The Pacific Ocean was out there. Big and grey-green in the afternoon light. I could see the edge of the mainland from here, just a dark line on the horizon. Fourteen miles of water between and a world that had no idea this island existed.
The system tir was visible in the corner of my vision. I’d learned to check it the sa way you check a clock. Not obsessively. Just regularly.
70 hours. 12 minutes.
Three days, give or take.
To seduce a woman. To convince her to let touch her. To extract essence and start banking points.
In a body that currently looked like I’d spent the last year exclusively eating fast food and avoiding sunlight.
I turned away from the window.
The bedroom on the left had the better view. I took it. My future roommate could deal with it. Whoever they turned out to be.
I sat on the edge of the bed and opened my orientation packet again. Class schedule. Campus rules. A list of monthly evaluation dates. A single page labeled "House Code of Conduct" that I skimd and imdiately forgot.
The map of the campus was printed on one side of a folded card. I studied it seriously this ti because clearly I could not trust my own sense of direction to get anywhere I needed to be.
Academic buildings were in Zone 2. Residential was Zone 3. Dining and recreation in Zone 4.
Snake Eyes was going to be most useful in Zone 4. The dining hall. High concentration of female students, casual environnt, no urgent social context to navigate.
I needed to get there soon. Start identifying targets. Start working.
I had a system designed by sothing divine, or deranged, or both. I had a skill that made won look at regardless of what I looked like. I had technique stats at C-rank from a past life of knowing exactly what to do with my hands and my mouth and my general presence.
What I didn’t have was ti to feel sorry about my current physical situation.
I stood up. Found the bathroom. Looked at myself in the mirror for the first ti since waking up in that amphitheater seat.
The face looking back at was eighteen. Round. Softer than it should’ve been. Brown hair that needed a cut, growing past my ears in a way that wasn’t stylish, just neglected. Amber eyes, which was at least interesting. The kind of color that reads warm in sunlight.
The body was what I expected. Soft in the middle. Broad but not muscled. The uniform shirt pulled across the stomach in a way that communicated "wrong size" to anyone paying attention.
The system’s Limit Breaker ability was theoretically fixing this. Sexual activity trained physical stats at 3x the rate of conventional thods. Which ant every extraction session was also a workout.
The problem was I needed to have an extraction session first.
I looked at my own reflection for another few seconds.
"You’ve worked with worse," I told myself.
I hadn’t, actually. But the sentint was useful.
I splashed water on my face, fixed the collar of my uniform, and went back out into the hallway.
The dining hall was a fifteen-minute walk that I completed in twenty-two minutes because I went the wrong way once. Just once. I was improving.
But when I finally got there, I stopped in the entrance and actually appreciated the space for a second.
Three floors of glass and ocean view. The ceiling was high enough to make the whole room feel like standing inside sothing important. Chef stations along the back wall. The sll of actual food, not cafeteria food. Sothing with garlic and butter that imdiately reminded I hadn’t eaten since before I died and woke up in soone else’s body.
The social geography was already establishing itself.
Front by the windows: the guild kids. Clean uniforms. Easy posture. Tables full before the food was even out.
Middle section: the general population. A mix of houses, affiliations, year years.
Near the kitchen, by the back wall: lottery admissions. Not explicitly assigned. But when everyone with family connections or guild backing was already moving toward the better spots, you ended up with the sa segregation every single ti, everywhere in the world.
I activated Snake Eyes.
The overlay ca up imdiately. asurents floating above every woman in my field of view like a heads-up display in a video ga designed by soone with very specific priorities.
I scanned systematically. Not desperately. Like I was browsing a nu.
34C, third-year. Ruby trim. Already in conversation with two other students, comfortable. Low priority.
32B, first-year. Amber trim. Sitting alone, staring at her food. Interesting, but Amber was across campus.
38DD, first-year. Obsidian trim.
I stopped.
She was sitting at a table near the edge of the lottery section. Light blue hair, which was distinctive enough to notice before Snake Eyes put up her asurent. Long, loose waves. A face that was made for getting whatever she wanted from whoever she was talking to. She had that particular bone structure where the features were arranged for maximum effect, sharp brows, full lips in a near-pout, a tiny beauty mark below the corner of her right eye.
The Obsidian uniform on her was doing sothing genuinely illegal. The blazer buttons were managing their job by a margin. The micro skirt sat high on her waist and ended a distance above the knee that the dress code had strong opinions about.
She was looking at her phone with a bored, beautiful expression while stabbing at a piece of fruit with her fork.
Lottery section. Obsidian trim. First-year.
Sa house as .
I checked my packet’s class schedule against the na I rembered from the novel’s cast.
Belle Fox.
Treasure sense ability. Bronze-tier essence at best. Not the highest yield, but she qualified for the first extraction bonus. Double points. And she was in my house which ant proximity. Regular access.
She looked up from her phone and caught looking.
I held Snake Eyes active for three seconds.
She looked back down. Then up again. A small furrow between her brows like she was trying to figure out sothing she couldn’t quite na.
Her cheeks were the faintest shade warr than they’d been a second ago.
The charm effect. Working in a body I actively found inconvenient. Still working.
The system tir updated in the corner of my vision.
70 hours. 3 minutes.
I walked to the food line.
I had a dorm assignnt, a house placent, and one potential target already looking at from across a room without knowing why.
Obsidian. The house where everything happened.
Well. Let it happen, then.
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