Jaime sucked in a deep breath.
The difference was immediate.
Now that the pressure from his evolution had disappeared, his entire body felt lighter. Not weak—exactly the opposite. It was as though someone had removed half his weight without taking away any of his mass.
He bounced experimentally on the balls of his feet.
Then jumped.
"Shit!"
Jaime landed harder than expected and immediately glanced down at the floor.
Nothing had broken.
Of course, he wasn't even sure the floor technically existed.
That realization didn't stop him from experimenting.
He dropped and started doing push-ups.
Twenty.
Forty.
Sixty.
There was barely any strain.
He transitioned into squats, then lunges, sprints, and eventually shadowboxing. His body moved with a speed and responsiveness he had never experienced before. Sweat refused to form on his skin, and his temperature remained perfectly comfortable despite the exertion.
He even attempted several martial arts movements he had only ever seen in anime and movies.
Some worked.
Some nearly put him on his ass.
"Okay. Still gotta actually know what the fuck I'm doing."
Good to know increased stats hadn't magically made him a martial arts master.
After several more minutes of experimentation, Jaime finally stopped.
His entire existence had changed.
That much was obvious.
"Status."
The blue screen appeared again.
His Strength, Dexterity, Durability, and Intelligence had all increased to twenty-five.
His Spirit had received the largest increase, reaching forty.
Jaime stared at the numbers while his newly enhanced mind started working through the implications.
Before his evolution, ten had represented the average human value in most physical attributes.
If the System scaled things linearly, then twenty should have made him roughly twice as capable as an ordinary person.
But that wasn't what he felt.
Not even close.
At twenty-five Strength, Jaime felt considerably more than two and a half times stronger than before. His speed, perception, coordination, and sheer physical control had all increased far beyond what the numbers alone seemed to imply.
"So they either compound somehow, or the stats affect each other."
That made sense.
Greater Strength would be more useful if his Durability allowed him to actually exert it. Higher Dexterity could let him use that Strength more efficiently. Intelligence might improve his ability to process what he was seeing, while Spirit—
Jaime frowned.
He still wasn't entirely sure what Spirit did.
That was going to require testing.
Unfortunately, he couldn't create any precision instruments in the Personal Subspace.
Or, more accurately, he couldn't create instruments he didn't properly understand.
He could imagine a machine that measured exactly how much force he produced, but apparently imagining a screen with a convenient number on it wasn't enough to convince the Subspace that he knew how such a machine actually worked.
"Cheap-ass cosmic cheat room."
No response.
Jaime smirked.
He could worry about exact measurements later.
For now, he had another notification waiting for him.
The moment he focused on it, the message returned to the center of his vision.
[ Congratulations! User Jaime was the third being from Planet Earth to achieve G-Rank. A Mystery Chest has been awarded. ]
Jaime leaned back slightly.
"So two people broke through before me."
That was useful information.
There were several possibilities.
Maybe everybody would reach G-Rank after accepting their beginner rewards, and the first three positions simply recognized whoever adapted to the situation fastest.
Or maybe advancing immediately wasn't normal at all.
If that was true, then the three of them had received abilities powerful enough to force some kind of evolution.
The second possibility was much more interesting.
And potentially much more dangerous.
Jaime had no way to know which answer was right yet.
Standing around wondering wasn't going to change that.
"Mystery Chest."
A prompt appeared.
[ User Jaime has chosen to open Mystery Chest (Unranked). ]
[ Congratulations! User Jaime has received: Foundation Synergizer Potion ×1. ]
An amber-colored cylindrical flask appeared in his hand.
Jaime raised an eyebrow.
The container looked like tempered glass, though there was something strangely ancient about it. Tiny imperfections marked its surface, giving the impression that it had existed for far longer than something freshly generated by a System should have.
It was cool against his palm.
He twisted the top open and cautiously brought it beneath his nose.
Nothing.
Jaime sniffed again.
Still nothing.
The liquid was completely colorless and seemed to possess even less of a scent than ordinary water.
"Huh."
The smart thing would probably have been to ask the System what it did.
The smarter thing might have been to wait until he better understood his abilities.
Jaime looked at the potion.
Then shrugged.
He had just evolved into something called a Superior Ghoul Lord, was standing inside a reality-warping safe space, and had been explicitly given the potion as a reward.
If there was ever a time to take a few calculated risks, this was probably it.
"Fuck it."
Jaime tilted his head back and chugged the approximately eight ounces of liquid.
It tasted like—
Nothing.
Literally nothing.
Jaime lowered the empty flask with a disappointed frown.
