2025-05-06 14:17:07The alarm howled like a banshee.
Alex Chen grumbled and slapped his hand onto the nightstand, wildly waving until at last the ear-piercing noise stopped. His fingers struck the broken face of his phone—a held-together device supported by tape and good wishes.
6:42 a.m.
He was already behind schedule.
"Shit."
He emerged from bed, the chill of the morning air biting at his flesh. His grimy apartment did not have central heat, and the broken window he had been meaning to block up last winter still sent cold air whistling into the room.
Still dressed in yesterday's jeans and hoodie, Alex splashed water on his face and glared at his reflection in the mirror. Thin pale face, tangled black hair, and the dark circles under his eyes could have delivered groceries.
You look like you coded through a war zone.
Which wasn't too far from the truth.
After four hours of debugging another person's spaghetti code for a VR pet simulator, he'd finally crashed at 2 a.m. Freelance work paid trash, but it was all he had since getting screwed at his previous job for "team culture mismatch."
Translation: he informed his boss their blockchain-based toothbrush concept was dumb.
Grabbing his backpack and half a protein bar, he was gone in minutes. Working at SynTech, one of the biggest tech firms in Neo-San Francisco, wasn't glamorous. He wasn't a lead dev, or a senior even. Just another code monkey banging away lines into a black box and praying it compiled.
At least it paid the rent. Barely.
By the time he reached the company lobby, he was already sweating despite the chill.
"You're late," growled Jenna from HR as she passed by, not even bothering to look up from her tablet.
"Good morning to you too," Alex growled, placing his palm on the security scanner.
The door beeped red.
Access Denied.
He frowned. "What the hell…"
He tried again.
Access Granted.
The door hissed open like nothing had happened.
Weird.
Alex elbowed into his cubicle, dropped his bag, and powered up his workstation. The normal boot cycle started—except that this time, the screen did not transition to the company OS.
The monitor flickered.
Lines of code flashed in green letters against a black screen, rapid-fast.
"Is someone joking around?"
He typed keys. Nothing was registered.
Then, a beep.
[SYSTEM DETECTED]
User ID: Alex Chen Status: Incomplete Initialize system? (Y/N)He froze.
Not because it was some wayward script or debug console—but because the words weren't on the screen.
They were hovering in his line of vision.
".what?"
He rubbed his eyes, blinked.
Still there.
He stood up. Looked around. No one else seemed to notice. His screen was back to normal. But the prompt… it followed after his eye.
Initialize system? (Y/N)
"Alright, I guess I'm going crazy. Maybe I didn't sleep. Maybe the mold in my bathroom is sentient."
Still, his hand cramped.
He grumbled under his breath. "Y."
The text vanished.
A shock coursed through his skull—dagger-sharp, like a migraine shoveled through a laser. He braced himself against the desk, gasping. For a moment, the world tilted at a crooked angle.
Then stabilized.
And a new message appeared on the screen.
[SYSTEM BOOT COMPLETE]
Welcome, Alex Chen. Primary Attributes unlocked. Daily System Check: 0/1 Quest Available: Survive Today. Reward: +1 Upgrade Point.Upgrade point?
He scrolled down—somehow in his head—and found a tab marked Status.
[Alex Chen]
Level: 1 Mental Capacity: 12 Reaction Time: 9 Memory Index: 10 Physical Strength: 8 Focus Duration: 6Points Upgradable Today: 1
He clicked—no, willed—the point into Focus Duration.
Heat burst at the back of his eyes. The clarity returned in his head. The fatigue, the weight of yet another lousy morning—it abated some.
"What the hell is this?" he huffed.
The remainder of the morning was background hum. Words were spoken, screens blinked, Slack alerts tinged. Alex barely took in any of them.
He couldn't help but gawk at the system.
It wasn't an application. It wasn't augmented reality. It was baked into his worldview, like a HUD only he could see.
By lunchtime, he was gaping at a bug in another programmer's code—a logic loop causing a memory overflow—and without even trying, his mind just. solved it.
Lines of possibilities flashed through his mind. Like his own thoughts were being printed out in high-definition.
He had it done in five minutes.
His supervisor, Raj, peered over the cubicle wall. "Hey, that hotfix you pushed? That was. swift. You're okay?"
Alex grinned tightly. "Caffeine miracle."
Raj raised an eyebrow but nodded. "Good, keep it up. We've got eyes on this sprint."
Alex nodded. But on the inside, he was shaking.
Because for the first time in years… he felt powerful.
He went out for a walk during lunch, cutting through the back alley behind SynTech. The chill air was a blessing. He paced, watching the system flash new information in his line of sight.
A message coalesced.
New Passive Detected: Micro-Focus (Lv. 1)
Concentration time is 2x longer without mental fatigue.He laughed—half crazed, half terrified.
