Max left Isa’s office feeling on top of the world.
He had navigated an impossible negotiation and emerged with a strategic alliance.
As he walked down the hallway, he spotted a familiar figure leaning against the wall, typing on her phone with an indifference so studied it could only be fake.
“Victoria.
What a surprise to find you here,” Max said, his voice tinged with playful irony.
“Just responding to some messages,” she replied, without looking up.
“It got late.”
Max activated [Player Gaze].
[Victoria Mont]
Level 3: Campus Queen
Status: Curious.
Slightly Jealous (not romantic, but regarding possession/influence).
Surface Thought: What on earth did they talk about for so long?
Isa never meets in private with anyone.
What did he offer her?
Is she trying to steal my ‘discovery’?
With the truth floating before his eyes, Max decided to play.
“Sure, ‘messages’.” he said with a conspiratorial tone.
“You wouldn’t be a little jealous that I’m making new friends, would you?
Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten who my first sponsor was.”
Victoria snapped her head up, her eyes flashing at being caught so easily.
“Don’t be ridiculous, scholarship kid.
I’m simply protecting my investment.”
Max dropped the mockery and adopted a more serious tone—one that disarmed her with its sincerity.
“In all seriousness, Victoria.
I wanted to say thank you.
Your ‘sponsorship’ into the Circle…
has opened more doors than you imagine.
I really owe you one.”
“I can’t afford to pay you back yet,” he continued, with an honesty she didn’t expect.
“But I promise you that, very soon, I’ll be the one inviting you to dinner.
And not at some cheap student joint, but somewhere that’s actually on your level.
As a proper thank you.”
The declaration left her silent.
He wasn’t acting like a grateful subordinate, but like a future equal.
For an instant, the calculating ‘Campus Queen’ vanished.
A fleeting image crossed her mind: her, sitting across from him in an elegant restaurant, not as his mentor, but simply as…
his date.
The idea was so absurd she dismissed it immediately, but a strange warmth persisted for a second.
She nodded slowly, her expression now truly indecipherable.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Max” she said, though her voice lacked its usual bite.
She turned and walked away, leaving Max with the certainty that he had just moved an important piece on his personal board.
The next morning, on the seventh and final day of his mission, Max was in the gym before dawn.
His body was a map of muscular aches, but his mind was focused.
“Ready for the last day of the week, rookie?” Laura greeted him with a smile.
The session was the most brutal yet.
Laura pushed him further than he thought possible.
On the last rep of his last exercise, with his muscles screaming and on the verge of collapse, he felt a shift.
A surge of warm energy coursed through his body.
And in his mind, the long-awaited ding.
[Side Quest: Warrior’s Foundations completed!]
[You have demonstrated exceptional discipline and determination!]
[Rewards granted:]
Passive Skill Acquired: [Training Multiplier (x2)].
+3 System Points (SP).
Relationship with Laura Soler increased: Acquaintance -> Gym Friend.
Exhausted but with a vibrant sense of triumph, Max dropped onto a mat beside Laura.
The air around them felt thick, charged with the heat of shared effort and the metallic scent of the gym.
The pain radiating from his muscle fibers wasn’t an annoyance, but a tangible testimony of his achievement: one more brick in the building he was constructing.
Instead of getting up and rushing to the shower to take refuge in his solitude—as his old instinct dictated—Max decided it was time to invest time in the person who had guided him through this voluntary torture.
“Seriously, thank you for this, Laura,” Max said, his voice sounding a bit deeper and raspier due to the fatigue.
“I wouldn’t have made it halfway through the workout without your shouting.”
Laura gave him a genuine smile—one of those that lit up her sweaty face and gave her an air of almost electric vitality.
“Don’t mention it, rookie.
You’ve got a willpower of steel, I’ll give you that,” she replied, while starting to stretch with a flexibility Max envied.
“But tell me, what’s the real goal?
Planning to join a team or just tired of looking like someone the wind could blow away at any second?”
Her tone was mocking—a friendly jab—but her dark eyes sparkled with sincere curiosity.
She was trying to decipher the enigma Max represented: a guy who dressed like an executive, bet like an oracle, and trained like a maniac.
“Something like that,” Max replied with a half-smile, hiding the complexity of his plans behind a simple answer.
“Let’s just say I’m improving my…
general presentation.
And what about you?
