Hugo stared at the glowing notification, unblinking.
He read it again. And again. And again.
[Water Affinity: SSS Grade]
The basement felt suddenly too quiet.
Not truly quiet — the hum of his old computer fan still droned, the faint buzz of the refrigerator crept in from the corner — but quiet enough that it was thunderous.
Hugo's voice felt foreign when he muttered, "Is this… some kind of prank?"
He turned toward the table.
Randalf was back at it.
The raccoon-shaped Lich was perched among the scraps of cake, belly round and twitching in satisfaction, robe sleeves smeared with frosting. It hummed softly, chewing with deliberate slowness, as though the act of eating itself were a meditation. Crumbs rained gently onto the tablecloth, drifting like snowflakes in the dim light.
Randalf froze mid-bite as though he had been caught committing a crime. A crumb dangled from its whisker. Its ears twitched as though sensing Hugo's disbelief. With a small, guilty cough, it straightened its robe, brushing frosting from its claws, and gave an awkward half-bow.
"I was, ah, merely… verifying that the and maintaining its structural integrity, master," it said, voice slightly muffled.
Hugo's jaw moved, but no sound came out. He didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or invent a new emotional state entirely.
"You—how… what, what did you do? How did you—" Words tangled in his throat. Sentences collapsed before fully forming.
Randalf tilted its head, eyes glinting under the dim light. "I simply raised your body constitution," it said, calm, patient. "And the affinity adjusted accordingly. You can check your stats and see for yourself."
"Stats?" Hugo repeated flatly.
He hadn't bothered to check them before — the D-grade Water Affinity had been a disappointment, a dull ache to dwell on, so he didn't bother exploring more. Now, though, curiosity tinged with disbelief.
He murmured the word: Status.
A translucent blue window blinked open in midair, lines of text scrolling neatly. The light reflected across his tired eyes, painting them pale against the shadows of the basement walls.
[Status Window]
Name: Hugo Cole
Race: Human
Affinity: Water (SSS Grade)
Mana: 1000 / 1000
Strength: 30
Agility: 30
Stamina: 30
Skills: None
"..."
"…That's not right," he said flatly. "That's definitely not right."
Hugo turned toward his desk, fingers brushing over the chipped wood as he reached for the computer tower. He pressed the power button. The machine whined like it was protesting the absurdity of existence itself.
"Come on, come on…" he muttered. The screen flickered to life, pale light spilling across his face, washing out the exhaustion, highlighting his dark circles.
His hands hesitated over the keyboard, then typed: 'Average beginner Awakened stats'.
The page loaded slowly, each second stretching into a universe. Numbers finally blinked onto the screen:
Mana: 10
Strength: 5
Agility: 5
Stamina: 5
Hugo leaned back slowly, letting out a dry, humorless laugh. His mouth hung slightly open. "…Right."
He calculated in his head. Not just above average… not even close. Three times stronger? A hundred times more mana?
Randalf, meanwhile, hummed. The creature seemed completely unconcerned, a perfect portrait of calm in the eye of absolute absurdity.
"You… what are you?" Hugo asked finally, voice flat from disbelief.
Randalf's ears twitched. Whiskers glistening with frosting, it rose slightly on its haunches and thumped a tiny fist onto the table. The sound echoed, absurdly, in the basement.
"A Lich, master! A LICH!!!" it declared proudly. Its tone carried the weight of worlds, and simultaneously the ridiculousness of a raccoon with a sugar high.
******
It took Hugo a while to calm down. Not entirely calm — more like he'd accepted, in the shallowest sense, that reality had just shredded all expectation and glued it back together in a form that made no sense whatsoever.
Hugo didn't know what to feel.
For the first time in a while, excitement hovered somewhere beneath the numbness — a small flicker he hadn't felt in years, buried under apathy and endless disappointment.
He stared at the SSS rank hovering in his status window. Blue light reflected off the dust on the desk, pooling in little uneven patches on the floor.
He took a deep breath, shoulders slumping slightly. "Okay… calm down. Focus." His voice sounded flat to him, almost bored, but inside, his chest still thumped. That faint, unfamiliar excitement hummed beneath the surface, like a tuning fork vibrating against raw metal.