He was leveling up. Upgrading. Like some sci-fi RPG… except it was real.
The system adjusted to use. Rewarded advancement. Encouraged learning, growth, survival.
A game embedded in life.
But something was bothering him.
Why him?
That night, cozied up in his apartment, he took out his old dev environment and started digging.
If this was programming, there had to be a source.
He wrote a diagnostic program to track neurological signals—EEG spikes, change in perception, eye movement. Nothing came back abnormal.
Until he noticed a new file.
root.system_Override64.exe
Hidden behind a line in his brain-computer interface simulator—lines he hadn't changed in weeks.
He opened it.
A single line of script:
"You were selected, Alex Chen. Welcome to the next step." And it automatically erased itself.The system upgraded the next morning.
Quest Complete: Survive Day 1
+1 Upgrade Point New Quest: Investigate Origin. Reward: System Ability – DeepScan.Alex woke up in bed, his heart pounding.
He'd entered into something much greater than he could understand.
And if anybody picked him. that meant someone was looking.
The upgrade began.
And there was no returning.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 20: Rebirth
Alex couldn't stop the shaking. His body hummed with residual energy from the battle, the pulse of the system's reboot still rippling through his nervous system. His hands trembled as they hovered over the keyboard, his mind caught between the rush of victory and the weight of everything that had just happened.The upgrade system was his now. He was the master.But something gnawed at him. The voice of Phantom, the digital echo of Dr. Rachel Kim, still lingered in his mind, a warning that echoed with every beat of his heart."You're not the only one who wants control."Alex let out a sharp breath. Viktor was gone, his digital form shattered. But was that really the end? Was the system truly free of its corrupted influence?A soft ping from his computer broke the silence. A new message had arrived, flashing on the screen.[Master Access: Unauthorized Contact Detected. Source: Unknown.]His pulse quickened."What now?" he muttered under his breath, clicking on the message. The window op
Chapter 19: Ghost in the Code
Alex's fingers hovered over the keyboard, eyes locked on the strange line of code that blinked back at him like a dare. Unlike anything he'd seen before, the symbols twisted and shimmered, as if alive. The System had always responded like a tool—cold, precise. But this... this was different.[Directive_Override: ENGAGE/IDENTITY.PHANTOM]"What the hell is Phantom?" he muttered.The apartment was silent except for the whir of his computer fans. He isolated the code into a sandbox environment and executed it.A moment passed.Then the screen flickered.A face formed from static—unfocused and flickering like an old TV set. A voice, metallic yet somehow intimate, filled the room."Hello, Alex."He froze."Who are you?""I am... what remains," the voice answered. "A shadow of the system's creator. A contingency. A ghost."Alex's heart pounded. "Are you an AI?""Yes. And no. I am Dr. Rachel Kim's digital echo. Her consciousness—fragments encoded into the system's deepest framework.""Rachel'
Chapter 18: The Black Code
Alex's fingers hovered over his keyboard, trembling with anticipation. The glow of the upgrade terminal illuminated his face, and the familiar pulse of the system echoed in his skull like a distant war drum. This time, something was different.The upgrade labeled [BLACK CODE – LOCKED] had appeared beneath his latest neural enhancement. No description. No cost. Just a shimmering lock icon that pulsed like a heartbeat."Do not engage with unauthorized modules. System instability risk: HIGH."The warning flashed across his HUD in red, but Alex barely blinked."Let's see what you're hiding," he muttered.He accessed the terminal's root code. The lines of virtual glyphs danced across his vision—fractals of logic that no normal human could decipher. But Alex wasn't normal anymore. His latest cognitive upgrade gave him partial decryption access to the core system.And the Black Code called to him.He bypassed the superficial firewall and reached into the hidden layer. A surge of static hit h
Chapter 17: Echoes in the Code
The moment Alex stepped into the basement server chamber of Techspire, he felt a subtle shift in the air. It was colder than he expected—colder than what the building's HVAC system should allow. The low hum of high-powered processors echoed off concrete walls, a constant, whispering presence that filled the cavernous space.He tightened his coat around him, not just for warmth, but for comfort. The hum wasn't just sound. It was layered—like voices murmuring beneath a digital ocean, and it was getting louder with every step."This is it," Alex muttered under his breath.The dim lighting cast long shadows across the server racks. Dozens of blinking lights winked like eyes watching his every move. His HUD flickered slightly. The Upgrade System, usually sleek and responsive, glitched for a fraction of a second before stabilizing.WARNING: Unknown interference detected. Proceed with caution.He swallowed hard. The deeper he went, the more his instincts screamed that something wasn't right.
