And so, Inso finally got a moment to sleep after Devi sneaked out of his room while he was having his full-blown existential meltdown.
He finally had a moment to process his new reality. Unfortunately, "processing" mostly involved soaking his pillow with tears of shame and self-pity.
I'm the worst player in the entire universe, he thought, staring at the ceiling. Even NPCs are gonna laugh at me.
For three solid hours, Inso held the most pathetic pity party. He cried. He questioned his life choices. He wondered if maybe extinction wasn't so bad after all. Finally, emotionally drained and dehydrated, he managed to fall asleep.
For exactly twelve minutes.
CRASH!
The door exploded open with a sound like thunder, followed immediately by a kick that sent Inso rolling across the floor like a football. He landed in a heap of clothes that was unwashed for god knows how long. His face sticky with dried tears, and his hair defying several laws of physics.
Through bleary eyes, he looked up to see Devi towering over him. Devi glanced at Inso- bloodshot eyes, gaunt face, and—oh god—was that mucus?
Devi took one look at his pathetic state and her face almost got disfigured from disgust. She grabbed his blanket and threw it over his head like she was covering a crime scene.
"GET YOUR PITIFUL ASS UP, NOW!" she roared.
Inso didn't move. He couldn't move. The crushing weight of being universally terrible had drained all motivation from his body. "Noona..." his voice came out muffled and broken, "can I just... die instead?"
The room went silent.
Slowly, Devi crouched down to his level. Her hand reached out and gently caressed his cheek. Hope flickered in Inso's chest—maybe her soft side is finally peeking out, maybe she'd comfort him, maybe—
He looked up into her eyes and immediately regretted every life choice.
Her eyes were the color of hellfire, opposite of comforting.
"You better move it," she whispered with the kind of smile that made criminals nervous, "before I rip you open to see what your last meal was."
Inso shot up so fast he probably broke his spine. "BATHROOM! SHOWER! MOVING! YES MA'AM!"
Twenty minutes later, they stood in the same barren wasteland where Inso had first learned about his pathetic future. The sun hadn't even risen yet—the sky was still a depressing gray, that made Inso's depression level boost up.
"I didn't even get to poop," Inso muttered, glaring at the sky like it had personally offended him.
"Alright, log in," Devi commanded, already touching her pendant.
But something stirred in Inso's chest. A flicker of determination he didn't know he still possessed. Afterall, he can't brush it off like it's some normal kid's game. It held billions of lives as hostage.
"I can't let this planet die," he said suddenly, his voice growing stronger. "Not while my grandma and Noona are still alive. Everyone else can eat space dust for all I care!"
He touched his glasses with resolve and logged in.
DING!
[Polarum: OMG his bed hair is still sticking up! SO CUTE! ]
Before Inso could even process the embarrassing comment, Devi was already moving.
[D has blocked group chat access]
[Chat members cannot communicate during training mode]
And then she became a blur.
Inso watched in stunned silence as Devi moved like she'd been touched by the gods of speed themselves. Twenty meters in one second—was she teleporting? Then she was jumping, rolling, flipping through the air like gravity was merely a suggestion.
The next moment, the air around her shimmered with heat despite there being no visible fire. Finally, she took five deep breaths, flipped her hair with casual grace, and turned to him like she'd just finished a light warm-up. But she had already completed her daily tasks in just 5 minutes.
"What are your daily tasks?" she asked, tilting her head innocently.
Inso's jaw had apparently forgotten how to close. "So... to become like that, I need about ten years of experience, right?" he gulped.
Hesitantly, he opened his task list for her to see.
[Daily Tasks]
[Hydroclump: Clump moist air to water and make patterns from it - 100 exp]
[Plasma Spark: Create sparking gas by overcharging particles - 100 exp]
[Electrostatic Lift: Levitate sand/dust by overcharging for 2 minutes - 100 exp]
[Run 2km - 50 exp]
[Eye Exercise: Concentrate on single electron for 60 seconds - 150 exp]
They both stared at the screen. Devi's eyes seemed to involuntarily avert in pain from all the scientific wordings, while Inso's expression slowly transformed into something resembling confidence.
"This is kid's play for me," he said, removing his glasses with a cocky grin.
He'd been manipulating molecular structures since childhood—it was as natural as breathing. Concentrating, he guided the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the surrounding air, coaxing them to bond and form water droplets that danced through the air in the shape of a rabbit.
"See? Easy peasy!" His excitement lasted exactly four seconds.
[Hydroclump +5 exp]
The world stopped. Inso stared at the screen like it had just insulted his non-existent mother. "You mean I have to do this TWENTY TIMES to get full experience?"
"Probably," Devi said with the casual indifference.
"Life is not daijobu for me I guess" Inso muttered to himself, then began the tiring process of repetition.
[Hydroclump +5 exp] [Hydroclump +5 exp] [Hydroclump +5 exp]
By the twentieth time, his eyes were burning from exhaustion and lack of sleep. But he'd done it. A smile broke across his face like he'd just conquered Mount Everest.
"One down, four to go," he wheezed.
The second task required him to overcharge gas particles until they bound together like opposing magnets—a process that felt like trying to force two identical poles of a magnet together through sheer willpower.
