Chapter 63: Level Reached! Player Will Now Be Briefed!
The days collapsed into each other.
David squeezed more out of Mrs. Walbury — longer sessions, private time he had to ask for twice before she agreed, the kind of drilling that left his knuckles stiff and his footwork sharper than it had any right to be.
Holly pushed him during their sessions the way she always did, which was to say without mercy, which was to say exactly what he needed. He didn’t tell her that.
At home he filled the remaining hours with reps. Virgin Touch made it almost unfair — a few hours of sleep and he was back, fully reset, his body ready to go again before his mind had finished complaining.
He used every minute of it. Push-ups until the carpet had the impression of his palms. Holds. Breathwork. The kind of quiet, repetitive work that didn’t look like anything from the outside but accumulated in the joints.
He noticed somewhere around day eight that the stats weren’t ticking the way they used to.
Twenty reps used to net him something. Now he’d hit thirty and see nothing. Then thirty-five. He didn’t panic — he just adjusted, pushed the number higher until the system decided he’d earned it, and kept going. The threshold had moved. That was fine. He’d move with it.
By day eleven, everything sat at fifty.
[DING.]
[Congratulations. Player has reached the 50-stat threshold. Player has advanced to Level 5.]
David exhaled.
He was on the floor of his living room, back against the couch, palms flat on the carpet behind him. The coffee table had been shoved toward the wall, creating a temporal work out space for him.
He wore a tank top, gym shorts, bare feet — the assembly of a man who had stopped caring what he looked like at home approximately six days ago. Sweat had dried on him twice already.
He stared at the notification hovering in the air in front of him, and his stats beneath it, each number sitting clean and even at fifty.
[Player Stats Updated:
Name: David Myers
Strength: 50.
Agility: 52.
Endurance: 51.
Stamina: 51.
Penile Strength: 50
Total Exchange points: 50
LvL: 5/??? ]
He didn’t celebrate. Didn’t have the energy for it, and it wouldn’t have felt right anyway. Just him and the quiet and a number that meant the system owed him something.
’Alright,’ he thought.
’System...’
[I’m here, Player.]
The notification pulsed once, then held.
"Alright." David said it out loud, because it felt less strange than thinking it. "You owe me information. Two questions."
[Player may proceed.]
"First." He shifted his weight, palms still flat on the carpet. "The dungeon. Which stats should I actually be focusing on? Not all of them — I know you’re going to say all of them are important. I’m asking which ones matter most for what I’m about to walk into."
A pause. Shorter than usual.
[All stats contribute to Player’s overall performance. However, given the nature of dungeon environments and the creatures Player will encounter, the recommended priorities are Strength, Agility, and Stamina. Dungeons operate in waves — magical creatures advance in successive groups. Player will not face one enemy but many, across sustained periods of engagement.]
[Strength: improves overall physical output — raw power, striking force, the ability to put something down before it puts you down.]
[Agility: improves reaction speed, balance, and spatial awareness. Where Strength falls short, Agility compensates — allowing Player to avoid damage entirely rather than absorb it.]
[Stamina: governs how long Player remains effective before performance deteriorates. In a wave-based environment, this is not optional.]
[Endurance: governs damage absorption — how much Player can take before the body fails. Depleted Stamina means dying slowly. Depleted Endurance means dying quickly.]
David read it twice.
’Blunt,’ he thought. ’Okay.’
He turned it over. Strength to kill them. Agility as a fallback when he couldn’t. Stamina to last long enough for it to matter. Endurance to absorb what he couldn’t dodge.
He didn’t know how many waves were coming — nobody told you that upfront — which meant Stamina wasn’t optional and neither was Endurance. Agility he could keep climbing without pouring everything into it. Strength, Stamina, Endurance — those three were the foundation.
He nodded once.
’Honestly helpful,’ he thought, and meant it.
Six days. Not enough to rebuild from scratch. Enough to sharpen what was already there. He’d push the three hard and let Agility climb at its own pace. It wasn’t a perfect plan. It was the plan he had.
He uncrossed his legs, stretched both arms above his head until something in his spine released, then settled again and sat straight.
"Alright, system." Quiet. Even. "Second question."
He looked at the notification space directly — the way you looked at someone when you wanted them to understand you weren’t asking twice.
"You’ve been with me since the beginning. You’ve pushed me, tested me, kept things from me, tangled Holly into things I didn’t ask for." A beat.
"I’m at level five now. So I’m going to need you to stop making me wait."
He let the silence sit.
"What exactly are you?"
A short silence pressed on for the moment.
Not the usual processing pause — something longer. Something that felt different in the air, though David couldn’t have explained why.
Then:
[Congratulations. The First Truth has been unlocked. Player will now be properly briefed]
Then the silence stretched — longer this time, heavier — before the notification returned.
The glow was different. Redder. Deeper than anything the system had shown him before, pulsing at the edge of his vision like something breathing, and David’s shoulders jumped before he could catch himself.
[You must have been wondering what I am. I will now answer you.]
David stilled.
It took him a second to place what was wrong. He read it again, slower.
’Player,’ he thought. ’It didn’t say Player.’
Every notification since the beginning had always referred to him as player.
But for some reason, not this.
He stared at the words and felt something shift in the room that had nothing to do with the temperature.
Then the final notification came.
[I am neither your enemy, nor your jailer, nor a parasite feeding on your progress.]
[I am not the Monarch of Sin. Nor am I his power. I am the last record of his existence.]
"...Hmm." David grunted as he stared in confusion.
"Explain."