Riri's finger moved through the interface. Twenty in each stat first, baseline across the board, then she looked at what was left.
Thirty-seven points.
She thought about the dungeons. Speed to dodge. Strength to hit. Constitution to stay standing after taking a hit. She allocated the remainder and didn't second-guess it.
[Strength: 3 → 32][Agility: 6 → 33][Constitution: 4 → 32][Intelligence: 14 → 20][Wisdom: 12 → 20][Charisma: 18 → 20][Allocation Complete. Confirm? Y/N]
She pressed "Yes."
The change hit immediately.
Heat flooded through her body, not painful but intense, like someone had lit a match under her skin. Her muscles seized and released. Her bones ached with a deep pressure that pulled a sharp breath out of her. She braced her palms against the marble and felt the texture bite differently now. Sharper. More present.
Her heartbeat slowed and steadied. The fragile flutter in her chest gave way to something solid, rhythmic, and strong. When the sensation faded, she flexed her fingers. The motion felt right. Not borrowed. Not foreign.
Hers.
She stood, and the movement was effortless. No wobble, no tremor. Her boots felt lighter against the floor. She rolled her shoulders, then did it again just to feel the difference. Two hours ago those same shoulders had shaken through a basic lunge. Now the leather jacket settled across them like it weighed nothing.
She looked at her reflection in the window. Same face. Same too-pretty features, same straight-cut bangs. But the posture had changed. She wasn't bracing anymore. Wasn't holding herself like something that might tip over.
[Updated Status:][Combat Power: 87 → 965][HP: 40 → 320]
Nearly a thousand Combat Power at Level 1. Riri exhaled slowly, testing her new lungs. They didn't burn. They just worked.
[Host! Host! You're forgetting something important!]
[Your Luxury Lottery Ticket! Shall we use it now? This unit is very excited! Guaranteed S-Rank minimum means the possibilities are—]
"Hold on." She held up a hand. "Let me think."
[Of course! Take your time. This unit will wait patiently. ♡]
Riri crossed to the windows and looked out over the empty city. The streets below were wide and clean and completely still. No transit pods moving between towers, no foot traffic on the pedestrian bridges, nothing. Three hundred thousand people in this Prep City alone, and not one of them outside.
Everyone was doing exactly what she'd just done. Reading notifications. Staring at stat windows. Trying to understand the shape of what had happened to them.
She turned the lottery ticket over in her mind.
S-Rank minimum meant weapons that cut through steel, skills that bent reality, equipment that glowed with enough power to make other Players salivate. She'd edited three arcs in that manuscript where secondary characters had killed each other over loot pulls weaker than what she was holding right now. Over D-Rank gear. Over the possibility of something better.
She was already going to draw attention. System #2 was the second-most powerful System on the planet. The moment she entered a Training Dungeon, every Player in the lobby would see that number floating above her head. They'd clock her Combat Power and start doing math.
Pulling god-tier loot in public would answer questions she wasn't ready to answer yet.
The ticket could wait. She tucked the notification into her inventory with a thought and felt it slot into place, a small gold pulse confirming the storage.
"System," she said. "Is there any way to hide my System number?"
[Negative, Host. System Numbers and Combat Power are publicly visible to all Players. This is a core function of the Integration and cannot be disabled or concealed.]
"Everything else?"
[Hidden, yes. Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Luck, Charisma, Level, HP, and MP are all private data. Only the Host and their bonded partner may access a full Status Window.]
Riri's hand stilled against the glass.
So they'd see the number above her head and the Combat Power readout. That was it. No stat breakdown, no level, no indication of why her Combat Power sat nearly at a thousand when every other freshly-integrated Player was probably sitting somewhere in the double digits.
She almost laughed.
"So people will see System #2 and Combat Power 965."
[Correct! This unit imagines the reactions will be quite entertaining. ♡]
Riri pressed her palm flat against the cold glass. She couldn't hide the number or the Combat Power. The moment she stood in a dungeon lobby, every Player in the room would know something was wrong with the math. They just wouldn't know what.
"When do Training Dungeons open?"
[First wave access begins in 36 hours. Host has been granted Priority Access due to System ranking.]
Thirty-six hours.
She pushed off the window and turned to face the penthouse properly for the first time. She'd been so focused on the floor and the System interface and her own reflection that she hadn't actually looked at the space she was standing in.
It was large. Larger than it had seemed when she was on her knees on the marble. The main room stretched the full width of the building, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, a kitchen along the far wall that looked like it had never been used. Dark cabinets, matte black appliances, a counter so clean it reflected the ceiling. Past that, a hallway leading deeper into the apartment.
The original Riri had lived here. Had woken up here every morning before the Stasis, had eaten at that counter or hadn't, had left something behind or hadn't.
One way to find out.
She crossed the room, her boots quiet on the marble, and pushed open the first door off the hallway.