The first thing I registered was the sll.
Antiseptic. Sharp, chemical, the kind that hits the back of your throat before you’ve even fully woken up. Nauseating in the way only hospital slls can be — not quite a scent, more like an announcent.
I blinked through the blur, and the ceiling tiles ca into focus slowly. Then the thin plastic tube taped to the inside of my arm, running up to a drip stand beside the bed.
The heart monitor beside beeped in its steady, slightly ominous rhythm. Like a clock that was specifically designed to make you think about dying.
The infirmary.
Not exactly a surprise. That hit from Tyler had been the kind of thing that either qualifies as a critical dical incident or skips that step entirely and just kills you. Apparently I’d landed sowhere in the middle.
Not again.
This was the eighth ti this week. And today was still only Tuesday. Eight visits ant eight separate occasions where Nurse Joey had found so new and creative way to yell at for being reckless. That man had never once shown a single sign of understanding my situation. He just kept finding fresh angles of disappointnt.
[Error: Transmigration Portal Is Not Responding]
Huh?
[Alert!]
[Choose Your Path]
[Path A: You beco OP in this world, stronger with every opponent that you face.]
[Path B: You die again and repull the transmigration draw.]
[Choose Now]
Die again.
I sat with that option for approximately one second before dismissing it entirely. It didn’t matter how appealing the transmigration draw sounded in theory.
Dying wasn’t a strategy. It was torture — and I ant that in the most literal sense I could. That brief window of unconsciousness earlier hadn’t been peaceful or blank. It had felt eternal. Like being pulled apart slowly by sothing that didn’t have hands, while so part of you refused to stop fighting it.
And even if I could push past that — the transmigration draw was still just a draw. A gamble. It didn’t guarantee the kind of world I’d land in, and Option B was essentially just stacking risks on top of risks.
Hard pass.
"I’ll go with A," I said.
Sohow, speaking out loud was enough. The system responded imdiately.
The screen shifted — text dissolving into a blank loading state. I waited, expecting the standard rollout. Stats. Inventory. A skill tree. Sothing that looked like the kind of interface that made sense. What appeared instead made stare for a solid three seconds before I could process it.
A hologram.
A glitching, blue-tinted image of a floating woman, hovering a few feet in front of at eye level. She was looking directly at with the kind of smile that said, finally, soone clicked the bait. Which, honestly, wasn’t the most reassuring expression to be on the receiving end of.
The whole thing had the energy of a trap. First I’d gotten a system I never asked for, and now there was a holographic woman hovering in an infirmary bed staring at like she’d been waiting.
"Hi, Ren."
"The fuck—" My eyebrows went up. "How do you know my na? And who are you?"
"My na is Alia 5.0." The smile didn’t shift even slightly as she spoke. "I am your interacting interface. As for your na — your private and public data were synced to the system during the initial scan—"
"Wait." I cut her off. "How does any of this connect to the option I picked?"
"Your selected option — Path A — was to beco an overpowered character." She clicked her fingers, and a new display materialised in the corner of my vision like it had always been there.
[Player’s Stat]
[Player Info]
[Na: Ren Mora | Ability: None (Late Bloor) | Rank: F]
[Statistics]
[Force: 7 | Agility: 4 | Stamina: 11 | Fortitude: 0.0001]
"This is your docunted stat profile," Alia said, with a look at the screen that managed to be genuinely disapproving. "Based on these numbers, it’s clear you haven’t been putting in any consistent effort to work on yourself. Laziness? Procrastination?"
Procrastination was, objectively, the more accurate word.
It wasn’t like the motivation had never been there. Every single ti I dragged myself out of a beating at Silvic High, I’d have this whole internal speech. Today’s the day. Hundred push-ups. Hundred squats. Sung Jin Woo mode. Let’s go. I’d ride that wave of bruised-ego energy all the way back to my room and actually start.
And then sowhere around push-up five or six, the room would start tilting. My arms would give out. And I’d decide — reasonably, I thought — that I’d give it my absolute best tomorrow.
Tomorrow always had reasons of its own.
"Does it matter?" I asked. "Just show how to get stronger."
She clicked her fingers again. A second screen opened to her left.
[Street Fight Tournant]
[Stages 1–30]
[Apply for tournant]
"What is this?"
"Your starting section," Alia said, folding her hands. "The lowest of the four available tournants — the Street Fight Tournant. Like all tournants in the system, it consists of thirty stages. You defeat thirty opponents, you clear the tournant."
I stared at the screen.
"Hold on. Thirty opponents?"
She looked at with the specific patience of soone who had already decided to slow things down.
"It’s a street fight tournant. Once you apply, the system queues you against thirty consecutive opponents across thirty stages. Clear them all, you advance."
The more clearly I understood it, the more it unsettled . A street fight. On the street. Against people who presumably knew how to fight — as opposed to , who had just yesterday thrown my first real punch in four years of high school and imdiately gotten kicked into the floor for it.
