He looked back at the blue screen still floating patiently in his room.
[YOU ARE PROCESSING. THAT'S NORMAL.]
[MOST USERS EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANT PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS UPON SYSTEM ACQUISITION.]
[THIS IS REAL. YOU ARE NOT INSANE.]
[UNFORTUNATELY.]
"Unfortunately," Jake repeated numbly. "Yeah, unfortunately is right."
He set his phone down and looked at his hands. They were still shaking.
"So what happens now?" he asked quietly. "Do I just... have this thing forever?"
[YES.]
[THE SYSTEM IS BOUND TO YOUR SOUL.]
[IT CANNOT BE REMOVED, TRANSFERRED OR REJECTED.]
[SYSTEM LOSS ONLY OCCURS THROUGH USER DEATH OR SPECIFIC FAILURE CONDITIONS.]
"Failure conditions," Jake said. "What failure conditions?"
[DISPLAYING INITIAL QUEST...]
A new window appeared, overlaying the first one.
[MANDATORY QUEST: FIRST STEPS]
[OBJECTIVE: GAIN YOUR FIRST 100 FOLLOWERS]
[TIME LIMIT: 7 DAYS]
[REWARD: ACCESS TO LEVEL 2, SKILL UNLOCK]
[FAILURE PENALTY: SYSTEM REVOCATION]
Jake stared at the word "REVOCATION" for a long time.
"What does that mean?" he asked, though he already knew the answer. "System revocation. What happens if I fail?"
[YOU LOSE THE SYSTEM.]
"And then what?"
[YOU BECOME A NORMAL HUMAN IN A WORLD WITH MONSTERS.]
[STATISTICAL SURVIVAL RATE FOR NON-SYSTEM HOLDERS IN DUNGEON BREAK SCENARIOS: 12%]
[THAT RATE IS DECLINING DAILY AS DUNGEON FREQUENCY INCREASES.]
The room felt like it was tilting, Jake gripped the edge of his desk.
"So I either do this, or I die."
[ESSENTIALLY, YES.]
[THOUGH EVEN WITH THE SYSTEM, YOUR SURVIVAL ODDS ARE NOT EXCELLENT.]
[YOUR INITIAL STATS ARE... SUBOPTIMAL.]
"Suboptimal," Jake said flatly. "Show me. Show me my stats."
[DISPLAYING USER PROFILE...]
A character sheet appeared. Just like in a video game, like in the RPGs Jake used to play when he was younger and had free time and his biggest worry was midterm exams.
[JAKE C - LEVEL 1]
[CLASS: ADULT CONTENT CREATOR]
[SUBCLASS: SHAMELESS PERVERT]
[HP: 100/100]
[MP: N/A]
[DESIRE POINTS: 0]
[ENGAGEMENT ENERGY: 0]
[STATS:]
- CHARISMA: C
- STAMINA: D
- TECHNIQUE: F
- APPEAL: C
- PRODUCTION: F
- LUCK: B
[SKILLS: NONE]
[EQUIPMENT: NONE]
[FOLLOWERS: 0]
[TITLES: NONE]
Jake read through the stats three times then he started laughing. It wasn't a happy laugh, It was the laugh of a man whose life had just become a cosmic joke.
"F," he said between gasps. "F in Technique, the system ranked my sexual technique as an F."
[THE EVALUATION IS OBJECTIVE.]
"That's somehow worse!" Jake's laughter turned slightly hysterical. "Oh god... Oh my god, this is real. This is actually real and I'm going to die because I'm bad at sex."
[THAT'S NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE.]
[YOU'RE GOING TO DIE BECAUSE YOU'RE BAD AT SEX "AND" HAVE NO COMBAT ABILITIES.]
"Thank you! That's so much better!"
Jake put his head in his hands. His laughter died down into something that might have been a sob if he was being honest with himself.
This was insane, all of it. Six hours ago his biggest problem was his boss's incompetence and his mother's disappointment, but now the world had apparently turned into a video game and monsters were real and Jake had been given a system that required him to become a porn streamer or die.
His phone buzzed again with more messages from Marcus and other other people. Everyone was trying to process what was happening.
Jake looked at the quest timer. Six days, twenty-three hours and forty-seven minutes remaining.
One hundred followers.
In a week.
For adult content.
"I can't do this," Jake whispered. "I can't... I don't know how to do this."
[TUTORIAL AVAILABLE.]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN?]