Inso strained until his eyes felt like they might pop out of his skull.
Finally, success! The gases created a brilliant spark of colored light that hung in the air for three long seconds before vanishing.
[Plasma Spark +10 exp]
"Yeah, yeah, I know this system will pull this shit," Inso sighed. He was beginning to understand that the universe had personally marked him for suffering.
Nine more repetitions later, he collapsed to the ground like a slime.
Devi lifted him up, her voice carrying what might have been concern. "Inso, are you alright?"
His weary eyes managed a small smile. "I'm fine, Noona. Don't worry."
"Good," she said with the same concerned expression, "then get up and finish the rest."
Inso let out a laugh that sounded more like a dying car engine. A smile so forced yet he had to do it to keep himself from bursting out.
The third task nearly broke him. Overcharging particles in the ground to make them levitate while maintaining perfect control for two full minutes which was like trying to juggle flaming torches while riding a unicycle, on a tightrope, during an earthquake.
When the two minutes finally ended, both Inso and the levitated particles crashed to the ground together.
"Inso," Devi called softly.
"Noona, please.... Just give me five minutes," he gasped, sprawled on the ground like roadkill.
Instead of her usual threats, Devi sat beside him. When she spoke, her voice was unusually gentle. "Do you know what happened to my real parents?"
Inso's exhausted brain suddenly snapped back online. "Real parents?" He shot up so fast in shock.
"REAL PARENTS?!"
His shout was so loud that Devi's eardrums burst.
She chuckled, but it was tinged with sadness. "Yes. The ones raising me now adopted me when I was twelve." Her eyes grew distant, unfocused. "My biological parents... they're gone."
Inso's heart began racing, but not from exhaustion this time.
"I used to be lazy, just like you," Devi continued, her voice growing quieter. "I'd skip my daily tasks, thinking it was just a game. The system kept warning me about penalties, but I ignored them. I thought, 'What's the worst that could happen? Maybe they'll deduct some exp from my profile'"
She paused, her fist clenching unconsciously. "We were driving to a supermarket. It was a beautiful day, and we were all laughing about something silly. Then suddenly..." Her voice cracked. "The earth just... split open. A sudden earthquake. Our car fell through the bridge, and my parents died on spot."
Inso felt like he'd been punched in the chest. The air seemed to leave his lungs all at once.
"I thought it was just unfortunate," Devi whispered, her eyes completely dry but somehow infinitely deep. "Until that night, when the system screen appeared in my hospital room. Just two words: 'Penalty Executed.'"
Rage. Pure, glowing rage flooded through Inso's body. "How dare they? How dare the system take her parents away because of a stupid game? She was just a child!"
"That's why, Inso," Devi's smile didn't reach her eyes, but those eyes held the weight of years of pain and determination. "I don't want to watch you turn to ash just because you were too lazy to complete a daily task."
Something shifted inside Inso. The exhaustion, the self-pity, the unfairness—none of it mattered anymore. What mattered was this: he would not let the system win. He would not let it take anyone else from the people he cared about.
"I need to find whoever controls this system," he growled, leaping to his feet with renewed energy, "and show them what happens when you mess with lives."
Inso took off running like a man possessed. Two kilometers flashed by in a blur of determination and barely contained rage. He didn't stop, didn't slow down, didn't even feel winded. The thought of Devi as a twelve-year-old girl, alone in a hospital room, receiving a notification that the system had murdered her parents—it fueled his determination.
[Run 2km - 50 exp earned]
One task left.
The final task was the most difficult: tracking a single electron's movement for sixty straight seconds without blinking. It sounded simple, but electrons moved in ways that made hummingbirds look sluggish.
Inso failed. Again. And again. His eyes burned, tears streamed down his face, but he kept trying. On his fifteenth attempt, he made it to fifty-eight seconds before his body betrayed him with an involuntary blink.
Devi's parents, he reminded himself. The system killed them for a game. It could kill my grandmother too. She did nothing wrong
He tried again, replaying her sad, distant expression in his mind. His eyes felt like they were about to burst from his skull, but he held on. Fifty seconds. Fifty-five. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine...
Sixty.
[Eye Exercise +150 exp]
[Daily tasks completed! Total: 500 exp earned]
Inso looked up at the dawning sky, sun rising to cheer him up, his eyes fierce and unwavering despite the tears of pain streaming down his face.
"Just you wait," he whispered to whatever entity was pulling the strings. "I'll climb to the top of the rankings, and when I find you, I'm going to fry you alive."
Epilogue:
While Inso was pushing his eye muscles to their absolute limits, tracking electrons with the determination of a man on mission impossible, Devi watched from the sidelines with a completely blank expression.
Poor kid totally bought that sob story I made up on the spot, she thought, biting her lip to keep from laughing. The tragic backstory about her "real parents" and the system penalty? Pure fiction. She'd crafted it in about thirty seconds when she saw how pathetically unmotivated he was.
She watched him glare at the sky with righteous fury, making dramatic declarations about frying the system alive, and had to cover her mouth to muffle her giggles.
I should feel bad about this, she mused. But ...
Devi's internal laughter continues...
To be continued...