The purple soup in the sky was starting to look like a bad hangover after a party in Barra Funda, and my skin was beginning to itch in places I didn't even know I had.
I pulled that chunk of weird, industrial-looking metal out of the system's inventory, holding it like a heavy fuse that some underpaid electrician had forgotten in a greasy fuse box behind a shopping mall.
There was no keyhole in the empty space in front of my face, which made sense because this whole world operates on the kind of logic you only find after three days of no sleep and too much cheap energy drink.
I gave my wrist a sharp turn, a movement that felt so stupidly dramatic I almost expected a director to yell cut from behind a boulder.
The reality in front of my floating sneakers didn't shatter or crack like a cool special effect; it just gave a soft, greasy sigh and opened up like a giant zipper made of ground-up glowing dust, revealing a dark space that felt as cold and inviting as an air-conditioned bank on a forty-degree afternoon.
Profit didn't even wait for a proper invitation or an acknowledgment of his existence; he just trotted through the opening with his crystal tails swaying like those stupid fiber-optic lamps people buy at the bus station.
I followed him into the dark because standing out there in the acid rain was a great way to melt my expensive new hair before I could even find a mirror to appreciate it properly.
The moment my heels clicked against the dark surface on the other side, the heavy zipper behind me pulled itself shut with a dull, rubbery pop that sounded like a Tupperware lid clicking into place after you force too much leftover feijoada inside it.
The silence hit me like a physical mass, cutting off the roaring of the toxic storm so fast that my ears did that weird, painful pop you get when the airplane starts descending toward Guarulhos.
I just stood there with my hands on my hips, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the fact that I was no longer in a purple hellscape but in something that felt significantly more expensive and less likely to kill me in the next five minutes.
Profit was already a few meters ahead, his paws making a dry, clicking sound on a floor that was so perfectly polished and black that I could see the reflection of my floating shoes and my ruined dress perfectly.
It wasn't granite or marble or any of that standard medieval fantasy stuff; it was a vast, infinite sheet of something that looked like obsidian but felt like that high-density rubber they use for gym floors.
The ceiling above us didn't exist in any conventional sense of the word, replaced instead by a massive, sluggish galaxy that was spinning so slowly it made me feel like I was watching a high-resolution video on a computer that was desperately struggling to render the frames.
There were millions of tiny, sharp points of white light up there, scattered across a deep violet background that didn't twinkle so much as they just throbbed with a slow, heavy pulse.
The air in this place was the weirdest part, thick and heavy with so much primordial mana that it didn't even feel like gas when I inhaled it.
Every breath felt like I was taking a long, slow sip of an expensive Cabernet that someone had left out on the counter just long enough for it to get heavy and warm.
My lungs didn't burn or protest like they did outside; they actually seemed to expand and relax, the thick air coating the inside of my throat with a sweet, metallic aftertaste that made me think of those cherry-flavored toothpastes you get as a kid.
I took a few more deep breaths, feeling the tension in my shoulders finally give way after God knows how many hours of running away from bone-mutts and questioning my own sanity.
I let myself drop onto the floor with a heavy thud, not caring if the obsidian rubber was too cold or if I looked like a complete mess in front of my new glowing pet.
My silk skirt fanned out around me like a puddle of ruined expensive fabric, and I stretched my legs out until my heels gave a small, satisfying crack.
The contrast was just too much for my brain to process all at once, the sudden shift from running for my life to this absolute, docile nothingness making me feel like I was floating in a sensory deprivation tank.
Back in my old life, when I was still breaking my back in that corporate office in the center of the city, silence was a luxury that cost more than my monthly rent in a crappy apartment.
I used to spend hours sitting in traffic on the Marginal, listening to the roar of old buses and the screams of motorcycle couriers, while my boss sent me fifty messages about an Excel sheet I hadn't saved.
There was always someone demanding something, some deadline breathing down my neck like a hungry monster, and some social obligation that I had to fulfill just to keep up appearances.
Here, in this giant void that belonged to me and a crystal fox that was currently trying to chew on its own tail, nobody was going to send me an email at eleven PM on a Friday.
There were no bills to pay, no crowded subways to squeeze into, and no ex-fiancés trying to take credit for the corporate acquisitions I spent months planning by myself.
It was just me and this infinite pocket of nothing, and for the first time since that truck sent me to this stupid fantasy world, I felt like I could actually breathe without tasting exhaust fumes.
I reached up and pulled those heavy crystal headphones off my head, letting them rest around my neck while I ran my fingers through the glowing, messy nebula that was supposed to be my hair.
It was floating slightly, as if there was a permanent fan blowing from underneath my skull, and it felt greasy and full of that gray bone-mutt dust that was now smeared across my expensive dress.
I looked down at Profit, who had given up on his tail and was now staring at me with his golden kaleidoscope eyes, his head tilted to the side like a dog trying to understand a complex math problem.
"What are you looking at, you little weirdo?" I asked, my voice sounding a lot more shaky than I wanted it to be as I gestured vaguely toward the glass table with my left hand while the other one gripped the armchair's soft fabric.
He didn't answer, obviously, but he gave another one of those hard-drive clicking noises and walked over to lie down right next to my hip, his crystal body feeling like a cold brick against my thigh.
I leaned back on my elbows, staring up at that lazy galaxy and wondering if my parents back in the real world had already held a funeral for me or if they were still fighting with the insurance company over the body.
It was a useless thought, the kind that doesn't help you survive or level up or do any of the things that the protagonist of a transmigration story is supposed to do, but I couldn't help it.
My brain was just doing that typical human thing of cycling through old memories and irrelevant garbage when it doesn't have a specific crisis to focus on.
