Ruby Fairchild did not panic.
Panic was inefficient.
She walked.
Not quickly— running attracted attention, but with long, confident strides that cut through the chaos like a blade through silk. People surged around her in broken currents, faces pale, voices rising into a constant, panicked roar. Sirens wailed. Car alarms screamed. Somewhere nearby, glass exploded as a shopfront caved under the pressure of a fleeing crowd.
Ruby adjusted her coat and stepped neatly over a fallen bicycle.
Predictable.
The System's interface hovered at the edge of her vision, quiet now. No prompts. No guidance. Just a passive presence, like a mirror she hadn't asked for but couldn't ignore.
She liked it already.
Ruby turned down a side street, away from the main road, mind moving faster than her feet. Elara was heading home— smart, correct, emotionally driven. Maya mattered to Elara, which meant Maya mattered by extension.
That connection wasn't altruism.
It was ownership logic.
Ruby paused briefly beneath a bus stop shelter, letting a stampede of civilians rush past. She checked her phone. No signal. Of course.
Her thoughts drifted not to fear, or even excitement, but to boredom.
The same suffocating boredom that had defined her childhood.
She remembered being eight years old, sitting in a lecture hall while her father presented a paper on multidimensional probability collapse. The adults had been rapt. Ruby had solved the equations halfway through and spent the rest of the hour wondering if anyone would notice if she rewrote the conclusion on the fly.
They hadn't.
At fourteen, she'd discovered that people reacted far more dramatically when you broke them instead of rules.
That had been fun. Briefly.
At eighteen, she'd found Elara.
And now?
Now the world had finally caught up.
Ruby smiled to herself.
The alley ahead was narrow and shadowed, the kind of place tourists avoided and locals used without thinking. Ruby took it without hesitation.
Halfway through, the air changed.
It wasn't a sound at first. It was a pressure— a subtle tightening behind the eyes, like the moment before a migraine.
Ruby stopped.
She tilted her head, listening.
Something scraped against concrete.
Slow. Wet.
Ruby's heart rate ticked up not in fear, but curiosity.
"Ah," she murmured. "There you are, I was expecting some monsters to show up since the tower appeared."
The creature lurched into view from behind a skip bin.
It had once been a dog.
Once.
Now its frame was elongated, joints bent at the wrong angles, ribs pressing visibly against grayish skin. Its eyes glowed a dull amber, unfocused but aggressive. Mana— Ruby felt it now, a low hum that prickled across her skin.
A Beast.
The System obligingly tagged it.
[Mana Warped Stray — Level 1]
Ruby exhaled slowly.
She did not reach for a weapon.
She had none.
The dog snarled, lips pulling back to reveal too many teeth, saliva dripping in viscous strands onto the pavement.
Ruby's fingers twitched.
Conjuration, she thought.
Nothing happened.
She blinked once.
"Oh," she said softly. "That's inconvenient."
The beast lunged.
Ruby moved.
Not back— aside.
The dog slammed into the spot where she'd been standing, claws screeching against stone. Ruby pivoted, boots skidding slightly, heart hammering now in earnest.
She raised her hand again.
Conjuration. Ethereal weapon.
Mana surged— raw, untamed, painful.
Something formed.
A blade flickered into existence in her grip, translucent and shimmering, its edge humming with unstable energy. It felt wrong. Cold. Heavy in a way metal never was.
Ruby laughed under her breath. "There you are."
The dog recovered faster than she'd expected.
Good.
It charged again.
Ruby stepped forward this time.
The blade passed through flesh with a hiss, resistance minimal. The creature yelped— a wet, broken sound, and collapsed in a heap, body twitching before going still.
Silence reclaimed the alley.
Ruby stood over the corpse, breathing hard.
Her hands trembled— not from fear.
From exhilaration.
The System chimed.
[Mana Warped Stray — Level 1 defeated]
[Experience Points Gained]
[Level Up!]
Ruby stared at the notification, then laughed.
A sharp, breathless sound that echoed off the walls.
"Oh," she whispered. "This is going to be addictive."
The body dissolved before her eyes, breaking down into motes of light that drifted upward and vanished. No blood. No mess.
Clean.
Efficient.
Ruby flexed her fingers as the ethereal blade faded, leaving behind only the faint memory of weight.
Her vision shifted as her status window expanded unprompted.
[STATUS]
Name: Ruby Fairchild
Class: Rogue
Title: None
Level: 2
XP: 0 / 83
——
HP: 90 / 90
MP: 70 / 70
——
CON: 9
STR: 8
DEX: 12
AGI: 13
INT: 10
WIS: 9
PIE: 8
LCK: 11
——
Free Points: 5
Ruby read it once.
Then again.
Numbers. Growth. Immediate, tangible feedback.
She assigned the points without hesitation— two into Agility, two into Dexterity, one into Constitution.
Survivability first.
[STATUS]
CON: 9 —> 10
STR: 8
DEX: 12 —> 14
AGI: 13 —> 15
INT: 10
WIS: 9
PIE: 8
LCK: 11
——
Free Points: 0
Everything else could come later.
The System accepted her choice silently.
Ruby checked the time on her phone. Still dead.
She decided to check the system page for paths while walking.
[PATHS]
Light Armor — Lvl: 1
Stealth — Lvl: 1
Alchemy — Lvl: 1
Dueling — Lvl: 1
Conjuration — Lvl: 1
Evocation — Lvl: 1
Restoration — Lvl: 1
"At least the system is organized," she thought.
She turned, stepping out of the alley and back onto the street.
The city looked the same.
But Ruby knew better now.
The world had rules again.
And she was very, very good at learning rules.
She pulled out her phone and typed a message she wasn't sure would send.
Ruby: I killed something.
Ruby: I leveled up.
Ruby: Don't panic. I'm coming by later, and will explain things in better detail.
She hesitated, then added:
Ruby: Stay inside. Lock the doors.
The message hung unsent.
Ruby slipped the phone into her pocket and started walking toward home.
Behind her, somewhere far away, something much larger roared.
Ruby's smile returned— slow, sharp, delighted.
Boredom, at last, had a cure.