The house was still quiet when he got back. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Holden stepped through the Aegis Array and reset the seal.

He went up the stairs slowly, pausing outside Maeve’s door.

The door wasn’t fully closed. Through the small opening, he could see the glow of her nightlight.

She was safe.

He pulled the door closed, as gently as he could.

Then he walked to his own room, shut the door, and sat on the floor.

He pulled the bottle from inside his jacket and put it on the ground in front of him. It glowed softly in the dark with gold and white light.

The energy builds up faster than your body can vent it.

The voice of the merchant was still ringing inside his head.

Then it finds its own exit.

"Right," Holden said to the bottle.

The glass felt warm as he lifted it. The energy contained within was so powerful that he could feel it pressing against the lid, trying to escape despite the strength of the bottle.

He thought about the ruins. The beasts in it and the toxic fog.

He thought about Draven, who was definitely planning something for him inside those ruins and was too cautious to do it openly before they walked in.

He thought about the Lotus, and Vespera’s cracked star core, and what full political protection actually meant for his sister.

He broke the seal on the bottle.

He drank it all in one go.

For about half a second, nothing happened.

Then it hit him like a wall.

CRACK.

His spine went rigid. Every vein in his body ignited at once, burning as if they had injected him with magma instead of blood. He could feel it in his fingertips, in his teeth, the back of his eyes.

His muscles seized, like his body couldn’t decide whether to expand or collapse and was trying to do both at the same time. The energy from the serum wasn’t flowing through him. It was tearing through him, ripping along every channel it could find.

Crack. Crack.

He heard his bones popping under the pressure. The energy had reached his bones, and they were fighting back against the pressure.

His vision went white. It was so bright it felt like he was staring at the sun from two inches away.

And then the System woke up.

[100x Absorption Protocol: Active.]

The multiplier locked onto the Serum’s energy.

And it began to work.

The raw power that had been tearing through him like a wrecking ball suddenly had somewhere to go. His cells broke free and began absorbing, faster than they were ever supposed to, pulling in everything the Serum was outputting with zero waste, zero loss. A hundred times faster than a body was built to handle.

The fire in his veins didn’t stop.

But it changed.

Whoosh.

Like someone had redirected the flood. The burning feeling was still there, but it stopped being violent.

His bones felt like it was being recast.

His muscles felt like they were being compressed and packed dense until every fiber was coiled like rope under his skin.

The white faded from his vision.

He could see the floor again. His hands. The empty bottle lying on its side near his knee.

He was still breathing.

The System chimed.

[Foundation Limit Reached.]

[Advancement Unlocked.]

He felt it happen.

It wasn’t loud, just a quiet snap deep in his core. After that, he could suddenly think clearly, and a calm feeling washed over him from the inside out.

His inner energy stopped feeling dense and compressed.

It felt like space.

He sat there for a moment, just breathing, feeling the new him. His shoulders felt different. His hands felt different. When he pressed his palm on the floor, the floorboards creaked softly beneath pressure he had not been putting on them a minute before.

He stood up slowly.

Thud.

His foot hit the floor and the sound was different than it had been before. Like the floor had sensed a difference.

He walked to the far wall, raised his right fist, and punched it lightly.

CRACK.

A thin line crack opened on the wall.

He pulled his hand back and looked at it. His knuckles weren’t even red.

He hadn’t used any technique. He had neither activated Asura’s Ignition, nor channeled anything through the Star-Forged sword. He just punched a wall the same way he would knock on a door, and the wall lost.

The system screen blinked into view in the corner of his vision.

[Fighter Rank: Rank 1, 7-Star.]

He stared at it for a second.

He went up two full stars In one night. From a bottle the size of his thumb.

His body had finally caught up.

For the first time since he’d gotten the System, his raw strength actually matched what his skills were capable of.

He thought about the ruins, about the beasts inside, about the fog and the three days ahead of him.

Then he looked at his System screen again.

[Kill Points: 350KP]

[Next Multiplier Upgrade: 1,000 KP]

As he looked at the 350KP, a different kind of pressure began to build. Reaching 7 star was a big step up. Still, in a rank 2 zone,you can never be too careful. Thinking you have "enough" power can get you killed.

He needed more.

And dawn was still hours away.

He picked up his jacket from the floor, checked that the Aegis Array seal on Maeve’s door was still active, and headed back downstairs.

The night wasn’t done with him yet.