The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

Interlude: The Blue Box Returns

"Well, if everything is my fault, then don't come back."

"I'll come back whenever I like, this is my house!"

"You barely show up here! If you want to go, then just bloody leave."

"...See you in the evening."

"I'm not opening the door this time, so you'd better take the keys. But I'd rather you didn't!"

"I don't care, I've already taken them. Now goodbye."

Deniz stormed out.

He slammed the door of his car shut, as he started the engine.

Congratulations, Deniz! You have unlocked [Breaking and Entering System]. I have taken your keys away, to help you focus.

Deniz checked his pocket, and found that his house keys were missing.

"Hey, what's the big idea, mister?" he said, turning to the sound of the voice.

Instead of a person, he just saw a large, blue box.

Currently, your lockpicking and strength could do with some development. The easiest way to improve them is to level up, unlocking distributable stat points in the process. As such, I will set you the following quest:

Quest: Sneak into your boss' room as he does the rounds, and kill 15 rats.

Deniz pondered this as he drove towards the highway.

"Wait, why would I have to sneak into his room to do that?" Deniz asked. "Wouldn't he appreciate it if I killed the rats? Especially if there are that many of them. I could just ask him if he needed it as a favour."

Good point. However...

Your boss IS SECRETLY A RAT.

So that is why you have to sneak in, and not tell him.

"What? A RAT?" Deniz exclaimed, almost losing control of his car. "But... how could that be? He has always been vocal about his hatred of rats!"

Clearly he was trying to conceal his secret identity. He is a cunning, ratty man.

"I daresay! I can't believe that he had deceived me for so long..."

Noticing Deniz's erratic driving, a tired policeman sallied over and stopped him.

After a breathalyser test and a check of Deniz's driving license, the policeman sighed. "Clearly you're not drunk. Well, what happened? I saw you talking, were you on the phone while driving?"

"Does talking to a blue box count as being on the phone?" Deniz asked the blue box.

Absolutely not.

"I guess not, then," he told the officer.

"Alright, good. Well, be careful with your driving now. See you around."

The policeman was tired, and couldn't be bothered to deal with the matter further. He soon fell asleep in his car on the way back home, causing a car crash.

However, Deniz did not pay attention, and instead continued driving onwards to his office building.

"Why did the policeman not have issues with me referring to a blue box?" he asked, realising that the preceding conversation was somewhat surreal.

Um, well, everyone knows what a blue box is. It's popular on RoyalRoad. And everyone knows that RoyalRoad readers are normal people, and not a motley collection of freakish uncultured modern nerds. So blue boxes must be well-known among normal people.

Although this reasoning was far from airtight, Deniz accepted it.

"Alright, so we've arrived," he said. "What now?"

Wait for exactly one hour, then make your way towards the boss' room. To help you out, I have activated a map of the office block, which should appear to the lower-left of your vision.

"Wow, this is great. It even moves to keep track of my location. Wonder that they never provided me with a map like this before, it would have been helpful. Just goes to show how much contempt the bourgeois have for the working class, denying us such simple conveniences."

He walked to his own cubicle, following the directions on the map to avoid his typical confusion.

"So," he whispered, "how am I supposed to sneak out of here to the boss' room? I'm not that stealthy, I'm sure that I'd be seen."

That's fine, because a [Sneaking] skill is provided as part of the [Breaking and Entering System]. While yours is currently too low to pull off the task, you can train it by playing Splinter Cell. Since you have an hour to spare, this should be ample time to improve your skill.

"But how can I just play Splinter Cell here? I mean, even if it works, it would be obvious to anyone who walked by."

That is fine, you can merely use the [Concealment] skill to make people think that you are working on an Excel sheet, even when you are actually playing Splinter Cell in a window behind it. Through persistently cheating on your wife and covering it up, you have gained a high level of skill at [Concealment], and this is a good opportunity to use it.

"How highly developed is my [Concealment] skill?"

Your concealment skill is at stage 7. The highest stage is 10. An average human score would be around 1 to 3. Since your skill is so impressive, the system has granted you the ability to conceal your activities by having others see you doing something else.

The only person who could detect you is your boss, who is a rat and therefore has the power to sniff out the Splinter Cell game even though you are hiding its window from sight. You would have to make a saving throw, and this would be about 50-50. Fortunately, he is currently still in his room, and you should make your move as soon as your boss begins to walk around the offices.

"Alright. Who has the highest concealment stage?"

John Mayer. His [Concealment] stage is 15.

"15? But I though the maximum is 10."

Do not doubt the system.

Otherwise, I will have to make you believe.

Deniz quieted down, not wishing to incur the wrath of this blue box.

He spent the next hour playing Splinter Cell, with one eye on the clock. Soon, he saw that it was time for him to enter his boss' room.

Standing up, he found that his [Sneaking] skill, which had raised to 5, was now capable of hiding him from detection as he approached his destination. However, he wasn't sure what to kill all of the rats with.

Fortunately, he remembered that one of his colleagues had green fingers, and sneakily stole a machete from this colleague's cubicle.

