The title of Vice President was not a job; it was a state of being. Leo's new office was on the 55th floor, a vast, minimalist expanse of chrome and black marble that felt less like a workspace and more like a mausoleum for ambition. He was now one of the handful of people who charted the course for the entire global corporation. His Corporate Throne skill had evolved; it was no longer an aura of authority but a tangible, oppressive gravity that bent the will of others before they even entered the room.
His lieutenants, Ben and Anna, were now his direct reports, running the massive Strategic Division he had built. They entered his office not with the cautious loyalty of allies, but with the quiet, fearful reverence of high priests entering a temple.
"The Q4 projections are finalized," Anna said, her voice a respectful hush. She placed a tablet on his desk, careful not to let her fingers linger. "Your predictive models were… conservative. We're tracking 5% above your most optimistic forecast."
Leo didn't look at the tablet. He looked at her. [Anna Chen. Status: Utterly Loyal (Fear-Based). Asset Value: S-Rank. Emotional State: Awe/Terror.]
"Good," was all he said. The word was not praise; it was a dismissal. Anna and Ben nodded and retreated, the oppressive weight in the room lifting slightly as the door hissed shut behind them.
He was powerful. He was isolated. And for the first time, he was bored. The game had lost its challenge.
He turned his attention to the highest-level project at TitanCorp: 'Project Legacy,' the CEO's personal initiative for a massive, multi-decade expansion into emerging AI markets. As he opened the core financial models, a wave of data so immense it would have crashed his old laptop flowed across his screen.
He focused, his mind a perfect engine of analysis, ready to deconstruct the CEO's grand strategy. But as he did, something impossible happened. The System, his constant, silent companion, glitched.
For a single, jarring microsecond, the stream of financial data was replaced by a different kind of interface. It was a character sheet, stark and black, displaying stats so impossibly high they seemed to break the System's own rules.
[Name: Alistair Finch] [Title: Chief Executive Officer] [Primary Skill: Reality Rewrite (Lv. ???)] [Passive Skill: Corporate Omniscience (MAX)] [Status: Observing]
The screen vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving the financial data in its place. Leo froze. The silence in his vast office was absolute. He had never seen another user's stats. He had assumed, with the solipsism of a god in a new universe, that he was the only one.
"System," Leo said, his voice a low whisper. "What was that?"
For the first time ever, the System's response was not instantaneous. When it came, the familiar blue text was tinged with the same strange, silver, glitching light he had seen when he made his final choice.
[QUERY ERROR… RE-ROUTING… ACCESS DENIED.] [WARNING: A ROOT-LEVEL ANOMALY HAS BEEN DETECTED. YOU ARE NOT THE PRIMARY USER.]
A cold dread, an emotion he hadn't felt since he was a desperate, jobless graduate, pierced through his Calm Mind. He was not the player. He was a piece. The entire game, the quests, the skills, the promotions—it was all a construct, controlled by someone else. The CEO, Alistair Finch. The original user. The man who didn't just have skills; he had a skill called Reality Rewrite. How do you fight a man who can edit the world around you?
He finally understood. This wasn't a ladder he had been climbing. It was a gauntlet, a trial. The CEO wasn't just running a company; he was searching for something. A successor. Or a final, worthy opponent.
Just as this paradigm-shifting realization settled in, a soft, traditional chime echoed from his desktop computer. It was a new email, one that had bypassed all his firewalls and security protocols. It was from the office of the CEO.
The subject line was simple. A Conversation.
The body of the email contained only two words that felt less like a request and more like the pull of gravity.
My office.