I climbed up to the ring.
My eyes were already fixed on Tyler before I'd fully settled into my stance — tracking his posture, his weight distribution, anything I could read. The funny thing was that he wasn't doing anything. He just stood there against the elastic ropes, arms loose, watching me with the exact expression you'd give a child who was trying to act serious.
Amused. Unbothered. Completely unconcerned.
That look, more than anything else, made something curl tight in my chest.
[Profile Scanning Proceeding]
[Name: Tyler Wilson | Ability: Hardening | Rank: C | Difficulty: Insane]
[Profile Scanning Complete]
[Overall Tip: Run]
I stared at that last line for a second.
So the system did profile scans. Useful, in theory. I already knew Tyler's ability and his rank — those weren't secrets. What I hadn't known, what the scan was now telling me very plainly, was that relative to where I was standing, Tyler Wilson was an insane difficulty rating.
And the system whose entire purpose was to make me stronger had looked at this matchup and decided the best tip it could offer was to run.
Well. Running was something I'd spent the better part of my life doing. It was practically a reflex at this point. But it had never once actually solved anything — it just pushed problems to a later date, let them sit and compound and wait for you.
Not today.
"Cute," Tyler said, the corner of his mouth pulling up when I raised my fists. "I can tell you don't do this every day."
"Shut up and fight."
Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe it was the accumulated weight of every single thing this week. Either way, that was all I said before I rushed him — right arm swinging hard toward his face.
For a moment it looked like it would actually connect.
Then he just tilted, barely moving his feet, and let the punch pass by his ear. His hands stayed behind his back the entire time.
Classic. Sensei mode. Performing for the audience.
I pressed forward anyway, swinging whatever combinations my arms could manage at whatever speed they could manage it. He moved around all of it. Not scrambling — that would have implied some effort on his part. He was just there and then not there, his hands still clasped behind him like I wasn't worth bringing them out for.
Displaying dominance. Got it.
"That all you've got?" He was laughing between the words. "You're weaker than I thought."
Not that he was wrong. I hadn't even taken a hit from him yet — I was still in the swinging phase — and I was already pulling air like I'd been running for an hour. My lungs had opinions about this. Loud ones.
"Sometimes I wonder what your actual plan for survival is," Tyler continued, drifting out of range of another swing. "You think wit and cleverness are going to carry you? Look around, Ren. This world is not built for someone like you."
"Makes two of us," I managed, going for a kick that he sidestepped without even glancing down.
"You're a cripple." He said it flat, like a statement of fact rather than an insult. "People like you don't last long in environments like this. How many people without abilities do you know who made something of themselves? None. You don't get jobs. You don't get opportunities. You're a charity case the government keeps around to feel better about itself."
I kept moving. Kept swinging.
But that last part landed somewhere deeper than the fight.
Not anger — not exactly. Something closer to pain. The specific kind that comes from realising what someone actually thinks of you when they're not bothering to soften it. Not performed contempt. Just his honest assessment. That people like me existed as a kind of practical display of uselessness.
Something shifted in me afterwards.
I stopped swinging and started moving — closed the distance differently, lower, driving my shoulder into his torso the same way I'd taken Cassian into the locker. I caught him. Pushed him back into the ring ropes and tried to pin him there, using my body weight to hold him while I worked for a grip.
He didn't panic. He just started driving his elbows and forearms into my back, methodical, working the same spot each time.
In frustration I threw him off and down to the floor, going with him, landing over him and reaching for a punch.
He blocked it.
I tried again. Blocked again. A third time — still blocked, his forearms reading every angle I offered.
He shot his knees up and I lost my balance. In the half-second that took, he flipped the position — and then he was the one on top.
His first punch came and I got my arm up to block. The arm went numb immediately.
Useless.
The second punch came through the dead arm. I felt it in the bone — an actual crack somewhere along the radius — and my guard collapsed completely. My face was open.
THWACK. Against my jawline. Then again. Then more, at a pace I couldn't count anymore. My field of vision started contracting at the edges, the room swaying in and out of focus.
Not again. Is this actually just how it ends for me every time?
Then he stopped.
