The life of Alina Veyra was a masterpiece of curation. Her party members, her gear, her dialogue options, her fiancé, every element was optimized to present a flawless, and cohesive public profile.
Tonight's event was a prime example: a fundraiser for the Jooshin Advanced Artifacts Division, held at a gallery that looked less like a building and more like a sterile, white loading screen.
The guest list was a who's who of players with maxed-out Wealth stats.
The "art" was the kind Victor loved: massive, inert artifacts with impressive lore descriptions but zero practical stats.
Alina stood before her personal armory, a space larger than most Jooshin dorms, and felt a wave of profound apathy.
[System Alert: Morale dropping to critical levels.]
The Void Sapphire dress from the last social hung in a stasis-field garment bag, a silent reminder of her assigned role.
Tonight's required gear set was a silver sheath dress: Elegant, Understated, Charisma +5, and about as exciting as a corporate balance sheet.
"Just equip it," she murmured to her reflection. "Activate [Social Protocol: Smile], and talk about the artist's bold use of beige. You can grind this."
But she couldn't. The thought of another three hours of forced smiles and meaningless NPC dialogue felt like a stacking Exhaustion debuff.
Her meticulously curated life was a beautiful, suffocating instance, and she needed to find an exit.
The rebellion that led her to drop the grimoire for Darius was a small, quiet thing.
Tonight, she needed to trigger a more disruptive event.
An hour later, Alina disguises into a dark jeans, a shirt, and a jacket. She used her sneaking skill to slip out a service entrance without her guards seeing her.
She wasn't going to the sterile white gallery. She was going to its polar opposite.
Anonymous coordinates led her to a rundown industrial area. The gallery, "The Cauldron," was a huge, abandoned warehouse with old walls covered in glowing graffiti. It smelled of wet concrete, paint, and junk wine.
Here, tech was for art, not for business.
Inside, the place was loud and alive. The crowd was full of techs, artists, and rebels in old and custom clothes.
This was a free-fire zone for ideas.
Alina felt a thrill of forbidden intimacy, a Belonging buff in a place she had no right to be. This was real. She drifted through the space, a high-level player in a low-level zone, soaking it all in.
The tech was raw and rebellious. A sculpture made of shattered terminals flickered with fragmented images of celebrity faces.
A series of portraits were painted on repossessed apartment doors. It was angry, beautiful, and achingly honest.
She was standing before a particularly eye catching piece, a giant robot pieced together from old machines, its empty eyes filled with sorrow.
when she saw him.
He was tucked away in a corner, partially hidden by a concrete pillar, as if he had instinctively sought a Sneaking bonus from the shadows. It was Darius Cole.
He wasn't just looking at the old mech; he was interfacing with it.
In his lap was an old data pad , his hand moving with smooth focus, a stylus moving across the screen as he sketched its designs.
He was completely absorbed, his brow wrinkled in concentration.
[Skill Check: Empathy - Success!]
He wasn't just drawing the machine, he was trying to understand its soul.
Alina's heart gave a strange, unexpected jerk.
Of all the places, of all the players, it was the "statistical anomaly." And he fit in here more than she could ever.
She hesitated, the protocol of her world screaming at her to snap out , to pretend she hadn't seen him.
But the shared memory of the archives was a quest marker she couldn't resist.
She walked towards him.
"I see you're a fan of post-industrial existentialism," she said.
His head snapped up, his eyes opened wide.
For a moment, she saw fear. The kind you see when a weak player runs into a boss.
Then it was gone, and his face was calm again. He looked over her gear with a small smile on his face.
"It's a step up from the 'Bold Use of Beige' collection," he replied.
She laughed, and the Tension debuff between them eased. "My father just bought one of those.
A giant beige square. He called it a 'significant cultural acquisition.' I think it's a wall he overpaid for."
"I was just calculating the scrap value of this piece," Darius said, gesturing with his stylus.
"With the price of steel these days, the creator is probably sitting on a goldmine.
Assuming he can get it out the door."
It was the driest joke Alina had ever heard, and she found it funnier than any of Victor's fake stories .
She stepped closer, peering at his data pad.
He hadn't just sketched the mech, he'd rendered its manipulators, the way the mangled parts were twisted into gestures of supplication and rage.
His lines were clean, confident, and full of emotion. He had captured the machine's core programming.
"Your Technical Artistry skill is high-level," she said with sincerity. "Really high."
Darius shrugged, closing the data pad. "It's just a way to organize my thoughts.
Cheaper than a mind-healer." He looked around the chaotic gallery. "What's a Veyra heir doing in a starter zone like this? Don't you have a guild to endow or a small corporation to acquire?"
"I'm on an authorized leave of absence from my gilded cage," she said, picking up a plastic cup of wine.
It tasted like vinegar and freedom. "I needed to see something that wasn't... curated.
Something that was allowed to be buggy and broken." Her eyes went back to the mech. "Something that's honest."
They stood in a comfortable silence, their shared appreciation for the raw tech creating a new, unspoken Bond.
"If Victor knew I was here," Alina said with a half-smile, "he'd send his group to take over the place and turn it into condos before the next reset."
"If the academy knew I was here," Darius said, "they'd probably write me up for hanging around in a broken down place like this."
Their eyes met, and an understanding passed between them.
This moment, this place, was a [Shared Secret]. It had to be. To acknowledge it would be real and therefore dangerous.
"Well," Alina said, "my stay here is about to expire. I should get back before they send a search party."
"Right," Darius said. "I have a date with a hundred-year-old spell book ."
They didn't plan to meet again.
"Be careful of where you step," Darius said, his voice was so low she almost didn't hear it.
It was a clear echo of the anonymous message. A shared secret.
"You too," she whispered back.
She turned and walked away.
Darius waited a full five minutes before heading for the same exit.
They left separately, two players leaving a secret instance, returning to their own hostile open worlds.
Neither of them noticed the figure standing in the deepest shadows. The figure had a [Stealth] rating that was off the charts.
They hadn't been looking at the tech. They had been observing the interaction. As Darius exited, the figure raised a scanner, the lens a single, predatory eye.
[Data Capture: Complete]. A perfect, clear image of his face. A moment later, as Alina emerged, the scanner was raised again. [Data Capture: Complete]. Another perfect shot.
The figure lowered the scanner, reviewing the two image files. The F-Rank. The A-Rank.
Apart, they were a minor annoyance and a valuable asset.
Together, here… together they were a system anomaly. A bug that would need to be patched.
The figure typed a quick, encrypted message and melted back into the night.