Jake sat silently for a long time, his apartment was quiet except for the distant sounds of the city sirens (it was a lot more than usual) Shouting from somewhere blocks away, and a helicopter passing overhead.
The world was changing whether he liked it or not.
And he could either adapt, or die.
"Fuck," Jake said quietly. Then, louder: "Fuck!"
He stood up and paced to the window, Looked out at the brick wall that had been his view for three years. The same brick wall, the same shitty apartment. The same mediocre life.
Except now it came with monsters and magic and a porn system that was apparently his only ticket to survival.
"Fine," Jake said, turning back to face the screen. "Fine, show me the tutorial, but I'm not promising anything. I need... I need to think about this."
[UNDERSTOOD.]
[TUTORIAL WILL INITIALIZE WHEN YOU'RE READY.]
[IN THE MEANTIME, I RECOMMEND RESEARCHING OTHER SYSTEM HOLDERS.]
[UNDERSTANDING THE NEW WORLD WILL HELP YOU SURVIVE IT.]
The screen dimmed slightly, becoming less intrusive but still visible in his side vision.
Jake grabbed his laptop and started researching. Twitter. Reddit. News sites. Forums that had popped up in the last few hours.
He read everything he could find.
The systems had appeared six months ago, but only to a handful of people. Rumors had spread but they'd been dismissed as hoaxes or viral marketing. Mass delusion.
Then few days ago the first dungeon appeared in Seoul. A rift in reality that vomited out monsters, hundreds died before system holders arrived to fight them.
After that, it couldn't be hidden anymore. Governments across the world finally started acknowledging it slowly, scientists started studying it, researching if the world could survive.
But the dungeons kept appearing more and more frequently, and only system holders could fight what came out of them effectively.
Normal weapons worked, but barely. Guns could kill the weaker monsters, but anything stronger required the enhanced abilities that systems provided.
Jake read account after account. People describing their systems. Warriors who could cut through steel. Mages who could throw lightning. Healers who could close wounds with a touch.
And then he found a thread on Reddit that made him pause.
"Anyone else get a weird system? Not combat related?"
The responses were a mix of sympathy and curiosity, someone with a Cooking System that could create food with magical effects. A Musician System that could buff allies with songs. A Crafting System that could make enhanced equipment.
All useful. All valuable to the new world.
One person mentioned getting a "Entertainer System" that required them to perform to gain power. They'd become a street performer, doing magic tricks and juggling. It worked. They were level 15 now.
Nobody mentioned porn.
Jake closed his laptop and stared at the ceiling.
Seven days.
One hundred followers.
And a system that required him to create the kind of content he'd only ever consumed in private, with the door locked and his browser in incognito mode.
"I'm so fucked," he muttered.
[NOT YET.]
[THAT'S THE PROBLEM.]
Jake groaned. "Did you just make a sex joke?"
[AFFIRMATIVE.]
[SYSTEM HUMOR IS PART OF THE USER EXPERIENCE.]
[DID IT LAND?]
"No," Jake said flatly. "It did not land."
[NOTED. WILL ADJUST PARAMETERS.]*
Jake looked at the clock. 3:47 AM. He had work in five hours, except did work even matter anymore? Would anyone be going to the office tomorrow? Would there still be an office?
His phone buzzed. A news alert.
"PRESIDENT TO ADDRESS NATION TOMORROW REGARDING 'SYSTEM' PHENOMENON"
Tomorrow, the government was going to make an official statement tomorrow.
But Jake already knew what they'd say. Adapt. Survive. Hope.
He crawled into bed without changing clothes and the blue screen dimmed further but didn't still disappear. He could still see it in the darkness, a faint glow, a reminder that his life had fundamentally changed.
Sleep didn't come for a long time, he was up in thoughts and imagination, but when it finally did, Jake dreamed of floating blue text and F-rank scores and monsters made of teeth crawling out of holes in reality.
And somewhere in the dream, a cheerful voice saying: "Don't worry! You'll get the hang of it!"
He woke up the next morning with sunlight streaming through his window and the blue screen still floating over his bed.
[QUEST TIMER: 6 DAYS, 14 HOURS, 23 MINUTES REMAINING]
It wasn't a dream.
"Fuck," Jake said to his ceiling.
The apocalypse had come, and he was going to face it with an F in Technique and a system that required him to become a porn streamer.
"What The Fuck Was This Life Now?"