[Error: System Update Required]
[Update System For Tournament Migration]
I stared at the notification.
Below it were two options: update or discard. The phrasing of the migration requirement felt familiar in a way I couldn't immediately place, and then I did: it was exactly how my Minecraft launcher sounded right before it refused to let me into a game without doing something first.
"What's happening?"
Amelia was studying the screen alongside me, which was already a sign that this was outside her usual frame of reference. She generally operated with the confident composure of someone who knew everything that was going on in the system.
"I think it wants to push new features for the tournament." She said.
"You think?" I looked at her. "You're the live system interface. You should know this."
She turned back to the screen with visible reluctance. "This hasn't happened before. There was no update cycle before now." She paused, processing. "I think my version is being upgraded as part of this. Which means there's a chance my memory doesn't transfer cleanly."
She said it the way someone announces a mild scheduling conflict. Like she wasn't describing the possibility of being reset into a version of herself that had no record of the last several weeks.
I went silent for a moment.
Losing the current Amelia wasn't the crisis it might have seemed on the surface. The programmer could wipe her without my permission at any point, and there wasn't much I could do about it.
But a new interactor would mean starting the dynamic over from nothing, which was its own specific kind of exhausting.
The current one had calibrated to me. She knew how I thought, she insulted me in ways that were proportional to the situation, and she showed up when it mattered even if she acted like she didn't particularly care about the outcome.
Also, what features was the system about to add? An apocalypse tournament suggested a category of needs that the street fight setup hadn't required. Equipment. Weapons. Inventory. Buffs. The kind of infrastructure that would make raw physical stats feel like a starting point rather than a ceiling.
"It's not like I have a real choice anyway." I exhaled. My eyes went to the screen. "Update."
[System Update Processing ... 1%]
[Applying New Features]
[Tweaking U.I Configuration]
[Increasinf Player's Death Chances]
I stared at that last line.
"Why is it saying that out loud?"
No response. I looked to where Amelia had been standing and found empty space. She'd gone the moment I initiated the update, not gradually, just gone, mid-conversation, which was both consistent with a system going offline for maintenance and quietly unsettling regardless.
I sat in the empty library with a red system screen running its update percentage in silence.
These past few weeks with her had been— and I was committing to this description fully— something like being stuck at a relative's house with a family member who made a point of criticising everything you did but still showed up whenever things got serious.
Not exactly warm, or comfortable. But the kind of presence you acclimate to in a way you don't notice until it's gone.
I'll miss her.
The update percentage climbed.
[System Update Completed]
[Sign-In Reward: 20,000 Souls]
[Restoring Backup]
"That's sweet. I missed you too."
She was back. Standing in the same space she'd occupied before, head tilted, hands clasped together in a way that was designed to be disarming, which it was and I resented that.
She looked different, slightly taller, hair longer, the hologram rendered with more detail. Her voice had dropped by a fraction of a pitch, just enough to notice. And she was already wearing the expression that communicated she'd fully heard the thought I hadn't intended to think out loud.
"Scratch that," I said, feeling sudden warmth in my cheek. "I wish you'd disappear and never come back."
"Sure." She smiled.
"What are the new features?"
A system screen opened to my right. Clean layout, more structured than before.
[Inventory | Mastery | Skill | Progress Map]
And at the top corner:
[Souls: 20,000 | Gems: 0]
"There it is." I pressed my palm flat against my forehead. "Inventory. Of course."
"Equipment isn't mandatory," Amelia said. "But for a tournament like this, having extra protection is the difference between surviving the first hour and not." She paused. "Do you want me to explain what you're walking into, or would you prefer to find out by being killed?"
"Tell me."
"An apocalypse has a specific structure." She settled into it. "It's not a hundred players being the main threat, the primary danger is monsters. The ranking exists as a secondary system, making every other player in the tournament a potential threat on top of the monster threat."
She pulled up a visual alongside her explanation.
"There are four divisions, each representing a separate world. Each division has nodes— structured from 1-1 to 5-10, so fifty nodes per division. Nodes can increase past that ceiling as long as your kill count keeps climbing. The limits are your timer and death."
"And the other rankers? Are they in the nodes too?"
"NPCs. They're running the same system— completing nodes, killing monsters, climbing the ranking. Completing nodes is one path to ranking up. Killing an NPC is the faster one." She held my gaze for a moment. "Before you ask— no, there isn't a version of this tournament where NPCs leave you alone because you've chosen not to engage with them. If you're in their range, they'll come for you. The choice you actually have is whether you kill them or be killed in the run."
I looked at my hands. Still bandaged from two days ago. My fingers were doing something involuntary and unhelpful.
I'd entered the street fight tournament thinking the three-life structure was the most death-adjacent thing the system could produce. It had seemed like a reasonable ceiling at the time. And then it had kept raising the ceiling— Cypher, Ember, Kyon— and each time I'd convinced myself I understood how far the system was willing to go.
The apocalypse tournament had apparently never read any of those conversations.
"It's survival Ren," Amelia said. "That's the entire logic. If you walk in there treating it like anything else, your first challenge kills you without hesitation."
I exhaled. Long and slow. The option to not do this had closed when I asked to approve my entry. That was a wall I was on the other side of now.
"Inventory," I said.
The screen opened on my left.
[Weapon]
['Avenger → Common → 508 (+508)']
[Equip?]
[Armor]
[Accessory]
"Avenger." I looked at it. A long blue sword, clean design, glowing edges, the kind of thing that looked like it had been designed to mean something. It was currently the only item in the inventory.
I had never been a weapon person. Everything I'd built over the past weeks had been through my hands, my body, the gap between my level and my opponent's that I'd closed through mechanics and instinct.
Swords were a different category of problem. They required a different relationship with fighting than the one I'd developed.
But monsters weren't going to come at me with knuckles. At least, not all of them.
"Your weapons only exist inside the tournament domain," Amelia added. "Out here, you're back to what you have on you. And there are no exceptions."
"Noted." I looked back at the full screen. "Tell me about Mastery."
"Replaces your previous stat categories. Force, Agility, Stamina, Fortitude. Plus two new ones, Skill and Skill Mastery. You upgrade them using Gems earned from killing NPCs or bosses." She said bosses with the same casual delivery she used for everything, which was its own kind of warning.
"Bosses."
"Every monster species has an alpha. A source. Killing it stops the spawning of that species and gives you gems." She moved on like this was not particularly alarming information. "The gems go toward Mastery upgrades. The Souls you started with go toward inventory, buying and upgrading equipment."
Right. The skills I already had — Analytical Eye, Flow State, Recovery Rate — those existed within the Skill category. In a tournament built around monster encounters and NPC threats, there were going to be more of those. A lot more.
[Domain Replacement in 00:30]
I looked at the countdown.
[29... 28... 27...]
"Ren." Amelia's voice dropped into the register she used when she was being serious and not performing seriousness. "Are you sure about this?"
"No," I said honestly.
[18... 17... 16...]
The library door opened.
A girl walked in. Dark hair, purple eyes that glowed faintly at the edges, the kind of glow that didn't come from ambient lighting. She was holding a textbook against her chest and had the expression of someone who had expected the room to be empty and was now processing that it wasn't.
I recognised those eyes immediately.
[5... 4... 3... 2...]
"Yeah...I'm so fucked."