The whisper was gone.
Not gone like it just "faded away into a gentle void."
No.
It was gone like someone snuffed out a dying candle with their bare hand. It was violent, and abrupt. The silence that followed was a monstrous, gaping hole that smelled suspiciously like it was a burnt circuit and existential dread.
I stared at the cracked holo-screen that was in front of me, the static lines of my System dashboard flickering in and out like a geriatric disco ball.
[ ManaCore: Unstable. (Critical) ]
[ Energy Efficiency: -13%. (Catastrophic) ]
[ Recommended Action: Pray. ]
"Pray? Fuck you, you little piece of digital shit," I grumbled as I slammed an open palm onto the desk.
The desk was made of repurposed particle board and sheer desperation. It shuddered, but held firm — barely.
Ha. Very funny. I swear this damn System had developed a personality.
A lazy, broken, aggressively useless personality that probably hated my guts as much as I hated mornings, Mondays, and the entire concept of reliable mana output.
It was an antique, a piece of pre-war junk that processed mana slower than a sloth swimming through molasses.
And as if summoned by my misery, my cheap, cracked phone started vibrating on the desk like it was possessed by a particularly energetic demon. The caller ID flashed in pale blue letters: Sarah "Saint" Anwen.
I called her earlier, but it seemed she was too busy healing guys. But that was about three hours ago.
But of course, it was the only person whose timing was consistently worse than my System's stability rating.
The one person whose life seemed to be a golden-hued tutorial while mine was stuck on the hardest difficulty setting with permanent debuffs.
I hesitated, imagining the exquisite relief of throwing the phone against the peeling wall. But Saint Sarah was my only lifeline—a fact I would take to my grave before admitting it out loud. I picked it up. "Yeah?" I said flatly. My throat was dry, tasting of ancient coffee and failure.
Static. Then her voice — soft, rushed, and laced with that annoying healer confidence that made my teeth itch.
But something was off. Her breath was short, jagged.
"Leon, you alive?"
"Nope," I said. "This is my ghost speaking. Leave a message after the curse tone. Currently haunting the System's database, looking for the cheat codes I know are hiding in there."
"Funny." She sounded incredibly distracted, the sound of magic crackling faintly in the background.
But woven into that familiar battlefield static was something else. It was a low, strained sound, like someone trying desperately to suppress a cough, or perhaps something even more strenuous. "I'm kinda busy reattaching a tank's arm right now. Can this wait?"
"Oh yeah, sure, let me just die quietly in a corner, Saint Sarah. Don't worry about me or my collapsing mana circuits. I'll just use my last ounce of power to write a passive-aggressive suicide note about how superior your new-model System is."
There was a heavy pause, followed by a sharp intake of breath on her end. "Ah~ fuck… What did you do this time, you absolute waste of potential?"
"Nothing!" I protested, then that's when I realized that was a fucking lie. "Okay, maybe I… sort of overloaded my core trying to recast a Rank-C flame circuit with Rank-B amplification runes. But in my defense, it should've worked if my System wasn't such a goddamn fossil from the Stone Age."
And then there was a sharp, unmistakable moan that sliced through the comm. It was instantly muffled, but undeniable.
"Leon, I told you, your System is from the Stone Age. Literally. They discontinued that model before they invented decent hygiene. You're gonna blow your dick off trying that shit." Her voice was punctuated by a harsh, guttural exhale, that definitely did not sound anything of healing.
"What the hell was that noise?" I demanded, as I leaned forward, suddenly alert. "Did you just step on a particularly noisy dire rat? Because that sounded less like field triage and more like—"
"I'm stretching!" she snapped, as the tremor in her voice was spiking. "It's a very deep tissue injury, Leon! I have to bend over to get the correct flux angle. It's strenuous!"
"Strenuous? It sounds like you're fighting a primal entity that only responds to... should I say heavy rhythmic breathing," I muttered. "And I thought tanks went down with a scream, not an Ah~."
She groaned, it was a sound of pure exasperation mixed with obvious physical strain. "Look, Leon, this is Ah~ not the best time to discuss your inevitable financial collapse. There's a lot of pressure here."
