Chapter 178: Commercial Fever Dream With System Rewards

Chapter 178: Chapter 178: Commercial Fever Dream With System Rewards

Entering Sector 5 felt like stepping into a commercial fever dream I used to see on old Earth broadcasts of Times Square.

Billboards covered nearly every vertical surface.

Holographic panels stacked on top of each other in aggressive layers of light and motion.

And on almost every single one of them, the same man smiled with too many teeth.

Draven.

Larger than life.

Arms crossed.

Arms open.

Kissing someone off-frame.

Standing on a pile of monster corpses with energy still glowing around his fists.

The ads rotated through a dozen different versions of the same message: strength, spectacle, inevitability.

His face was the skyline.

"Hehe. Surprised?" Draven said, walking ahead without looking back.

Another vehicle was already waiting: sleeker than the first, darker paint, the kind of quiet luxury that didn’t need to announce itself.

The three of us climbed in as its doors sealed and the car lifted cleanly into the upper lanes.

From above, the landscape was not so different from Sector 7.

Same layered traffic, same dense vertical architecture, same distant shimmer of gate residual on the horizon.

The difference was the branding.

Sector 7 had guild crests and academy banners.

Sector 5 had Draven’s face repeated until it became background noise.

He leaned back in the seat, completely at ease.

"We have ten guilds here. Highest number in any sector. That’s what this place is popular for. You’ll have so many people to train with."

I didn’t ask what kind of training he meant.

Curiosity would only hand him another opportunity to mock.

"Where am I staying?"

"In a cell, of course."

His tone stayed light, almost cheerful.

"You’re still the bastard who assaulted her. So it’s only right you get a little punishment first. I’ll take you to one of my places and lock you up."

I nodded once.

Giselle’s head turned a fraction toward him.

"I want to train with him."

"Not so fast."

Draven didn’t even open his eyes.

"We don’t know what his class is."

"I do. Almost. I can copy most of it."

"Most of it is not all, Giselle. We don’t know what else he’s hiding."

He finally cracked one yellow eye open and looked at her.

"Not like I’m afraid of him. But yeah—you did lose once."

Her eyes narrowed.

"I didn’t. I was pinned. That is not the same as losing the fight."

"Sure, sure. Talk to your mommy about that."

"Did... she watch?"

"Probably."

Draven’s smile returned, sharper.

"She’ll kill him if you take him straight to her. So I’ll lock him up first, then we go coax her together. Order of operations."

He pointed a finger at me without sitting up.

"Don’t cause trouble."

"Like what?"

"I’m not telling you. You’ll just do it on purpose."

The car descended toward a building with an aggressive, angular design.

A massive stylised ’D’ crowned the top floors, lit from within so it glowed against the skyline.

The structure itself was not as large as Jenna’s guild complex, but it had the dense, expensive look of a place that did not need size to prove importance.

We stepped out onto a private platform.

Draven immediately began waving at people: staff, lower-ranked supports, a pair of Vanguards who straightened the moment they saw him.

He walked ahead as the entire building rearranged itself around his path.

Giselle’s hand closed around mine.

The contact was brief, deliberate, and cold.

"You took some of my power," she said quietly.

"Right?"

"Yes."

"Do you still have it inside you?"

"I can’t access it."

"Why not?"

"Didn’t store it properly."

She studied my face for a second longer, as if checking whether the answer was another lie, then released my hand before anyone could comment.

Draven shoved open a pair of double doors with both palms and announced, far too loudly:

"HERE WE ARE."

The interior looked like a high-end office that had given up on professionalism.

Open floor plan, expensive furniture, dampeners built discreetly into the walls.

And, rare enough that it actually registered as strange, three men occupied the central seating area.

Legs on the table. Phones in hand.

The casual posture of people who were used to being the minority and had decided not to perform gratitude for it.

One of them glanced up.

"You’re back?"

His eyes moved past Draven and landed on me.

"Who’s this?"

Draven didn’t bother answering the question.

"Lock him up. Feed him only once for two days. Put a suppressor collar on him."

The three supports exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation. The one who had spoken stood first, rolling his shoulders like the order was mildly inconvenient rather than serious.

"Assault case?" he asked, already producing a slim black collar from a side drawer.

"Something like that," Draven said.

"Be polite. He’s a good boy."

The collar closed around my throat with a magnetic click. The moment the seal engaged, whatever thin thread of energy I had still been able to feel went completely silent.

It simply had no surface left to push against.

Giselle watched the process with an unreadable expression.

"Two days between meals is excessive," she said.

"He’s not here to be comfortable."

Draven was already walking toward an inner corridor.

"He’s here because he did something to you in front of every camera that mattered and then smiled about it. The cell is the kindest version of the week. Remember that."

One of the guards gestured for me to follow.

I did.

The corridor was narrower, the lighting colder.

At the end, a reinforced door stood open onto a room still larger and cleaner than any actual prison cell had a right to be: bed, basic sanitation, a single recessed light, residual-null walls.

No windows.

The collar-controlled support paused at the threshold.

"You try anything clever with the hardware, it tightens. You try to force output, it tightens harder. Food comes when it comes. Questions go to the wall panel if you feel like talking to no one. Don’t call us unless you are dying."

He sealed the door.

[Suppressor collar: Active | Output nullified]

[Giselle core fragment: 0.6% retained — Inaccessible under current restraints]

[Congratulations!]

[Quest Complete: Clear the Sector Academy Entrance Examination]

[Rewards Issued]

• 1× Golden Roulette Ticket

• 1× Silver Roulette Ticket

• +5000 Exp

• 1000 Succubus Points

[Level Up!]

[Current Level: 31]

I stared at the floating text until the letters began to blur.

’Golden ticket, huh?’