August 9th. 3:01 AM.
The victory fanfare faded as Magnus pulled off his headset, and the manufactured triumph of The Rising Dead gave way to the low, mechanical hum of his computer fans.
The truest soundtrack of his life.
On screen, his character stood triumphant over a field of twitching polygonal corpses, the words "VICTORY" blinking in blood-red letters.
"Again..."
A small block of text appeared in the bottom left of the screen.
~One Save, One Life, One Headache~
"Finish the game on the hardest difficulty with permadeath activated and never picking up a weapon."
He released a breath that seemed to carry the weight of every completed game, every perfected achievement, every mastered challenge that meant absolutely nothing beyond the glow of his monitor.
"The last achievement. Hardest difficulty. No upgrades. No weapons. No deaths." His voice felt hollow in the empty apartment. "I think it's time to retire this one too. What do you think, Lazlo?"
From the overstuffed cat bed beside his desk, Lazlo stirred like a fluffy ginger croissant achieving consciousness. The cat blinked once with the supreme indifference only felines could master, yawned with theatrical drama, and tucked his paws beneath his chin.
"You'll never know the struggles of this world, will you, buddy?" Magnus murmured, reaching down to scratch behind Lazlo's ears.
The cat purred immediately. A soft, soothing reminder that something in life responded positively to his attention.
Magnus glanced at his setup. Two precious things occupied this corner of his studio apartment: the custom-built gaming rig that cost more than six months of rent, and Lazlo, who was priceless in ways the SkillSphere algorithm would never measure.
He exited the game. The Gleam launcher bloomed across his triple monitors, displaying his library in neat, colour-coded rows.
His profile statistics glowed in the corner:
Average Completion Rate: 100%
Games Mastered: 257
Games Played: 257 / 301
Total Achievements: 18,447 / 18,447
"What's next?" he muttered, scrolling past survival sims, strategy games, roguelikes. "Maybe something with base building? No, I'm burnt out on resource management..."
His phone buzzed against the mouse pad.
3:07 AM.
"Shit."
Work for Magnus started in less than five hours.
Magnus initiated his nightly shutdown sequence and swiveled in his chair, grabbing his phone as his monitors went dark one by one.
A notification banner glowed at the top of his screen:
@Aerin is broadcasting live!
The preview thumbnail showed Aela, the real name of the persona belonging to Aerin, mid-performance, because that's what S-Rankers did, they performed, standing between two shouting men outside a coffee shop. Her expression radiated that serene, almost infuriating confidence that came naturally to people who'd never questioned their place in the world.
Magnus had followed her for one reason: they'd gone to the same high school, and unlike most S-Rankers, she'd actually been kind to him. No performative charity. No condescending small talk. Just... normal.
Back when normal still felt achievable.
He dismissed the stream and tapped her profile picture instead.
~~~
@Aerin
Twenty-one | Influencer | Making the world listen, one conversation at a time!
Skills:
- S-Rank Negotiator
- A-Rank Strategist
- C-Rank Guitarist
Reputation Points: 150,320
Current Challenge:"Persuade a stranger to buy something useless in under 3 minutes."
Top Category: Social
30-Day Growth:+3.2%
~~~
Magnus rolled his eyes and sighed.
"Of course she's popular," Magnus muttered. "S-Rankers can do whatever the hell they want."
He scrolled through the comment section: a flood of admiration, thirst, and barely-concealed envy. Hundreds of replies to every post. Tens of thousands of likes. Over a million followers. Sponsorship offers in her DMs, probably.
His own SkillSphere profile? Twenty-three followers. Most of them bots.
Magnus stood, his knees protesting after eight straight hours in his chair. The hardwood floor was cold against his bare feet as he shuffled toward the bathroom.
The smart scale blinked to life the moment he stepped on it, sending faint electrical pulses through his soles. It measured, quantified, and judged him.
A hum. A ping.
The bathroom mirror in front of him connected wirelessly to his scales and lit up in pale-blue holographic glyphs.
"C-Rank Gamer. D-Rank Manager. E-Rank Weight Lifter."
He stared at the numbers like they were a medical diagnosis.
Most people graduated high school with at least one A-Rank skill. The ambitious ones had two or three. By age eighteen, the average SkillSphere user had accumulated over 5,000 Reputation Points.
Magnus had 109.
"SkillSense doesn't measure intelligence," he said to his reflection, the words rehearsed from repetition. "Just whether you've monetised your hobbies. Who needs raw potential when you can juggle for tips on a street corner?"
