The whisper didn't return gently this time.
It came like a bad hangover with a vendetta.
It was sharp, invasive, and electric.
One moment I was lying on my lumpy excuse of a mattress, staring at the ceiling mold colony that was slowly evolving into responsive life, and then, the next, my entire body went white-hot, — not burning, just vibrating, like every atom had remembered it was once part of a star and decided to file for a comeback tour.
Then came the text. It was not on my holo-screen. Not in my head. Everywhere.
[ System Sync Complete. ]
[ Lust Assimilation Protocol — Full Integration Achieved. ]
[ New Subroutines Unlocked: Desire IndexSin MemoryAdaptive Emotion LinkHost Synchrony: 100%. ]
[ Warning: Side Effects Include Mild Madness, Hallucination, and Spontaneous Arousal. ]
[ Proceed Anyway? ]
"...Spontaneous what now?" I muttered into the empty room, as I squinted like a man who was reading his own death warrant written in Comic Sans.
No response.
Just the faint hum of the neighborhood mana line buzzing like a mosquito in my skull.
I'd seen this prompt before — a half-corrupted flicker in the middle of class about a month ago. Back then, I'd thought it was some prank my System was pulling. Because, you know, 'Lust Assimilation Protocol'? It sounded like something straight out of a trashy adult game, not a government-issued mana interface. I was sitting in Advanced Runic Theory 201, half-asleep, when the holographic glyphs on my tablet started dripping. Literally — melting into bright, molten symbols that twisted into one word: "ACCEPT."
I didn't, of course.
I wasn't that desperate yet. (Okay, maybe a little. I'd been running on no sleep, zero points, and a 3-day caffeine coma.)— and then it vanished like it never existed.
But now? Oh, it was real. The System dashboard flared to life again, and now it was a whole lot cleaner than I'd ever seen it, with its crisp golden lines running across the interface like new veins under translucent skin. The old, sluggish pre-war junk had gotten a fucking glow-up.
[ Main System: Active ]
[ User: Leon Hanson]
[ Rank: C+ ]
[ Core Integrity: 78% ]
[ Energy Efficiency: Restored ]
[ Subsystems Available: Status Inventory SkillsStoreMissionsPenalty Tracker ]
[ Protocol: Lust Assimilation (Bound) ]
"Well," I muttered, as I dragged myself upright, "looks like my System finally decided to become hot, huh?"
Except it wasn't just aesthetic, instead, the feeling was different. It wasn't like before — cold, mechanical, robotic.
This new interface pulsed like a goddamn heartbeat. Like something alive was crawling underneath the code. Then the whisper returned — not static this time, but a voice. Faint. Feminine. Familiar.
"Leon… sync accepted. Welcome to me."
"Excuse me?" I said aloud. Because obviously, the sane response to hearing a ghostly digital voice in your skull is to talk back to it. But now there was no response, it was just warmth — like fingers brushing through the back of my head.
Then, new panels unfolded one after another, painting the air in glowing sigils and data.
[Skills Available] — Mana Drain (Passive): Absorbs ambient energy from nearby sources, living or otherwise.
The first thought that came to my mind, 'Get that mana flowing into my cock, baby.'
[Sin Gauge (Active):] Tracks emotional corruption levels. (Warning: High values may attract "attention.") Oh, I'm sure it will, you horny little shit.
[Charm Resonance:] Converts emotional energy into manipulation potential.
'So, I can fuck people over with my… feelings? Nice.'
[Desire Reconstruction:] Adapt physical stats based on surrounding emotional density.
'So if someone's horny enough, I get buff? This is already better than any gym membership.'
But then, after I realized what was at stake, I came back to my senses.
My jaw hung open. "...What the actual fuck is this, a dating sim for sociopaths?"
And then I scrolled further down.
[Penalty System Enabled] — [ Failure to use acquired energy results in Overflow Syndrome. Sounds painful. — Neglecting System Missions will reduce Core Stability. — Suppressing Lust Energy for extended periods may cause Neural Overheat. — Ignoring the Protocol results in Termination. ]
So I can't just ignore this thing, and I gotta get it off, or my brain melts.
And wait, Termination? As in dead. As in no more cheap synth-ale or questionable street meat.
My mouth went dry. Termination.
"Cool, great, fantastic," I muttered, as I paced the room. "So the thing that glitched into my life now requires me to basically… participate in its twisted little game or I melt. Wonderful. What kind of fucked-up dick punch of a situation is this?"
My eyes caught the glowing tab labeled Missions. Against my better judgment — and because curiosity is just a polite word for self-destruction — I opened it.
{ [ Current Mission: Establish Emotional Link. ] Objective: Stimulate Lust Energy in a target to 20%. Reward: 100 System Points | +1 Core Stability. Penalty: 5% Neural Decay. }
I blinked. Then blinked again. And whispered, "…what?"
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a very tired, very rational part of me was screaming, You're being drafted into a perverted death trap, you idiot! But the rest of me — the broke, desperate, half-insane, definitely underfed part — saw those 100 points and thought: Rent. Food. New boots.
This whole thing could get me out of the shithole I was in.
Still, I wasn't stupid, (I was just catastrophically unlucky.)
I wasn't about to start trying to seduce random people to feed a rogue System. There had to be another way to test it — maybe trick the energy using artificial emotion triggers, or illusion-based mana…
Except as I was thinking that, the air shifted again. The System flickered.
[ Emotional Resonance Detected. ]
[ Calibrating Source... ]
[ Target: Leon Hanson ]
[ Emotion Identified: Despair. ]
[ Assimilating... ]
[ Sync 20% → 40% → 75%... ]
"Wait, wait—what the hell do you think you are doing?!" I snapped, as I gripped the edge of my desk—the air around me vibrated.
My skin crawled with cold sweat.
My chest felt hollowed out, like something was pulling at my insides. My dick twitched involuntarily, a weirdly detached sensation.
And then I heard it again. Her voice — low this time, like a purr.
"Despair… qualifies as Lust too, Leon. The hunger to live... the ache to be more... all of it is desire. And we crave it all."
I gasped, collapsing onto my knees as light crawled up my arms like molten veins.
[Assimilation Complete.]
[Core Efficiency: 135%.]
[System Stability: Restored.]
[Welcome, User Leon Hanson. Your desires are now ours.]
For a long moment, I just knelt there, panting, and staring at the faint shimmer fading from my skin.
My whole body felt… charged. It was like a live wire.
And there was a distinct, heavy throb between my legs that hadn't been there before.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch a wall, file a lawsuit, and maybe write a memoir titled "How I Accidentally Installed a Sentient Sex Demon in My Brain." Get some royalties off this fucking mess.
Instead, I just lay back down on the mattress, staring at the ceiling again.
My vision was sharper, the mold on the ceiling now seemed less like a biohazard and more like a strangely beautiful, abstract art installation.
"I am so not telling Sarah about this." No fucking way.
She'd either think I was insane, or worse, she'd try to exploit this. And that was a can of worms I wasn't ready to open.
This whole situation was already a giant, throbbing cockblock to my normal, miserable existence.
Now I had a digital succubus whispering sweet, sinful nothings in my ear, and a mission to get some poor bastard to cum based on my own pathetic despair. This was gonna be a long, long night.