"Pressure? Yeah, I've got pressure. My landlord's a Grade-A psychopath with a proficiency rating in eviction magic. I have zero points. My rent's due, my potion stock's gone, and my mana core's coughing up errors like a drunken old man. I'm about three hours away from resorting to selling my kidneys to the Black-Market Guild just to afford street noodles." I paused, taking a breath. "So, got any spare points lying around, Saint Sarah? You know, those magical shiny numbers that let me not starve?"
I heard what sounded dangerously like a leather attach creaking, followed by a muffled shout that was suddenly cut off.
She spoke again, but her voice was breathless. "Leon… I'm a C-Rank too, remember? We get five-hundred points a month if the Guild's in a good mood. I'm busy trying to heal guys who actually do their jobs, not the ones who try to hotwire their own mana circuits like a crack addict trying to fix a toaster."
"Maybe you should, I don't know, get a job that involves reliable income?" she said sweetly but the sound that followed was definitely not healing.
"I have a job! It's called 'being a tragic, dirt-poor protagonist in an unfair world'! It should pay dividends!"
"It doesn't pay bills, you dumb shit."
"Oh It should."
Suddenly, the combat sounds intensified on her end. Someone yelled, "Sarah! We need more regeneration seals on his—" but the voice ended in a supressed gasp. Sarah's breathing became ragged.
"Oh, fuck, Leon, you're killing me right now. This is… getting complicated. I need to push harder here!" she gasped, the word 'harder' ending on a note that confirmed everything I suspected.
I smirked. "Yeah, I bet you do. Just make sure you're using the proper sealing runes, Saint. Don't want any accidental mana leakage."
She exhaled sharply, a sound of release that made me snicker. "Crap, I've got to go, Leon! I'll send you fifty points later, okay? Just… don't die, and try not to blow up your apartment. Again. And I'm not selling my kidney to buy you a better System!"
"No promises, you hypocritical bitch," I replied affectionately.
The line clicked off before I got the chance to drag any more embarrassing confessions out of her, leaving me alone with the distant, mechanical hum of the neighborhood mana generator.
Fifty points. Big whoop. That's barely enough to stabilize my core for a day or two or maybe buy a day-old mana battery and enough expired street noodles to sustain me until the inevitable eviction notice.
I looked around my shoebox of an apartment—stacks of burnt-out mana batteries, a sink full of unwashed beakers, and one sad, wilting plant that I kept alive purely out of spite for the world's harshness. "My life was a high-level dungeon — the only loot drops were despair and overdue utility bills."
The System flickered again, but it was faint.
[ Error Detected: Anomaly in User Sync Layer. ]
[ Would you like to report this bug? ]
I stared at it for a long moment, my gaze unwavering then muttered, "Buddy, you are the bug. The entire, broken, goddamn framework is the bug."
And yet… for a split second, the whisper returned.
Faint. Garbled. Like static under the skin. Not the System's droning reports, but something resonant, echoing from beyond the confines of my pathetic rig.
"Le—...on… recalibra—... the core…"
Then silence again.
I frowned, the cynical humor draining away. My hands itched with a faint, unfamiliar glow—a color that wasn't supposed to exist in my pathetic Rank-C mana pool. Whatever that voice was, it wasn't random System noise. It felt foreign. Powerful. And suddenly, dangerously mine.
This dumb thing happened after the system interference last month. I thought of reporting it as a bug.
Maybe showing up at the System Diagnostics Guild and casually saying; 'Hey there, my System keeps showing me something called Lust Assimilation Protocol. Could you tell me how to solve it?'
They'd probably kick my ass out the door and still charge me for wasting their time.
Classic.
But I knew the truth deep down.
The System was broken. The Whisper was a glitch.
And broke as I was, even I knew when life handed you a glitch in the fabric of reality itself—a goddamn cheat code veiled in static—you didn't ignore it.
You exploited the fuck out of it. And maybe, just maybe, this time I could finally afford a proper meal, and perhaps an upgrade that didn't involve Sarah's heavily strained charity.