Divine Celebrity 46 (Patreon)

I couldn’t help but smile as I drove away from the stadium despite my exhausted state. The training had been a bigger success than I expected, my performance good enough to catch the attention of the coaches in a positive way. 

All I needed to replicate it during the afternoon training — and the next three days, until Friday evening —  by push myself to the limit without a break. Painful, but certainly worth it. 

And, impressing the coaches wasn’t the only benefit of my training. I had managed to gather a decent amount of Intent, and while most of it had been devoured by my guide, I managed to channel some toward the System. 

Not enough to give me a new Trait, but just like making a budget, every little bit helped. 

I wanted to go and sleep, but unfortunately, I had other, more important things to do, such as hacking the database of that museum to change the information to further obfuscate the information they could use to lead to me. Luckily, I had long received the notification from the little phishing e-mail I had sent using the credentials of the museum director, which in turn would allow me to access their systems remotely. 

The moment I arrived at my dorm, I turned on a few remote networks simultaneously, before activating the little program that I had left in the museum, one that would make it look like the connection came from the museum even if someone discovered my fiddling.  

It sounded complicated, but it was a simple trick, done using mostly commercial programs, assisted by a few nuggets I had downloaded from hacking forums when I was younger, hoping to make a lot of money — before I realized just how hard it was to actually make a criminal career through hacking. 

Not the stealing part, which was ridiculously easy, but using the money that was stolen was much more difficult, for anyone that didn’t have international criminal connections.

Yet, simply didn’t mean ineffective, I thought as I quickly typed the information, and a remote program popped in front of me. “Now, the boring part,” I murmured as I started working on the inventory program I had accessed, carefully reading the help section and the other documentation I could access. 

It was a mind-numbingly boring activity, but a necessary thing to understand how the program worked, and what kind of process it required to actually change information. 

Unlike what the movies show, hacking was mostly a mind-numbingly boring amount of documentation reading, with the occasional break where the hacker prayed someone with the correct administrative access clicked the phishing link. 

Of course, true hackers still existed, the kind that used recently-discovered vulnerabilities to attack networks, scraping passwords from temporary files, hijacking access privileges, and many other tricks that were truly impressive. But those tricks required expertise that I was woefully lacking. 

Luckily, a third-rate museum that relied on security measures that were written in the eighties, and managed by an IT manager that habitually clicked later whenever his computer prompted a security update didn’t require that level of skill. 

Still, even in an ancient system filled with security vulnerabilities and managed by a team that literally clicked every link that I sent, understanding how the system worked sufficiently took half a day, and stealing all the required credentials to approve a correction request took another two hours. 

Not all was bad, however, as my food was long delivered by the team, only requiring a quick reheating. The chicken breast, rice, and artichoke might not be the most amazing combination, but it was still more delicious than anything I could cook for myself, with the added benefit of being free. 

After eating, I focused back on my task. In the end, I was finally able to push and approve the amendment request that changed the delivery location of that orb from our museum, marking it as lost in delivery instead, then erased all the notifications to relevant people before it was noticed. 

When I completed everything and logged out of the system, it was already three. I sent one last command to the museum computer I used to access the other museum, triggering a deep format that erased my presence of being there — alongside all the information they had saved in. 

Not the most elegant method to erase my presence, but it was certainly better than nothing. “Time to sleep,” I murmured as I threw myself to the bed, but not before I set four alarms just in case. 

I was exhausted enough to fear missing the evening training. 

Yet, the moment I put my head on the pillow, the alarm started to blare, quick enough to make me think that I had screwed up setting the alarm, but checking the clock corrected that mistake. It was almost five. 

I was glad I had set four alarms, because, somehow, I had already turned off two of the alarms I had set up. Technically, I still had ten minutes to sleep, making that blinking snooze button on the screen extremely tempting, but I forced myself to stand up. 

Skipping the training was not an option. 

I chose to use that ten minutes to eat another quick meal, accompanied by bitter coffee and a painfully-cold shower. It forced me to go a touch faster than I would have preferred on campus, and put on my uniform and pads a tad quicker than I would have preferred, but I was on time.

Unlike the morning training, the offensive team was on the field with us, significantly more energetic than the defensive players. Since I had no reason to believe that they would be fitter than their defensive counterparts, it wasn’t hard to guess that their morning training didn’t include desperate dashes or endless burpees as punishment, leaving them fresh.

As I looked at the offensive team, more than one player caught my gaze, anger flashing in their eyes. It wasn’t too hard to guess the reason for their frustration.

I pushed my chests out as I let my smirk widen challengingly, because I noticed a slight flare of Intent as they started looking at me furiously. Not that the sudden influx of Intent surprised me too much. It reminded me of the chess tournament, the first time I received such benefits, turning others’ frustrations into power.

Since the coaches were yet to arrive, I decided to milk it a bit more before Megan finally dumped me and I lost the most interesting tool I had to stomp on their nerves. 

“Thad,” I said, far too louder than necessary to be heard by someone that was standing close to me. “Do you think we can make another bet with Kevin? Megan mentioned she would appreciate a new car.” 

My words earned a disapproving glare from Carter, whose approach was far too serious compared to the rest of the team, but as the rest of the defensive players exploded in laughter, he kept his mouth shut. Considering the bad blood between the two parts of the team, he clearly decided that trying to keep the tension down was a thankless task. 

I smiled in satisfaction even as I closed my eyes, doing my best to channel the sudden flare of Intent into my system once more. The offense glared, the defense laughed, while the practice squad players shuffled in discomfort, clearly not wanting to involve themselves in the issue. 

Their combined attention brought much more Intent than I had been expecting, completely overshadowing the scraps that I managed to collect during the morning training. 

It wasn’t surprising. What I had done during the morning training was not too impressive. They expected me to perform below average, and I merely performed above average for a backup, hardly something to awaken emotional reaction. Of course, considering my tenure, it was still impressive, but the kind that only earned an intellectual nod rather than a deep emotional response. 

Much different than the anger coming from bruised pride. 

“Middle-class garbage,” Kevin grumbled loudly, trying to attack my financial state. 

Unfortunately for him, it was not the amazing comeback he thought himself delivering. From his perspective, middle-class might be a scathing, devastating insult, but for me, it was an aspirational target. 

So, the laughter that escaped my lips was genuine. Unlike the following words, carefully barbed to hurt the most. “Hey, at least I can keep a sexy blonde satisfied,” I answered. “I even have some photographs you can use if you want to learn how to do it.” 

“How dare you!” Kevin exploded, once again motioning to dash forward, only to be held back by two offensive linemen. 

“Hey, don’t tire yourself,” I mocked him, amused by his reaction. It was clear that he expected the others to hold him back, and he was using that as an excuse to put on a show. “You would disappoint your current girlfriend as well. I simply don’t have time to go around satisfying all of your exes.” 

The laughter that exploded from the defensive team was impressively loud. Too loud, even. I was certain my little dig didn’t have the merit to earn that. I had a feeling that it was more about freezing in the early morning in full pads while they were doing their lazy practice in the indoor gym. 

Yet, seeing the anger and frustration dancing on the face of our ‘teammates’ was just an ancillary bonus. Because, when I touched my mental space, I was greeted by another beautiful line of writing. 

[Taunt II, acquired]

Before I could see whether I could push them enough to get to the third stage, however, Coach Bill stepped on the field, cutting off that probability. 

It was training time.