"That's lame."
He had expected something incredible.
Or disgusting.
Magical fruit punch.
Liquid fire.
Battery acid.
Anything.
Instead, the miraculous cosmic potion tasted less interesting than tap water.
Then a cool sensation spread through his stomach.
"Oh?"
The chill expanded through his torso before creeping into his arms and legs.
Jaime shivered.
Then the final drop touched his tongue.
His body convulsed.
Pain detonated through him.
"GAH—!"
Jaime almost collapsed.
Only instinct kept him standing as every muscle in his body locked simultaneously.
His thoughts scattered.
What the fuck is happening?!
Pain came from everywhere.
Bones.
Muscles.
Organs.
Skin.
Even his teeth fucking hurt.
It felt like someone had dropped his entire body into boiling water while simultaneously shredding his muscles and smashing his bones apart with hammers.
There was no wound.
No single source.
Nothing he could focus on.
Just pain.
Unrelenting.
All-consuming.
It grew worse with every passing second.
Then—
Nothing.
Jaime gasped.
His body went limp.
The agony had vanished so suddenly that his mind struggled to understand its absence.
He sucked in one ragged breath.
Then another.
"Mother... fucker..."
A few seconds passed.
Jaime finally started to relax.
That was when something inside him ruptured.
Not his body.
Something deeper.
His soul.
There was no other word for it.
Agony beyond anything his physical nerves could have produced ripped through his consciousness.
Jaime never even had the opportunity to scream.
His mind shut down.
An unknown amount of time later, Jaime's eyes snapped open.
He shot upright—
and launched nearly ten feet into the air.
"What the fuck?!"
He landed awkwardly, stumbled, caught himself, then immediately started shouting at the nonexistent sky.
"System! What the hell was that bullshit?! Were you trying to KILL me?!"
Silence.
"I mean, goddamn! No warning? No note? Nothing?! My nigga, you could've put a skull on the bottle! A little this shit might rip your soul in half label!"
Still nothing.
Jaime continued ranting for another minute before finally running out of insults creative enough to satisfy him.
He stood there breathing heavily.
Then he noticed his pants.
"What the hell?"
His faded black jeans no longer fit.
At all.
The material had torn around his thighs, leaving him looking like he was wearing some unholy combination of jean shorts and leggings.
His faded green Adidas shirt was simply gone.
Jaime looked around.
His high-top Converse sat nearby, abandoned after becoming uncomfortable during his first evolution.
"You've gotta be kidding me. This was my good shit."
As irritation started building again, some invisible force acted upon his clothes.
The torn denim stretched and reshaped itself around his body.
Threads lifted from the floor, twisting together until his destroyed shirt reconstructed itself and settled over his torso.
Jaime stared.
"...Okay. That's useful."
The clothing adjusted until it fit perfectly.
That brought his attention to the second thing he had noticed.
His body.
Something was very different.
Jaime had always been fortunate when it came to genetics. He had been lean, athletic enough, and generally satisfied with how he looked.
But this?
"Mirror."
A full-body mirror materialized in front of him.
Jaime went silent.
The person staring back could still pass for the eighteen-year-old Jaime Fareway.
Technically.
But he looked like someone had taken Jaime, handed his design to a team of professional artists, and told them to remove every imperfection without making him completely unrecognizable.
He had previously stood around five-foot-eleven.
Now?
Six-four.
Maybe slightly over.
His lean frame had filled out dramatically, with dense muscle covering his body without making him look bulky.
Jaime lifted his shirt.
An eight-pack stared back.
He blinked.
"Okay."
He turned slightly.
"Okay!"
The pain had still been some bullshit.
But maybe not completely useless bullshit.
His brown skin seemed healthier than before, almost unnaturally smooth beneath the artificial lighting. His normally short hair now fell toward his neck in thick black curls that seemed to absorb the light around them.
Then Jaime looked at his eyes.
"Whoa."
Purple.
Not slightly purple.
Not blue with a weird tint.
Royal purple.
They almost seemed to glow, and there was something in their reflection that made Jaime's grin slowly return.
Mischief.
Possibility.
An idea formed.
It wasn't much yet.
Barely more than a stray thought.
The kind of thought most people would dismiss five seconds after having it.
Jaime didn't.
And one day, many civilizations would burn and countless souls would wail because of the ideas beginning to take root in his mind at that exact moment.
For now, however, Jaime merely smiled at his reflection.
"Alright, System. Go ahead and show me what's up."
He dismissed the mirror.
A La-Z-Boy recliner appeared behind him, and Jaime dropped into it like he hadn't spent the last several minutes threatening to hunt down the System and permanently unplug it.
