One week later, Kian didn't crawl through the grate.
He walked in through the front door of The Slaughtered Lamb, past the drunks who didn't recognize him, down the stairs, and into Mags' basement like he owned the place.
She was already waiting. Two cups on the table. Good whiskey. The expensive kind that came in crystal bottles.
"You're late," she said.
"You're still breathing." He sat down, didn't touch the drink. "That means business is good."
Mags slid a heavy sack across the table. Gold. Real gold, not the digital credits the guilds used for official transactions. The sound it made was thick. Honest.
"Twenty thousand," she said. "And I could've gotten thirty if I'd waited another day. The Northern Guild is having a fucking meltdown. They sent runners to every black market in the kingdom looking for 'unauthorized copies.'"
Kian didn't look at the gold. He was watching her face. The way her scarred lip kept twitching.
"You're scared."
"I'm sane." She leaned forward, dropped her voice. "They executed a fence in the Eastern Quarter yesterday. Public. Didn't even pretend it was legal. Just dragged him into the square and took his head off."
"What'd he sell?"
"A sword. Some Unique-grade blade that was supposed to be in a guild vault. Except some anonymous seller, completely hypothetical, had moved three of them last week."
Kian smiled. "Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically, that fence is dead. And the Guild Masters are putting together a task force to find the source." Mags grabbed the whiskey, poured herself a heavy one. Didn't offer again. "You need to stop. Lay low for a year. Let this blow over."
"No."
"You're gonna get us both killed."
"No," he said again, slower. "I'm gonna get us rich. And then I'm gonna get us powerful. And then nobody's gonna fucking touch us."
He reached into his bag. Pulled out a stack of books.
Mags went pale.
"Are those,"
"Skill books. Twenty of them. All Rank-D or above." He fanned them out on the table. "I need more. Rarer. Higher rank. I don't care what it costs."
Her hand was shaking around the glass. "You can't stack skill books. The System locks them after one use. Even if you somehow,"
"Mags." He cut her off. Quiet. Flat. "Do I look like I care what the System does?"
He picked up one book. Basic Swordsmanship, Rank-D. A nothing skill. The kind they taught to cadets in the Imperial Academy. Worth maybe fifty gold to a fresh adventurer.
He held it in both hands. Focused on that weird itch behind his eyes, the glitch. The duplicate command that lived in his skull like a second heartbeat.
Copy.
The book split. One became two. Two became four. Four became eight.
He stacked them in front of her. Eight identical books. Same cover. Same pages. Same impossible existence.
Mags didn't breathe.
"The System says one per customer," Kian said. "But I'm not a customer. I'm a fucking error."
He opened the first book. Words poured into his head, basic forms, footwork, grip strength. A notification flashed across his HUD.
[Skill Learned: Basic Swordsmanship (Rank D)]
He opened the second. Same words. Same lesson. But this time, the notification was different.
[Skill Enhanced: Basic Swordsmanship (Rank D → C)]
Third book.
[Skill Enhanced: Basic Swordsmanship (Rank C → B)]
Fourth.
[Skill Enhanced: Basic Swordsmanship (Rank B → A)]
He didn't stop. Book after book. The notifications started stacking faster than his HUD could process them. The words blurred together, Enhanced, Enhanced, Enhanced, until the system threw up a red error message.
[WARNING: SKILL RANK EXCEEDS CLASS LIMIT.]
[WARNING: STAT OVERFLOW DETECTED.]
[WARNING: USER RANK F CANNOT,]
He opened the eighth book.
The error vanished.
For one perfect second, his HUD went blank. No text. No warnings. No fucking rules.
Then a new notification appeared. Gold letters. Ones he'd never seen before.
[SKILL OVERCLOCK: Basic Swordsmanship (Rank SSS)]
[CLASS LIMIT: OVERRIDDEN]
[USER RANK: OVERRIDDEN]
His body screamed. Not pain. Something bigger. Something that felt like his bones were being remade from the inside out.
The room snapped into focus. Every grain of wood on the table. Every drop of sweat on Mags' forehead. The way the air moved when she breathed.
He could see it. All of it. The geometry of combat written into every object around him.
He picked up the remaining twelve books. Stacked them in front of her.
"Sell these," he said. His voice sounded different. Deeper. Like it was coming from somewhere else. "Use the gold to get me every skill book you can find. Steal them. Kill for them. I don't care."
Mags stared at the books. Then at his eyes, which she swore were glowing, just a little, in the dark of the basement.
"What the fuck are you?" she whispered.
Kian stood up. Rolled his shoulders. Felt the power humming under his skin like a live wire.
"I'm the thing the System's trying to patch out," he said. "And I'm just getting started."
He walked toward the stairs. Stopped at the bottom step.
"Oh. And Mags?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time I come back, have something better than swordsmanship. Something Unique. Something nobody's supposed to have more than one of." He glanced over his shoulder. Grinned that sharp, hungry grin. "I wanna see how hard I can break this thing before it crashes."
He left her sitting in the basement, surrounded by impossible books, pouring herself another drink with shaking hands.
The gold letters were still burning in his HUD.
USER RANK: OVERRIDDEN.
He liked the sound of that.