Neo turned his attention back to the woman.
"So, to secure the apartment, the initial payment will be one hundred thousand Creds," she said, holding the tablet in front of her. "After that, the monthly fee will be ten thousand."
One hundred thousand.
And ten thousand every month after that.
It was far more than he had expected. Even after selling the Epic relic, even after seeing that absurd number in his account, hearing a woman say that amount so lightly made it feel different. Real in a way numbers on a screen never did. It was no longer money sitting in his account. It was money leaving.
His first thought was simple. That was almost everything. His second came right after. The woman was watching him. That same look had returned to her face, faint but obvious once he noticed it. The expectation that he would hesitate. That she had shown him something above his level, let him walk through it for a while, and now they would both return to the part where he accepted that this kind of place was never meant for someone like him.
Neo pulled out his identification card.
"Where do I sign?"
The look on her face vanished so quickly it almost amused him.
Her whole tone changed at once. The distance disappeared. The false softness became something warmer, brighter, more professional now that she knew the money was real.
"Of course," she said, stepping closer and turning the tablet toward him. "Right here."
Name. Account confirmation. Rental agreement. Identity verification. A few taps, one final scan, another signature. The apartment became his with the quiet finality of a screen changing color and a transaction confirming.
The woman handed him a slim black card. "This will handle entry and exit access. The building doesn't use traditional keys."
Neo turned it once between his fingers. A card instead of a key. The last place he had called his own in Zone 0 used a broken lock he had fixed himself with wire and a stolen hinge.
She kept talking after that. Building rules, maintenance requests, security response times, floor access, visitor procedure. Neo listened just enough to catch the important parts. By the time she left, her voice had already blurred into the background.
The door closed behind her.
Silence fell over the apartment.
Real silence. The first he had heard in days that did not carry danger underneath it.
Neo walked into the main room and dropped onto the sofa without ceremony. The cushions gave way softer than he expected. He stretched out and stared at the ceiling.
So this was it.
A place of his own. A real one. His name written into some system that would remember him now whether he wanted it to or not.
'Ten thousand a month.'
Now he understood Snot better. Bills. Rent. The kind of weight that kept dragging people back to the ground no matter how much stronger they wanted to become. In Zone 0, nobody talked about rent like this because places like this barely existed. You found somewhere broken, somewhere forgotten, somewhere nobody bothered claiming yet, and you stayed there until the place fell apart around you or someone worse arrived first. Here, the city did not force you out with collapsing roofs and desperate men. It did it with numbers.
Neo let out a slow breath and stared at the ceiling a little longer.
He should have felt satisfied. A few days ago he had nothing. No certainty that he would live through the week. Now he had money, a home, two secondary classes, and a path opening in front of him.
The feeling never came.
Because the more he learned about this world, the less he liked it.
Neo stood and walked toward the glass. The city stretched wide beneath him, all towers and clean roads and lights that worked without flickering. From this height, everything looked stable, ordered, built for people who expected tomorrow to arrive without asking permission first.
He knew better now.
Beneath that order was the same thing he had always hated. Control. Families deciding which ruins mattered and who could enter them. Government branches measuring lives by usefulness. Institutions handing out access as if power itself were something to be leased. The strongest roads in the world were already owned before he even arrived, and every clean tower sitting outside that window had been built inside a structure designed by hands that were not his.
He hated that.
The moment Nep had tried to place a hand on him and steer his life, Neo had killed him for it. That line had always been there. It was only clearer now.
Neo's fingers found the ring at his neck.
Cold metal. The same ring that had opened the mountain. The same ring that had reacted when nothing else should have.
'Who were you?' he thought, staring at his own reflection superimposed over the city lights. 'What did you leave me?'
Questions kept stacking without permission. The chained figure beneath the mountain. The hidden ruin. The Divine class carved into his soul. None of it had arrived by accident, and none of it had explained itself.
One day he would learn what the ring truly was. One day he would understand who that figure had been. And when that day came, nobody would be in a position to keep the truth from him.
Neo tightened his grip on the ring once, then let it drop against his chest.
Three months until Gray Hand's test. Government Breaches in the meantime. Classes waiting to be taken from things stronger than him. The path was ugly, but it was simple. Grow stronger. Take more. Keep climbing until the world ran out of weight to press down on him.
Neo opened his Soul Window, read the numbers one more time, and closed it.
Tomorrow, he would continue.