Aaryan lay flat on the blood-stained canvas of the underground boxing club. His ears were ringing, a dull, rhythmic thudding that matched the pulsing pain in his cracked ribs. Above him, the "Crusher" was roaring, a sound of triumph that felt miles away.
'I was wrong,' Aaryan thought, coughing up a spray of crimson. 'The Age-Increasing magic... it only changed my shell.'
He had grown to the size of an 18-year-old man, his limbs longer and his jaw sharper, but his internal stats hadn't caught up. His muscles were hollow. His stamina was still that of a malnourished Class 10 student. He was an amateur in a professional's body, and the Crusher was punishing him for it.
[WARNING: HOST VITAL SIGNS CRITICAL] [EMERGENCY RECOVERY PACKAGE DETECTED] [COST: 20 SC COINS — INCLUDES: INSTANT BONE REPAIR, CELLULAR REGENERATION, AND ADRENALINE OVERDRIVE]
"Buy it..." Aaryan hissed, his fingers digging into the rough fabric of the ring. "Do it now."
[TRANSACTION COMPLETE. INITIALIZING RECOVERY...]
The transformation was agonizing. It felt like thousands of hot needles were stitching his muscles back together. In a flash, the swelling around his eyes vanished. The black bruises turned to healthy skin. Aaryan stood up, his movements fluid and terrifyingly calm. He wasn't just healed; he was upgraded.
Using the Ayanokōji-level analysis, he stopped looking at the Crusher as a man. He looked at him as a set of biological weaknesses. He saw the slight tilt in the giant's left ankle and the way his breathing hitched before a heavy swing.
The Crusher lunged, a finishing blow aimed at Aaryan's head. Aaryan didn't flinch. He slipped the punch by a hair's breadth and delivered a single, concentrated strike to the Crusher's solar plexus.
The giant froze. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed like a falling mountain. The arena went silent. The "Invisible Boy" had just knocked out the king of the pit in one strike.
[REWARD: 100 SC COINS GATHERED. PRIZE MONEY: RS. 5,000 RECEIVED.]
THE 45-DAY GRIND
Aaryan didn't stop there. He knew that to face the "God" or "Demon" he had seen in the news footage, he needed more than one lucky win. Over the next one and a half months, Aaryan lived a double life that would have broken a normal person.
By day, his clone sat in the back of the classroom at AKPS, acting as the quiet, stoic student that no one noticed. By night, the real Aaryan—his body aged and hardened by magic—became a legend in the underground circuit.
He fought twenty matches in those six weeks. Each match was a calculated risk. Every time he won, he poured his SC coins back into the System.
"System, increase Strength. Increase Agility. Maximize Bone Density," he would command after every victory.
By his 20th match, he was no longer the boy who jumped from the 10th floor. He was a weapon. He had earned over 1,500 SC coins and accumulated Rs. 50,000 in cash, hiding the money in a loose floorboard beneath his bed.
Finally, the night of the Grand Final arrived. His opponent was a dark-web assassin who fought with a lethality Aaryan had never seen. But Aaryan was no longer guessing. He had spent 1,500 SC coins on his stats. He moved faster than the human eye could track.
When the referee signaled the end of the final match, Aaryan stood over his defeated opponent, breathing evenly. He hadn't even broken a sweat.
[QUEST COMPLETE: KING OF THE UNDERGROUND] [TOTAL REWARDS: 5,000 SC COINS & RS. 150,000 PRIZE MONEY.]
Aaryan stood in the shower that night, letting the hot water wash away the last of the arena's grime. 'One and a half months,' he calculated. 'I've made two lakhs in cash and have enough SC coins to buy a small country's arsenal. The profit is high... but why is the System doing this? Why does it want me this powerful?'
He searched every corner of the internet—Reddit, dark web forums, even government archives he hacked into using his Python skills. Nothing. The System was a ghost. It existed only for him.
