The moment he shut the café door behind them, Leon's first move was to shrug the backpack off in one sharp motion and toss it onto the floor between overturned chairs.
He dropped to his knees immediately, like he was afraid that if he hesitated for even a second someone would snatch it away, despite knowing perfectly well they were alone in here. Still, his hands moved fast. Too fast. Digging through the bag with the same unhealthy focus you saw in people counting chips at a table or checking lottery tickets after the draw, because the adrenaline hadn't worn off yet, and right now system rewards were the only thing that made any of this feel like it had shape, like it meant something.
Valeria stayed leaned against the counter the entire time, one leg crossed over the other, silent and unhurried. She watched him the way you watched someone reveal their real self without noticing.
Only when Leon dumped the contents onto the floor did she finally speak, softly, that familiar irritating smile in her voice.
"Looking at you right now, I'd think Essence Record invented a new kind of addiction," she said lightly. "Lootoholism."
Leon didn't even glance at her.
Because what lay in front of him was what mattered: two Gray Boxes with that dull, matte, nothing surface, one Brown Box whose very color promised something better, a plain grayish skill scroll with no glow at all, and the other one, violet, faintly pulsing with energy like its existence here took effort.
For a moment he licked his lips without realizing it, and Valeria didn't miss it.
"Relax," she added, tilting her head. "They're not going anywhere."
Then, completely unrelated, like she'd suddenly changed the topic mid-sentence, she asked:
"So tell me… do you like girls with ponytails?"
Leon froze.
His hand hovered over the first Gray Box as he slowly turned his head, staring at her with open, genuine confusion. In his mind, that question had absolutely zero connection to what they were doing.
"What?" he said at last. "Where did that even come from?"
Valeria shrugged, perfectly innocent.
"That girl you handed the backpack to," she said. "She had her hair in a ponytail. I wondered if you had a… type."
Leon let out a short scoff, finally pulling his eyes off the loot.
"That was coincidence," he said immediately, without hesitation. "I needed someone to carry it because the backpack was getting in my way. That's it. In that chaos I didn't even think about looking at her face, let alone analyzing her hairstyle."
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then tried to throw it back at her, flicking her a sidelong look.
"What, are you jealous?"
That was a mistake.
Valeria didn't flinch. She just smiled slowly, calm, unsettling, and answered so naturally Leon felt the ground drop out from under him.
"Of course," she said. "Not of the girl. Of the fact you thought about someone else for even a moment."
Leon opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Nothing useful came out. So he ignored the entire topic like it had never been spoken and turned back to the floor.
He reached for the first Gray Box, focusing on something safe. Simple. Understandable.
Valeria watched for a moment, then sighed theatrically and pushed her lower lip out in an exaggeratedly sweet pout.
"Honestly," she muttered. "I never would've guessed some pathetic Gray Box could be more interesting to you than me."
Leon didn't lift his head, eyes locked on the prompt in front of him.
[Do you want to open Gray Box?]
He didn't hesitate. He just nodded and muttered a quick "Yes," like he was afraid that if he delayed even a second the system would count it as refusal and retract the offer.
The Gray Box on the floor cracked without a sound, dissolving into tiny motes of light that hung in the air for a heartbeat, then gathered into a single shape.
A pair of plain black socks.
No runes. No glow. No "wow." They looked exactly like something you could've bought at any supermarket less than a day ago.
Leon picked them up slowly, brow furrowing, and a new window appeared at once.
[Urban Survivor Socks (Normal Grade)]
[Description: Simple socks designed for long-term movement and basic comfort.]
[Effect: +1 Vitality]
For a long moment, he stared at the text in dead silence, like his brain needed time to digest the fact that after all the fighting, after killing beasts, skirting the edge of death, Essence Record had decided the most appropriate reward was…
…socks that gave him one point of Vitality.
"What the hell…" he muttered finally, letting his hand drop. "Socks that give one stat point? Seriously?"
He leaned his back against the counter, visibly annoyed, and snorted.
"What am I supposed to do with socks, "
Valeria burst out laughing.
Not a quiet chuckle. Not subtle. A clear, genuine laugh, like she'd just been handed exactly what she needed to brighten her mood. When Leon glared at her, she lifted a hand to her mouth as if trying to stop herself, failing completely.
"Oh, I heard a rumor once," she said, amused, "that Essence Record gives people what they desire most in the moment."