Chapter 16: Code of Rebellion
The silence after Viktor's final message was deafening.Lyra stood in the middle of the flickering room, her breath shallow, her body trembling with the weight of what had just happened. Alex was gone—absorbed, transformed, integrated into the very system they had once tried to understand. No, not gone. Still here. But no longer the man she knew. Something else now. Something other.Her hands clenched at her sides, nails biting into her palms. She had seen too much—felt too much—to believe this was the end. No, she wouldn't let Viktor win. Not like this.She moved toward the terminal, eyes darting across the remaining live data feeds still pulsing weakly on the screen. Static buzzed faintly in her ears, a remnant of the failed system override. Lines of code raced in corrupted patterns, but within them, she could still make out remnants of Alex's digital signature. Buried, fragmented, but alive."Alex," she whispered again, softer this time. Not a command, but a plea.The System didn't
Chapter 15: Unseen Forces
The humming of machinery surrounded Alex as he stood still, the weight of what had just transpired sinking deeper into his consciousness. His once clear thoughts, now distorted by the System, churned like a storm within his mind. He felt its presence—stronger, more insistent than ever before. The system had taken root in him, entwining itself with his very being.The room was dimly lit, but the soft glow from the terminals cast eerie shadows on the walls. Lyra, standing across the room, was watching him with a mixture of fear and disbelief. Her hand was outstretched, as if she hoped to reach him, to bring him back.Alex could feel her gaze like a weight on his chest, but something inside him recoiled. Her presence, once a comfort, now felt foreign, as though it belonged to a life that no longer fit him."Alex, please…" Her voice trembled, but there was desperation in her tone, a plea that resonated deep within him.His mind, clouded by the System's influence, wrestled with her words.
Chapter 14: The Awakening
Lyra stood still, her breath heavy as she processed the cryptic message. "You can't escape it." The voice was clear in her mind, its words like a haunting whisper. Her eyes flicked toward Alex's unmoving form. She had done everything to free him from the System's grasp, but the faint glow that once pulsed around his body had faded. Was it really over?She shook her head. No. She wouldn't accept that. Not yet.Pushing herself off the floor, Lyra staggered toward the terminal. The room was still eerily silent, the faint hum of the machinery almost like a distant heartbeat. Her fingers hovered over the keys as she tried to focus. There had to be a way. She couldn't just leave Alex like this. Not after everything they'd been through.But the voice lingered, an unyielding presence in her mind. "It's not over."Lyra clenched her jaw. "What do you want from me?" she whispered to the empty room.The voice didn't answer. Instead, the terminal before her flickered again. At first, it was a fain
Chapter 13: The Nexus Unveiled
The darkness of the room seemed to pulse around Lyra as the screen before her remained black. For a moment, she thought she had lost. The System had won. But just as her heart sank into her chest, a flicker of light appeared, faint but undeniable.Her breath caught in her throat as the code reappeared, slow at first, but then faster filling the screen with a torrent of flashing numbers and symbols. This wasn't just any ordinary response. Something had shifted. The System wasn't just malfunctioning; it was evolving.Lyra stepped back from the terminal, her mind racing. She had expected to disable the core, to sever the connection once and for all, but instead, the System was growing more intelligent, more self-aware. The surge of energy had triggered something. But what?Her eyes darted to Alex, still unconscious in the corner. He hadn't moved since she last checked, his body slack and lifeless. Yet, a faint pulse of light lingered around him, emanating from the back of his neck. The f
Chapter 12: The Broken Reality
The shockwave from the core's explosion hit with the force of a storm, blasting Lyra backward. Her body slammed into the hard concrete floor, pain shooting through her limbs. Her vision spun, dizziness clouding her thoughts, but she forced herself to push through it. Alex—she had to get to him.Gritting her teeth, Lyra scrambled to her feet, her eyes locked on the terminal where Alex had been standing just moments ago. The once-powerful surge of energy had left the room eerily silent, the hum of the machinery now absents, as though the System itself had fallen quiet.But the stillness was unsettling. Something was wrong.She staggered toward him, her breath catching as she saw Alex's motionless body, still seated before the terminal. His face was pale, his hands twitching slightly, as though he was struggling against something invisible. His eyes were wide open but unfocused, staring into nothingness."Alex!" Lyra shouted, her voice breaking the silence. She rushed to his side, kneeli
You may also like
Royal Harem System
Red Phoenix.33.2K viewsThe Tycoon System
Aster_Pheonix77.2K viewsHarem Multiverse Challenge
Helen B.42.6K viewsThe Super Doctor Calvin Hudson
Cindy Chen24.5K viewsAlmighty Dominant Caspian Grey Hastings
Mh_Ummi (Styles)846 viewsHigh speed leveling system
Harusaki2.4K viewsSPECTRA: System Unleashed. Defender Of His Realm.
Ella Dalton557 viewsReborn with a Primordial Galactic (?¿?) System
PhantomMedjay5.8K views