The drive helped to drain some of the anger I was feeling, but only some. It would be hard to be noticed by anyone that wasn't looking into my eyes.

Even as a kid, I was never the one that was quick to explode when angered, punching and shouting. Nor I was the forgive-and-forget type. No, I was the little vindictive shit one that pushed the desire to take revenge down, let it cool down until a suitable opening appeared, before the responsible pay.

It might not be healthy, but it was certainly cathartic.

Still, my habits didn't make suppressing the initial flood of anger any easier. A hot shower and a cold beer, however, made it easier. Though, easier didn't mean easy, I realized.

I found myself laying on the bed, tossing and turning, sleep proved elusive. Whenever I closed my eyes, the ruined memories of my car popped into my sight. It wasn't that I loved my car. It was little more than the garbage that miraculously managed to work.

But it was my garbage. It was not for a rich asshole to destroy.

With sleep proving elusive, I decided to call back my guide, deciding that if I was going to struggle to sleep, I might as well listen to the annoying buzz of the mysterious being that threatened my whole understanding of how the world worked.

And her leather-clad beauty was always a bonus.

"You can come out," I said loudly as I shifted in my bed. Unfortunately, that amazing, genius plan didn't work. "Miss angel?" I said, followed by a few alternate statements, but none of them worked. I wondered whether she was ignoring me, or she lacked the ability to hear me in the first place.

"Hey, it is Zeus, inviting us for dinner," I tried. If she was able to hear me, it was enough to anger her, or at least, earn a reaction.

Unfortunately, silence followed.

Oh, how I wished to dismiss everything as a bad dream, that there was no angel forcing me to follow a nebulous objective. Unfortunately, the notable jump in my skills went a long way of confirming otherwise. I tried to think of several phrases to bring her forward, they failed as well.

"Maybe meditation would help," I thought. It worked in movies. It wasn't something I made a habit of doing since I wasn't a bored housewife, but extreme times needed extreme measures.

So, I sat down, doing my best to cross my legs, taking deep breaths, trying to be introspective. The lingering anger hardly helped, the sight of my ruined car popping on my sight. If I was able to sleep, I would have stopped the attempt and slept, to be fresh and ready for the tournament.

However, since I wasn't able to sleep in the first place, I might as well spend it on something useful. Thanks to my — forced — patience, several minutes later, I managed to feel … something.

Two things, I was forced to be accurate. It wasn't a clear feeling, a weird mix of trying to remember a slipping dream and identifying the source of a glow in a thick mist.

Two sources felt different, though explaining their difference was even harder than touching them in the first place. The best I could distinguish them was by classifying them as living and mechanical.

I took a wild guess, and assumed the living one was my absentminded guide, and the mechanical one was the System.

I decided to reach the mechanical first, which, interestingly, worked much easier than I expected. After a minute of concentration, something clicked, like finding the light switch in the darkness.

And suddenly, some more writing popped into my view.

[Seduction I, acquired]

[Taunt I, acquired]

"Okay," I murmured, more than a bit surprised by the sudden flood of writing. I certainly wasn't expecting to trigger the System that easily, considering that the whole reason I had a guide in the first place was to help me.

And that was not the only surprise. The name of Heroic trait had given me the impression that they were about grand achievements, amazing deeds, and the impression they left on the audience. The inclusion of seduction proved that it wasn't some residual from the tournament.

I certainly didn't expect the events of the party to qualify to grant me Heroic Traits.

It wasn't an exaggeration to say it changed every single plan that was dancing in my mind in embryonic form.

I didn't try to reach the other light in the mists of my mind, which, at this point, was sure that it would awaken my scatter-brained guide. I wanted to think about the implications without actually getting distracted by her chatter.

Maybe I should just try to be a reality TV industry, if a scandal suddenly gave me some bonus. A laugh escaped my mouth as I lay on my bed again, my anger disappearing in the amusing idea of somehow becoming an ancient Greek god by dominating third-page news.

