Stan woke up the next morning with bruised ribs and a floating blue interface waiting for him like it had been there all night.
He sat up and opened the system properly this time, no panic, just focus. If this was real and he was becoming more convinced it was, he needed to understand exactly what he was working with before he did anything stupid.
He pulled up his skills one by one.
> [Skill: Presence — Level 1]
> Passive. Projects a subtle aura that makes others instinctively aware of the user.
> Current effect: Minimal.
> [Skill: Resonance — Level 1]
> Active. Words carry faint emotional weight in direct conversation.
> Current effect: Minimal.
> [Skill: Read — Level 1]
> Passive. Grants faint insight into emotional states of nearby people.
> Current accuracy: Low.
Minimal. Minimal. Low.
He stared at the words for a moment then closed the tab. Complaining about it wasn't going to level them up. He needed to actually test them to see what they eeven looked like in practice and figure out the gap between what the system said and what he could actually feel working.
He got dressed, swallowed two painkillers for his ribs and headed out.
---
The academy cafeteria was loud at eight in the morning. Long tables packed with students in ranked training gear, conversations overlapping, trays clattering. Stan usually ate fast and left before anyone noticed him.
Today he moved slower, picked a spot near the middle of the room instead of his usual corner and just sat with his food and let the Read skill run.
At first he felt nothing different from normal. People eating, talking, half asleep over their coffee. Then slowly, like his eyes adjusting to a dark room, something started coming through at the edges.
The girl two seats down was anxious about something. Not visibly, she was laughing at whatever her friend was saying, but underneath it there was a tight, restless energy that Stan could feel faintly like a sound just below hearing.
The guy across the table was bored and trying not to show it. The couple by the window were fine on the surface but there was a distance between them that felt settled, like it had been there a while.
Stan ate his food and processed this quietly.
Low accuracy. That was what the system said. But even at low accuracy it was giving important him information. The kind that took most people years of social experience to read naturally. He could work with that.
He finished eating and moved on.
---
He spent the late morning in the common area near the main hall, one of the busiest crossroads on campus. He found a seat, opened a textbook he wasn't reading and ran the Presence skill passively while people moved around him.
The results were subtle. A few people glanced at him as they passed, the kind of second look you give someone when something registers without you knowing what.
A girl from his theory class slowed down slightly when she walked past his table, looked at him, then kept going. She had never looked at him before in three months of sitting in the same room.
It wasn't dramatic. But it was something. The skill was working, just quietly, just at the edges. Like a radio signal coming in weak but clear enough to tune if you knew how to listen.
He tested Resonance last.
He stopped a second year student he vaguely recognised outside the library and asked for directions to the records office, which he already knew the location of. When he asked he focused on the skill, pushed it the way the system seemed to respond to intentional activation.
The student stopped and answered him. That wasn't unusual. What was unusual was that the conversation kept going. The student added extra detail, then asked what Stan was looking for at records, then mentioned a shortcut through the admin building.
A two second interaction that should have ended at "down the hall, left at the stairs" turned into a three minute conversation.
The student walked away looking slightly confused about why they had just told a stranger their entire schedule.
Stan stood outside the library and thought about that for a while.
Level 1 across the board and the skills were already doing something real. Low ceiling right now but the ceiling was clearly meant to move. He needed targets. He needed to level these up through actual use and the only way to do that was to be around people, specifically around people in relationships, specifically around women whose partners were worth taking from.
He already knew exactly where to start.
Jake ate lunch at the same table every day. East wing, window seats, the ones with the best view of the training grounds.
He sat with his crew and his girlfriend Cara and it was the most visible table in the room because Jake made sure it was. Rank 4 on a campus where most students were sitting at Rank 1 or 2 meant you owned the social space whether you deserved it or not.
Stan had been avoiding that table for three months. Starting tomorrow he was going to start eating in the east wing.
He wasn't ready to do anything yet. He knew that. Level 1 skills and a Rank 0 meant walking up to Cara Mercer and turning on the charm would accomplish nothing except getting him beaten up again. He needed proximity first. Patience. He needed to let the skills do the groundwork quietly before he made any kind of move.
He was thinking through the timeline when the system chimed.
> [New Quest Available!]
He blinked and opened it.
> [Quest: First Step]
> You cannot steal what you cannot reach. Close the distance.
> Objective: Make eye contact with a target's partner and hold it for three seconds without looking away first.
> Reward: Presence — Level Up, 50 System Points
> Time Limit: 7 Days
Stan read it twice.
Three seconds of eye contact. That was the quest. That was what the system considered a meaningful first step for him and honestly he couldn't even argue with it.
Three months ago he would have looked away from anyone who glanced at him twice.
He closed the notification and leaned back in his chair.
Seven days.
He could do three seconds.