"Isn’t there an easier path?" I asked. "A stat boost, a skill grant — I don’t even have an ability yet. Surely there’s a shortcut."
Alia nodded, with the energy of soone who had anticipated this exact question and prepared accordingly.
"This is a system. Not a freeload chanism. Your stat profile shows you listed as a late bloor — which ans you were not born without an ability. You simply haven’t awakened it yet. My function is to guide you and enforce discipline and consistency. Not to hand you power you haven’t earned. Becoming overpowered is a process. I’m here to manage that process."
I exhaled. Long and slow.
She was right. That was the irritating part. There was no honest version of this where I woke up strong tomorrow without putting in the work. If I was ever going to be in a position where soone like Tyler couldn’t just casually dismantle , then I had to learn how to actually fight back — and I had to start sowhere.
"Alright," I said, and exhaled again. "Apply for the tournant."
I wasn’t fully certain about this. Maybe fifty percent certain. Maybe less. But staying exactly as I was wasn’t an option anymore — Tyler and every high-tier in Silvic High had already made that clear. And sowhere underneath all the reluctance, I was tired of just absorbing it.
"Done." Alia glanced to the side as a notification populated.
[Tournant Application Processing]
[Your first Stage will be announced once the application has been verified.]
I opened my mouth to ask what that ant exactly — and then the infirmary door creaked open.
Nurse Joey, I assud.
But the person who walked into the ward wasn’t Joey.
Cassian. One of Tyler’s crew. He had the bruise on his nose I’d put there earlier — faded now, but still visible — and the expression of soone who’d had a bad few hours and was very much planning to pass that along.
Looking at that bruise, I felt sothing small and satisfied settle in my chest.
"Co on." He crossed the room, grabbed the drip line connected to my arm, and yanked it free without any further conversation.
"What the hell—" I tried to push him back, but he’d already gripped my arm. "Let go of !"
"It’ll be quick." He hauled off the stretcher and toward the door.
What’s Tyler planning now.
***
I heard Tyler’s voice before I saw him.
"You know how I feel about mistakes, Rowan."
Cassian had dragged all the way to the school gym. Tyler was up on the wrestling ring — and kneeling at his feet was soone I recognised from class.
Rowan. The quiet one. Wire-rimd glasses, always in the corner, always looking like the kind of person who’d already accepted that high school was just sothing that happened to him.
I’d clocked it within his first week here — he’d arrived already stripped of most of his self-esteem. Which made him exactly the kind of person Tyler gravitated toward. In a few short weeks he’d gone from new student to full-ti errand boy. Tyler’s tool of choice. I didn’t bla him for it. Behind all the posturing and theatrics, Tyler had a way of making himself feel genuinely inescapable.
"I told you to pass the potatoes at lunch," Tyler was saying, dragging a hand through his hair with perford frustration. "That was all. How do you get sothing that simple wrong?"
"It was a mistake. I’m sorry." Rowan was fully on his knees, voice small, that miserable look in his eyes that ca from having given up on the idea of dignity. "Please don’t hurt ."
Tyler’s expression shifted the mont he heard that. The smirk — the specific one that ant he’d gotten exactly what he wanted — spread across his face slowly.
"Alright, alright. Co on, stand up." He even reached out a hand to help Rowan to his feet. Like a person who genuinely cared.
The punch ca imdiately after. Hard, sudden, no build-up. Rowan went backwards and down, hands flying to his nose. He was covering it, but blood was already moving through his fingers, trailing over his lips.
"That’s for making miss lunch," Tyler said. The smirk hadn’t moved. "Now, scram."
Rowan got up and left the ring at speed.
Tyler did his standard sweep of the room — scanning for whatever ca next — and found . His face brightened in a way that was more unsettling than if he’d looked angry.
"Ren. There you are." He leaned back against the ring ropes. "Been waiting for you."
He waved over. Then I took three steps and stopped.
"Why the ugly look?" He tilted his head. "This is for your benefit."
Which ant it wasn’t. Whatever he was setting up, it was going to benefit exactly one person, and that person was Tyler.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"A deal." He straightened slightly. "I’m guessing you still want to take responsibility for that cheat note. Clear your na before Professor Chen turns it into a suspension."
"What’s the deal."
"Beat in a fair fight." I could swear he flexed when he said it — casual, like he wasn’t even trying to hide it. "No abilities or tricks. Clean fight. You win, I walk straight to the staff room and confess to everything."
"Right," I said. "Very believable."
"Believe it or don’t. That’s on you."
He wasn’t trustworthy. That was a fact, not an opinion. Tyler lied the way most people breathed — reflexively, without thinking about it. There was no realistic version of this where he kept his word.
But.
This was the only path, slim as it was, where he might actually say sothing true. Walk away now and I’d have a suspension letter by end of week. Stay and at least there was a chance — however small — that this ended differently.
"Alright," I said. "Let’s get this over with."
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