When I chose to sign up for volunteering at West Trigon's police station, I got to choose the days and hours I could volunteer for from a timetable. The days I ended up volunteering for are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It's Wednesday today, which means Today is my day off! I feel like I really need it after what happened yesterday.

  I've only been volunteering for two days and I'm exausted.

  To be fair, neither of the volunteering sessions were responsible for this. This is solely due to the escapade I performed yesterday. But now I know what could happen during patrols, I feel more anxious about the next patrol session I'll be taking.

  But I've had enough of thinking about that. Let's look at something else instead.

  I enter the system's user interface and start browsing tasks. Let's look for a few that feel different from normal. My eyes wander around, then rest on a certain task hidden in the interface.

  [SYSTEM]

  [Task : Read a book.]

  [Progress: 0/1]

  [Rewards: miniscule increase in memory.]

  Now, there are a few things to watch out for when looking at system tasks like this. For example, what does 'read a book' mean? Well, what counts as 'read'? Is looking at each individual page enough? Do I need to look at each word? Is skimming each page enough to count as 'read'? And what counts as 'a book'? Does a webnovel count as a book? Is there a requirement to the number of pages or words something contains before it becomes a book?

  For that, we need to look at the details of the task. I open up the details of the task and skim through the lengthy list of information. I find a paragraph crifying the definition of book.

  [Book... requires word count of at least 100,000... found in at least three libraries.]

  I check the rest of the details. It doesn't look too bad. I'd probably need two or three days to do it, but it would also be a good way to pass the time while I'm in West Trigon.

  [SYSTEM]

  [Task : Travel 20km by foot]

  [Progress: 0/20]

  [Rewards: small increase in speed]

  This also looks like a nice task to try. It'd be a long walk but anything I don't finish today I could do tomorrow while volunteering. The reward is also nice, too. Let's check the details of it.

  [Time left before invalidation: 1 hr 32 min.]

  Nevermind. I'd Better get going now!

  And this is why you have to read the task details before you set out to do the task. Sometimes stuff like this is hidden.

  But isn't there something that's missing here?

  I take another look around the system user interface.

  Where's Beachball? While Beachball often manifests itself to me outside the system's user interface, it's not like he exists physically in the world. Instead, it's more correct to think of that beachball as an illusion he creates through our link in the interface. Though I suppose you could say the same about his appearance in the interface itself- that too is just it's chosen avatar.

  As if on queue, a red dwarf star appears from among the consteltions and speeds towards me like a comet. As it approaches, it shrinks down to its normal size and a message pops up.

  -THE SUPER VILLIANY SYSTEM-

  [System Update: completed]

  [Tasks completed : 3]

  [Link strength: 94.7% -> 94.7459%]

  Such a small increase in link strength? No, maybe this is the normal increase.

  On second thought, there's no way this is a normal increase. Wouldn't that imply that I'd need to do over ten thousand tasks normally for a system to reach 100% link strength? Well, on the other hand, I didn't exactly do any hard tasks for the system. It would be reasonable to assume that harder tasks give more link strength than easier ones.

  I don't know what to make of it, but I should probably be thankful that it didn't do something completely unexpected like shoot up over a hundred percent. This increase is at least rational.

  Considering the two tasks I've chosen from the system, I think I'll go back and visit Kyte. Sure, it means I'll lose a few hours in West Trigon, but it's not like I'll finish that task anytime soon anyway. I check the progress for beachball's task.

  -THE SUPER VILLAINY SYSTEM-

  [Task: Spend 672 hours in west Trigon]

  [Progress: 43/672]

  [Rewards: Immunity (1)]

  At most I'd lose about twelve hours of progress maximum. Is that significant?

  Um, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That's about seventy hours. So that'll put me up to 110. If I also spend today here that's about 130 instead. Ah, it's probably fine. I'll just need to spend a few more evening walks over here. Let's just hurry before I waste too much time.

  With that in mind, I jog a long, twenty kilometre detour over to my apartment in East Trigon.

  "A little to the left."

  I take a step left.

  "More to the left."

  I take another step left.

  "A bit more."

  I feel like I've done this quite recently. Where was it? Oh yes, two days ago while volunteering.

  I lean forwards on the edge roof of Mrs Grace's house, holding an antenna screwed onto the top of a rge stick. A wire winds down the stick from the antenna to the front of the house and trails inside through her living room window. Kyte stands in her front yard, watching me.

  "I think this is too far to the left, Mrs Grace. It's not on the roof anymore." Kyte calls to her through the open window.

  "It'll be fine. Just move a bit more to the left. Just a teeny bit." She responds.

  I stretch myself further to the left. At some point, the excited voice of Mrs Grace echos out the window.

  "That's it! It's coming through clearly, now!"

  Kyte looks at me and shrugs as Mrs Grace totters through the front door.

  "Oh dear. That is a bit too far left, isn't it?" She sighs as she sees my precarious position on the edge of the roof. "I think we'll have to try again."

  When I reached my apartment earlier today, I colpsed on the sofa in front of a somewhat confused Kyte. After expining my exaustion and unexpected return, we both decided we'd take the time to go and visit Mrs Grace. When we arrived, Mrs Grace was fiddling with some rge electronic pieces that somehow connect to her television. That's how we got roped into helping her set it up. We had already connected the other end of the antenna to her television, so all that was left was finding a suitable pce for the antenna.

