Chapter 62: A Changing Man
The sound David made was somewhere between a sigh and a grunt — not quite either, just something that left his body without permission, like pressure releasing from a valve. His eyes dragged to the side.
[Penalty: Holly Houston will be erased from Player’s life.]
He read it twice.
’Erased.’
"Okay." He said it out loud. Not to anyone. Just to hear what the word sounded like in the open air. "What exactly does that mean? Erased how? Are you — is the system threatening me right now?"
[No threat is being issued. The system does not threaten. Erasure refers to the removal of all memory relating to Holly Houston from Player’s cognitive storage. Temptation value will be set to zero — permanently.]
’So you’d just... take her out of my head.’
He stood there for a second.
’Not hurt her. Just make it so I never cared in the first place.’
Fourteen days to clear a dungeon. Holly’s existence in his memory dangling on the other end of the deadline like something he hadn’t known he was holding until someone told him it could be taken. He almost laughed. Almost.
"Great," he said flatly. "Higher stakes. Fantastic."
He hadn’t been to a dungeon. That was the part his brain kept snagging on. The highest he’d reached was a quest — which was where he’d met Holly in the first place, which was either meaningful or annoying, and he hadn’t decided which. The system had been pushing her into his path since the beginning. And now here she was again, woven into something he couldn’t ignore.
’At least it’s consistent,’ he thought. ’I’ll give it that.’
He started walking again.
The training with Mrs. Walbury had already been grinding him down to something leaner. Fourteen days just meant he was going to push that further — harder sessions, less sleep, the kind of pace that turned soreness into background noise. That was manageable. That was just more of what he was already doing.
What mattered more was the level.
He was at four. Level five meant information — actual answers about what the system was and what it wanted from him. He’d been treating it like a tool because that was the only frame that made sense, but a tool didn’t curate his relationships. A tool didn’t erase people.
"Hey," he said quietly, walking. "Are you an enemy?"
[The system is not your enemy.]
’A liar would say exactly that,’ he thought.
He kept walking.
Fourteen days. Level five. One dungeon. More training than he’d thought his body could take.
’Fine,’ David thought. ’Fine.’
He exhaled through his nose and lifted his head, hands sliding into his pockets.
’Not like I’m walking home alone after escorting a girl through a bad neighborhood,’ he thought. ’There’s almost nothing that feels quite this pathetic.’
He kept moving.
A minute passed before something else surfaced — quieter, more practical. He slowed without stopping.
’Dragon Claw.’
He actually paused at that.
He had a dungeon coming. Fourteen days, which sounded like a lot until you remembered that he’d never been inside one. If there was ever a time to start putting reps on the skill, it was now — not inside the dungeon where a mistake meant something, but out here, where the worst case scenario was looking stupid in an empty street.
He glanced around.
Nothing. Lamp posts. Cracked pavement. A stray cat that wanted no part of him.
"Where are the armed robbers when you actually need one," he muttered.
He kept walking. One block, then two, the idea still sitting in the back of his head like an itch he hadn’t scratched. No cabs in sight — he’d checked twice, then stopped checking. He was already late enough that it didn’t matter. So he walked, and he looked, and every so often he flexed his hand at his side and thought about activation, and every so often he didn’t.
He never found his robber.
He almost didn’t notice the gate at first.
He registered the space before he registered what was wrong with it — that open corner where the air used to feel heavier, where people walked a half-step wider without knowing why. He stopped.
The gate was gone.
Just — gone. The ground where it had stood was ordinary. Cracked concrete, same as everywhere else. No barrier, no shimmer, no crowd of low-ranked hunters pretending not to be scared. Nobody at all.
’They cleared it,’ he thought.
He stood there longer than he meant to.
It was a small thing. One dungeon gate in the lower district, cleared by people who probably weren’t paid enough for it. But something in his chest shifted anyway — something quiet and inconvenient.
’There’s hope here,’ he thought. ’Actual hope.’
Not charity. Not the upper city tossing resources downward like scraps. People from these streets, handling their own. He thought about what it would look like if that became the rule instead of the exception — if the lower districts stopped being the place people survived and started being the place people built something. If he got strong enough to be part of that.
’I’m going to make it happen,’ he thought. Not a plan. Just a fact he hadn’t known yet.
Then his stomach growled.
’But first — home.’
---
He found his keys on the third pocket check. The lock gave with a familiar resistance, the kind you learned to angle into, and he stepped inside and shut it behind him with his heel.
Shoes first. Then his jeans, folded over the chair — not because he was particular about it, just because it was the kind of thing that stayed with you. Shirt next. He moved through it the way he moved through everything lately: composed, deliberate, like his body had started taking the training seriously even when his brain wasn’t paying attention. By the time he was down to his singlet and boxers he hadn’t rushed once.
He crossed the bedroom in three quiet strides and dropped backward onto the bed.
The mattress caught him softly. Springs settled. He stared at the ceiling for a moment — the familiar water stain in the corner, the crack that had been there since he moved in.
Then he reached sideways and pulled open the nightstand drawer.
Eva stared up at him and he stared at it.
Taking a soft hiss, he glanced over at his boxers, specifically at the faint impression of his length.
’You embarrassed me today.’ he thought. ’Or have you forgotten? It seems you need to be properly suctioned tonight.’
He considered it for a moment — the familiar ritual of it, lifting her out of the closet, and unleashing her suctioning wrath against his cock. However, he looked at Eva for another second.
Then he slid the drawer shut.
"No," he said quietly. To himself, mostly. "Not tonight."
He settled back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling again. The water stain. The crack. The silence of a room that wasn’t asking anything from him.
Normally he’d have had her out already. Normally that was the part of the day he looked forward to — He and Eva and the dark. The perfect unity.
Now he just felt, well, honestly he couldn’t explain.
’That’s different,’ he thought. Not alarmed by it. Just noticing. ’That’s completely different from how it usually goes.’
He closed his eyes, turning over to his side as he adjusted his pillow.
’I guess I really am changing.’
A beat.
’Hm.’
He didn’t know if that was good yet. But he fell asleep before he could decide.