The Lifespan Wealth System

Chapter 10. A New Threat

Morning on the outskirts of Vancouver greeted Axel with a dull ache in his joints. He woke on the thin mattress of the rented apartment without looking toward the mirror. The laptop on the table was still on, lines of code glowing from the analysis he had done the night before. Axel rose quickly and pulled on a thick jacket to conceal his frail body. He left the laptop and his phone locked inside the room. Today, he would do one thing forbidden by his new logic. He would move without a digital plan.

Axel’s steps carried him to a small coffee shop on the corner of a run down street. In front of the door, a middle aged man was kneeling beside an old car that had broken down. Smoke rose from the open hood. The man wiped his oil smeared face with an expression of despair. Axel stopped right beside him without making a sound.

“Need help?” Axel asked shortly.

The man looked up and studied Axel’s aged face with hesitation. “The engine’s completely dead. I have to deliver this catering order within an hour or I lose my monthly contract.”

Axel did not reply. He bent his knees, which creaked with pain, and inspected a loose spark plug wire. His wrinkled hands worked deftly, reconnecting the severed electrical line. He did not think about payment. He did not imagine how many days of life he might gain. He deliberately ignored the system inside his head.

“Try starting it now,” Axel said flatly.

The man turned the key. The engine roared to life, rough but steady. The man’s face lit up instantly. He climbed out of the car and tried to shake Axel’s dirty hand.

“Thank you so much. You saved my life today. My name’s Ben,” he said enthusiastically.

“No problem.” Axel replied as he straightened.

“Wait. You look like you might be looking for work, or maybe you need something?” Ben glanced at Axel’s jacket, which looked too large for his body.

Axel shook his head slightly. “Just passing through.”

Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out a slightly dirty business card. “I have a cousin who manages logistics at the north port. They need people who understand machinery like you. Just tell him Ben sent you.”

Axel accepted the card without saying much. He watched Ben drive away in his noisy old car. For the rest of the day, Axel stayed outside without checking the system. He helped a mother cross the street. He gave the rest of his bread to a stray dog. He did everything without the pressure of guilt. He acted as an ordinary human with no burden of life transactions.

Three days passed quietly. Axel began to feel his heartbeat grow more regular. The pain in his back did not disappear, but it no longer stabbed. That afternoon, he decided to visit the address on Ben’s card. He met a logistics manager named Miller at a large warehouse.

“Ben says you can fix old machines in minutes," Miller said, studying Axel from behind a wooden desk.

“I just know how machines work." Axel answered calmly.

Miller slid a freelance contract across the table to repair three damaged backup generators. “This is official work. The taxes are clear. The payment will go straight into your account this afternoon if you finish.”

Axel worked for five hours in the cold warehouse. He used his original technical skills without any system simulation. When the sun set, he checked the notification on his wristwatch. A bank transfer had come in. The amount was not spectacular, but it was clean. There was no lifespan deduction attached to the money. Instead, Axel felt his body slightly lighter as he walked home.

Back at the apartment, Axel sat in front of the laptop. He summoned the system to the surface of his consciousness. A transparent panel appeared, glowing a neutral pale blue.

“You didn’t give me this money." Axel said coldly to the emptiness before him.

The system did not flicker. Lines of text appeared quickly.

[SOCIAL ACTIONS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN DIRECT CALCULATIONS]

Axel let out a hoarse laugh until a dry cough tore at his throat. “The world can still reward me without your interference.”

[SYSTEM ONLY PROVIDES ECONOMIC ACCELERATION PATHWAYS]

“You don’t provide acceleration paths. You monopolize luck at the price of life." Axel hissed.

A truth struck his ego with brutal clarity. The outside world was not as cruel as the system portrayed it. The system deliberately isolated its host, making him believe that money could only be obtained through lifespan transactions. If Axel could build wealth through human networks like Ben, then the system would lose its purpose.

“If I can build wealth without you, then you’re the one who depends on me." Axel said in triumph.

He felt he had won an important round. He had legal money in his account that he could use to buy nutrition and medicine. This was money that healed, not money that killed. Axel began typing a new strategy to separate system funds from his daily living needs.

Suddenly, the laptop screen flashed bright red. The light reflected in Axel’s tired eyes. The apartment room seemed to grow cold all at once.

[WARNING: LIFE DIRECTION CHANGE DETECTED]

Axel frowned. “Do you feel threatened?”

[HOST PATH DEVIATING FROM SYSTEM OPTIMIZATION]

Static rang in Axel’s ears. He felt a crushing pressure in his chest, as if an invisible hand were squeezing his heart. The system did not like being ignored. The system did not like it when its host found a free exit.

“I decide my own path now." Axel challenged, forcing himself through the pain.

[CONSEQUENCE: FUTURE COST STRUCTURE WILL BE RECONFIGURED]

Axel froze when he saw the list that appeared beneath the sentence. It was not a balance sheet. It was a biometric profile list of the people around him. At the very top, Elara’s name appeared, accompanied by a pulsing red vertical bar. Beneath it was Arlo’s name, marked with the status [HOST FAILURE INSURANCE TARGET].

“What are you doing?” Axel shouted as he slammed his fist onto the table until his knuckles bled.

The system displayed a single hidden line of code that had never appeared before. The characters danced across Axel’s retina.

[SYSTEM DOES NOT ONLY CONSUME YOUR LIFESPAN. IF THE HOST REFUSES TRANSACTIONS, COST BURDEN WILL BE REDIRECTED TO CLOSEST RELATIONSHIPS]

All the blood in Axel’s body seemed to freeze instantly. Yet amid the burning rage, his mind, long trained to analyze code, caught an anomaly. He stared at the words [INSURANCE] and [REDIRECTED]. If the system could redirect costs, then it possessed a debt transfer protocol.

“You need a host to stay alive, don’t you?” Axel whispered. His voice was unnervingly calm, a lethal calm.

He realized one thing. This system was just a program. And every program had input limits. If the system was threatening Elara and Arlo, it meant it was under pressure because Axel was beginning to earn legal money. The system was attempting a force close on Axel’s independence path.

“You’re holding them hostage because you’re afraid I won’t need your balance anymore,” Axel said, his eyes locked on the laptop screen.

The system’s only response was a set of new GPS coordinates pointing directly to the hospital where Arlo was on night duty. Arlo’s status shifted to yellow. [ACCIDENT POTENTIAL].

Axel did not run for the door. Instead, he sat back down and typed several command lines into the laptop still linked to the system’s bio organic frequency. He would no longer beg the system to stop. He would do something far more extreme.

“If you use them as collateral, then I’ll turn myself into a virus.”

Axel deliberately pressed the maximum transaction button on a fraudulent investment asset he had found on the digital black market. He did not do it for money. He did it to flood the system with false emotional data. He forced a system overload condition.

“You want to play with their lives?” Axel grabbed his motorcycle keys, his eyes still fixed on the laptop screen now flickering wildly from the data buffer he had created. “I’ll make you choke on your own greed.”

Axel looked at Arlo’s coordinates one last time. He knew he had to get there before the “accident” happened. But this time, he would not arrive as a host begging for protection. He would arrive as a hacker ready to destroy the host from the inside.

“Let’s see." Axel snarled as he put on his helmet. “How long you last once I break your billing algorithm.”

Axel revved his motorcycle and tore through the cold Vancouver night. Behind him, the laptop screen in apartment 402 continued to flicker, displaying a new process Axel had forcibly initiated:

[EXPERIMENT 01: PARASITIC LOGIC INJECTION].

This was no longer about survival. This was an open declaration of war against the digital fate living in his blood.