David lay staring at the ceiling. The new iteration had started nearly half an hour ago, yet he hadn’t moved—just lay there, hollow-eyed, replaying the failures over and over in his mind. The last one stung the most. He would have won if not for the system’s cheating, that smug, invisible hand yanking victory away at the last second.

  Eventually, he exhaled, long and tired, and forced himself upright. His body moved automatically now, through the motions of the “morning” routine.

  By the time the sun began its slow climb across the dome sky, David was already perched on the rooftop. A small pile of crystal cores glowed beside him as he siphoned mana into his veins.

  He stared into the horizon, thinking about what to do about the final boss.

  Some time later, he decided to go for a “walk”, he sat about half a kilometer from the surface in his levitating chair. David leaned back in the seat, one hand lazily resting on the keyboard of his laptop as the city sprawled beneath him—empty streets without any living soul (not counting the monsters). He wasn’t really scouting anymore; part of him just needed to move, to feel something that wasn’t the still weight of failure pressing on his chest.

  A flicker of movement caught his eye on the outskirts—structures rising where there shouldn’t have been any. He frowned and tilted the chair’s nose down, coasting closer. Through the dusty haze, rows of concrete bunkers and metal hangars came into view. A perimeter fence, a watchtower, even the faint outline of landing pads.

  He checked his map. A label blinked faintly: Fort Halley Ridge.

  “Halley Ridge? That’s no fort,” David muttered. His pulse picked up. “That’s a military base.”

  As David descended toward the military base, rows of small barracks, a squat hospital, even a little convenience store.

  But what really caught his attention lay beyond those—toward the storage yards and the firing range.

  David's eyes widened. Now this was worth the trip. Heavy machine guns gleamed in the muted light, their barrels still wrapped in plastic. Stacks of Javelin launchers rested in neat rows beside boxes of ammunition. And parked under a shade net, three Humvees sat waiting. He floated down beside them, brushing a hand along the hood of one. The metal was warm.

  "No tanks, though," he muttered, a grin crossing his face. "Guess you can’t have everything."

  Still, the whole setup struck him as odd. The base was too small, too isolated for real military use. There were no tracks, no heavy fuel depots, no sign of armored divisions. Just a few vehicles and some gear.

  He frowned, scanning the perimeter. "What was the base doing out here, huh?" he murmured..

  David’s first order of business was simple—petty revenge. Specifically, revenge on Kevin’s self-driving car, which had killed him twice in earlier loops. The moment he found a cache of Javelins at the military base, he knew exactly what he was going to do.

  He sat cross-legged in the office parking lot, a single Javelin propped up beside him and a printed manual spread open across his lap. The manual was thick, filled with technical diagrams and far too many safety warnings. “Alright,” he muttered, tracing a finger across the checklist. “Insert battery... remove protective cover... attach targeting module... make sure no one’s behind you—ha, as if.”

  The air shimmered faintly with heat, the sun bearing down on the asphalt. David adjusted the launcher’s settings, flipping through menus. “Contrast, brightness... okay, we’re good. Now... aim at Kevin’s stupid car.” He squinted through the sight, but the targeting reticle refused to lock on. “What the—oh, right. It tracks heat signatures.”

  He sighed, set the launcher down, and trudged over to the sleek electric car parked nearby. A tap on the dashboard woke it up, its lights flickering to life. “You’ve got one last chance to redeem yourself,” he told it, deadpan. Then he walked back, hefted the Javelin, and looked through the sight again.

  Still nothing.

  And then it hit him. “It’s an EV. Of course it doesn’t have a heat signature. Brilliant.” He groaned, rubbing his temple. “The same problem I’ll probably have with the crystal monster... fantastic.”

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  Flipping through the manual again, he eventually found a buried section about switching guidance modes. “Manual lock... no heat contrast required. Perfect.” He grinned, re-shouldered the launcher, and squeezed the trigger.

  The missile streaked forward with a blinding flash and a shrieking hiss.

  BOOM!

  Kevin’s car exploded into a spectacular fireball, chunks of smoking metal raining down across the lot. A flaming tire bounced past David, close enough that he felt the rush of heat on his cheek.

