Chapter 107: Rewards!

Kai woke up to a sore body, a migraine, and an awfully bruised lip.

He exhaled and stared at the ceiling of his room while the night tried to reassemble itself in broken pieces. Just how much had he drunk after leaving the maze? He remembered cutting back into the ball hall with his clothes fixed and his pulse still stupid, then going straight for every glass he could get his hands on because sobriety felt like an unfair demand after getting fucked in a flower maze by a crown prince.

"My head hurts."

[Good morning, Host.]

"...Morning."

The answer left his mouth before the oddness of it fully landed. The System rarely greeted him like that, so he already knew this was either going to be bullshit or good news.

"Why—"

[Shall we commence with the unveiling of the rewards?]

Kai froze halfway through sitting up, one hand still against his forehead.

"Rewards."

[Correct.]

[Multiple completion conditions from the previous night have been verified.]

[Begin distribution?]

He lowered his hand and gave a short humorless breath.

"If this is about the ball, yes. If this is about me making terrible decisions in a garden, still yes. Give me the good news before my skull splits."

[Acknowledged.]

A clean panel opened across his vision and immediately began stacking lines with the kind of density that made his hangover feel personally attacked.

[Reward Set One: Mandatory Event Attendance]

[Event: Cinderella Event]

[Status: Completed]

[Base attendance reward confirmed.]

[Bond Points awarded: +40,000]

Kai’s eyes widened at once.

"Forty thousand?"

[Correct. That is only the first block.]

[Additional attendance modifiers applied:]

[Unrecognized high-impact entrance: +5,000]

[Direct contact with royal host line: +5,000]

[Route divergence trigger success: +10,000]

[Total current Bond Points from attendance block: 60,000]

Kai sat fully upright and ignored the way his body complained about it.

"You are telling me I got paid this hard for showing up, removing a mask, and surviving rich people."

[Host also altered local political and romantic trajectory maps simply by attending.]

"Of course I did."

The panel refreshed.

[Reward Set Two: Unplanned High-Value Intimacy Event]

[Target: Candidate 007 / Crown Prince Evander]

[Status: Completed through impulsive physical consummation]

[Classification: Spontaneous bond acceleration]

Kai put both hands over his face.

"Do not phrase it like that."

[Host requested rewards.]

[Continuing.]

[Bond Points awarded: +40,000]

[Affinity growth bonus applied]

[Candidate 007 affinity has crossed early threshold far ahead of standard progression]

[Hidden condition satisfied: Host accepted pursuit without institutional framing]

[Total Bond Points now accumulated from both blocks: 100,000]

Kai lowered his hands and stared at the number until it stopped looking fake.

One hundred thousand bond points.

He had gone months treating the System store and reward channel like a stingy landlord. Now the interface was dumping value on him because he attended a masquerade and let a prince fuck him behind flower walls.

"I do not know whether to feel validated or personally attacked."

[Emotional interpretation is optional.]

[Proceeding to ability unlocks.]

The next panel hit harder than the points.

[New Ability Unlocked: Mana Circulation]

[Host can now sense, gather, and channel mana.]

[Current state: untrained]

[Host is capable of learning and performing magic, but no completed spell forms are currently installed.]

Kai went still.

"Magic."

[Correct.]

[This is not cosmetic. Host previously operated through physical reinforcement, appraisal, system tools, and borrowed skills. Native mana handling is now available.]

He flexed his fingers slowly. Under the hangover and sore muscles there was something else, a faint responsiveness in the air around his hands, like the room had always contained a current he could not touch until now.

"So I can learn spells."

[Yes.]

[Recommendation: structured instruction. Uncontrolled discharge may damage Host’s body or surroundings.]

"I gathered that."

[Additional ability unlocked: Flight]

[Type: native sustained aerial movement]

[Difference from temporary borrowed Hover: permanent acquisition]

[Stamina cost scales with speed, altitude, and duration]

Kai let out a disbelieving laugh and immediately regretted the way it jabbed through his headache.

"I can fly."

[Correct.]

[Host no longer requires Candidate 001’s temporary skill for basic aerial travel.]

That alone would have been enough to make the morning absurd. The System was not finished.

[Bloodline Award detected.]

[Host has received: True Dragon Bloodline]

[Access state: sealed / conditional]

[Full manifestation remains locked until specific criteria are met.]

Kai’s amusement vanished.

"True Dragon."

[Correct.]

[This bloodline is not ornamental. When unlocked, it will affect body ceiling, mana quality, presence pressure, and route authority.]

[Current available effects under seal: passive resilience increase, latent dominance signature, improved compatibility with high-tier growth materials.]

"What criteria?"

[Incomplete disclosure.]

[Known requirements include: sufficient authority rank, survival through a designated high-threat sequence, and one unresolved origin-linked condition.]

[Further details locked.]

Kai stared at the far wall of his room and tried to process the fact that he had gone to bed drunk and sore and woken up with a sealed dragon bloodline sitting under his skin like a future problem with good packaging.

"You are enjoying this."

[The System does not experience enjoyment.]

"Liar."

The interface continued with less mercy.

