When I logged into IT Gens that morning, I expected the usual: caffeine-fueled arguments over kernel updates, flame wars about which language God would use if He coded (it's not Java), and maybe, just maybe, another poor bastard melting down over a corrupted RAID array.
What I did not expect was the universe handing Peter Carter a gold-plated, diamond-encrusted escape hatch from financial despair. And it was glowing.
The channel was on fire—an electric, chaotic frenzy exploding in real-time over one name: Quantum Tech. Or, as the regulars affectionately called them, "Quantum Desperate." The desperation wasn't subtle anymore.
You could smell it—like the scent of blood in the water before a corporate feeding frenzy. Quantum Tech had posted the offer that broke the system's sanity filters: $700,000 upfront, plus a permanent position, for one impossible job. No strings attached—except the strings were clearly made of razor wire.
I clicked the pinned post, half-expecting vaporware or crypto scam bait. The old Peter—pre-enhancement, pre-system, pre-everything—would've snorted, scrolled past, and maybe gone back to debugging spaghetti code written by an unpaid intern in Bucharest.
But Enhanced Peter? Enhanced Peter could taste opportunity like a wolf tastes fear in the throat of prey. My brain lit up like a fireworks factory hit by lightning.
The job description read like someone had merged a fever dream with a failed DARPA grant. They weren't just looking for an assistant algorithm. No—this was supposed to be an interactive, self-adaptive AI that could operate at 40% of human cerebral capacity.
Yeah. Forty.
Now, scientifically, that whole "humans only use 10% of their brain" myth is pure horseshit. But Quantum Tech didn't care.
They had built their entire neural framework off the assumption that their AI would grow—evolve—from that 10%, reaching fictional 20% on its own through machine learning and recursive simulation. And then, theoretically, they'd bridge the gap to 40% through some divine intervention or raw genius.
Problem was, they'd hit a wall. A hard, jagged, unforgiving wall of math and entropy. The post didn't say how far they'd gotten, but I read between the lines—between the panic in the comments and the oddly vague phrasing.
Eleven percent. Maybe twelve. And that extra leap? That mythical acceleration from "so smart" to "terrifyingly sentient"? It wasn't something anyone could brute-force. They needed someone who could see through the math. Past it. Someone like me.
That's when I noticed the kicker.
Twenty people had already signed up, despite the fact that Quantum wasn't releasing the full project brief until Monday. No one knew what they were really walking into—only that $700K was on the line.
Which told me one of two things: this was either the most legitimate tech crisis in recent history... or the most intricate corporate honeytrap ever devised. Either way, I couldn't look away.
And neither, apparently, could my system.
That's when the interface flickered—just a heartbeat, just enough to pull my eyes from the text—and a deep, mechanical ding echoed in my head like a gunshot in a cathedral.
[DING! Princess in Distress Mission Detected!]
My cursor froze. System interface. A mission. And it read like the opening crawl of a psychological thriller wrapped in a murder mystery wearing a Silicon Valley hoodie.
[Mission: Corporate Salvation
Target: Charlotte Thompson, 24, CEO of Quantum Tech. Inherited $8.1 billion company after father's sudden death 3 weeks ago. Zero technical knowledge. Surrounded by internal traitors. Hostile takeover in progress.
Suicide risk: 92%. Project collapse: 98%. Father's death marked as "highly suspicious."
[Primary Objectives: – Prevent Charlotte's suicide
– Uncover conspiracy behind father's death
– Eliminate corporate traitors
– Stabilize company leadership
[Rewards: 100,000 SP + Super Mystery Box
Risk Level: EXTREME – Corporate assassination probable
Accept Mission? Y/N]
I sat there, paralyzed—not out of fear, but awe. My enhanced cognition processed every detail like a goddamn quantum calculator. Suicide. Betrayal. Billion-dollar sabotage. And a girl—no, a CEO—with the weight of a dying empire on her shoulders, about to throw herself off the ledge while wolves tore down the door behind her.
It wasn't a coding gig anymore.
It was war.
And system, somehow, had decided that I was the only bastard crazy enough to win it.
My eyes narrowed. The glow from the monitor painted everything in cold, electric blue. My heart slowed. My breath vanished. This wasn't about money anymore. It was about power. Secrets. Legacy. And blood.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I stared at the notification as the cold sank in—deep, elemental cold. Not the kind that prickles your skin. The kind that seeps into your marrow and coils there like a serpent.
