The man reached down under the bench.
There was a wet clink. A bottle rolled out. Then a metal clunk. Some scraping. The sound of someone digging through trash.
"Ah. Found it," he muttered.
He straightened, holding something that looked vaguely like a wristband, if wristbands were made of old circuit board, scrap metal, and something that might've been leather before it got cooked through atmosphere reentry.
He tossed it at me.
I caught it. Barely. It was heavier than it looked. Warmer, too.
"What is this?"
"Your badge."
I stared at it. There was no glow. No UI ping. No cool chime or unlocking sequence. Just a blinking green diode and a faint smell of regret.
"This is a badge? I saw the others outside, they looked nothing like this."
He gestured with his bottle. "Technically. It's a Legacy version. Doesn't do much. But the System has to recognize it."
"Recognize it?"
"Do you want to get paid or pay for anything? Want the System to log kills, award merit, give you credit for surviving? You wear that."
I turned it over in my hands. It had an old connector port on the underside and some scratch marks on the top. It looked like someone had once tried to carve a name into it and then given up halfway through.
"What's merit?" I asked.
He waved a hand.
"Currency. System-grade. Usually earned through quests, achievements, social contribution metrics, all the crap the classed Users get spoon-fed."
"And me?"
"You get scraps. But with that, " he pointed to the band, "you at least get counted."
I looked at it again. Still no glow. Still no UI.
"Does it do anything else?"
"Storage," he said. "Limited. Five slots. But I wouldn't put anything too fragile in there, the Legacy version's... bumpy."
He tapped the badge with one thick finger, and something pinged faintly inside it, no fanfare, just a soft click like someone flipping an ancient switch.
"There," he muttered. "There should be five hundred merit loaded in now."
I blinked. "Wait, what? Why?"
"So you don't starve before the next level."
"Generous."
I raised an eyebrow.
He took a gulp.
"And the System takes a cut," he added.
"Of what?"
"Everything. All your merit. Every time you earn something, it siphons off a percentage. Calls it administrative overhead."
I frowned.
"How much?"
"Around thirty percent," he said. "They say it's to cover the cost of maintaining unsupported infrastructure. I say it's another way to keep us down."
I clipped the thing onto my wrist. It didn't hiss or seal or graft. It just... sat there. A lump of dead tech held together by legal obligation and spite.
No prompt appeared.
But I felt something shift. Just a little. Like the System reacted, not because it cared, but because it had to.
The orc grinned.
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"That flicker. The System acknowledging you exist now."
I flexed my hand. The band didn't budge.
"And if I take it off?"
"Nothing tracks. You don't get paid. No punishment or anything, it prefers we don't wear it"
I stared at him.
He stared back.
"So it's not a perk."
"Nope."
"It's a collar."
He nodded. "Welcome to the pound boy."
I stared at the thing clamped on my wrist.
No glow. No ping. Just a warm lump of scrap tech and obligation.
A pat on the head from the universe that said: "Fine, you exist. Happy now?"
Not because I earned it. Not because I mattered.
Just because the System had a legal checkbox it couldn't uncheck.
So this was it.
The first time it acknowledged me, and only because it had to.
Like giving a participation ribbon to the kid they hoped wouldn't show up.
I didn't feel proud.
I felt like someone had stapled a barcode to my soul and called it a compromise.
But hey. If it tracks my kills and lets me buy dinner, I'll wear the damn thing.
For now.
He leaned back against the wall with a groan like old wood settling.
I heard him mutter something I couldn't quite hear something about a "Kellek", and that me and him were similar or something like that.
Took another sip. Didn't offer me one. Based on the smell it would probably kill me or burn me from the inside.
"Figure you probably want to know why they let you crawl this far before kicking your teeth in," he said. "Why they even bother letting Legacy idiots like us pick a fight?"
I didn't answer. That was the answer.
He nodded like he heard it anyway.
"It's law," he said. "Old law. Back when the System first booted up and started running integration protocols across the spiral. They thought they could standardize everything. One interface. One class tree. One reward structure. Nice and tidy."
He took another drink. Swished it around. Spat it into the corner. The stains made more sense now.
"But not every species liked that. Not every world wanted to trade in their traditions for a sword with a glow effect and a skill tree made by an intern. Some of 'em fought. Some of 'em negotiated. And a few were just too damn stubborn or too damn dangerous to overwrite."
He tapped the side of his bottle against his tusk. Clink. Clink.
"So they made a clause. Civil Accord. Sapient Choice. §12.4.9.b."
He recited it like something he'd chewed on too many times.
"Any sapient being, upon full cognitive recognition of System integration, must retain the legal right to decline template optimization in favor of pre-existing or legacy progression structures, provided said structures are self-maintained and clearly differentiated."
He snorted.
"Which is System-speak for 'Fine, do what you want, but we're not helping.'"
I frowned. "So it's not a bug."
He barked a laugh. "Nope. It's worse. You're compliant. Just not Supported."
I stared at the thing still clamped around my wrist.
Didn't hum. Didn't pulse. Just sat there, like a warning label for existing wrong.
Of course.
They'd wrapped a fucking muzzle in a clause and called it a right.
"You can go your own way," they said.
as long as it's unassisted, unsupported, and preferably off a cliff.
Not recognized. Not encouraged. Just... tolerated.
Just long enough for the paperwork to say "option offered."
Sounds about right.
Sounds like every job interview I've ever lied my way into.
