The morning after their library meeting, Max received an email from Isa.
The message was a perfect reflection of its sender: stripped of ornament, efficient, and surgical.
Subject: Investment Proposals
Max,
I have analyzed your reports.
The Vireon thesis is solid, though speculative.
The short-term opportunities are logically consistent.
We will proceed as discussed.
Meet me in the computer lab at the Economics Building at 2 PM.
We will need to execute the trades together.
— IL
A surge of relief washed over Max—a warm sensation that his [Player Mind] allowed him to enjoy for an instant before returning to strategic coldness.
The first and most difficult step—winning the trust of the campus’s most valuable intellectual asset—had been a success.
At exactly 2 PM, Max entered the high-tech lab.
The air was stale with the smell of server ozone and the constant hum of Bloomberg terminals.
Isa was already there, a solitary silhouette in front of a screen filled with candlestick charts and real-time data streams.
Upon seeing him arrive, she didn’t smile, but she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a gesture that betrayed a hidden tension.
Before Max could say a word or touch a key, she swiveled in her ergonomic chair and looked at him with a seriousness that seemed to stop time.
“Max, I need you to understand something before we press a single button.” she said, her voice dropping to an almost confessional tone.
“Unlike Victoria, Leo, and most of the students at this university, I am not an ‘heiress’.
I don’t come from a wealthy family.
My family is academic, not corporate.
The capital I am about to invest is mine.
These are my life savings, excellence scholarships I’ve won, and reinvested profits from my own low-risk trades.
This isn’t play money.
It’s my future”
She paused, allowing the weight of her words to settle in the room.
She was placing her entire life into Max’s ‘black box’.
“My total available capital for these trades is $50,000.” she continued.
“We will allocate 60% to Vireon and 20% to each of the short-term opportunities, as you suggested”
Max nodded slowly.
The magnitude of the responsibility fell onto his shoulders like a lead cloak.
It was no longer just about his own progress or humiliating his rivals; he was the guardian of someone else’s effort and intellect.
The pressure was immense, but his mind, tempered by the failure of a previous life, processed it as fuel.
They sat side by side.
For the next hour, Isa’s analytical precision and Max’s strategic vision fused into a symphony of clicks and commands.
There were no doubts.
With every buy order executed, Max felt the threads of his empire begin to tighten.
The first joint bet of their fledgling partnership was officially on the market.
When they finished, they parted with a brief nod.
Max left the building feeling the world vibrate beneath his feet.
Back in the solitude of his room, he sat at his mahogany desk and summoned the System interface.
His initial instinct screamed at him to strengthen his body—to increase his Strength or Agility for the gym—but the memory of Leo’s face—his influence, his ability to sway the masses with a single taunt—taught him a crucial lesson.
His next battle wouldn’t be fought with weights, but with perceptions.
In this elite ecosystem, image was power, and presence was armor.
“System,” he commanded while doing mental math.
He remembered that each SP gave a 0.05 increase to an attribute; what he had would be enough for now.
“Invest all 5 SP into Charisma.”
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Expense: 5 SP
Attribute: Charisma (CHA)
Base: 0.9 -> 1.15
Total (Title Bonus “The Regresor” applied): 1.2 -> 1.45
He felt a subtle, almost imperceptible shift.
It wasn’t a burst of energy, but a readjustment within his own skin.
His back straightened naturally, his chin lifted a couple of millimeters, and a new ease in inhabiting his own space washed over him.
His bearing now projected a magnetic confidence—an assurance that invited people to listen and respect him.
The scrawny ‘scholarship kid’ was disappearing, making way for something far more dangerous: a leader.
Max looked in the mirror and saw that his gaze, previously only calculating, now held a glint that could command an entire room.
Just in time, should the social war escalate.
In one of the private rooms of the social club, far from the eyes of the ‘commoners’, a frantic Leo Vargas paced back and forth.
His acolytes, accustomed to his arrogance, watched in a tense silence.
The humiliation of the 7-1 and Max’s shadow over Victoria were open wounds that wouldn’t stop festering.
“That starveling is way out of line,” Leo hissed, stopping dead in his tracks.
“They think he’s special.
An oracle, a genius…
First the bet, then Victoria, and now he’s seen coming out of Isa Lovelace’s office!
