[Rewards]
[Agility: +3 | Force: +1 | Fortitude: +0.0099]
I stared at the screen.
After all of that. After Stone and the bat and dying twice and nearly making it permanent the third time, the system was rewarding me with a Fortitude increase of 0.0099. Not even a hundredth of a point. I turned the number over in my head trying to find an angle where it was impressive.
There wasn't one.
[Pro Reward!]
[Analytical Eye — Passive Skill]
"Analytical Eye," I said. "What does that do?"
"It's a low-level observation ability." Amelia must have caught something in my expression, because she kept going before I could get excited about it. "Technically, it isn't classified as a gene ability. The base version of this exists in everyone — yours simply operates faster. It allows your brain to process an opponent's movement patterns at a slightly higher speed than normal, which means you read physical coordinates quicker than most."
I thought about it for a second. The coordinate system I'd come up with mid-fight. C-1 through C-5. The way I'd eventually spotted his legs.
"I came up with it anyway," I said, with a shrug. "I'm calling it an ability."
Amelia didn't argue.
Around us, the domain was already dissolving. The dark alleyway folded away, the flickering streetlight blinked out, the gravel road smoothed and lightened and disappeared — and the school gym came back into shape around me, solid and fluorescent and completely empty.
I stood there for a moment. Looking at it.
I hadn't expected to feel anything about returning to this specific room. And yet.
"Shall I announce your next challenge?" Amelia said, already gesturing toward the system screen in the corner of my vision.
"Absolutely not." I turned away from the screen. "Not until I've recovered from the last one."
"Do you think this is how—"
I raised both hands. "Save it, Amelia. Don't give me the speech. That wasn't training, that was murder with extra steps and a loading screen."
Silence.
I looked back. Her hologram was gone. Just the system screen, and me, and the empty gym. I stood there for a moment feeling vaguely guilty about it.
She'll be back. She always came back, usually at the worst possible moment, usually with something I didn't want to hear.
I pushed it aside. The honest truth was that I had no problem with getting stronger — I wanted that. What I didn't want was to die in the process. Because if I died, genuinely died, then the whole point of any of this collapsed. There was no strength worth earning if I wasn't around to use it.
I'd figure out the pacing. Just not tonight.
***
THE NEXT DAY
"—New abilities are formed through the combination of DNA from two contrasting parents. However, an exception occurs when two separate ability types are involved. Take a physical-type and special-type user, for example — combine their DNA, and nine times out of ten, what you get isn't a new ability. What you get is a hybrid."
Biology was, objectively, the class that everyone else treated as a scheduled nap. Students around me were doing the usual — heads tilted, eyes glazing, pencils forgotten mid-sentence.
I was actually listening.
Mr Chen had this specific quality that was difficult to explain. Something about the way he constructed an explanation — building it layer by layer, attaching concrete images to abstract concepts — made the information land differently. Like watching something develop in front of you rather than just being told it existed.
There was a theory I'd had for years that he'd done something else before teaching. Written comics, maybe. The visual instinct was too consistent to be accidental.
And beyond that, visualisation was genuinely how I processed things. Any subject I could place myself inside, imagine at the level of a scene rather than a fact, I could hold onto. It was the technique that kept my grades functional across almost every subject.
Every subject except maths, which operated in a language that actively resisted imagination. Equations without physical analogues. Answers that could technically be wrong even when they were right. Maths had always felt like a system designed to punish the way my brain worked.
"A hybrid," Mr Chen continued, "is the concentration of two separate abilities within a single human body. These cases are rare, and as documented, can sometimes produce significant side effects — including certain physical disabilities in the user—"
The bell cut through the hallway. End of period.
Mr Chen closed his notes in the way he always did — decisive, no lingering — and moved toward the door.
Then he stopped.
He turned back like something had surfaced. "Before I go, I was asked to pass an announcement to Class A-3." He returned to the front of the room. "This may still be at the rumour stage, but the current information we have is that the BHA is planning an entry examination this year."
