The static had become a sound. In the three days since the Awakening, the faint itch in Jack's mind had grown into a high-pitched whine that lived just behind his ears. It was a constant, invasive hum that frayed the edges of his thoughts, making the complex equations in his System Theory textbook seem like meaningless scribbles. His analytical clarity, the one thing he trusted, was being corroded. He found his mask of mediocrity slipping. Yesterday, Mike had told a joke, and Jack had forgotten to perform the requisite half-smile. A minor error, but errors were the first sign of decay. The maintenance schedule could not be delayed any longer.
From his seat in the orphanage's common room, he scanned his environment. He was not looking for a friend. He was shopping. The criteria were simple, calculated with the same detachment he used to solve a math problem. The prey had to be weak, both in will and in prospective power. It had to be socially isolated, ensuring no immediate, passionate inquiries would be made. It had to be someone whose disappearance would be a piece of paperwork before it became a tragedy. A rounding error in the System.
His eyes settled on a boy huddled in the corner, nervously chewing on his thumbnail. David. The anxious boy from the Awakening ceremony, whose talent was a useless F-rank [Lesser Night Vision]. Perfect. David had no friends, no family on record, and a personality that actively repelled social contact. He was a ghost long before he was a corpse. The System had already marked him for disposal; Jack would simply be the instrument.
The lure had to be simple, playing on the victim's known weaknesses. Hope was the most effective bait for the hopeless. Later that evening, Jack approached David in the crowded hallway leading to the dorms. He kept his expression open and friendly, a carefully constructed mask of shared mediocrity.
"David, right?" Jack started, keeping his voice down.
David flinched, surprised to be acknowledged. "Uh, yeah."
"I'm Jack. We were in the same Awakening group," Jack said, extending the false branch of camaraderie. "Listen, this might sound weird, but I was clearing out some old boxes in the east wing storage for my work duty, and I found a book. Looked like an old edition of 'Mana Structures for Beginners.' Thought of you. Figured with your talent, you'd be reading a lot in the dark."
Hope flickered in David's eyes. A gift. An acknowledgment. "Really? For me?"
"I hid it behind some boxes so the proctors wouldn't confiscate it. I can show you where if you want. It's quiet down there now."
"Okay," David said, his voice barely a whisper. "Yeah, okay."
The storage basement was a tomb of forgotten things, smelling of dust and decay. A single, bare bulb cast long, skeletal shadows from towering stacks of broken desks and old filing cabinets. It was perfect. Isolated. Soundproofed by neglect.
"It's just back here," Jack said, leading David deeper into the labyrinth of junk.
David followed, his eyes scanning the shelves, full of nervous excitement. "I can't believe you thought of me. No one ever…"
He trailed off as Jack stopped beside a rusted metal locker. "Here we are," Jack said. His voice was different now. The practiced warmth was gone, leaving behind something flat and cold.
David turned, a confused frown on his face. "Where's the book?"
"There is no book," Jack stated. From his sleeve, he produced a small, crude syringe he had assembled over the past two days. The needle was a sharpened nail, and the plunger was a simple rod, but the liquid inside was effective. A paralytic neurotoxin, painstakingly extracted from the preserved Gloomfang Spider specimens in the biology lab. He had studied its properties for weeks.
Fear, raw and pure, finally replaced the hope in David's eyes. He opened his mouth to scream, but Jack was faster. He lunged, clamping a hand over David's mouth and jabbing the needle deep into the soft flesh of his neck. David thrashed for a moment, a pathetic, silent struggle, before a shudder ran through his body. He collapsed, his limbs locking up, his eyes wide with a terror he could no longer voice.
Jack knelt, looking down at the boy with the detached curiosity of a researcher. David's eyes darted back and forth, the only part of him that could still move, screaming a silent plea.
"You think there are rules," Jack said, his voice a calm, clinical whisper that cut through the dusty silence. "You think if you're a good person, if you don't cause trouble, you'll be safe. You think the System is fair."
He leaned closer, his face a blank mask. "The System doesn't care about the rules you think exist."
As the last spark of terrified life faded from David's eyes, a blue window materialized in the air before Jack.
[Sacrifice Accepted. Dungeon Anchor Established.]
The body on the floor began to glow. It dissolved not into gore, but into countless motes of shimmering blue light, particles of raw data that flowed from the corpse and into the air, coalescing into a single, dense point before vanishing. Nothing remained. No blood, no body, no evidence. The System was a tidy executioner.
And then, blessed silence. The high-pitched whine in Jack's head vanished. The static was purged. The world snapped back into sharp, perfect focus. A wave of pure, cold clarity washed over him, a feeling more satisfying than any drug. The maintenance was complete.
A new, ghostly white interface shimmered into existence in his vision. It was a three-dimensional, holographic grid of the orphanage basement, with a series of tabs along the side: [Layout], [Monsters], [Rewards], [Settings]. In the top right corner, a timer began to count down from one hour.
[01:00:00]
He focused on the [Monsters] tab. It was mostly greyed out. A line of text explained: [New monster types must be acquired through direct kill]. Only three options were available, three spectral images of creatures he now owned. A Goblin. A Giant Rat. A Gelatinous Slime. Below them was a single, larger slot for a boss monster, also a Goblin. Pathetic, F-rank trash. But they were his.
He looked at the [Rewards] tab and saw a single, empty slot labeled [Seed Item]. The System would provide the containers, but he had to provide the prize. The factory was operational, but it required raw materials.
He looked at the ticking clock. The anchor was established, the dungeon core was formed, but it was an unstable existence. It needed to be placed, given a physical location in the world, or it would collapse. He had created the first stone, a monument built from a life no one would remember.
The factory was open. Now, he had fifty-nine minutes to hide it.