CHAPTER 295: PRIVATE DOMAIN

The eggs sizzled low in the pan, their soft crackle filling the silence between us. Sienna flipped a slice of toast with a lazy flick of her wrist, eyes half-lidded but movements crisp. It felt almost normal. Domestic, even.

But my mind wasn’t on breakfast anymore.

It was on her hands.

Her movements.

Her job.

"Sienna," I said, voice even.

She glanced up. "Yeah?"

"Hold still for a second."

"Uh... why?" she said slowly, slicing through an avocado with clean, practiced motion.

"Just a theory," I said, focusing.

I used Scan on her.

The interface bloomed to life—lights overlaying her like a wireframe, data structuring itself as the System read her signature. And then, it appeared.

Name: Sienna Locke

Job: Deconstruction Worker (A-Rank)

Skills:

Structural Destabilization (Lv. 4)Identifies and weakens key load-bearing components to safely compromise structural integrity for controlled disassembly.

Load Redistribution (Lv. 5)Manipulates weight balance to make heavy materials easier to detach and lower without causing collapse or injury.

Reverse Engineering (Lv. 4)Enhances accuracy when analyzing, mapping, and disassembling structures without damaging valuable components.

Exertion Tolerance (Lv. 6)Allows sustained high-effort work in debris-heavy, unstable, or claustrophobic environments with reduced physical strain.

Decentralized Coordination (Lv. 5)Increases group efficiency during takedown operations by syncing individual tasks without reliance on a central structure or unified plan.

I whistled low.

These weren’t standard System issue. At all. No generic demolition job would include coordination this refined or structural insight this precise. And her old Construction Worker job wasn’t exactly geared for this either.

This was a complete inversion.

I had expected her Construction Worker job to invert into a Demolitionist, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Her job had evolved into something functionally opposite—and yet it wasn’t just a mirror. It was something new. A mutation. A custom-fit job, likely formed entirely by her title.

But...

I frowned, eyes scanning the interface.

There was no listing for a Job Title.

No mention of "Job Inverter." No title tag. No hint. No code.

Nothing.

Just a blank space.

I muttered, "Of course."

Only 3830 had ever seen other people’s job titles using her Scan oriented job title. That ability let her even see my special skills. My Scan on the other hand is like the one’s in evaluation centers. Meaning I wouldn’t be seeing any job titles, special skills or even portfolios.

Either way, it was disappointing.

If I could’ve found a way to copy Sienna’s, Camille’s, or Alexis’s Job Title, no matter how unlikely... I’d be unstoppable.

Camille could raise all her skills to Level 10 temporarily. Alexis could merge multiple jobs together boosting their effects exponentially. Sienna could flip entire jobs into their opposites and unlock new skillsets that no one else even knew existed.

And if you combined it with me?

You’d have someone with the ability to have unlimited jobs that both existed and didn’t, able to combine those jobs, max out any skill, redeem rewards and even use Full Profession Sync on top of that. Unfortunately, that sort of power was still out of my reach.

At least, for now.

Still, I wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

My gaze dropped to the most interesting skill in the bunch.

Decentralized Coordination.

Group sync, autonomous task alignment, no need for unified plans. That... could be dangerous in the right hands. And with no one else in the world having these skills, they seemed imperative to copy them now.

I activated the skill.

Use Copy on "Decentralized Coordination"?

Result: Decentralized Coordination (Lv. 1). Confirm?

I clicked Yes.

The System pulsed.

Processing request...

...

...

Longer than usual.

I sat back, eyes narrowing.

The System had never stalled like this before. Not even when pulling high-level skills or using Destroy to take an entire arsenal.

Then—finally—it buzzed.

Error: Skill not fully registered in Public Domain. Please wait.

My mouth went dry.

That was... new.

The words themselves didn’t feel strange, but the tone of them did. If you could call it that. The System had never acknowledged that it had a domain structure. Public or otherwise.

And "wait"?

It had never told me to wait.

That was language—suggestive, fluid, almost conversational.

Not procedural.

I sat back, heart slow and deliberate.

The System wasn’t reacting like a dumb tool anymore. This was different. It was responding. Learning. Maybe not in a human sense—but in a networked, dynamic way.

My fingers drummed the counter.

Not fully registered.

So... these skills didn’t exist in the public skill library. They weren’t categorized. Which made sense. Sienna was likely the only Deconstruction Worker in existence. The title flipped the job and birthed something new.

My System for once wasn’t ahead of everyone else.

It was catching up.

That’s when I saw it.

Sienna had stopped chopping.

She was staring down—eyes slightly glazed, as if reading something only she could see. A System notification.

I knew that look too well.

After a second, she blinked and turned to me.

The toast popped in the background.

The System pinged again.

Consent received from individual Sienna Locke. Access to private domain job and skills granted. You may now copy any skill at any time.

A soft breath left my lungs.

So that’s what this was.

Her job and its skills weren’t publicly accessible.

But she could authorize me.

Most jobs and skills had thousands of users. But this one belonged to Sienna alone.

Another first.

And just like that, the approval went through.

A light sensation sparked in the back of my mind—like the fizz of soda on a cut. A new connection formed.

New Skill Acquired: Decentralized Coordination (Lv. 1)

I exhaled slowly.

"System gave you a message just now, didn’t it?" I asked.

Sienna gave me a faintly amused look. "Yeah. Said something about a request for domain access."

"You read it?"

"Of course. You were staring at me like I was a rare mineral sample. Figured you were scanning again."

"You’re not mad?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Why would I be? I know very well what your job title lets you do and I trust you in knowing that you won’t do anything bad to us."

I laughed, tension easing.

"Well," I said, "thanks."

"Anytime," she said, flipping the eggs onto plates.

I walked over and helped her set the table, stealing one of the diced potatoes with my fingers.

"So..." she said after a moment, "that ominous thing you wanted to try—was it just scanning me?"

"That was part of it."

"And the other part?"

I shrugged. "Working with you. Seeing your job in motion. Your new skills... they’re incredible, Sienna."

She flushed slightly, then hid it behind a smirk. "You know I’m just making breakfast, right?"

"You’re dismantling and repurposing natural resources for nutrient conversion," I said, deadly serious.

She laughed. "You’re unbearable."

"But effective."

We set the plates down and sat. I let the food warm my senses, the spice, the weight of familiarity. But my mind stayed partially elsewhere.

The System was changing.

No—responding. It didn’t give pre-scripted outputs anymore. It recognized domains. It stalled. It waited for permission.

It... acknowledged things.

Something about that unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.

Because if the System could adjust, that meant it could adapt. And if it could adapt—then either someone, somewhere, had taught it how or it had always been conscious.

After we finished eating, Sienna stood to clean the pans, and I leaned against the counter, sipping water.

"I should probably tell Alexis about this," I muttered.

Sienna glanced over. "What when you copied me?"

"Yeah, but more precisely the System’s reaction. The private domain access. The delay."

She nodded, lips pursed. "It’s getting weirder, isn’t it?"

I looked down at my hands.

"Yeah," I said softly. "And I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface yet."