Chapter 9 – A Different Kind of System
Super Guardian by LittleLYTA
The room still stank of mold and old regret.
The power hadn't come back. The fridge hummed a hollow lie—it was as dead as everything else in this place. The air was thick with silence, broken only by the occasional creak of wood as Zack moved across the floor in bare feet, his uniform shirt half-buttoned, his collar sagging like the rest of his life.
He sat down heavily on the floor. The weight of everything pressed into his shoulders—bills, darkness, hunger, memories. But something new lingered in the back of his skull.
A faint glow pulsed behind his eyes.
Not a real glow. Not something anyone else could see.
But he could.
It flickered in the darkness like a phantom screen—hovering at the edge of thought, just waiting for him to focus.
That was the difference now.
Everyone who entered the Holy Domain for the first time got the system. That was standard. A rite of passage. The moment you stepped past the boundary after your sixteenth birthday, something clicked inside your head, and suddenly there was a voice—a cold, measured presence keeping track of your kills, your points, your progression.
People called it a blessing.
Zack had always thought it sounded more like a tracker. Something watching them. Counting them. Grading them like test subjects.
But whatever it was… his wasn't the same anymore.
His system had changed.
No—been changed.
Ever since the orb… ever since that strange, glitching moment of pain and static when the blue Carbee dissolved into his hands… something had shifted. Something had been hacked.
Now the system wasn't just a voice. It was visual. Tangible. Game-like.
He didn't have to ask to hear it anymore.
He could see it.
Floating there in the center of his mind was the interface—translucent and pulsing with faint light. It had weight, color, movement. And more than that… it felt responsive. Alive, almost. As if it had been tailored to him.
Like someone—or something—had installed a cheat code in his brain.
Zack stared at the flickering screen in the darkness of the room. A part of him still half-expected it to vanish, like it was all just a dream cooked up by starvation and stress.
But it didn't.
Instead, the window shifted, and a new notification expanded across the glowing interface.
---
[New Daily Quest Received]
[Beginner Body Training – Day 1]
Must be completed before 12:00 AM. Resets daily.
Failure to complete will result in punishment.
100 Pushups
100 Situps
Run 3km
[Reward: +1 Extra Mod Point]
---
Zack exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the cold air of the powerless room.
"…Still there."
The quest hadn't changed.
Same brutal list.
Same silent threat underlined in that one word—punishment.
He didn't know what the system meant by that yet.
And to be honest, he didn't want to find out.
But more than the quest, it was the form of it that got to him.
This wasn't how the system worked for anyone else. Not at school, not in the shelters, not even in the Holy Domain.
Their version was clinical. Text-only. Voice-only. The same sterile feedback every time they checked their points or killed a spirit beast.
But his… his had color. Texture. Motion.
It felt like something entirely different.
And the strangest part?
It didn't scare him.
No. What scared him was how natural it felt—how easy it was to accept.
Like this was how it should've been all along.
"Spirit System 2.0," Zack muttered under his breath. "That's what you're calling yourself now, huh?"
No response came. The system wasn't like a person—it didn't talk unless it needed to.
But he felt it listening.
Like the screen itself was quietly watching him, measuring his reaction.
And in a way, Zack welcomed it.
Because for the first time in a long time, he wasn't just reacting to the world.
He was being seen by something.
Tracked. Updated. Evolving.
This wasn't just the system anymore.
It was his system.
And whatever had changed it—whoever had made it different—had also made a mistake.
Because they gave him something he was never meant to have.
A chance.
A real one.
And Zack Tennyson wasn't planning to waste it.
The window groaned faintly as Zack eased it shut behind him. He dropped to the ground with a soft grunt, landing in a crouch just beneath the rusting gutter. The cold morning air scraped against his face as he darted past the crumbling fence, then slipped behind the dying tree a few steps down the street—its crooked trunk barely wide enough to hide a kid, let alone a sixteen-year-old with long limbs and a guilty conscience.
His eyes flicked toward the second floor. Nothing. No angry voice. No boots stomping. No landlord at the door yet.
Good.
Zack exhaled, then bolted.
The cracked pavement slapped under his worn shoes as he ran, feet eating distance like he had somewhere important to be. The truth was... he did.
And no money to get there.
No fare for a tram.
Not even a wrinkled coin to bribe one of the cleaner buses that rolled through the upper sectors.
The direction was burned into his legs by now. He took the same streets every morning. Past the rusting comms tower that hadn't worked in a decade. Left by the empty gun shop, right at the clinic that only took credits, and then down the long stretch of pale concrete that led to his school.
Not just any school.
A private school.
One of the only ones left that still offered real education to humans outside the main Alliance sectors. It had security, working toilets, and—if you were lucky—access to one of the old learning pods that hadn't been cannibalized for parts.
Zack didn't belong there.
He knew that. Everyone reminded him, every single day.
But he still ran toward it like a lifeline, lungs burning, arms pumping. The weight of the empty system quest window still hung in his mind like a silent threat.
[Beginner Body Training – Day 1]
Must be completed before 12:00 AM. Resets daily.
Failure to complete will result in punishment.
100 Pushups
100 Situps
Run 3km
[Reward: +1 Extra Mod Point]
His legs ached already, but he kept going. Because he couldn't afford to be late.
Because his sister had worked her damn hands raw to save enough credits to get him enrolled there. Because she'd lied on the forms. Because she'd bribed an instructor with a half-functional mod lens. Because she'd made a hundred deals with a hundred devils just to keep his name on the list.
Zack wasn't just running to school.
He was running to survive.
And in this world, sometimes, that was the same thing.