Chapter 4: It actually worked

[Target: Sophia — Hunter]

[Current Rank: C]

[Hidden Potential: S-Rank]

[Recommendation: HIGH-PRIORITY INVESTMENT TARGET]

Leon’s breath caught somewhere in his throat. He blinked at the words, then blinked again, half convinced they’d rearrange themselves into something less absurd the second time around.

S-rank. There were maybe a handful of S-rank hunters in the entire city. People who cleared gates by themselves that took full raid parties to survive. People who got their faces on broadcasts and their names attached to government contracts. And the system was telling him that the woman standing in his doorway in house slippers, offering to help him with a "scuffle," was one bad awakening test away from being one of them.

"Uh, hello? You still with me?" Sophia waved a hand in front of his face, brow furrowed.

Leon snapped back, forcing his expression into something he hoped looked like calm and not like a man who’d just been electrocuted. He cleared his throat, willing his pulse to slow down.

"Sorry, sorry, long night," he said. "It’s really nothing serious, honestly. Just a personal thing. Nothing you need to worry about."

She studied him for a second, clearly unconvinced, but eventually let it go with a small shrug. "Okay. Well, if it happens again, my door’s right there." She jabbed a thumb at her own apartment. "Take care of yourself, Leon."

"Yeah. Thanks, Sophia."

She gave him one last look, somewhere between concern and awkwardness, then turned and disappeared back into her room. Leon shut his door and turned the lock, more out of habit than any real need for privacy.

He stood there for a moment, back against the wood, staring at nothing.

’Why would she even care?’ he thought. ’We’ve barely said ten words to each other in a year, and she comes knocking because I looked beat up?’

The thought didn’t sit long before another one shoved it aside, louder and far more insistent. S-rank. She’s going to be S-rank.

If the system was telling the truth, and after last night, some too-eager part of him was already starting to believe it might be, then Sophia wasn’t just a neighbor with good manners. She was an opportunity. If he could find some way to invest in her, the way he’d invested in Viper LTD, help push her toward the potential the system saw buried under a C-rank badge, she wouldn’t just be grateful.

She’d be indebted to him. And an S-rank hunter owing him a favor was worth more than any stock on the market.

’One step at a time,’ he told himself, shoving the thought aside for later. ’First, I need to know if the system even actually works.’

The cup ramen was cold by the time he remembered it existed. He ate it anyway, sitting at his desk with his eyes drifting every few minutes to the clock in the corner of his screen, then to his phone, then back to the clock.

Sixteen hours. That was the number the system had given him. He didn’t know when the countdown had actually started, from the moment he bought the shares, probably, somewhere around midnight, which meant sometime in the evening he’d know whether he’d just made the smartest decision of his life or thrown away his last forty credits on a screen that had been lying to him from the start.

The day crawled. He tried to distract himself, scrolled through job listings he couldn’t apply for without missing class, reread the same page of a textbook three times without absorbing a word of it, paced his tiny room until his ribs reminded him, sharply, that pacing was a bad idea. Every so often he’d catch himself glancing at the System window, sitting quiet and unchanging in the corner of his vision, and mutter something under his breath before forcing himself to look away again.

By evening, hunger dragged him back to the cupboard for a second cup of ramen. He sat with it steaming in front of him, phone face-up on the desk, PC screen glowing softly with the trading app still open, and watched the clock tick past the sixteen-hour mark.

Nothing happened.

No notification. No ping. No golden light bleeding across his vision like there had been the first time. Just the quiet hum of his PC and the smell of cheap noodles going cold for the second time that day.

"...Of course," he said flatly, setting his chopsticks down. "Of course it doesn’t work. Should’ve known. Should’ve known the second I saw a hundred credits turning into a million in sixteen hours that it was garbage. Baloney. All of it."

He let his head fall back against the chair, staring at the ceiling, feeling something in his chest cave in slower and heavier than the humiliation from the mall ever had. Forty credits wasn’t a fortune, but it had been almost everything he had, and he’d handed it over on the promise of a hallucination.

He was still staring at the ceiling, jaw tight, when his phone lit up on the desk beside him.

He almost ignored it. Almost let it sit there buzzing while he wallowed. But something made him glance over, and the headline on the screen stopped the self-pity dead in his throat.

BREAKING: Private hunter guild Viper LTD stuns industry, newly signed S-rank hunter and two A-rank hunters revealed, alongside a rare artifact recovered from a Tier-4 gate. Investors scramble as valuation skyrockets overnight.

Leon sat up so fast the chair nearly tipped backward.

He fumbled for the phone, thumb smearing across the cracked screen as he opened the article properly, scanning it twice, three times, heart hammering somewhere up near his throat. Photos of a guild banner he didn’t recognize an hour ago. Analysts falling over themselves describing Viper LTD as the most explosive story in the hunter economy this year.

His phone buzzed again before he’d even finished reading, a second notification, this one from the trading app itself.

Your position in Viper LTD has appreciated significantly. Current portfolio value: 200,412 credits.

Leon stared at the number until the digits stopped looking like digits and just became a blur.

"...Two hundred thousand," he whispered. "Two hundred thousand credits."

Before he could even process it properly, the System flared to life at the edge of his vision, gold light spilling across the blue like it had the first time, only brighter now, like it, too, was pleased with itself.

[Investment Complete]

Leon sat frozen in his chair, cold ramen forgotten, staring at the light like it was the first real thing he’d seen in years.