The next three months were an exhausting blur of spilled water, choking smoke, and a whole lot of sweat.
I kept my head completely down at school. I didn't talk to anyone in the hallways, I ate my lunch alone in the library, and I avoided eye contact. But things were changing. Every single day, the loud kids on the yellow bus got more and more restless and excited about one massive event: The Intraschool Battle Royale.
It was exactly what it sounded like—a giant, all-out tournament where every student in the school got to show off their powers in the main gymnasium. There were no written tests or boring essays. It was a pure fighting arena. The winner got a huge, shiny trophy, their name painted on the hallway banner, and total, unquestioned respect from the entire student body.
Everyone still thought I was just the normal, helpless girl who hid in the dusty history section. They assumed I would just sit high up in the back of the bleachers, cover my head, and hide while the real heroes fought it out.
They were totally wrong. I had work to do.
Every day after school, I sprinted home, locked myself inside, and trained until my muscles shook. I started with water. Since I had already unlocked the skill by completely understanding the logic behind the janitor's movements, I just needed to practice making my own body do it.
I filled my bathroom sink to the brim with freezing cold water. I stood in front of the mirror, took a deep breath, and held out my hand. I stared at the still surface and twitched my pointer finger upward, copying the exact muscle tension I had memorized. A single, wobbly drop of water floated up into the air. My heart leaped. But when I tried to excitedly pull my whole hand up to lift the rest of it, the connection snapped. The water splashed loudly back down, soaking the front of my shirt and making a huge puddle on the bathmat.
It was incredibly frustrating. But I didn't give up. I practiced for hours every single night until my fingers cramped into claws. Through trial and error, I figured out the exact rules of my new power. I learned that if I squeezed my pinky finger inward, the floating water got tight and hard, almost like a baseball made of solid glass. If I swept my arm violently from side to side, the water stretched out long and thin, cutting through the air like a rope.
By the end of the second month, I didn't need the tiny bathroom sink anymore. I could stand in the middle of our backyard, pull a thick stream of water right out of the green garden hose, and whip it through the empty air so fast it cleanly chopped the heads off my dad's overgrown dandelions.
*Ding!*
**[Basic Water Control leveled up to Lv. 5]**
**[New skill Unlocked: Water Whip]**
Fire, on the other hand, was much harder. I had unlocked the fire skill by reading my fantasy book and fully understanding the logic of stealing nearby heat. The system had accepted my answer. But knowing the rules in my head was very different from surviving it with my bare hands.
I practiced fire late at night in the dry dirt behind our detached garage, where nobody could see the glowing light from the street. I started with a single, small white candle. I sat cross-legged in the dirt and stared at the tiny yellow flame flickering in the dark. I didn't try to just make my own fire out of thin air. Instead, I followed the rules of the book. I imagined a thick, invisible string connecting the hot candle to the center of my palm. I focused all my energy and pulled the heat toward me.
The very first time I did it, the candle went out instantly, completely robbed of its warmth. But all that stolen heat rushed straight into my skin. The palm of my hand got so blisteringly hot that I screamed out loud and dropped face-first into the dirt. I had to sneak back inside and hold my throbbing, bright red hand in a bucket of ice cubes for over an hour.
But I kept trying. I had the system, and I wasn't going to quit.
I learned how to catch the stolen heat and hold it hovering an inch away from my skin so I didn't burn myself again. I practiced pulling the thick, heavy heat from the ticking metal engines of my parents' cars after they drove home from work. I secretly pulled the heat right out of boiling pots of water on the stove while my dad was looking the other way. I packed all that stolen, invisible warmth into a tight, spinning ball of air right above my open hand. Once the ball got so packed with pressure that it glowed a blinding, bright orange, I learned how to punch the air and throw it.
By the end of the third month, I could steal the ambient heat from our entire living room—leaving my parents shivering and reaching for blankets on the couch—and throw a fireball the size of a basketball. The last one I threw hit the metal trash can behind the garage and instantly turned it into a glowing, smoking puddle of melted goo.
*Ding!*
**[Heat Transfer Fireball leveled up to Lv. 4]**
**[System Warning: Please be careful! Do not burn your house down!]**
Now, it was Thursday night. The Battle Royale was tomorrow morning.
I sat alone on my bedroom carpet and looked closely at my hands under the desk lamp. My fingers were covered in small, peeling burn marks and tiny cuts from the snapping water whip, but my hands didn't shake anymore. The terrified girl who hid in the locker was gone. I felt strong.
I didn't have super speed. I couldn't shoot lasers from my eyes or turn my skin into rock. I didn't have a flashy, famous power passed down from my elite parents. I just had a basic fireball, a water whip, and a super cool system.
But I had a massive advantage. Because I had to actually *understand* exactly how my magic worked to unlock it, I could use it in ways the other kids wouldn't expect. They just blindly threw their powers around, relying on raw strength until they got tired and ran out of breath. I knew the physics. I knew the rules. I used my magic like a precision tool.
I stood up and packed my faded gray hoodie into my backpack. I zipped it shut and smiled into the dark room.
Tomorrow, the whole school was going to learn exactly what happens when you underestimate an overachieving, hyperimaginative bookworm with a system.