Easing the boss' door open, he saw that the room was infested with rats. Most of them wore snobbish suits, strangely, and several of them were rolling a vacuum cleaner around the room to improve its hygiene. Despite the abundance of rats, it was a very neat room.

He ran in, grabbed the vacuum cleaner, and shoved its nozzle hard at one of the rats which had been operating it. The rat was sucked into the vacuum cleaner, and soon another one followed. This was enough to clog the vacuum.

Congratulations! 2/15 rats completed.

Deniz's hand flinched away as a horde of rats leapt towards him, biting a few small cuts in his hand. Hopefully this wouldn't give him a disease. He raised the machete in the air, and some of the rats scattered away.

Advancing on them, he saw one rat run bravely towards him. However, it fell to a few swings of the machete, and its insides lay carved up across the ground.

As he frantically swung at the mass of rats, taking a few sharp wounds in the meantime, he saw one big rat loom out angrily from behind the rest. He quickly killed another rat who was scurrying around his arm and biting, then turned to face this large rat.

Congratulations! 14/15 rats completed.

The large rat picked up the vacuum cleaner and swung it at Deniz, causing a sore bruise on the ankle. However, Deniz knelt down and swung his machete across the rat's face. With a second swipe, the rat's intestines came spilling out, and it died.

However, Deniz was shocked as this rat, on dying, turned into a human corpse, that of his boss.

The rest of the rat corpses also transformed into a pile of human remains. Deniz worried as he saw this.

Congratulations, you have completed the Quest. As a reward, you shall receive EXP, and your stealth skill will increase by one stage.

You have levelled up to level 5!

Each level increase brings a boost to your strongest stat. In your case, that is [Concealment], which has raised to 8. Well done!

In a few seconds, a guard burst in, and soon he had called a policeman.

"Excuse me, did you just kill these people?" the guard said.

Deniz panicked, caught red-handed.

However, as he activated his - now level 8 - [Concealment] skill, he began to calm down. "No, you see, it was my wife who killed them. I can explain!"

"That sounds very convincing, sir," the policeman said, walking into the room. "Please lead us to your wife, so that we might accost her."

"Straight away."

He directed the policeman to his house, and knocked on the door. However, his wife refused to open it.

Don't worry, I can convince her.

The blue box walked up to the door, and banged on it. However, the wife, still thinking that it was Deniz, refused to open the door.

Well, excuse me.

CHA ∞

It knocked on the door again, and this time Deniz's wife came rushing to the entrance to open it.

Gushingly, she said, "Oh, welcome in! I'm Nikki, why don't you come in?"

The blue box embraced her without resistance, and then dragged her out using his high Strength stat. He threw her on the ground in front of Deniz.

Main Story Quest: Kill your wife.

Deniz didn't hesitate, and struck his wife with the bloody machete which he had carried here from the office. After a strike to her face, blood splashed onto the ground, and she began to plead for her life and say that she would take him back.

However, he was not satisfied, and leapt towards her, striking against her neck and chest until she died. Blood pooled across the entrance to his house.

"Excuse me, sir," the policeman said, "but you are not allowed to murder the suspects, no matter what crimes they are supposed to have done. This is an illegal act of vigilantism, and we will have to arrest you."

After a moment's hesitation, Deniz tossed the machete towards Nikki's corpse. It fell just beneath her mangled shoulders.

"No, you see, it was her!" he explained to the policeman. "She did it. She killed... herself, with a machete attack. See? She's clearly holding the murder weapon!"

"Ah, that is very true," the policeman said. "Well, I shall take note of her many crimes, but it looks like she is dead for now. This means that you should be free to enter your house without risk. Thank you for your co-operation."

"Thanks," Deniz said.

As him and the blue box walked into the house, Nikki's corpse began to blush and reach for the blue box even though she was dead. This is because of just how high its charisma stat was. However, it paid her no notice.

Congratulations, Deniz, you have reached level 15.

You have looted the item 'A New Way To Hate' from your slain wife.

You have unlocked a new song for your Jukebox, 'Girl I'll Never Understand' by Blue.

"Why do I have a jukebox?" Deniz asked.

It's a cosmetic element which can be used to play music. Allow me to demonstrate.

I could never believe and never understand

How you could do this to me

Enough is enough, done all I can

Now you're gonna lose me

Throwing away our yesterdays

Everything we planned

Cause you're a girl I'll never understand 🎵🎵🎵

"Ah. Good stuff."

If you want, you can spend $50k dollars worth of our microtransaction currency to unlock any of several highly-sought songs, such as 'A Thousand Years,' 'Friday,' and 'Blank Space.' Each can only be bought once from the Store, and after that it will be out of stock forever.

"Pfft, paying for cosmetics? Nah, I'll leave them be, you can save them for losers."

A wise decision. I am also capable of coming up with new AI-generated Blue songs for free, so you shall never be in want of good pop music.

"But what about the struggling new boy bands? Who will bother going to their gigs, if technology can just generate new Blue songs?"

I don't know, groupies? I don't think those care that much about musical quality, typically. Besides, my general impression is that humans care more about being celebrities or wealthy than about the art itself, so it's best if humans just go around being celebrities and leave the art to others.