What the actual fuck.
This wasn't a job listing. It was a loaded gun in a glass case with my name etched into the barrel. Not some cheeky "seduce the lonely heiress" fantasy cooked up by my horny nerds cosmic system. This was espionage. Psychological warfare.
A corporate crucifixion in progress—with one terrified girl nailed to the cross while wolves chewed at her ankles.
And I was being asked to step in.
The system's summary still glowed on the edge of my vision:
[Charlotte Thompson, 24. Inherited $8.1 billion company after her father's death three weeks ago. Suicide risk: 92%. Internal betrayal confirmed. Corporate conspiracy probable. Risk level: EXTREME.]
Jesus fucking Christ.
Charlotte Thompson hadn't just inherited a tech empire—she'd been buried alive beneath it. She was sitting on the throne of a kingdom built on code, patents, secrets, and weaponized algorithms, and from the sound of it, she didn't even know how to read the blueprints.
I flexed my fingers and started typing, tearing through surface-level security and scraping public and leaked data sources like a predator scenting blood. My enhanced cognition began weaving connections before the first windows finished loading.
And what I found?
It made me want to scream into a pillow and laugh until I ruptured something.
"This girl is actually this fucked."
Charlotte hadn't just coasted through Harvard—she'd purchased it. Not the lazy trust-fund type of purchase, either.
This was full-scale academic laundering. Hired ghostwriters for every paper. Exams were outsourced. Professors bribed. Advisors rotated. She didn't climb the academic ladder—she airlifted herself to the top and then declared she'd invented it.
Not a single business theory grasped. Not a single line of code written. She once publicly confused "cloud storage" with weather prediction software in a board meeting. She wasn't just underqualified.
She was corporately illiterate. A soft target placed at the center of a power structure so vast, so vicious, that any movement she made only tightened the noose.
And she was supposed to be the CEO?
Fucking hell.
But while most people would've seen a doomed heiress caught in a corporate slaughterhouse, my upgraded mind—wired for patterns, primed for opportunity—saw something else.
A throne with no king.
A company worth eight billion, hemorrhaging leadership, reeling from a suspicious death, and surrounded by vultures wearing three-thousand-dollar suits and champagne smiles. The old guard was already moving in. Their plan was likely years in the making, quiet and surgical, until Charlotte's father died—too suddenly, too cleanly—and left her as the final piece to move.
Stopping that takeover? Insane. Like trying to steal a grenade mid-explosion.
These weren't schoolyard bullies I could intimidate. They weren't bored housewives I could charm. These were predators, the kind who shook hands while planning your autopsy. And I, Peter Carter, freelance programmer with barely enough in my bank account to order takeout, was going to step onto the board and declare checkmate?
These were people who'd supposedly killed the original owner and were now circling to finish the job. They wouldn't just sit around while some teenage nobody tried to play hero.
Who the fuck was I to think I could waltz into this world and destroy whatever plan they'd been building for years?
I should've walked away.
Should've closed the tab and gone back to debugging bad code for good pay.
But that 100,000 SP... That was life-altering.
And then there was the Super Mystery Box.
No description. No preview. No precedent. The system had never even hinted at something called a Mystery Box before. My interface didn't know what was in it—and that meant it was either completely adaptive... or utterly forbidden.
I sat back, staring at the mission prompt, my mind racing. Fear tangled with ambition in my chest. This could get me killed.
Not metaphorically. Actually, literally, irreversibly dead.
But the math was forming behind my eyes. The odds. The vectors. The tools at my disposal. With my current loadout—my system buffs, my Dark Lord abilities, my memory, knowledge, skills augmentations—I had a 40% chance of surviving. Maybe 42, if I played every angle like a goddamn demon.
It wasn't enough.
But it would have to be.
Because if I pulled it off, this mission wouldn't just change my life. It would set my family up for generations. No mom working two shifts. No more ramen noodles and cracked monitors. No more waking up terrified of medical bills or even future student loans for me and my sisters. This was an empire, ripe for the taking.
And in that empire, there would be no princes.
Only king and queens.
I hovered over the prompt. One word. One decision.
[Accept Mission: Y/N?]