He cleared his throat and tried to sound collected. "So… what else can you do?"
The raccoon-Lich twitched an ear. "Anything you want, master… Well, except fight for you."
Hugo blinked, deadpan. "What do you mean?"
"Law of the universe," Randalf murmured, voice heavy with self-importance. "Higher existences can't harm lower ones directly. Helping, to an extent, is permitted. What I did for you… well, that didn't count."
"…Right." Hugo said not quite familiar with the terms. "So… you're a higher existence? How strong is that?"
"Well master, not to brag, but I could probably blow up a thousand of your worlds stacked together."
"..."
"…Ohh. That powerful," Hugo muttered flatly, lips pressed in a thin line.
He swallowed suddenly becoming more self aware. Randalf had already proven itself, and Hugo didn't doubt it for a second.
He opened his mouth to ask another question, but froze midway hearing a sound from upstairs.
"HUGO!!! WHAT IN THE WORLD HAPPENED TO MY TOMATOES!!"
'Shit.'
Hugo's gaze snapped to the Lich, which was lying there like it hadn't a care in the world. He exhaled sharply. "Hide. My mom can't see you. She hates spawns to the core."
Randalf twitched an ear, eyes half-lidded in lazy acknowledgment. Hugo didn't wait for acknowledgment. He bolted upstairs, heart hammering in his chest. His mother was behind the house, tending her tomatoes like a gardener guarding treasure. He could swear she loved those plants more than him. Not that he'd say it out loud.
"Mom," he called, sweat running down his back, soaking into the collar of his hoodie.
She turned, holding a bitten tomato in her hand. Her expression was a mix of confusion, anger, and disbelief. "What happened to my tomatoes?"
Hugo tried to make it sound casual, believable. "It was a raccoon, Mom. I found it eating them when I got home and chased it away."
He told half the truth. The other half — a cosmic being had eaten the lot — would have resulted in fainting or, worse, panic. Her face softened slightly as she inspected the damage, shaking her head. "Hmm. That little thief…"
She got over it surprisingly quickly and headed inside to the kitchen.
While she sorted groceries she brought back, she asked trying to sound nonchalant. "So… how did it go? I'm sure you tore your token already."
Hugo could sense the tension beneath her calm tone. She was trying not to worry him — and failing terribly. "Yeah. I already tore it up," he said, sitting at the dining table, trying not to let the absurdity of the last few hours leak into his face.
"And?" she asked, back still turned.
"And… I got a B-grade Water Affinity," he replied, keeping his voice steady.
Her hand froze mid-reach for a tomato. Hugo could see her shoulders tense slightly, suspicion rising. "You aren't pulling my leg, are you?" she asked, spinning around to look at him.
Hugo didn't fully understand what was going on, and until he did, he was planning on keeping it to himself.
But that didn't mean he couldn't give his mom a little bit of joy.
Hugo's eyes flicked toward her. "Mom! I got a B-grade affinity!" he said, letting a hint of excitement slip into his tone. The words carried more energy than he'd expected, a small tremor of hope he hadn't realized he was holding.
Her eyes widened. Then she screamed — a high, delighted sound that seemed almost too loud for their small house — and rushed to hug him. Tears spilled down her face, her hands clutching his shoulders tightly. "Ohh, my boy. You actually did it."
Hugo stood frozen, heart aching at the sight. The years had been rough on her. Losing his father to a spawn gate when he was just a child, raising him alone, working full-time at the city hospital using her F-grade Light Affinity which was useful only in healing small bruises… she had endured more than anyone should. And here she was, crying over a moment of his success — small in the grand scheme of things, but monumental for them.
After a while, she straightened, wiping her tears but still glowing with excitement. "What am I doing crying? We need to celebrate! I need to tell everyone. Hold on, I'll call Uncle Barns and tell him about this. You should quit your old job so you could begin work at his guild tomorrow and, in no time, afford your first skill book."
She ran to her bag, fumbling for her phone, muttering to herself. Hugo left her to it, descending the stairs, chest tight with a mixture of relief, excitement, and lingering disbelief.