Helen Grant put down his phone and quietly looked at the table full of dishes, feeling a bit sad inside.

Since getting married, Brian Clark had always been idle, coming home on time every day, never working overtime.

Helen Grant thought, he must be afraid that I’m under too much pressure, so he volunteers to work overtime to earn extra pay.

It’s just that he’s too useless.

Just as Helen Grant was reflecting sorrowfully, his newly bought phone lit up, and a familiar system interface automatically appeared on the screen.

Helen Grant unlocked the phone and saw the first task prompt: A challenger has been caught by locals. Challenger 001 must eliminate or rescue the challenger as soon as possible, otherwise the system will publicly reveal the identity of challenger 001 worldwide through the captured challenger. Time limit: 24 hours.

Author’s note: Brian Clark: We guardians have received professional training. No matter how sad we are, we won’t cry—unless we really can’t hold it in.

Chapter 8

Helen Grant stared at his phone for a while, feeling nothing inside.

He set out the bowl and chopsticks belonging to Brian Clark at the seat his partner usually occupied, just as always, as if Brian Clark were still sitting across from him, and quietly enjoyed the dinner.

After finishing his own meal, he got up and moved to Brian Clark’s seat, eating the portion meant for his partner as well.

After eating enough for two, Helen Grant sat in Brian Clark’s seat, recalling that loneliness that had lasted thousands of years.

When he was eating his own portion just now, Helen Grant looked at the empty seat across from him and felt extremely lonely. He moved to Brian Clark’s seat, wanting to create the illusion that both of them were there, but the moment he sat down, he realized he felt even lonelier, because Helen Grant found that even his own seat was now empty.

He turned on the TV. The sound of the news anchor and the gentle clinking of chopsticks against a bowl echoed in the room. Despite the lively background noise, the house still felt empty.

After dinner, Helen Grant tidied up the table and washed the dishes in the kitchen.

By then, the news broadcast had ended, and the music of “Fishermen’s Song at Dusk” from the weather forecast played along with the sound of running water as Helen Grant quietly scrubbed the dishes.

Helen Grant liked the background music of the weather forecast; this tune gave him a sense of contentment after a good meal. He enjoyed washing dishes to the melody of “Fishermen’s Song at Dusk,” occasionally glancing at Brian Clark sprawled on the sofa savoring dinner, or looking out at the sunset through the window. Such lazy, cozy moments gave Helen Grant a sense of truly being alive.

Helen Grant had lived for thousands of years, fighting to clear stages every single day. He had witnessed countless bizarre worlds and survived endless dangers. He once had teammates, but they either died in the brutal survival games or drifted apart due to differing beliefs.

He wanted to defeat the system and possess supreme power. On the road to freedom, he pressed forward, leaving countless friends behind, battered and bruised. He gazed at the stars, striving for a single goal. When he finally succeeded, becoming the first to clear the game, gaining endless life and power, Helen Grant looked back at the path he had taken and found that at the end of the road, only loneliness remained.

Whenever he thought about facing countless more days like this, enduring endless loneliness, Helen Grant felt afraid.

Strange—when he was weak, he could summon endless courage in the face of invincible enemies, but now that he was strong and had no rivals left in the world, Helen Grant was actually afraid.

Afraid of an endless future, afraid of the person he was about to become—cold and unfeeling.

While striving for a difficult goal, he had always been running away from life, from the mundane reality of being an ordinary person.

So Helen Grant made one last wish: he wanted to become an ordinary person, to spend his final life briefly but peacefully and truly. This was the home he chose for himself.

After finishing the dishes, just as the weather forecast ended, Helen Grant turned off the TV and, in the quiet room, picked up his phone again.

He had two choices before him: one, obey the system’s orders, save or kill the saboteur, and from then on be controlled by the system, gradually drifting away from his current life and eventually returning to his old self; two, ignore the system and let it expose his identity. By then, could he still live an ordinary life with Brian Clark as before?

Neither option was what Helen Grant wanted.

Helen Grant immediately ruled out the first option, wondering how the system would reveal his identity after he refused.

This was an undeveloped world. Helen Grant had chosen this world precisely because he knew the system couldn’t fully control it, so the system couldn’t recklessly disclose information here—even if it did, people might not believe it.

The only thing the system could do was have the challenger reveal his identity.

Having dealt with the system for so many years, Helen Grant knew the system couldn’t turn people from undeveloped worlds into challengers; all challengers were randomly selected from worlds the system fully controlled. The system had always been committed to having challengers develop new worlds, in order to expand its own sphere of influence.

Therefore, the only one who could expose his identity was the challenger—the one said to have been caught by locals.

The only way to silence the challenger seemed to be to kill him, but that would play right into the system’s hands, which was exactly what Helen Grant didn’t want.

It seemed there was only one way left.