  He blinked, coughed once, and shrugged. “Well... that’s one way to test it.”

  “I’ll give it a solid A-minus. Loses points for nearly killing me again, but... good effort.”

  David sighed, rubbing his temples beneath the VR helmet. The fun part was over—now came the tedious one: programming the robots. These weren’t military units by design, at least not originally. They were household assistance prototypes his company had been developing before everything went to hell.

  Now they were his private army.

  Using controllers that came with his VR helmet, David used one of the robots directly, its camera feed flickering in front of his eyes. He moved its limbs, recorded the gestures, and fine-tuned the transitions, then stitched the motions together with the existing aiming and targeting software.

  It was slow work. Tedious. Every shot, a calculated outcome.

  “Alright… shoulder rotation looks good. Insert battery. Remove protective cover. Attach targeting module. Step forward. Aim. Fire. Reset,” he muttered under his breath, watching as the robot executed the sequence perfectly on already used Javelin.

  The integration with the Javelins had been the real nightmare. Teaching them to aim through the missile system’s interface was a lost cause. Instead, he adapted their AI to fire based on simplified trajectory models and manual calibration data. Crude—but it was working.

  By the end of the session, David had seven robots configured. Ideally it would be eight, but... One missile had already gone into Kevin’s poor, doomed car.

  He leaned back in his chair, exhaling heavily. “Alright… Javelins done.”

  David finally turned to the task he had been putting off—the one that made his stomach tighten with reluctant dread. He sat cross-legged on the concrete floor of the roof, surrounded by small crystalline cores. Each one contained the residue of fallen monsters, energy solidified into matter. His robots had been hoarding them while tinkering with Javelins. Now, later had arrived.

  He exhaled, flexed his fingers, and began the process. The crystals dissolved one by one, their internal glow spilling into his hands, flooding through his veins to his core. His skin prickled, his breath hitched, and his magical core—a dense sphere of structured mana deep in his chest—shuddered under the strain.

  Hours passed in a blur of light and exhaustion. The pile of crystals dwindled to nothing. And then it got refilled again and again by his robot-servants.

  [You have improved your Magical Core: Rank B- → B]

  David blinked at the message. That was more progress than he’d expected. He even felt a faint tug forward, the first glimmer of the next rank’s threshold—but it was still distant, buried beneath another mountain of mana he didn’t yet have.

  He rubbed his face with both hands. “If only I had a few of those big-panther cores…” he muttered. The mini-bosses were strong, but he felt that their crystalline remains were pure, dense with energy. Unfortunately, the final boss—his personal nightmare, the Cthulhu-like abomination—never gave him enough breathing room to collect them.

  And as he sat, floating on his chair, watching the last remnants of a burned panther corpse that he killed with an overcharge just now, a familiar cold text flickered before his eyes:

  [An Examiner has been assigned.]

  David’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, fantastic,” he said dryly.

  The monster appeared again—a silhouette of writhing tendrils, levitating like he was in water and not in the air. It hovered near the office complex.

  David sat cross-legged on his flying chair, a laptop balanced on his knees, fingers flying over the keys. His expression was focused, almost calm. On the screen, a dozen green dots flickered—his autonomous combat units awaiting commands.

  When the creature reached the designated kill zone, David didn’t hesitate. He slammed the Enter key.

  “FIRE!”

  Seven robotic warriors with launchers swiveled in unison, their targeting systems flashing red before releasing a coordinated salvo. The missiles streaked through the air, trailing smoke, converging on the monster’s massive form.

  Three.

  Two.

  One—

  Impact.

  A thunderous explosion rippled across the skyline. Shockwaves rolled through the air, shaking windows for blocks. The creature let out a sound between a roar and a psychic scream, one of its enormous tendrils ripped clean off, dissolving into glowing mist.

  David grinned, his chest pounding.

  “Got you. You’re not invincible after all.”

  His triumph was short-lived. The monster steadied itself, regaining balance as the energy and kept himself afloat. It was wounded, but very much alive—and now, furious.

  David’s eyes darted back to his screen. Seven launchers, all empty.

  “Well, okay, time to run away” thought Dave and started flying to the edge of the dome.