THE RAREST MAGIC: FUTURE SIGHT
The next morning, the blue screen was waiting for him, but the text was a deep, warning purple.
[NEW QUEST: THE BANK OF FATE] [OBJECTIVE: ARRIVE AT THE CENTRAL BANK BY 6:00 P.M. TOMORROW.]
Aaryan stared at the prompt. "A bank? Why a bank? I already have two lakhs. I don't need to rob one."
His mind, now operating at 100+ simulations per second, began to whirl. Is it a setup? A test of my invisibility? Or something worse? He needed to know. He couldn't go in blind.
"System, search for a magic that allows me to see the truth of tomorrow."
[NOTIFICATION: PRECOGNITION (FUTURE SIGHT - RARE GRADE) DETECTED.] [COST: 100 SC COINS. NOTE: USER WILL SEE A 30-SECOND FRAGMENT OF THE MOST LIKELY TIMELINE.]
"Buy it," Aaryan commanded.
As soon as the transaction finished, the world around him dissolved. He wasn't in his room anymore. He was standing in the lobby of the Central Bank. He saw the clock hit 6:00 P.M. Suddenly, the front windows exploded. Six men in heavy armor, carrying military-grade C4, stormed in.
In the vision, Aaryan saw a woman holding a baby. He saw a security guard reach for his gun, only to be cut down. And then, the center of the bank erupted in a massive, blinding white light. A bomb. The robbers weren't there to steal money; they were there to erase the building from the map.
Aaryan snapped back to reality, gasping for air. His eyes were cold.
THE INTERVENTION
The next day at school felt like a slow-motion movie. He watched the clock, his Ayanokōji personality keeping his face like a mask of ice. As soon as the bell rang, he headed toward the city center.
At 5:55 P.M., Aaryan arrived. He ducked into a nearby alley and summoned his clone.
"Stay here," he told the double. "If I fail, you take Mom and my sister and leave the city. Don't look back."
The clone nodded silently.
Aaryan activated his Invisibility Magic and his Protection Shield. He walked through the front doors of the bank, passing right between the guards. He was a ghost in the machine.
6:00 P.M.
BOOM!
The glass shattered exactly as it had in his vision. The terrorists charged in, shouting orders. But this time, there was a variable they hadn't accounted for.
Aaryan didn't wait for them to speak. He moved like a shadow. He didn't use a gun; he used his 400+ Strength. He struck the first man's helmet with such force the reinforced plastic cracked. He caught the second man's rifle and snapped the barrel with one hand.
The bank customers screamed, seeing their attackers being thrown across the room by an invisible force. To them, it looked like the air itself was punching the terrorists.
Aaryan spotted the leader reaching for the detonator. With a burst of Movement Speed, Aaryan was across the room in a heartbeat. He snatched the bomb out of the leader's hands and deactivated the timer with 0:02 seconds left.
He left the terrorists tied up with their own tactical gear and vanished before the police could even enter the building.
THE DREAM
Back in his room, Aaryan collapsed onto his bed. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a deep, unnatural exhaustion.
[QUEST COMPLETE: THE BANK SAVIOR] [REWARD: 2,500 SC COINS GATHERED.]
He fell into a deep sleep, but for the first time, his mind wasn't his own.
In his dream, he was standing on a white plain that stretched to infinity. Standing in front of him was the being from the news footage—the God with the glowing eyes.
"You've done well, Aaryan," the being whispered, its voice sounding like a thousand people speaking at once. "But did you really think this was all for you? The coins, the power... they aren't rewards. They are a down payment."
The God reached out a hand, and the white world began to turn black. "The real game hasn't even started. Soon, Class 10 will be the least of your worries."
Aaryan tried to scream, to activate his magic, but he was frozen.
"Sleep well, Invisible God," the being laughed. "Tomorrow, the world finds out you exist."
Aaryan woke up in a cold sweat, the sun hitting his face. He looked at his hand. It was glowing with a faint, purple light that wasn't from the System.