He needs a reminder of where he sits on the food chain.”
With a twisted smile, he gave the order.
They wouldn’t use brute force—not yet.
They would use the social machinery they controlled by birthright.
Within hours, a poisonous rumor began to seep through WhatsApp groups and faculty hallways: Max Adler, the social climber, was nothing more than an emotional parasite.
It was said he was using Victoria’s status as a shield while, with disgusting audacity, attempting to seduce the icy Isa Lovelace behind his benefactor’s back.
The rumor spread like wildfire.
The campus, always hungry for drama, devoured the story.
The ‘poor townie’ was already an irritating anomaly by the side of a goddess like Victoria; but the suggestion that he was also pursuing the untouchable Isa Lovelace was taken as a direct insult to the campus hierarchy.
Max began to notice the change in the air.
Conversations cut short as he passed, looks of contempt were now open and blatant, and whispers of ‘player’ and ‘pathetic’ followed him like a dense shadow.
A few days later, Leo decided the stage was set for a public execution.
He confronted Max in the central plaza during the lunch hour, just as the student influx was at its peak.
“Well, well, Adler,” Leo said, raising his voice, his tone dripping with that fake concern used to tear someone down. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“Don’t you ever get tired?
I hear one of the most influential girls on campus isn’t enough for you—you have to go after the other one too.
You’ve either got a lot of nerve, or absolutely no shame.”
The crowd fell into a tomb-like silence.
Hundreds of eyes were fixed on Max, waiting for the stutter, the lowered gaze, the total collapse of the impostor.
But Max, fueled by his new Charisma and the icy serenity of [Player Mind], didn’t back down.
On the contrary, he stood taller, and his mere presence seemed to expand, claiming the space in a way that threw Leo off.
Max simply smiled.
It wasn’t a defiant smile, but one of absolute and crushing confidence.
“Thanks for being so concerned with my social life, Leo.
It’s truly touching to see that I’m living rent-free in your head,” Max said, and his voice, imbued with a new magnetic resonance, captivated everyone present.
“But I think you’ve got the wrong perspective.
You’re talking about them like they’re objects—possessions that someone can just win or lose.”
Max took a step forward, closing the distance.
His gaze swept over the crowd before locking onto Leo’s eyes, who for the first time in his life felt small under the sun.
“The real question here isn’t what I want, or if I have ‘nerve.’ The question is whether women as smart, successful, and independent as Victoria and Isa would deem a man worthy of their time.
They aren’t trophies, Leo.
They’re the ones who decide”.
He made a dramatic pause, letting the weight of his words sink into everyone’s consciousness.
“And if in the end they decide I’m worthy of being with one…
or both of them, well, that’s just something you’re going to have to live with.
Or perhaps, you could spend less time keeping tabs on me and more time wondering what they see in me that they clearly can’t see in you.”
The blow was a verbal checkmate: subtle, devastating, and irrefutable.
Max hadn’t defended himself like an accused man; he had positioned himself as someone superior simply by virtue of being valued by the most powerful women in the place.
He had defended his honor and theirs, turning the humiliation back on Leo in a single move.
Leo stood there agape, his face turning from red to pale, unable to articulate a response to Max’s logic.
From the terrace of a nearby cafe, Victoria Mont watched the scene through her sunglasses.
A slow, genuine smile of amusement played on her lips.
“Smart, scholarship kid.
Very smart”, she thought.
She was impressed; Max had just used the social pressure she knew so well to crush his own tormentor.
On the other side of the plaza, leaving the library with a stack of books, Isa Lovelace had also overheard the end of the altercation.
Her face remained a mask of pure analysis, but her mind was racing at top speed.
“Optimal response.
Deflected the attack, reinforced our status, and reversed the pressure on the aggressor.
His social IQ is significantly higher than my data suggested.
Fascinating”.
Both women, from their respective worlds, watched as Max calmly walked away from the plaza, leaving behind a humiliated Leo and a crowd that now whispered with a new, deep-seated respect.
Max Adler had just won a battle he didn’t know he was going to fight.
He had consolidated his position with the two most important figures in his new life, but in doing so, he had turned a spoiled bully into a sworn enemy.
The social war wasn’t over; it had just leveled up.