The system didn't care if you could dismantle complex arguments, optimize systems in your head, or memorize entire books. It didn't track intelligence, wisdom, or any of the attributes that actually mattered in RPGs.
"Those games understand what skills are important."
If you weren't performing something measurable, you were invisible.
Permanent Eidetic Memory, his doctor once said after various tests.
No matter what Magnus saw or experienced, he remembered it in perfect detail.
"But innate perfect memorisation isn't a skill..."
Magnus sighed, looking past the floating stats at the person beneath them.
Dark blue hair, unwashed and matted, hung past his shoulders. His jaw wore three days of patchy stubble that somehow made him look older and more pathetic simultaneously. The bags under his silver eyes had deepened into what looked like soft bruises, and his unzipped oversized hoodie barely concealed the curve of his stomach hanging over his waistband.
His faded t-shirt displayed a quote from some ancient philosopher nobody remembered anymore: "The unexamined life is not worth living."
The irony wasn't lost on him.
Nobody would bother examining his life.
He rubbed his eyes. The bags remained.
'I should hit the gym after work tomorrow,' he thought, knowing he wouldn't. He'd think the same thing tomorrow night, and probably the night after that, trapped in the loop of good intentions and zero follow-through that defined his life.
Back in his room, Lazlo had claimed the warm spot on his chair. Magnus gently relocated him to the bed and pulled up his SkillSphere profile on his phone.
~~~
@MagnusBarlowe.06
Eighteen | Gamer | Completionist
Reputation Points: 109
Active Challenge: "Achieve B-Rank Gamer Skill,"
Top Category: Recreation
30-Day Growth: +0.3%
Recent Activity: None
Comments: Disabled
~~~
"Why doesn't it ever increase?" he whispered. "Doesn't matter. It's just a stupid number anyway."
But he was a completionist. He'd written so in his bio.
Numbers always mattered.
His thumb hovered over the home feed, ready to spiral into the usual routine: scroll through other people's achievements, watch S-Rankers collect followers like popular trading cards, feel progressively worse about himself until exhaustion finally won.
Lazlo meowed. A small, sad sound that somehow cut through the noise in Magnus's head.
"You're right, buddy." Magnus closed the app and scooped up the cat, holding the warm, purring weight against his chest. Lazlo nestled into his hoodie like it was a custom-made nest. "Doomscrolling never helped anyone."
They collapsed onto the bed together. Magnus checked his phone one last time.
"One last time," he lied to himself.
His email showed a new message.
"Linden Electric - August Statement."
He opened it.
The number made his stomach drop.
Fifty percent higher than last month. The heatwave had forced him to run the AC almost constantly.
Lazlo overheated easily with all that fur. Magnus considered shaving him, but could never bring himself to remove that luscious coat.
Now the bill reflected his choice: keep his cat comfortable, or eat something other than instant ramen.
"Looks like no new cat tower this month," Magnus said softly, stroking Lazlo's head. The cat purred, oblivious to the concept of money or sacrifice or the quiet calculations of poverty. "And we'll stick with the regular food. The good stuff will have to wait."
Lazlo's purring intensified, as if to say the regular food was perfectly fine, that Magnus worried too much, that his bed was better than a cat tower, and that everything would work out.
Magnus wished he could believe in that kind of optimism.
He set his phone face-down on the nightstand and closed his eyes.
Half asleep, his mind wandered to the games he'd mastered. All those apocalypse scenarios.
Zombie outbreaks.
Nuclear fallout.
Alien invasions.
He ran through the calculations automatically, the way he always did: resources needed, optimal strategies, survival probability curves.
The conclusion was always the same.
He wouldn't make it. Not in the real world. Especially not if the zombies could run. And aliens? Forget about it.
If life were an RPG, his character build was all wrong. A high Intelligence build with passable Strength, but abysmal Agility and Endurance. A glass cannon without the cannon part. The kind of character you'd respec after the tutorial.
Beside him, Lazlo stretched and repositioned himself against Magnus's ribs, a small anchor of warmth in the dark.
Magnus's breathing slowed. Deepened.
Tomorrow would be another day at the WcNonald's. Another eight hours of dealing with customers, ordering his staff around, and using his D-Rank Manager skill. It was the one thing the system acknowledged he was competent at, even if it only manifested in his ability to organise a company and workers that nobody cared about.
Tomorrow would be exactly the same as usual.
Like every weekday.
The next day passed like all the others.
Well...
Almost.