Though, it might not be as ridiculous as it sounded. Maybe there was a reason for the stories about Zeus' endless scandals.

Pity I couldn't just run it through my guide — and not just because she wasn't here right now. I had a feeling she wouldn't react well to my plan to copy Zeus' playbook.

With my mind on the implications of my latest discovery, my anger was quick to take the backseat. I fell asleep thinking plans…

Something I only noticed when my alarm blared, waking me up for the second and the last day of the tournament.

"Fuck," I murmured as a splitting headache hit, the kind that I never felt before, even when I decided a bottle of cheap vodka was the perfect pre-bed drink. It was easy to guess the source. The headache gave me the same weird sensation I had felt when I achieved while meditating.

Only a hundred times worse.

I closed my eyes, trying to reach the same space, but with the pressure acting as a guide, it was much easier to find that mental place. It was the same blurred reach, like the lights through the mist, but this time, one of them, the one that didn't trigger the System, was glowing like an out-of-control forest fire.

It confirmed one thing. It wasn't that easy to get rid of her.

However, before summoning her back, I touched the System part again. Not that I expected anything to happen, just for practice…

Which was why I was surprised when it was triggered again, only to receive an endless wall of text.

[Seduction II, acquired]

[Stamina I, acquired]

[Recovery I, acquired]

[Tactics II, acquired]

[Strategy I, acquired]

"What the fuck," I murmured even as the text flood filled my sight. What had happened when I was sleeping?

Unfortunately, the horrible headache I was feeling prevented me from thinking about it. I mentally reached the out-of-control glow of my guide, and a touch later, she appeared.

She looked around in confusion while my headache started to go down, but didn't disappear immediately. "Is it morning already?" she asked, confirming one important thing. She either didn't have a perception of time when she disappeared, effectively freezing her, or she had a warped perception of time.

"It took me a while to discover how to call you," I said, and before she could say anything, I dashed into the bathroom, knowing she would be too shy to follow.

Under the warm flow of water, the pain started to disappear slowly. And as soon as I was able to focus on my thoughts. Unlike the last night, I didn't understand where the improvements came from. After all, I was sleeping. Hardly the time to deliver great achievements. And two Traits, Stamina and Recovery, made it even more confusing.

However, I received my first clue when I stepped out of the bathroom — already dressed not to freak out my guide. My phone screen was filled with hundreds of notifications, and when I checked it, I realized my social media pages, which might as well have been a desert as far as a number of friends and followers had concerned, had turned into a circus.

Dozens of tagged photos from the party, each with chains of comments, and hundreds of new followers. Okay, I thought with a murmur. Maybe my poorly-thought plan of being a reality-TV star wasn't as bad as I first assumed.

Still, there was one surprising thing. I could understand where the seduction boost came from, and even the boost for Tactics and Pattern Recognition was understandable, as a great part of the social media buzz was about me being a super-smart chess player.

Hardly accurate, not that I was going to bother about abusing that misconception once more.

However, the sudden Stamina and Recovery Traits had surprised me. They hardly made sense. Yes, I had done my best during the training, but it had been about that, I would have received that during the earlier boost.

"Are you ready for the tournament?" my guide asked with her usual enthusiasm.

"Sure," I murmured even as I put my shoes on, ready for a long walk, going through the posts to catch up.

Then, I came across one post that explained it. This time, it was not a photo, but a screenshot of Megan's message to a friend.

A long, rather descriptive message that went into great detail about how amazing in bed I had been for hours and hours, and how Kevin couldn't even hold a candle to my performance.

"Damn, that's merciless," I murmured even as I read through the message, a smile popping on my face. It was just sinking the dagger even deeper.

Despite the amazing benefits it gave me, I felt a little sorry for Kevin.

Unfortunately for him, that only lasted until I remembered the horrible death of my car, replaced with cruel satisfaction.

"Did you say something?" my guide asked, which incidentally confirmed she didn't have perfect hearing.

"I said I'm feeling anxious to win a tournament and get some more traits," I explained, a smile on my face.

I had work to do.