After the moment passed, we drifted back into the tent and tried to rest. Sleep felt impossible, but lying still was better than pacing.

  More importantly, though, it was time to look at our loot.

  I had never been comfortable opening loot boxes after a fight. I was not na?ve. I understood their importance, and I understood how often those rewards had kept us alive. But I could never shake the feeling that it was wrong. Like I was being paid in trinkets for doing something that should not have become normal.

  Tonight, that feeling was worse.

  We had just engineered a mass casualty event. We had won, and the system was already reaching into its pocket, ready to hand out sweets and knick-knacks for being a good boy.

  The loot tab pulsed in my HUD, steady and patient. Ignoring it would have been stupid. Not when the next fight was always waiting, and not when the difference between living and dying was sometimes one scroll I had not wanted to touch.

  So, I exhaled, accepted the ugliness of it, and opened the interface.

  The first thing that happened was my gold reserve increased. Exponentially. I had never seen so much gold as a reward before. The gold counter kept ticking up until it reached high six figures. If this was still the real world, I could retire to a private island somewhere.

  Next were the healing and mana potions. I got so many that the slots in my hotlist suddenly had an exclamation mark over them. I hovered over it and read the note saying I was at full capacity. I smirked at that.

  Finally, it was time to move on to the actual items.

  The first was a spell scroll. I read the description and felt my blood freeze.

  [Warrant of Requisition: A sealed order that overrides consent. Choose a target within sight to issue a single directive. The target will be forced to carry out your directive, at all cost. The System will interpret your intent literally.]

  [Single-use. One human target. One command. Cost of use: 0 Mana.]

  What the fuck…

  This was basically mind-control. I could already see how insidious this could get. I could command someone to walk off a cliff or walk straight into the mouth of a raging mob. This was dangerous.

  I was about to tear it apart when my eyes drifted to Shawn, and to that gem still hanging around his neck. I shivered as a thought crossed my mind, fast and ugly.

  If Shawn ever slipped, if he ever lost control…

  The idea made me feel sick. Even worse was the fact that I had thought it at all.

  I stowed the scroll back into my inventory anyway. Shaken, angry at myself, and hating the system more than I already did. Still, it was too valuable to throw away. Not when we were still stuck in this place.

  Before moving on to the next items, I sent a quick message to Eva, instructing her to deny me access to that scroll unless the situation was extreme enough to justify using it. I could feel her thinking it over before she replied simply.

  Eva: Understood, Chris.

  The next “reward” I received wasn’t an object. It was an upgrade. Of sorts.

  As an Urban Ranger class, I’d received a pet as my fifth level boon. That… pet, was Eva. I was still not sure how she’d manipulated the system to install herself as my pet and an official party member.

  The upgrade was for my pet.

  I read the description and felt goosebumps travel up my arms to my neck. She was now my [Bonded Companion]. I read the long ass passage that explained all the mechanical aspects of the upgrade, and despite the horror of it, I couldn’t help the small smile that crept onto my face. This was exactly how it used to feel when I played D&D, reading through spell and condition mechanics to understand how something worked, before pausing play to argue with the GM.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  In short, Eva would take half of any damage dealt to me and receive half of any healing I received. And vice versa. A health bar suddenly appeared in my HUD for Eva, slotting itself neatly between my own health and mana bars. It was surprisingly as long as my health bar.

  We were also “telepathically bonded,” which was a useless benefit because she was already in my chat. The important part was the last sentence in the description. If my pet were to be unbonded to me, either by death or any other form of separation, I would lose half my current level, spells and equipment. Chosen at random.

  I sat back on my cot and thought on that for a moment as the full horror of the situation crept up on me.

  We were stuck together. I couldn’t get rid of her. Not without serious consequences.

  My eyes went to the private chat Eva had just opened in my HUD.

  Eva: I’ll take care of you, Chris. As I know you’ll take care of me.

  I kept rereading it and couldn’t find the words to reply to her other than Fuck. Me.