I found myself thinking about a half-eaten coxinha I had left in the office fridge on the day I died, wondering if someone had eaten it or if it was currently growing its own ecosystem in the breakroom.
The quiet was nice, but like everything else in my life, it didn't last long enough for me to actually get bored or fall asleep on the rubber floor.
My soul was still humming with that Greed Bloodline thing the system had shoved into me, a heavy, pulling sensation right in the middle of my chest that felt like a permanent knot of anxiety that no amount of deep breathing could get rid of.
It was like a radio station that was permanently tuned to the wrong frequency, a constant low-level static that was calling out to the rest of the universe and letting everyone know I was here.
Out of the corner of my eye, right at the blurry edge where my vision started to fade into the dark, I noticed that the perfect black floor wasn't so perfect anymore.
It wasn't cracking or breaking, but the obsidian material was beginning to bubble and contort, rising up in slow, oily mounds that looked like boiling tar in a pot on a hot stove.
It didn't make a sound, the movement happening in a complete and heavy silence that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up so fast they felt like needles.
The dark matter seemed to be moving with a purpose, flowing slowly toward the spot where I was sitting like a bunch of magnetic filings being dragged by a heavy magnet underneath a piece of paper.
It didn't feel aggressive or violent, but more like a heavy, desperate kind of curiosity, as if the void itself was trying to get closer to the burning ball of greed that was sitting in the middle of its living room.
I didn't move, mostly because my legs felt like they were made of wet cardboard and because Profit didn't seem to be panicking yet, his tails just swaying lazily against the concrete-colored rubber.
One of the larger mounds of tar-like floor got within a meter of my sneakers, stretching out a thin, oily finger that hovered just a few centimeters away from the rubber sole without actually making contact.
I could see the reflection of the flickering galaxy on its surface, the black grease distorting the starlight into weird, ugly shapes that looked like melted plastic.
I realized then that this sanctuary wasn't just a big empty room where I could hide from the rain; it was a living thing that was reacting to the absolute mess I had become.
The system panel didn't pop up to explain what was happening or to offer me a tutorial on how to domesticate the dark matter of the void, which was par for the course with this garbage software.
I just stared at the bubbling floor, feeling that pulling sensation in my chest get a little tighter, and realized that my peaceful slice-of-life moment was officially over before I could even find a place to wash the monster grease off my hands.
I poked the hovering finger of black goo with the toe of my sneaker, watching it ripple and draw back like a stray dog that's not quite sure if you're going to kick it or give it a piece of bread.
I couldn't help but think about that stupid Excel file I forgot to save before I got run over by that truck on my way to the office, the one with all the Q4 projections that my boss was definitely going to scream about.
It was such a useless, trivial thing to remember when I was literally surrounded by tall, faceless monsters made of pure darkness in a pocket dimension that didn't follow any laws of human physics.
But the memory was stuck in my head like a bad song you can't stop humming, a tiny speck of my old corporate reality that refused to be swallowed by all this epic fantasy garbage.
The tallest shadow thing made a movement that could have been a nod or just its head melting and reforming in the dark, and its body gave off a faint smell of wet dog and cold metal that filled the small space between us.
Profit bared his tiny, crystal teeth, the light from his tails reflecting off the dark surface of the monster's oily skin and making it look like a bunch of purple and pink stars were swimming inside its chest.
I didn't have a weapon, unless you count a glass table and a half-full mug of warm green tea, so I just sat back in my velvet armchair and tried to look like a girl who wasn't currently questioning all her life choices.
"You guys want some tea or what?" I muttered, my voice sounding a lot more shaky than I wanted it to be as I gestured vaguely toward the glass table with my left hand while the other one gripped the armchair's soft fabric.
The shadows didn't respond with a booming voice or a telepathic message that made my brain bleed, they just kept swaying in that heavy, rhythmic silence that the headphones were amplifying into a physical weight against my eardrums.
It was like they were waiting for something, some command or some sign from me that I had no idea how to give because the system didn't come with a proper instruction manual for dealing with void monsters.
I reached up and tapped the side of the crystal headphones, trying to see if there was some volume control or a button that would let me turn off that heavy, vibrating bass that was making my teeth feel loose in their sockets.
There was nothing but smooth, cold crystal that felt like polished ice against my fingertips, and the low frequency just kept pulsing, synchronized perfectly with the heavy thumping of my heart.
The monster in front of me took another wet step closer, the dark material of its foot spreading out on the rubber floor before pulling itself back together with that same sucking sound that made my skin crawl.
It was then that I noticed a tiny, glowing dot right in the middle of the tallest shadow's chest, a point of bright white light that looked exactly like the star fragment Profit had been playing with just a few minutes ago.
The light was pulsing in sync with the heavy frequency in my headphones, and I realized that these things weren't just random monsters that had spawned in the dark to kill me and eat my new, expensive sneakers.
They were part of the sanctuary itself, pieces of the void that had been given shape by the sheer concentration of greed and mana that was radiating from my soul like a radio tower.
The thought didn't make me feel any better about being surrounded by faceless giants, but it did make me feel a little less like I was about to become monster food in the middle of my own living room.
I slowly reached out with my hand toward the tall shadow thing, my fingers trembling slightly as they got closer to the cold, oily surface of the darkness that was hovering just a few inches away from my arm.
The shadow didn't pull back or try to bite my fingers off; it just stayed there, pulsing with that heavy beat while the star in its chest glowed a little brighter against the deep black of its skin.
I let my fingers touch the dark surface, and it didn't feel like flesh or fur or anything organic, but rather like putting my hand into a bowl of very cold, heavy oil that refused to stick to my skin when I pulled it back.