Hugo walked over to his desk with casual confidence, picking up the warm coffee cup and taking a sip like we weren't in the middle of a military raid. Like he hadn't just beaten both of us with minimal effort.

"I'll do you two a favor before your demise. You want to understand how we got here?" He said, as if this was a last act of mercy. "How I became the World President? How all of this began?"

I pushed myself up slightly, my ribs protesting. Anthony was still on the ground near the wall, conscious but barely moving. We weren't going anywhere, and Hugo knew it.

"I'm listening," I said through gritted teeth. "Not like I have a choice anyways."

Hugo set down the cup and looked out the window at the compound below. "I hated every second of my life, Reynard. Did you know that? Every mundane, meaningless second of it."

He turned to face me, his expression distant. "I had a wife with a D-Rank job—a simple hairstylist with no ambitions beyond the next meal. And a son who showed no promise, no potential, nothing that indicated he'd ever be more than average. It was so evident that you were going to be F-Rank at best. Do you know how humiliating that was? To have produced something so... ordinary?"

The words stung, but I kept my face neutral. Let him talk. Let him reveal everything.

"I worked as a researcher," Hugo continued. "Standard System research. Nothing groundbreaking. Nothing that would change the world. Just... documenting what already existed. It was suffocating. Every day, the same dull routine. The same limitations. The same disappointment."

He moved away from the window, pacing slightly. "For a moment, I felt hopeless. Trapped in a life that would never amount to anything significant. But then, as I researched—before the experiments, before NovaCore, before any of this—I felt myself getting smarter. Thinking faster. More capable. And one day, I received something."

His eyes lit up with an intensity I'd never seen before. "A job title. But not just any job title. The first ever job title to ever exist and it was a naturally occurring beyond the basic System assignments. In history, even till now, all job titles were artificially implanted in people. Besides this one."

I stared at him. "What job title?"

"Job Potential," Hugo said simply. "S-Rank. The ultimate analysis title. It showed me the potential of all jobs I could acquire. Made me understand that the System wasn't fixed—it was malleable. Waiting for someone with sufficient intelligence to reshape it."

My blood ran cold. "So you went off the deep end—"

"I walked towards progress," Hugo corrected. "The System was even kind enough to grant me other rewards just for being the first to acquire this. It truly is remarkable was the System can gift us isn't it?"

He smiled at my expression. "But I digress...With that knowledge, I saw the limits of my Researcher job. Saw how restrictive it was, how it kept me contained. So I got to work. I found an old colleague by the name of Bruce Walsh, someone ambitious enough and amoral enough to help me push boundaries without asking too many ethical questions."

The name hit me like a punch. Bruce Walsh. The second lead researcher of the NovaCore experiments. The one who'd disappeared around the same time as Hugo.

"We founded NovaCore together," Hugo continued. "With the explicit purpose of experimenting on the System itself. Pushing it to its limits. Breaking it open to see what was inside. And we succeeded. Slowly, bit by bit, we learned how to give people artificial jobs. How to manipulate neural pathways to force the System to accept parameters it normally wouldn't."

He walked back to his desk, leaning against it casually. "I even gave myself the World President job. It seemed appropriate—ultimate authority, ultimate influence. The perfect position from which to orchestrate everything."

"But then the public started taking notice," Hugo said, his expression darkening slightly. "Rumors spreading about our work. Questions being asked. We needed to extinguish every flame before they became fires. So I made a decision."

He looked directly at me. "I left the family without warning. No explanation. No goodbye. Just vanished. It's not like there was anything of value there anyways." My blood boiled at that sentence. "Then I funded a space mission. I needed to get the heat of me so I told everyone that it would make Bruce Walsh the first person to reach Mars. A historic achievement. Humanity's greatest triumph."

My stomach twisted as I realized where this was going.

"But I made sure it would never be broadcasted," Hugo continued, his voice clinical. "Because the ships were rigged with explosives. Every single one. Bruce and his entire crew died before they even reached Mars' ground. Along with them went any knowledge of NovaCore's early work that they'd carried."

I thought of Mars. Of the graveyard of rocket ships I'd seen. NovaCore's symbol on one of them.

"I continued doing this," Hugo said matter-of-factly. "Every company that knew about us. Every potential whistle-blower. Every loose end. All eliminated in 'tragic accidents' across the solar system. It was remarkably efficient."

