The sun had long set, and we were well into the night by the time everyone finished their class selections. It was finally our turn to distribute our additional stat points, so I stepped into the 7-Eleven first.

  I was taken aback by the bare shelves, pausing for a moment to look around. What the heck? Was there a set time before the system replenished the items?

  The place was nearly empty, save for a few pieces of armor and some ice cream still in the freezers.

  I walked up to the console, expecting Eva to pop up and interrupt me as usual, but nothing happened. I waited a moment, and when still nothing came, I placed my palm on the console.

  The console flickered briefly, and the screen changed, displaying the following message:

  [Please distribute your stat points]

  Below the message was a list of my current stats, with the number ten above them. Each stat had a plus sign next to it. I clicked on the ‘plus’ beside my Dexterity score, and it went up by one while the total dropped to nine.

  Huh.

  “Eva? You there?” I said out loud to the empty store.

  I didn’t get a response. The place remained silent, except for the faint hum of the chillers and the flickering of the fluorescent lights overhead. It felt unsettling. I’d gotten used to Eva speaking to me whenever I entered the store.

  I quickly distributed my points, adding five each to Dexterity and Strength. I didn’t want to waste any more time in here, so I grabbed a few more regular arrows, some buzzsaw arrows, net arrows, and a new type of trick arrow labeled simply as [Boom].

  I topped off my Mana and Health potions, then decided to spend the rest of my gold upgrading my armor. I selected a mithrail shirt and added the disguise enchantment. For some reason, the enchantment turned it into a Mr. Big concert tee from 2023. The band name was emblazoned across the front, with tour dates and locations listed on the back.

  I went to that concert when they visited Singapore. I went with Amira… We had a great time that night and we had ended the day at a late-night diner...

  The thought hit me like a punch to the gut, and I forced myself to push it down. Amira was gone. I couldn’t live in the past. Not anymore.

  The system is still fucking with me.

  I swallowed the rising tightness in my chest and quickly changed into the shirt, surprised by the cool metallic feel of the armor against my skin. The tee shirt was smooth to the touch, but when I knocked my knuckles on it, it gave a light metallic ‘clink’.

  I made to leave the store but paused, trying once again.

  “Eva?” I called out to the empty space, my eyes scanning the small store. My gaze landed on the one item still sitting on the shelves behind the counter, and just as I focused on it, it moved and dropped to the floor. I flinched, startled, before I steadied myself and vaulted over the counter to grab it.

  It was a smartwatch in a plain box. Not from any of the big brands like Samsung or Apple, but a cheap, no-name brand, something you’d expect to find on those sketchy websites, if they still existed. I studied the box, which featured the usual spiel about syncing to messages, notifications, and health stats. The front of the box was blank.

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  I remembered the last time something had fallen off the shelf. I quickly grabbed it and stored it into my inventory. I took one last glance around, and I vaulted back over the counter and exited the store.

  “Cool shirt,” Shawn said as he walked past me, heading into the store as I exited. Jess and Siva were with the crowd of people, both the newly activated and those who had returned from grinding excursions. It was a minor miracle no one had died.

  I gave them a wave and stepped outside of the building, sitting on the curb to pull out the watch from my inventory and took it out of the box. It had a simple, circular design, much like the latest Samsung smartwatches. I instinctively knew how to turn it on. It pinged once, and the startup screen appeared briefly, flashing Personal Electronic Tracker, before being replaced by a very regular, very normal-looking smartwatch menu.

  I scrolled through it quickly and found nothing weird. I slipped the watch onto my left wrist. Immediately, my HUD activated with new system messages:

  [Pairing...]

  [Interface compatible...]

  [Downloading latest firmware. You may close this window while waiting.]

  What the fuck...

  I scanned through the various menus in my HUD, but couldn’t find anything new or different, except for a loading circle quietly pulsing at the top left corner of my view. I removed the watch, but the loading circle continued its silent rotation. I sighed and put the watch back on. Nothing to do but wait for it now.

  The personnel carrier rolled into the car park, followed by the Digger. The harried-looking elderly Chinese man, our… bus driver, had been ferrying those who’d finished their grinds back to New Jurong, while Shawn had arranged for someone to drive over the Grave Digger. I couldn’t believe how relieved I felt seeing that damn truck. It felt like an extension of us now, a reliable escape that had pulled us out of danger so many times before.

  With Siva, Jess, and Shawn done with their upgrades and purchases, we loaded the last batch of people onto the bus. Meanwhile, we took the Digger, leading the bus to the Chinese Gardens for the final round of grinding for the day. The Chinese Gardens was a sprawling public park with a tall pagoda in the center, overlooking a man-made lake. If the pattern held, we knew we could find mobs there.

  We arrived and parked in the lot outside the park. I took up the rear while Shawn and Siva led the way, with Jess somewhere in the middle of the group, when I noticed a teenage boy still hanging back near the vehicles. I was about to call out to him when he raised his hand and cast something over the bus and the Digger. The vehicles were immediately showered with neon green numbers and letters, glowing once before settling back to normal. It looked like something straight out of The Matrix.

  “Hey, uh…” I started, walking over to the boy.

  “It’s Eric,” he said, looking up at me. He looked to be about Siva’s age, but a head shorter. He was dressed simply in a tee, a hoodie jacket, and jeans.

  “Eric, what did you just do?” I asked, motioning to the vehicles.

  “Oh, that. It’s a minor enchantment so that mobs or other people can’t break in or steal them,” he said, making a move to join the others.

  “Hang on, hang on,” I said, catching up to him. “But how? I mean, how did you do that?”

  “I’m a Technomancer. I control electronic shit,” he replied, lifting his hoodie to cover his head as the mist from the park started creeping toward us.

  “Aha… good to know,” I said, more to myself than him. “Uh, wait… so what happens now? Only you can unlock the vehicles? What happens if you… uh… die?”

  He turned and looked up at me, locking eyes with mine.

  “Then you better do all you can to keep me alive, or all of you are walking home,” he said with a laugh before jogging off to join the group, leaving me standing alone in the car park.

  A Technomancer... Holy shit...

  I jogged to catch up, my mind still lingering on the upgrade module sitting in my inventory. That item, the watch… I had a sinking suspicion of what was going to happen, but first, let’s kill some mobs.