Notifications filled his vision.
[ Ding! User Jaime has consumed the Foundation Stabilizer. ]
Jaime's eyebrows rose.
[ Unexpected interaction detected between existing abilities and racial traits. ]
[ Analyzing... ]
[ Searching for countermeasures... ]
[ Compatible evolutionary route discovered. ]
[ Evolution successful. ]
[ Congratulations! User Jaime's foundation has been perfected. ]
[ Rank advancement confirmed. ]
[ User Jaime has advanced to F-Rank. ]
Jaime stared at the messages.
Hmm.
He couldn't pretend the result was entirely unexpected.
The first set of rewards had already forced one evolution. A potion with Foundation in its name causing another major change wasn't exactly impossible to predict.
Still...
I should probably be more careful.
The thought came with surprising clarity.
Getting stronger is good, but getting obsessed with getting stronger before I even understand what I can do—or what the hell I'm becoming—is an easy way to fuck myself.
His thoughts felt calmer now.
More controlled.
Whether that was caused by the Intelligence increase, his evolution, or simply the adrenaline finally wearing off, Jaime couldn't say.
He mentally opened the notification history.
More messages waited.
[ Ding! Congratulations! User Jaime has become the second individual in Region: Earth to advance to F-Rank. ]
[ User Jaime is the first individual in Subregion: USA to advance to F-Rank. ]
Jaime sat forward.
"Oh?"
[ Ding! Due to one or more individuals advancing to F-Rank, Regional and Subregional Chat functions will be opened ahead of schedule. ]
That sounded useful.
Potentially disastrous, but useful.
Another notification appeared.
[ Ding! For becoming the second F-Rank individual within Region: Earth and the first within Subregion: USA, User Jaime has received the title: Earth Pioneer II. ]
[ User Jaime has also received: Subregional Command Token — USA. ]
Jaime's smile disappeared.
"Command what?"
The next message answered him.
[ As the newly recognized Lord of your Subregion, it is your responsibility to allocate resources, expand your territory, and establish control over the surrounding area. ]
[ Attain complete control over Region: Earth to unlock the Second Layer and receive additional rewards. ]
Jaime stared.
Then stared some more.
"Damn."
He had known things were changing.
That was obvious.
He just hadn't expected the System to casually hand him responsibility for the whole fucking United States before he even figured out how to throw a proper punch with his new Strength.
Or Subregion, apparently.
He was going to have to get used to that.
Jaime rubbed a hand down his face.
"Nope."
Not dealing with that right now.
Regional conquest could wait.
He had abilities he didn't understand, a transformed body, an unknown race, a mysterious First Wave approaching, and somewhere outside this Subspace, Earth had become something fundamentally different from the world he knew.
Trying to conquer America before understanding any of that sounded like a fantastic way to die with ambition.
Personal development came first.
Everything else could get in line.
Thanks to Mother Earth's interference, one material-space day translated into roughly ten days inside his current Personal Subspace session. Jaime had already burned through a chunk of that time between his evolutions, experimentation, and unconsciousness.
He still had time.
But now he understood exactly how valuable every remaining hour was.
"Status."
The blue screen unfolded before him.
Location: Layer 1 — Personal Subspace
Name: Jaime Fareway
Race: Human/Ghoul King
Rank: F-
Titles: Earth Pioneer II | Subregional Lord — USA
Health: 1,000/1,000
Strength: 40 — Average F- Human: 15
Dexterity: 40 — Average F- Human: 12
Durability: 40 — Average F- Human: 12
Intelligence: 40 — Average F- Human: 16
Spirit: 45 — Average F- Human: 16
Stat Points: 0
Talents:
King's Instinct (SS+)
Energy Genius (SS+)
Skills:
Blood Control (SS+)
Lord of Air (S+)
Elemental Savant (SS)
Infect (SS+)
Jaime's eyes slowly traveled down the screen.
Everything had changed.
Even the Status itself seemed more detailed than before.
Race.
Titles.
Stat Points.
More precise comparisons.
Entirely new talents and skills.
Jaime had a growing suspicion that the System wasn't withholding information so much as revealing it when he became capable of actually using it.
If that was true, then his Status would likely continue changing as he grew stronger and learned more about the Well.
Which meant there was no point obsessing over everything he didn't know yet.
He needed to handle one problem at a time.
Jaime focused on the first unfamiliar ability in front of him.
King's Instinct (SS+).
A grin slowly spread across his face.
"Alright."
He leaned forward.
"Let's see what all this shit actually does."