The room shifted. Just slightly. The kind of collective attention that happens when something actually matters.
BHA. The Bureau's Hunter Academy.
There wasn't a more significant institution in the country, possibly in the world. Government-funded, government-directed, and admission-only by private invitation. It wasn't a school you applied to. It was a school that decided you were worth training and told you to show up.
BHA existed for one reason: to produce hunters. It took students with abilities and potential and built them into something operational. The examination was their intake process, annual, rigorous, and closed to anyone who didn't qualify.
"Like every entry year," Mr Chen continued, "the BHA structures its practical examinations around final-year high school students, provided they're registered. The purpose is straightforward, demonstrate your abilities, your potentials and prove you belong. The bureau pools all participating high schools in the country and selects ten students from the combined total. If the circumstances are right, Silvic High will be among that number."
If the circumstances are right was underselling it significantly.
Silvic High was one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. The academic reputation was real, but the thing that actually set us apart was the concentration of powerful students in the upper tiers. The Order alone — King, Queen, Ace, Jack — represented a level of ability that most schools couldn't match collectively, let alone individually. The last school that had actually tested us was Royal High, and rumour had it King had resolved that situation on his own.
Against the BHA examination? Silvic High was a near-certain top-10. The tendencies were that obvious.
"That's all for now. Any confirmed information will be passed along as it comes." Mr Chen left the room without ceremony.
"Ren."
I heard the voice before I saw him, which was enough to know who it was.
Tyler. Consistent, unwanted, apparently operating under the impression that escalating a situation he'd created was a reasonable use of his time. Ever since I'd confronted him about the cheat note, he'd recalibrated his interest in me, less incidental, more deliberate. Like I'd given him something to track.
He walked up and settled a palm on my right shoulder with the casual ease of someone who thought we had an established dynamic.
We didn't.
"Don't bother me," I said.
"Relax." He moved around to lean against my desk, arms crossed, completely unbothered. "I just wanted to check in on our deal. What's the decision, are you fighting, or are you taking the suspension?"
Survival rule number one: disengage before the situation has a chance to escalate. Walk away. Put distance between yourself and the problem and let it lose momentum on its own.
I stood. Didn't look at him. Started for the door.
Then his hand came down on my shoulder mid-step and pulled me back into the seat. Then he leaned in close, the performance of casual completely gone.
"Two days left, Ren. You want to risk a suspension when I'm standing right here?" He tilted his head. There was something almost like amusement in it, the kind that meant he already knew how this ended. "The guy you want to beat is offering you a direct shot. And I'll even make it easier for you. Come to the arena on Friday. Last chance."
He straightened, glanced toward his crew, and shifted registers instantly. "Alright, let's go get lunch."
Six of them filed out noisily after him. I watched them go.
Rowan was at the back of the group, trailing behind at a slight remove, like a dog that had learned not to walk too close to the front. He was fidgeting with his glasses in that continuous, low-level way he always did. When our eyes met briefly, whatever was in his expression was small and quickly redirected downward.
Then he followed them out.
Tyler. That bastard. I'm going to—
"Amelia."
Nothing.
I waited a moment. Called again. Still nothing.
Usually she appeared uninvited, always at the most inconvenient possible time. Apparently the one time I was actually trying to summon her she'd decided to demonstrate that she could be selective about it.
I sat with that for a moment.
Maybe she'd had a point. Not the specific words, I still maintained that near-permanent death was a reasonable thing to object to. But the underlying argument. That there wasn't a version of getting stronger that didn't require me to go through something. That the commitment had to come before the results, not after I felt ready for them.
I didn't feel ready. I probably wasn't going to feel ready.
"Alright," I said to the empty air, to the system screen sitting quietly in the corner of my vision, to wherever Amelia was choosing to wait this out. "We'll do it your way."
I exhaled.
"Announce my next challenge."