Chapter 25: DOWNPOUR

With all the quests and crap completed, I was officially level five, sitting on 114 EXP. According to the interface, I needed 207 EXP if I wanted to reach level six.

I was back at my place, the digital clock on the microwave showing exactly nine o’clock. The sun was long gone, and the rain was picking up speed with each passing second, drumming a violent rhythm against my window. Interestingly enough, the prick Hubert had returned a few minutes after I left Sarah’s place. They had been completely quiet since, not a single peep escaping their apartment upstairs.

The system interface suddenly hovered into my field of vision, glowing with a soft neon light.

╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮

LEVEL UP ! [4➔5]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

> LUST REFILLED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[!] UNSPENT POINTS: 5

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

> [CHA] : 11 [+]

> [END] : 5 [+]

> [PER] : 10 [+]

> [LCK] : 3 [+]

╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯

Right... five stat points to dump. Now, if I wanted to look good and sharp, Charisma was always the premier option. However, Perception was proving to be just as useful. My Endurance was fine for now; I wasn’t running out of energy mostly because my low Perception meant I was seeing fewer opportunities triggered by the system.

The last one, Luck, was a total wildcard. It was so low right now that I couldn’t even feel it doing anything in the background. I couldn’t risk wasting precious points on a gamble, so I made my choice: two points into Charisma, and three points into Perception.

The screen flickered, refreshing my sheet with the new values.

╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮

MAIN MENU

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

NAME: Chance Brooks

LVL: 5 [114/207]

RANK: Homewrecker

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ CORE STATS ]

> CHA: 13 [+2]

> END: 5

> PER: 13 [+2]

> LCK: 3

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ ENERGY ]

> LUST: 140/140

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ ACTIVE PERKS ]

> [The Outsider]

> [The Gentle Protector]

> [Empathic Resonance]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SIN POINTS: 830

╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯

"Homewrecker?" I muttered under my breath. "And, plus two?"

I guess it was fair. I was the one who left that sketchbook out to be found, after all. It got found, and Hubert absolutely flipped his lid right on schedule. I wasn’t the pathetic loser getting kicked down while I was already on the floor anymore. I wasn’t the one who would be crying in bed, paralyzed by a massive fear of the future.

So, yeah. I’d take the Homewrecker rank any day of the week over feeling like absolute trash.

"And it’s giving me two extra points to my stats, eh? Nice."

A faint, hesitant knock on the front door suddenly thawed me out of my thoughts. I let the system UI dissolve into the air and walked toward the entryway, peering through the small peephole.

It was... Sarah? She was holding a small backpack in her hand, her eyes darting nervously toward the stairwell behind her as if she expected someone to follow her. Why the fuck was she down here? I thought this night would play out silently and the real shit would hit the fan tomorrow with a couple more loyalty drops.

I unlocked the deadbolt, pulled the door open, and looked at her. She had clearly taken a shower; she was wearing a casual gray t-shirt and a pair of tight pants. Despite the fresh clothes, I could still see the tracks of drained tears staining her cheeks. She had really cried that hard over a guy like Hubert? Fucking hell, what a stupid whore.

"Hey," I said, putting on a warm smile. "What... happened?"

"I..." She put a hand to her forehead, looking exhausted. "I told Hubert I would stay at a friend’s house tonight... but the rain is just too bad out there. I really don’t want to step outside in this downpour."

"Oh..." I nodded understandingly, stepping aside. "Yeah, of course. Come inside, please."

"Thank you... and I’m so sorry for forcing my way in like this," she said, stepping past me. "I know you probably don’t want me around because of the drama with Hubert, but..."

"No, no," I said, closing and locking the door securely behind her. "Nonsense. Make yourself completely at home."

"I... I don’t even know what to say..."

"Well, you can always grab your phone and say, ’Hey, I’d like to order a pizza,’ maybe?"

Her eyes widened slightly before she let out a faint laugh. "Oh my god, you’re seriously never going to drop that one, huh?"

"I’m just joking." I chuckled softly. "You hungry?"

"N-no... I don’t want to eat anything right now. Just... I just want to lay down and completely forget what happened today."

I still had Empathic Resonance active, meaning I could easily touch her right now and feel exactly what she was craving deep down... but maybe I’d save that for later. Right now, I didn’t want to scare her off. She was right here, exactly where I wanted her to be. And hopefully, by the time the night ended, I’d be re-arranging her guts in my bed while her idiot husband sat upstairs, completely clueless about what I was doing to his wife.