[Additional S-tier rewards distributed:]

[1. Authority Rank increased]

[Host’s question rights have expanded.]

[Previously restricted categories may now return partial answers instead of full revocation.]

[2. Milestone reached: Capital Re-entry under independent decision]

[Reward: Adaptive Resistance]

[Effect: improved recovery against poison, low-grade corruption residue, and charm-type social pressure]

[3. Milestone reached: Dual formal proposal exposure without route collapse]

[Reward: Will Separation]

[Effect: Host gains temporary mental partition under emotional overload, reducing impulsive consent and panic responses]

[4. Milestone reached: Household stabilization after personal loss]

[Reward: Estate Link]

[Effect: Host may now receive remote status alerts from House Valerius through the System]

[5. Inventory Expansion]

[Ring of Infinite Storage capacity increased by one full tier]

[6. Skill Slot Expansion]

[Host may now maintain one additional passive support skill]

[7. Random High-Value Draw granted x1]

[Use timing optional]

Kai dragged a hand down his face.

"You waited until I was dehydrated and full of bad decisions to become generous."

[Reward timing follows verified completion, not Host comfort.]

"Of course it does."

He forced himself out of bed, crossed to the side table, and poured water with hands that still felt slightly wrong from residual alcohol and new mana sensitivity. The first drink helped. The second made thinking possible again.

"Open the authority part again."

[Authority Rank has increased from limited interrogative access to mid-tier inquiry access.]

[Host may now ask deeper structural questions regarding world mechanics, candidate classifications, and restricted event logic.]

[Answers may still be partial.]

Kai looked at his reflection in the dark window glass. Bruised lip. Tired eyes. White hair disordered from sleep. A man who had buried people, closed an adventuring route, attended a royal ball, and somehow come home with magic, flight, and a sealed true dragon bloodline.

"Ask test," he said. "Why was the Cinderella Event mandatory?"

[Partial answer available.]

[Because Host’s attendance created the shortest stable route into multiple high-value convergences: royal contact, public reintroduction, and academy-adjacent institutional visibility.]

[Full causal map remains locked.]

Kai’s mouth twitched.

"That is already more than you would have given me last month."

[Correct.]

He sat back down on the edge of the bed and pulled up the bond point total again just to stare at it.

100,000.

Store access suddenly mattered again. Training matter. Preparation mattered. The academy path sitting under all of this mattered. He could buy tools, manuals, protection, maybe even materials connected to the sealed bloodline later. For the first time in a long stretch, the System felt less like a stingy warden and more like a machine that had finally decided he had moved far enough to get paid.

"Show me the bloodline seal conditions again."

[True Dragon Bloodline]

[Seal strength: high]

[Known criteria:]

[1. Authority threshold]

[2. Designated high-threat survival event]

[3. Origin-linked condition]

[4. One unknown requirement]

[Host is advised not to force manifestation.]

"I was not planning to start breathing fire over breakfast."

[That is preferable.]

Kai rubbed his temples and tried to put the rewards into practical order. Mana meant study. Flight meant mobility. Authority meant better answers. Bond points meant purchasing power. Adaptive Resistance and Will Separation meant fewer cheap ways for other people or other systems to shove him around. Estate Link meant Duke and the household could no longer become a blind spot simply because he left the grounds.

And under all of it sat the dragon seal, quiet and heavy.

He let out a long breath.

"Alright. One more. Did last night change my route permanently?"

[Yes.]

[Adventuring Arc remains closed.]

[Royal contact branch is active.]

[Academy convergence probability has sharply increased.]

[Candidate network density around Host continues to rise.]

Kai gave a weak laugh and flopped back onto the mattress.

"So I got drunk, got fucked, and accidentally promoted myself into a worse political ecosystem."

[That is one valid summary.]

"I hate how helpful you become after the damage is done."

[The System distributes rewards after completion.]

He stared at the ceiling and let the full inventory of gains settle until the shock thinned into planning. He needed a magic primer. He needed to test Flight somewhere private. He needed to check the store against actual needs instead of impulse. He needed to decide how close he was willing to get to Evander now that the System had already paid him for the irreversible part of that encounter.

He also needed food and a stronger drink than water, preferably in reverse order.

Kai turned his head toward the window and spoke more quietly.

"Do not dump another life-changing announcement on me for at least an hour."

[Request noted.]

[Compliance not guaranteed.]

"I figured."

He closed his eyes for a second and started sorting priorities by force of will. Bond points first or training first. Store later. Bloodline left sealed. Evander left in the category of problems that could wait until after breakfast. For one brief stretch of morning, the room was only his, the rewards were only numbers and options, and no other man was inside the moment with him.

Then the System chimed again, sharper than the reward panels.

[Alert.]

[External presence detected.]

[Signature match: Candidate 005 / Aster Ludacris.]

Kai’s eyes snapped open.

A familiar voice followed from the direction of the window like the room had never belonged to Kai in the first place.

"So this is what your room looks like?"

Kai startled hard on the bed, still half tangled in the System interface, hangover and reward-shock stacked on top of each other, and found Aster Ludacris already inside the confinement of his room as if walls and formal entry were optional concepts.

The Chairman smiled faintly.

"You look busy."