She tilted her head and inspected the socks with mock seriousness.
"I didn't know you had a foot fetish."
A vein popped on Leon's forehead.
"What… ?" he growled. "That's not… "
"If you'd told me earlier," she cut in mercilessly, "I would've brought extra pairs. Maybe even cute pink patterns."
For a second, he looked like he was genuinely considering throwing the socks at her. Instead, he clenched his jaw, sucked in a breath, and silently took off his shoes and pulled the socks on, because even if it was only one stat, one stat was still one stat, and Leon knew he wasn't in a position to be picky about gear.
[Equipment Effect Applied]
[Effect: +1 Vitality]
Without another word, he grabbed the second Gray Box like he needed to prove, to her and to the universe, that the system's joke was a one-time thing and was about to correct itself.
The box trembled in his hand. Another prompt appeared.
[Do you want to open Gray Box?]
"Yes."
Leon's teeth grated slightly as the second Gray Box dissolved in that same calm, irritating way, turning into a ribbon of light that pulsed above the café floor, then thickened into something with a painfully familiar, almost boring shape.
A bow.
A wooden bow, unadorned, no metal reinforcement, no flashy glow, something that could've hung on a museum wall or in a historical reenactor's hut, not a reward in a world that had just become a blood-soaked survival nightmare.
Leon stared at it. Then at the system window. Then back at the bow, like if he did it long enough it would turn into something else.
It didn't.
[Forest-Bound Longbow (Normal Grade)]
[Description: A wooden bow crafted from specially treated forest wood. Features a highly tensioned string and limited mana conductivity.]
[Effect: +4 Agility]
"You've got to be kidding me…" he said out loud, disbelief sliding into pure irritation. "First socks, now a bow?"
He lifted it in one hand, weighing it, then snorted.
"I can't even shoot a bow," he added, as if the system could hear him. "I already have a perfectly good weapon." He jerked his head toward the sword leaning against the counter. "And I'm not exactly planning to reinvent myself as some woodland archer."
He tossed the bow onto a nearby table like something that might be useful someday, but definitely not now, and was about to move on to the rest of the loot when he caught Valeria out of the corner of his eye.
She wasn't smiling anymore.
It wasn't theatrical or sudden, just a subtle shift someone less attentive might miss. Her shoulders lowered a fraction, her head stopped tilting in that provoking way, and something cooler and more serious settled in her gaze.
"If I were you," she said, calmer now, no teasing, no jokes, "I'd take a closer look at that 'perfectly good weapon' of yours."
Leon lifted his eyes on instinct.
Her tone wasn't that sweet, cruel drawl she'd been using to needle him. It was practical. Almost warning. Like she'd noticed something that mattered.
For a moment he just stood there. Then, without a word, he stepped away from the scattered items and went to the sword he'd tossed aside earlier, too consumed by loot and annoyance to care.
The second he bent down and picked it up, his eyes widened slightly.
This wasn't just a "used" sword anymore.
This was a sword that had been forced, for hours, into doing things an ordinary [Iron Longsword (Normal Grade)] was never meant to survive.
Deep, irregular gouges ran along the flat and the edge. Some were fresh, their jagged lips sharp; others were darkened by blood and grime. And a few marks Leon recognized instantly, long, slanted claw trails left by the Violet Mutant Marten, too hard and too precise to mistake for zombie bone.
In several places, the blade was visibly chipped.Tiny fractures lined up where he'd struck insect exoskeletons, armored dogs, and the unnaturally reinforced spines of higher-level zombies over and over again. Near the tip, there was a slight bend, subtle, but obvious enough that anyone more experienced than Leon would call the weapon seriously compromised.
Leon held it for several long seconds, unmoving, feeling the weight and the unevenness under his fingers.
Only then did it really hit him, throughout all of it, he'd been so locked into fighting and surviving and reacting to system prompts that he hadn't even noticed how badly he'd been grinding down the one weapon he relied on.
Normal zombies, dozens, even, were one thing.
But mutated animals with hardened bodies, insect exoskeletons, beasts like the violet marten that could block strikes with its claws and hit with enough force to bite metal,
A normal-grade iron sword simply wasn't made for that.
And suddenly Valeria's warning made brutal sense.
At this rate, his "perfectly good weapon" was going to fall apart within the next few fights.