated Wanhai logo and idly wondering what kind of people worked in a place like that.
Now he owned forty percent of it. The thought still caught him off guard occasionally.
He guided the Huracán into the executive parking level beneath the tower, a restricted section reserved for senior leadership and major shareholders. His credentials, issued within twenty-four hours of his ownership becoming public knowledge inside the company, opened the security gate automatically.
The parking level was quiet at this hour.
He pulled into a space between Grayson’s characteristically understated Bentley and an empty slot reserved, according to the plaque mounted beside it, for the Chief Operating Officer.
After locking the car, he headed for the executive elevator and rode it to the top floor.
There were two reasons he had come today; The first was simple: he wanted to see the branch for himself.
Over the past week, he had been making decisions about Wanhai based on reports, briefings, and Grayson’s summaries. He knew the numbers. He knew the organizational structure. He knew the strategic direction.
What he didn’t know was the building. The atmosphere. The people. The rhythm of day-to-day operations.
Everything he understood about the company had been filtered through someone else’s perspective. It was past time for a firsthand look.
The second reason was Grayson.
The older man had requested the meeting personally, and the wording of the request had caught Stan’s attention.
’I’d prefer to discuss this in person, at the branch.’
It wasn’t urgent enough for alarm. But it wasn’t casual, either.
The elevator chimed softly as it reached the top floor. The doors slid open. Stan stepped into the executive corridor.
Grayson’s assistant was already waiting.
A sharp, composed woman in her thirties, she carried herself with the effortless efficiency of someone who always seemed to know what was happening five minutes before everyone else. Given how quickly she appeared, she had almost certainly been notified the moment Stan’s vehicle entered the executive parking level.
She inclined her head politely.
"Mr. Harrison. Mr. Davies is expecting you."
"Thank you."
She gestured toward the corner office at the end of the corridor and opened the door as he approached.
Stan stepped inside. Grayson Davies rose from behind his desk.
As always, he looked like a man who had grown into wealth rather than been consumed by it. Mid-fifties. Silver beginning to creep through his hair at the temples.
Confident without being performative.
His charcoal-gray suit was impeccably tailored, but free of the loud excesses favored by men who relied on their clothing to announce their importance.
He extended a hand. A genuine smile followed, a rare expression reserved for people he respected rather than merely did business with.
"Stan."
"Grayson."
They shook hands.
"Sit," Grayson said. "I’ve had coffee brought up. We have a few things to discuss."
Stan took the chair opposite the desk.
Whatever Grayson had wanted to tell him, he was about to find out.
With that, the meeting began.