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As the last item in the Level 1 Mall grayed out, a single option remained on the interface.
UNLOCK LEVEL 2 MALL
Ethan felt a surge of curiosity. If the Level 1 Mall had contained a fusion reactor, Iron Man armor, and the Super Soldier Serum, what would a higher tier hold? The jump in capability between those three items alone was staggering. Level 2 could contain anything.
He pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
Then the System's notification chimed in his mind, carrying the particular tone of a cashier who knows you can't afford what you're looking at.
"To unlock the Level 2 Mall, 150,000 Prestige Points are required."
"Your current Prestige is insufficient. Please keep up the good work!"
Ethan stared at the number. 150,000. He had 79,900.
He wanted to curse. This System was extortion in digital form. Buying items cost Prestige. The armor had required purchasing three models because the higher tiers were bundled with the lower ones. And now even opening the next shop required seventy thousand points he didn't have.
But the System was the System. Arguing with it was like arguing with gravity: technically possible, practically pointless.
He swallowed his frustration and closed the interface.
The serum could wait a few days. He'd been running on adrenaline, instant noodles, and spite for three months. His body needed rest, his mind needed quiet, and his bruised ribs needed time to stop reminding him they existed every time he breathed too deeply.
Two days off. Then back to work.
Two thousand kilometers to the west, Frank Holloway stepped off a bus in Graystone Province and immediately regretted not packing a heavier coat.
The journey from Ashford City had been grueling. Multiple transfers, unfamiliar routes, and the specific exhaustion that comes from spending fourteen hours on vehicles that weren't designed for comfort. He was stiff, tired, and confused about why this professional development program required such urgency.
The paperwork had arrived on his desk the moment he was reinstated. Not the next day. Not the next week. The moment. And the province had sent a special liaison to oversee the arrangements, which was unusual for a routine study program. Since when did the Education Bureau send escorts for a school principal's training seminar?
But the promise attached to the assignment had been clear: complete the program, return as principal of Third Middle School. That was worth the discomfort.
It was evening. Graystone Province in late autumn was nothing like Ashford City. The wind came off the western plateau with a cutting edge that found every gap in Frank's jacket and settled against his skin like cold water. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since he'd left home.
The station was empty.
Frank frowned. He'd been to Graystone Province before. As a major tourism destination, the transit stations usually had foot traffic even in the off-season. Vendors, guides, taxi drivers competing for fares.
Tonight, there was nobody.
The silence felt wrong. Not peaceful. Staged.
In the dim light beyond the station's entrance, several figures materialized.
Frank felt a spike of relief. People. He could ask for directions to the training facility, get his bearings, maybe find a place to—
The figures drew handguns.
Thirty years of military reflexes fired before Frank's conscious mind had finished processing what it was seeing. He dropped his bag, shifted his weight, and moved.
But the men were trained. Professional. And Frank was fifty years old with a bus ride's worth of stiffness in his joints.
Two shots. Both hit center mass.
The impact staggered him backward, and he looked down expecting blood. Instead, he saw two syringe-like projectiles embedded in his chest, their payloads already deploying.
Tranquilizer rounds.
His legs went first. Then his arms. A wave of drowsiness crashed through his brain like a tide, pulling him under.
The ground came up to meet him.
As Frank Holloway collapsed, several figures emerged from the shadows behind the station.
Foreign faces. Hard eyes. The body language of men who did this kind of work regularly and weren't sentimental about it.
Behind them, Conrad Whitfield adjusted his collar and looked at the unconscious man on the ground with an expression that contained no guilt whatsoever.
"Mr. Whitfield, the target is secured." The lead operative spoke with an accent that placed him somewhere in the Aurelian Republic's intelligence community. "The next phase depends on your family's influence."
"Leave that to me."
Conrad said it with the confidence of a man who'd grown up believing that the world arranged itself around Whitfield interests. He crouched beside Frank's body and studied the face of the man who meant more to Ethan Mercer than anyone alive.
"Whether my family makes it to the Aurelian Republic depends entirely on how much weight you carry in that boy's heart."
He straightened up.