  After some more fiddling, Kyte finds somewhere more reasonable to position the antenna. While we find a way to fix the antenna to the roof, Kyte asks Mrs Grace a question that's been on both of our minds.

  "What's the antenna for? Have you had problems with your TV recently?"

  Mrs Grace ughs, "Goodness, no! This isn't for television. Not ordinary television, anyway. This is for a special broadcasting station. It's on a hidden channel, so you need a special interpreter for it."

  "Special broadcasting station? Those exist?" Kyte responds.

  "They exist. But these channels are usually only avaible in the area local to the signal. There's no satellite connection to them, after all."

  "So this channel is being broadcast from Trigon City somewhere?" I ask.

  "That's correct. Come, the programme is about to start for real; let's watch it together."

  We head inside and sit down on the couch in the living room. On the TV screen is an unfamiliar logo. The logo has a cartoonish picture of an amphitheater with the words "The Tyrant's Den" in orange below it.

  A countdown is dispyed in the top left corner of the screen.

  0:15, 0:14, 0:13...

  "So what's this show about?" I ask.

  "It's a competitive fighting programme. I find it quite educational."

  "How so?"

  "It's easier just to watch it, rather than listen to me try to expin it. But both of you should find it very helpful."

  0:03, 0:02, 0:01.

  "Welcome to the two-thousand, four-hundred and sixty-first instalment of The Tyrant's Den! Today, I will be your host and commentator, Don Quirino!"

  The screen changes to a handsome man with short, neatly combed, bck hair wearing an orange, glittering suit with a mustard yellow tie. The man holds a microphone and stands in what looks like a circur boxing ring. The floor of the ring is made out of light brown concrete, and had several rge cracks through it. The cracks had recently been filled with extra concrete, still visible due to the darker pigment caused by the concrete not having the time to fully dry out.

  "Our first match for you today is a real doozy. A special one by all means! These two brave men will go head to head for five minutes in an all-out fist fight! The contestants will have no form of weaponry to fight with outside their own bodies, and they also are not allowed to surrender or run away while the fight is taking pce! Yes, you heard me correct, folks! A whole five minutes of uninterrupted, mindless violence!"

  Me and Kyte look at eachother, confused. We then turn towards Mrs Grace for an expination, but she fails to notice our puzzled expressions. Instead, she let of a squeal of joy at the announcement, her face having an expression of pure, unbridled excitement.

  "In the defending corner, we have- you know him! You love him! Half of you have had broken teeth from him! It's our very own here from The Tyrant's Den: Hammerhead, of the Blue Sharks!"

  The camera turns to face a giant of a man whose only piece of clothing is a pair of blue boxing shorts. He's dark-skinned with a buzzcut hairstyle. His bicepts are as big as Quirino's head, with shoulders twice as broad as his waist. He looks like he could crush a coconut with his bare hands and snap an entire tree over his knee.

  Okay, that's probably a slight exaggeration. His shoulder width isn't quite that broad. Everything else I said about him is probably true, though.

  Don Quirino holds the microphone over to Hammerhead. "Please, would you like to give the crowd few words?"

  Hammerhead takes the microphone from commentator gently, as if he's used to accidentally breaking them.

  "I offer this fight to the Tyrant! And to the glory of the Blue Sharks!"

  Waving his fist in the air, he starts chanting two words.

  "Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark!"

  The audience in the amphitheater joins Hammerhead's chant, clearly something that had long been a tradition.

  "Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark! Blue! Shark!"

  No, Mrs Grace, why are you also joining in?

  "I couldn't say better myself, Hammerhead. But let's not keep our competitor waiting! In the challenger corner we have- a despicable, good for nothing, enemy of the Tyrant, handed over to us by a magnanimous person who wishes to remain anonymous: Proud Hawk of the Red Hawks!"

  I almost cough out my drink at the famir name. The camera pans over to a gagged and tied up Proud Hawk.

  "Anything you want to say to the crowd, Proud Hawk?" Don Quirino says, as he loosens the ropes and removes the gag.

  "When I next see you, Fat Rat, I'll fil you alive!"

  "Choice words, indeed!" Quirino replies, showing a professional smile as if this response was part of the script. "But will all that passion and zeal help you in today's match? Let's find out, here at: The Tyrants Den!"

  The audience appud and scream in excitement.

  "Mrs Grace, when you said this was educational-" I begin to ask.

  "Thats right! Isn't it so very practical? A real fight! And it's so exciting, too. But I do feel sorry for Hammerhead's opponent. He doesn't look like he'll st three minutes, let alone five."

  Mrs Grace responds, eyes glued to the screen as the bell for the match begins.

  "3! 2! 1! And... start!"

  "Hammerhead's not wasting any time here goes straight into an offensive. How will Proud Hawk hold up? Not very well, it seems. Oh! That one looked like it hurt! Oh! Straight to the gut! He's got him on the ropes already! Proud Hawk is powerless to resist! There's still four minutes left on the clock! What's Hammerhead doing now? Oh! He's started dribbling Proud Hawk like a basketball! I'm afraid Proud Hawk's only choice now is to try and hold on as best he can until the time is up!"

  My vision of the harmless, gentle old dy of Mrs Grace crumbles a bit more today.