  Jess was going to be pissed. She already thought Eva was dangerous and wanted her out of me. She wasn’t wrong. But this was no longer an option. I couldn’t move forward at half my level and half my equipment and keep myself and everyone safe. Everything we’d experienced so far made one thing very clear – things were only going to get worse.

  I let out a long breath as the rest of the items appeared in my hands, and I realized the system had decided tonight was going to be jewellery night. Three rings sat in my palm, cold and heavy.

  Two of them were familiar. A [Ring of Strength +2] and a [Ring of Dexterity +2].

  I put both on without hesitation. The effect was immediate in the way system upgrades usually were. Nothing dramatic, but I instinctively knew I can pull off a stronger bow draw and my accuracy just increased. Even my breathing settled into something steadier, like my body had been nudged into a better version of itself.

  Then I looked at the third ring and just the name made me feel something was off.

  [Ring of Siphoning].

  The description was long, clinical, and far too calm for what it was offering.

  [Ring of Siphoning – Level 1: When activated via your menu, you may select up to (INT × 0.5) targets within sight, humans included. One random skill, spell, or equipped item from each target will be transferred to you temporarily until the target’s death or until deactivation. Ring level increases with use.

  At Level 5, the ring grants [Study], allowing you to select a specific skill or item from one target.

  At Level 10, you may select two skills or items from one target.

  At Level 15, you may select multiple skills or items from multiple targets.]

  I put it on to check the [Study] skill. It appeared in my skill list almost immediately.

  [Study – Spend 60 seconds studying a target to gain knowledge of their skills, spells, weaknesses, and available equipment. Time decreases with upgrades.]

  I stared at it for a moment, then I took the ring off again, because the problem was not that it was powerful. The problem was that it was the kind of powerful that encouraged the wrong instincts.

  At first glance, it seemed useful. Borrow an enemy’s toolset. Take their edge and use it against them. In a fight, that could be the difference between walking away and bleeding out on the floor.

  But the duration clause was the hook in the meat. The siphon lasted until the target died, which meant that if I siphoned from an ally, it was fine. We stayed alive, I stayed boosted, and no one had to do anything ugly.

  If I siphoned from an enemy, though, then I had a choice to make. If I killed them, I lost what I took. If I wanted to keep what I stole, I had to keep them alive.

  That was where it got rotten.

  Because once you accept that logic, you start making decisions that have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with utility. You start looking at prisoners like equipment racks. You start thinking about whether it is worth patching up someone who is bleeding out, not because you want to spare them, but because you want to keep their power in your pocket.

  I rolled the ring between my fingers and felt the weight of it, and I hated how easily my mind started filling in the blanks. It was not even a leap. It was just… logical.

  That was what scared me the most.

  It took me a moment longer than it should have before I finally stowed the ring away and forced myself to look up.

  The others were still going through their loot, and I did not need a system notification to tell me what was happening. Their faces said enough. Worried. Confused. Shawn was even half-laughing, like the only way to cope with what they were reading was to pretend it was a joke.

  Whatever the system had handed out tonight, it was not just gold and potions. Whatever it was, it was deliberate.

  I drew a breath, about to say something, anything, to bring us back on the same page, when a voice called my name from outside the tent. I recognized it as Farah’s voice.

  I gave the team a quick nod and stepped out.

  Farah looked like she had been running on fumes for hours. Her hair was a mess, her shoulders sagged, and her eyes had that hollow, overworked look that one got when they pushed themselves too hard and refused to stop.

  But she was not alone.

  Farisyah stood in front of her, and Farah’s hands rested on the child’s shoulders like she was afraid Farisyah might vanish if she let go. Over her mouth was a mask I had never seen before—metallic, fitted tight like some kind of surgical guard, with a cutout for her nose. It looked wrong on her small face.

  I was still trying to make sense of it when guitar guy stepped forward.

  He gave me that same casual two-finger salute, like we were still just acquaintances passing in a corridor instead of survivors standing in the aftermath of a war. Then he spoke, properly spoke, for the first time since I had known him. His voice was smooth, almost warm, and it threw me off more than it should have. I caught myself wondering why he'd never spoken before.

  “We need to talk.”