I flexed my fingers.
No prompt. No light.
But I felt it, that shift. That System flinch.
The kind of acknowledgment you give a stray dog on your porch right before calling pest control.
I wasn't approved.
I was legally visible.
And that was enough to piss me off all over again.
He leaned forward. Voice lowered a notch.
"There were a lot more of us, once. Back in the early cycles. Whole races built around it. Cultures that never gave up their roots. Legacy Halls were full then. Fires, chants, old powers that didn't need permission."
He gestured around the ruined room.
"Now? This is what's left. A bench. A badge. And me."
I didn't say anything.
He kept going.
"They try to kill the clause every millennium or so. Write it out. Deauthorize. But there's always a few of us who make it big enough to remind them why it's still there."
"Like who?"
The orcs eyes narrowed.
"One of them turned herself into a city. Whole damn thing runs on her resonance. Another lives in a hole under the galactic core and still kills classed agents that try to map the place. Then there's the beast of Praxis-Six. Just myth and teeth. And rage. They say he doesn't speak anymore, just breathes poison and eats memory."
He paused.
"And then there's the lovely Tara."
The words came slower. Softer. Almost wistful.
For a second, something unfocused passed behind his eyes.
"Hope for your sake you don't meet her anytime soon."
"Who are you?"
"Me? I'm just an old drunk. Every integration needs a Legacy 'mentor,' and I owed the System a favor."
"This is how it cashed in."
"Figured I'd just sit here, drink myself into the floor like a Gshnioork, maybe die of boredom. But now?"
He grinned wide. And for a second, his eyes actually focused.
His breath hit me like aged fruit rot and regret, I swear I got contact drunk just from standing too close.
"You might actually be a waste of time worth watching."
He stood, and the way he did it, smooth, effortless, without even the clink of a bottle or the grunt of aching joints, made me realize something important.
He hadn't been slouching out of drunkenness. Or if he had, he must've had a damn good skill to cure hangovers.
"Come on," he said, already walking toward the back of the room.
I hesitated, watching him nudge aside a stack of torn cloth and dented crates with the toe of his boot. Then something shifted with a low groan, metal grinding against stone, and a panel in the floor lifted to reveal a narrow staircase that disappeared into shadow. Cold air drifted up, dry and mineral-rich, edged with the faint smell of oil and dust and something else I couldn't quite place, iron, maybe, or old sweat baked into the walls.
He didn't look back to see if I followed. Just started down like this was the only real destination the building had ever had.
I took a breath.
And followed.
Because why not? At least he seems nice? Maybe?
The space beneath the Legacy hall felt like a different world.
Gone was the rot. Gone the dust and dead tech. The air was cooler here, not cold, just settled. Still. The kind of quiet you get in old places that are still being used, loved, maintained.
The room opened into a wide stone chamber reinforced with thick beams and studded with exposed conduits, most of them humming faintly with recycled power. The floor was packed flat and clean, etched in places with circular scoring from countless feet. On one side stood a row of weapon racks, nothing System-issued or standardized. Just tools. Real ones. Weighted staves, wrapped knuckle grips, curved blades that looked like they'd been hammered into shape by someone who meant it. A basin trickled water quietly into a trough in the far corner, and near the back wall, there was a practice dummy made of bound cords and dense hide. Someone had stabbed it a lot.
This place wasn't System-maintained.
He stepped into the center of the room and rolled his shoulders, the thick pop of tension breaking like a branch under weight.
He turned toward me, expression unreadable.
"First lesson," he said.
Then he pointed at his chest.
"Hit me."
I blinked.
"Come again?"
"You heard me," he said. "No warm-up. No drills. Just throw a punch. Let's see if there's anything in you, do you have any power in those noodles you call arms."
I looked around. Just me, him, and a whole lot of hard floor.
"You sure?"
"Punch me, Legacy."
Well. Alright then.
I stepped forward, flexed my hand once, and swung, fast, mean, unthinking. My shoulder screamed, my knuckles still raw from the last few fights.
Then suddenly there was nothing in the path of my punch anymore.
He moved, not fast, not flashy. Just... practiced. Efficient.
He pivoted, redirected my momentum with a single twist of his wrist, and before I could even process the shift, his fist was driving into my gut like a piledriver made of concrete and professional disappointment.
The world contracted.
I staggered back a step, eyes blurring, breath gone like it had been clawed out by a vacuum. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Just hurt.
He didn't press the advantage. Just stood there. Watching.
"That's what you get for trusting people," he said. Not angry. Not mocking. Just flat. Like he was stating gravity.
I doubled over, tried to find my lungs. I'm pretty sure he made me spit at least one out.
He added, with a slight shrug, "Also how we say 'hello' where I'm from."
I glared up at him through watery eyes.
"Hell of a greeting." I somehow got out through clenched teeth while trying to get my lungs to cooperate again.
He cracked his neck again, then extended a hand and yanked me back to my feet without waiting for consent.
"To your credit," he said, "you're still conscious."
"Barely."
"That counts."
He turned and stepped back into the circle, tossing the words over his shoulder as casually as someone offering a name at a bar.
"Hagar."
That caught me off guard.
"Is that your name or your species?"
He smirked. "Yes."
Then his eyes narrowed, sharp and glinting.
"If you can land a real hit, I'll tell you whether that's my name or my species. Until then, just call me Hagar. Easier to shout when you're begging me to stop."