The first thing I registered was the smell.
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 smells can be — not quite a scent, more like an announcement.
I blinked through the blur, and the ceiling tiles came 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 me 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 medical incident or skips that step entirely and just kills you. Apparently I'd landed somewhere in the middle.
Not again.
This was the eighth time this week. And today was still only Tuesday. Eight visits meant eight separate occasions where Nurse Joey had found some new and creative way to yell at me for being reckless. That man had never once shown a single sign of understanding my situation. He just kept finding fresh angles of disappointment.
[Error: Transmigration Portal Is Not Responding]
Huh?
[Alert!]
[Choose Your Path]
[Path A: You become 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 meant 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 something that didn't have hands, while some 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.
Somehow, speaking out loud was enough. The system responded immediately.
The screen shifted — text dissolving into a blank loading state. I waited, expecting the standard rollout. Stats. Inventory. A skill tree. Something that looked like the kind of interface that made sense. What appeared instead made me 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 me at eye level. She was looking directly at me with the kind of smile that said, finally, someone 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 me like she'd been waiting.
"Hi, Ren."
"The fuck—" My eyebrows went up. "How do you know my name? And who are you?"
"My name is Amelia 5.0." The smile didn't shift even slightly as she spoke. "I am your interacting interface. As for your name — 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 become 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]
[Name: Ren Mora | Ability: None (Late Bloomer) | Rank: F]
[Statistics]
[Force: 7 | Agility: 4 | Stamina: 11 | Fortitude: 0.0001]
"This is your documented stat profile," Amelia 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 time 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 somewhere 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 me how to get stronger."
She clicked her fingers again. A second screen opened to her left.
[Street Fight Tournament]
[Stages 1–30]
[Apply for tournament]
"What is this?"
"Your starting section," Amelia said, folding her hands. "The lowest of the four available tournaments — the Street Fight Tournament. Like all tournaments in the system, it consists of thirty stages. You defeat thirty opponents, you clear the tournament."
I stared at the screen.
"Hold on. Thirty opponents?"
She looked at me with the specific patience of someone who had already decided to slow things down.
"It's a street fight tournament. 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 me. A street fight. On the street. Against people who presumably knew how to fight — as opposed to me, who had just yesterday thrown my first real punch in four years of high school and immediately 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."
Amelia nodded, with the energy of someone who had anticipated this exact question and prepared accordingly.
"This is a system. Not a freeload mechanism. Your stat profile shows you listed as a late bloomer — which means 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 someone like Tyler couldn't just casually dismantle me, then I had to learn how to actually fight back — and I had to start somewhere.
"Alright," I said, and exhaled again. "Apply me for the tournament."
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 somewhere underneath all the reluctance, I was tired of just absorbing it.
"Done." Amelia glanced to the side as a notification populated.
[Tournament Application Processing]
[Your first Stage will be announced once the application has been verified.]
I opened my mouth to ask what that meant exactly — and then the infirmary door creaked open.
Nurse Joey, I assumed.
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 someone who'd had a bad few hours and was very much planning to pass that along.
Looking at that bruise, I felt something small and satisfied settle in my chest.
"Come 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 me!"
"It'll be quick." He hauled me 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 me all the way to the school gym. Tyler was up on the wrestling ring — and kneeling at his feet was someone I recognised from class.
Rowan. The quiet one. Wire-rimmed glasses, always in the corner, always looking like the kind of person who'd already accepted that high school was just something 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-time errand boy. Tyler's tool of choice. I didn't blame 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 performed frustration. "That was all. How do you get something 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 came from having given up on the idea of dignity. "Please don't hurt me."
Tyler's expression shifted the moment he heard that. The smirk — the specific one that meant he'd gotten exactly what he wanted — spread across his face slowly.
"Alright, alright. Come on, stand up." He even reached out a hand to help Rowan to his feet. Like a person who genuinely cared.
The punch came immediately 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 me 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 came next — and found me. 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 me over. Then I took three steps and stopped.
"Why the ugly look?" He tilted his head. "This is for your benefit."
Which meant 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 me to take responsibility for that cheat note. Clear your name before Professor Chen turns it into a suspension."
"What's the deal."
"Beat me 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 something 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."