"Take him. And make sure he stays sedated until we're ready."
The operatives moved with practiced efficiency. Within three minutes, Frank Holloway had been loaded into a waiting vehicle, and the station was empty again.
The wind continued to blow off the plateau, cold and indifferent.
Three days had passed since the verification meeting.
In those three days, Ethan had done absolutely nothing of consequence, and it was glorious.
He slept. He ate Linda's cooking. He scrolled through his phone. He sat in his parents' living room and stared at the ceiling. He didn't build anything, calibrate anything, or fire any palm-mounted energy weapons at foreign military aircraft.
It was the most restful seventy-two hours he'd experienced since the System had activated.
On the social media front, things were considerably less restful. The account Ethan had created before the verification meeting had exploded. His follower count, which had been negligible a week ago, had blown past thirty million by this morning.
Most of the followers were young. Students, recent graduates, kids his own age who saw in Ethan's trajectory something that resonated: a nobody from nowhere who'd been told he was worthless, refused to believe it, and ended up changing the world.
Some particularly enthusiastic fans had organized a fan club. They called him "Professor Mercer" on social media, which Ethan found simultaneously flattering and absurd. He was seventeen. He hadn't even graduated high school. But apparently, surviving a missile strike and destroying two fighter jets earned you a honorary academic title in the court of public opinion.
Where there were fans, though, there were anti-fans. A smaller but vocal contingent had taken up residence in his comment sections, and their arguments followed a predictable pattern.
"I think this Mercer kid is overrated. He just stumbled into inventing those things. Luck, not talent."
"Exactly. And let's not forget: he KILLED the pilots of those two fighter jets at the verification meeting. That's not heroism. That's violence."
"Right! For someone who treats human life so casually, the government should be punishing him, not celebrating him."
These voices were vastly outnumbered by supporters, who responded with the particular ferocity of people defending someone they'd personally invested their admiration in.
"'Stumbled into it'? Anyone who's completed basic education wouldn't say something that stupid."
"If I listed a single equation from the reactor's operational theory, I'd be impressed if you could identify the SYMBOLS, let alone solve it."
"Anyone who talks about 'luck' needs to either finish kindergarten or see a specialist about whatever's wrong with their brain."
"And about the fighter jets: anyone with eyes could see Professor Mercer was DEFENDING HIMSELF. Foreign military aircraft violated our airspace and fired a missile at a civilian. What was he supposed to do, politely ask them to stop?"
"Don't bother arguing with these people. In their minds, Professor Mercer should have sat still and let a foreign power kill him."
"Imagine having your country's airspace invaded and your response is to side with the invaders. Spineless doesn't even begin to cover it."
Watching the anti-fans get systematically demolished was entertaining enough that Ethan decided to add fuel to the fire.
He thought of a phrase from his Earth-Prime memories. A biology joke that had gone viral in his downloaded lifetime. Nobody in this world had ever heard it.
He typed it in the reply section under the most obnoxious anti-fan comment and hit post.
The response was immediate.
"PROFESSOR MERCER COMMENTED!"
"What did he say??"
"I CAN'T BREATHE. I'm dying. Professor Mercer is TOO much."
Ethan's reply, sitting beneath a paragraph of jealous ranting:
"Jealousy makes you undergo plasmolysis."
The comment section detonated.
"This is the greatest comeback I've ever seen."
"'Plasmolysis' — I'm going to use this in every argument for the rest of my life."
"To the anti-fans: you probably don't know what plasmolysis means. Don't worry, it'll be covered when you eventually finish middle school."
"Professor Mercer isn't just the greatest physicist alive. He's also funnier than every comedian on television."
"I didn't expect him to be this good at biology too!"
The thread was climbing toward the top of every trending list in the Republic when a different voice cut through the noise.
"Oh? Mercer is good at biology? That's hilarious."
"I'm a student at Ashford Preparatory Academy. Ethan Mercer's biology grades were among the worst in the entire school."
"Proof attached."
Below the comment, a photograph of a report card. Ethan's name. Ashford Prep's letterhead. And a biology score that would have made a first-year student wince.