Aside from being the undisputed queen of this temple of iron, what drives you to train like the world’s going to end tomorrow?”
The question seemed to catch her off guard.
Most people on campus only saw ‘Laura Soler, the athlete’—a high-performance engine.
Few ever asked about the fuel.
She stretched, pulling one knee to her chest with a sigh.
“Well, it’s not a state secret.
The Olympics.
That’s the only goal on my radar.”
“Really?
That’s incredible,” Max said, genuinely impressed.
It wasn’t just a wish; there was a weight of heavy responsibility in her voice.
“That must be an enormous amount of pressure.”
“It is.” she admitted, and for a moment, her expression lost its usual lightness, turning somber.
“Every second counts.
Every gram of muscle, every calorie, every hour of sleep…
Sometimes I feel like my life is nothing but a series of numbers: times, weights, distances.”
She paused briefly and then smiled again, as if shooing away a ghost with a wave of her hand.
“But it’s worth it! Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Besides, it’s not all Spartan suffering.
I have a sacred reward at the end of every hard training week.”
“A chocolate medal?” Max joked.
“Much better,” she said, her eyes sparkling with almost childlike mischief.
“A quart of chocolate ice cream with double caramel sauce.
I eat the whole thing, by myself, while watching some terribly cheesy rom-com on Netflix.
It’s my purification ritual.”
Max laughed for real.
The image of the elite athlete—the precision machine that allowed no errors—curled up in front of a screen with a tub of ice cream was so human and adorable that it completely disarmed him.
“I didn’t peg you as a fan of sap and sugar,” he confessed.
“It’s my secret fuel!” she declared with feigned seriousness.
“Chocolate is good for the soul, and my soul needs a lot of maintenance after how hard I put you through the wringer here every morning.”
The conversation flowed with astonishing ease from there.
They talked about eccentric professors, the movies they both considered guilty pleasures, and the strange fauna that inhabited the campus.
Max discovered that beneath the athlete’s iron armor beat the heart of a funny, down-to-earth girl with a natural kindness that stood in stark contrast to the cold calculation dominating the minds of Victoria or Isa.
In the middle of a laugh over a shared anecdote, a massive shadow loomed over them.
A guy from the rugby team, with a neck as wide as Max’s thighs and an expression of hereditary arrogance, approached, ignoring Max entirely.
“Hey, Soler.
There’s a party at the frat house tonight.
You should come.
There’ll be music, drinks, plenty of fun people.
It’d be a lot more entertaining than hanging out here with…
this guy.”
Laura’s smile evaporated like steam on a mirror.
Her posture turned icy.
“Thanks for the offer, Marcos, but I’m busy,” she replied, her voice cutting through the air like a knife.
“And ‘this guy’ is my friend, Max.
We were in the middle of a private conversation, if you don’t mind.”
Marcos, who expected a submissive reaction from Max or perhaps a pathetic attempt to defend himself, instead found a calm that threw him off.
Max didn’t even tense up.
He simply looked him in the eye—without a trace of fear or anger—using the same clinical gaze he used to analyze a stock chart.
His new physical presence, though still in the making, and the absolute lack of intimidation in his eyes made the rugby player feel strangely small and awkward.
Marcos grumbled something unintelligible about ‘wasting time’ and strode away.
The moment, rather than being awkward, created a new level of complicity between them.
“Don’t mind him,” Laura said, visibly annoyed.
“He’s an idiot who thinks the world is a rugby pitch.”
“Doesn’t bother me” Max responded with a calm smile.
And it was true.
Thanks to [Player Mind], Marcos’s ego was just static noise.
They continued chatting for a while longer, sealing a bond that now went beyond physical instruction.
Later, Max returned to his apartment and, after a scalding shower that seemed to dissolve the last remnants of lactic acid, he looked in the bedroom mirror.
The change was no longer a suggestion of his imagination.
His shoulders looked wider, his posture was straighter, and his muscles were starting to show lines of definition that hadn’t existed a week ago.
He was no longer the scrawny youth drowning in a river; he was the architect of his own flesh.
With 3 fresh SP in his account and a new ally whose loyalty didn’t depend on contracts but on mutual respect, Max felt truly powerful for the first time.
He was building an empire, yes, but he was doing it piece by piece, ensuring the foundations were as solid as his new will.
The game was only just beginning.