"My ship," I said hoarsely. "When I went to Mars as an astronaut. It was rigged to blow up too."

Hugo's eyes flickered with something—recognition? Amusement? "Ah. Yes. That was years later, but old habits die hard. NovaCore's legacy needed to remain buried. You surviving that was... unfortunate. Though in retrospect, it probably should have told me something important."

He pushed off from the desk, pacing again. "With the public flames extinguished, I had both time and resources. But I needed results. Proof that my theories could be replicated. And then I got my miracle. Subject 3811—the first NovaCore subject to successfully receive an artificial job title."

His voice took on an almost nostalgic quality. "After that, the floodgates opened. We refined the process. Made it repeatable. Started recruiting subjects—some volunteered, some didn't, it barely mattered. What mattered was the data. The progress. We even hired some of the subjects to work with us. Though it's not like they had a true choice in the end."

I thought of the subjects I'd encountered. Subject 3829 who could disable Systems entirely. Mark—Subject 3834—who could switch his job to any other job at will. All of them experiments. All of them tools for Hugo's research.

"But I kept pushing," Hugo said. "Kept refining. Kept searching for the ultimate achievement. And eventually, I reached it. Subject 3840. My greatest success, my de facto masterpiece. The Jobmaster title was born."

He paused, his expression thoughtful. "But that created a problem. How would I obtain the same job title for myself? I had the blueprints, even if her rank was D, I could easily refine it so it becomes SSS-Rank, but the bigger problem was that I couldn't exactly experiment on myself. My genius was needed to continue the work."

"So you found another way," I said quietly.

"Exactly," Hugo confirmed. "It took years, but I developed a method for the System to track genetic makeup—DNA signatures. Program it to recognize my specific genetic code and transfer job titles acquired by subjects who shared that code. It was elegant. Beautiful, really."

He smiled. "I tested it the first time and to my surprise...nothing happened. I assumed it was a fluke. A mishap in the programming. So I refined it, before testing it again. Thankfully, the second time, it worked perfectly. The Jobmaster title transferred to me, complete and optimized."

His smile widened. "But....little did I know that the first time wasn't a mishap at all. The System had worked exactly as designed. It had found someone with my genetic code and given them the Jobmaster job title."

My heart stopped.

"You," Hugo said, looking at me with something that might have been amusement. "My disappointing F-Rank son. Somehow, on that night when I first activated the genetic tracking, you acquired the Jobmaster title. Pure coincidence. Pure luck. The System recognizing a genetic match and executing its programming flawlessly. In fact, it wasn't until your first ever promotion straight to B-Rank that I found something odd."

I remembered that night. Standing on a bridge. Ready to jump. The crushing weight of being F-Rank at eighteen, of having no future, no hope, no reason to keep existing.

And then the notification. [NEW JOB TITLE ACQUIRED: JOBMASTER - SSS RANK]

It had stopped me. Made me curious enough to not jump. Gave me a reason to see what would happen next.

"All this time," Hugo continued, "I thought the first attempt had simply failed. Never occurred to me that it had succeeded—just not the way I intended. You stumbled into the most powerful job title in existence purely by accident. By being in the right genetic proximity at the right time."

Something inside me broke.

All the rage I'd been holding back. All the pain. All the years of wondering why my father had left. Why I'd been abandoned. Why I'd never been good enough.

"YOU COWARD!" I screamed, my voice raw. "You left Mom! You left us! You tortured people—hundreds of people—while keeping yourself safe! You rigged ships to explode! You killed Bruce and everyone who helped you! You created monsters and called it progress!"

I struggled to my feet, my entire body shaking with fury. "You could have done anything with your knowledge! You could have helped people! But instead, you used it to build a throne of corpses so you could play god!"

Hugo looked at me with complete disinterest. "Your screams are nothing more than a dying dog's barks," he said dismissively. "Loud. Meaningless and soon to be silenced."

He raised his hand, and he balled his fist. If this strike did hit me then I would be as good as dead. Nothing, not even my skills could save me from the damage.

But I was done listening. Done being afraid. Done letting this man's shadow control my life.

I pushed myself up fully using Pain Resistance. Ignoring Instinct's constant warnings. Ignoring everything except the man standing in front of me.

"I've heard enough," I said, my voice steady now. Cold. "I'm going to kill you."

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