He stood — breathing hard, chest working — and looked down at me with that expression. The one that wasn't anger anymore, just satisfaction. Like I was something he'd finished with.
I knew Tyler. I knew him. Stopping mid-berserk wasn't his pattern. When he got going he didn't pull back — he kept going until there was nothing left to respond to.
So why—
"You see, I was right," he said, still reining in his breathing. "Not just weak. Hopeless."
He looked past me, down toward the gym floor where his crew was watching. His eyes found Rowan. He gave a short nod.
"Come up here, Rowan."
The boy scurried up to the ring like the instruction had been a reflex he'd been trained into.
"Punch him."
Motherfucker.
Rowan went still. "What...?"
"You heard me." Tyler's patience was already thinning. "I said punch him."
Rowan walked over to me — slow, dragging his feet like he was hoping the floor would offer some kind of exit. Then he grabbed my collar, pulled me up partway, and hit me.
It was the kind of punch you'd use on something fragile. Ceramic, maybe. Like he was genuinely trying not to break me.
"Here." Tyler pulled Rowan aside and demonstrated — one punch, full force, and Rowan left the ground before he came back down. "That's how. Now try again."
Rowan stood slowly. I could see the red already spreading where he'd been hit. He pressed the spot once, then walked back over to me. His grip on my collar was tighter this time.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Then the punch. Harder now. I tasted copper — warm and immediate.
"There it is," Tyler said, the satisfaction in his voice genuine. "Knew you had it in you."
He walked over, crouched in front of me, and held that position for a moment — just looking. The pitying look lasted about two seconds before his expression settled into something colder.
"I'll make this interesting. Malpractice usually takes a week to process — so your suspension window is still open." He tilted his head slightly. "Which means you've got a week. One whole week. Beat me before your time runs out, you save yourself. That's the deal."
He laughed once — short, derisive — then stood and walked out of the gym, Rowan and the rest trailing after him.
I'm going to kill him.
"Weakling."
I looked up. Amelia had reappeared, hovering a few feet above me with that look she'd apparently reserved specifically for moments like this.
"Speak for yourself," I said. "You're a hologram whose entire job is to help me and you didn't offer a single tip the whole fight."
"I don't prefer to interfere with pre-existing relationships," Amelia replied, with the energy of someone who had already prepared that answer. "Besides, I was monitoring something."
"Monitoring what?"
"Your first tournament challenge. The application was approved."
I blinked. "That fast?"
"Yes."
"So when is it?"
"Ten seconds from now."
What?
A new screen blinked into existence in front of me.
[Stage 1 | Difficulty: Hard | Timer: 00:00:10]
"Ten seconds?" I was already sitting up. "Can you push it back? Extend the timer?"
"I can't reverse time," Amelia said simply.
[Timer: 00:00:01]
[System Notification: Replacing Domain]
The gym dissolved.
It happened all at once — floor reshaping into smooth gravel, walls folding outward and disappearing, replaced by the tight geometry of a dark alleyway. A streetlight at the far corner flickered on a two-second cycle, like it was trying to decide whether to commit. The space had that specific quality of somewhere you'd make a bad decision at 2 AM.
It looked real. Almost completely real. Except the sky above wasn't black, it was a deep reddish hue, off in a way that made the eyes want to correct for it. And the whole environment had a low-level glitch to it, like a program running slightly beyond its specifications.
"Domain replacement," I muttered, mostly to myself.
Amelia, predictably, had taken another unannounced absence.
I was alone.
Or at least that's what anyone would think until they heard the footsteps.
The sound came from somewhere down the alleyway — heavy, deliberate, accompanied by something between a breath and a growl.
Under the stuttering streetlight, a figure resolved into shape. Big. Wide across the shoulders, wearing a ripped tank top that looked like it had survived things. He was walking like a man collecting a debt — direct, unhurried, fully certain about what happened next.
And he was gripping a bat. Not carrying it. Gripping it — the kind of grip where you could see the veins working up his forearm.
[Stage 1: Player VS Stone | Difficulty: Hard | Lives Left: 3/3]
I looked at the name.
"So my first challenger," I said slowly, "is a guy named Stone?"
I looked at the bat.
Yeah. I'm stoned.