Saturday arrived bathed in a radiant sun that turned the track into a mirror of heat.
The university sports complex was a beehive of activity—a vibrant ecosystem of colorful uniforms, rhythmic music thundering from speakers, and the constant roar of a crowd that wasn’t looking for dividends, but for glory.
To Max, the contrast was almost violent.
Accustomed to the deathly silence of libraries and the contained tension of boardrooms—where power was exercised in whispers and mouse clicks—this display of raw energy was fascinating and strangely refreshing.
He found Laura in the warm-up area, a secluded spot where the tension was palpable.
She was in her own universe, sonically isolated by her headphones, moving with a predatory elasticity.
Her gaze held a fierce concentration—the kind of focus Max had only seen before in mirrors while planning a masterstroke.
When her eyes met his, the warrior’s mask cracked for an instant.
She pulled off an earbud, letting the world’s noise back in, and gave him a quick smile charged with a genuine gratitude that needed no words.
“You came”, she said, her voice slightly breathless from the jog, but with a spark of satisfaction in her eyes.
“I told you I would,” Max replied, maintaining his position with a calm that served as an anchor amidst the chaos.
His presence there wasn’t just a courtesy; it was a reaffirmation of his new identity: a man who keeps his word, no matter how busy his empire might be.
“Good luck, Laura”.
“I don’t need it,” she joked, regaining her competitive swagger, though the way her fingers tightened on the earbud betrayed that his support meant more than her pride cared to admit.
“But thanks for being here.
Seriously.
It means a lot”.
Max let her sink back into her preparation ritual and headed for the stands.
To kill time before the main race, he watched the other events from an elevated position.
He saw the perfect, agonizing arc of a javelin throw, where brute force was sublimated into pure technique; he observed the explosive power of a long jumper, defying gravity for a fraction of a second that felt eternal.
Max didn’t understand the technicalities of these movements, but for the first time in his two lives, he appreciated the beauty of selfless physical effort.
There was something noble in that absolute dedication, in that will to push the human body to the limit just for the satisfaction of beating a record.
He realized that the success he sought in the markets required the same monastic devotion these athletes showed under the sun.
At that moment, in the middle of the shouting, Max felt more connected to reality than ever: the ‘Oracle’ was learning to admire human will in its purest state.
Finally, the loudspeaker announced the race Max had been waiting for: the women’s 400-meter dash.
In the world of track and field, this distance is known as ‘the slow death’.
It’s a brutal hybrid that demands a sprinter’s speed and a long-distance runner’s endurance—a test where the human body runs out of oxygen long before seeing the finish line.
Max stepped down from the stands with a steady gait and positioned himself strategically in the front row, resting his hands on the metal railing right at the 250-meter mark.
He knew, from the exhausting gym sessions and his biomechanics talks with Laura, that this was the ‘critical point’.
It’s the place where adrenaline runs dry, lactic acid floods the muscles like liquid cement, and the race stops being a matter of legs and becomes a battle of pure will.
The silence preceding the gunshot was absolute—an elastic tension binding the eight athletes to their fate.
BANG!
Laura exploded out of the blocks with a force that seemed to tear through the air.
Her form was a symphony of efficiency: her back perfectly aligned, her arms slicing through the wind at sharp angles, and a long stride that devoured the track with rhythmic ferocity.
For the first 200 meters, she dominated.
She led the pack with an advantage that looked insurmountable, projecting an image of invincibility that made the crowd roar.
To any spectator, her victory was a foregone conclusion.
But as she rounded the final curve and passed Max’s position, reality began to seep through the cracks of the facade. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
Max didn’t need any System skill to see it; his intuition, forged through weeks of observing Laura’s every breath and every drop of sweat, screamed at him that something had broken.
It was a purely human observation.
Seeing her up close, the ‘poetry in motion’ had transformed into a mask of agony.
He saw the subtle yet devastating change: her shoulders, once low and relaxed, had hunched up toward her ears in an instinctive defensive gesture against the pain.
Her breathing was no longer the controlled rhythm of a machine, but a forced gasp—a desperate plea for air her lungs could no longer process.
Her eyes, usually so focused, held a glint of rising panic.
Laura wasn’t racing against her rivals; she was crashing headlong into the invisible wall of extreme fatigue.
He saw the truth: his champion was on the brink of collapse, and she still had the final stretch ahead of her.
Laura’s vulnerability did not go unnoticed by the predators on the track.
From the outer lane, a runner from a rival university—an athlete with a mechanical and relentless stride—smelled blood.
Like a shark in the water, she began to close the gap with terrifying ferocity.
With a hundred meters left to the finish line, Laura’s safety margin evaporated.
Now they were running neck and neck, two blurs of frantic limbs and faces contorted by agony.
Max, gripping the railing so hard his knuckles turned white, could see the exact moment the light began to fade from Laura’s eyes.
Her gaze was turning glassy; her body was operating on pure inertia, and inertia wasn’t going to be enough to win.
She was about to be overtaken—not for lack of talent, but because her will was simply collapsing under the weight of the pain.
In that instant, the notification for the [Trackside Support] quest flashed in Max’s peripheral vision, pulsing with a red urgency.
A simple shout of ‘Go!’ or loud applause would be lost in the ocean-like roar of the crowd.
He needed an anchor—something so specific and personal it could pierce through the fog of exhaustion and pull her back to reality.
Max filled his lungs, ignoring the strange looks from nearby spectators, and projected his voice with a strength born from deep within—an authority that claimed the air over the general din:
“LAURA!
IF YOU WIN, THE CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM IS ON ME!
A WHOLE TUB!”
It was an absurd shout, out of place in the solemnity of an interuniversity final—nearly comical.
But for Laura, those words were a ray of light in the darkness.
The memory of the ‘secret fuel’, their heart-to-heart in the gym, and the promise of a bond with the only person who saw her as something more than just a stat acted like a jolt of pure adrenaline.
Her eyes snapped wide, finding their focus in a miraculous instant.
Laura’s brain, flooded with dopamine at the thought of the promised reward, forced one last command into her exhausted muscle fibers.
With a groan that was more a roar of rage than a cry of pain, she made one final, agonizing push.
In the last five meters, when her legs could no longer feel the ground, she lunged forward, stretching her neck and chest with suicidal determination.
She crossed the finish line by an imperceptible fraction of a second before her rival, breaking the tape with the very last breath in her lungs.
Her momentum carried her several meters further before her legs finally gave out.
She crashed to the ground, her chest heaving in violent spasms as she struggled to catch her breath, her eyes fixed on the scoreboard.
It was a victory won in the trenches, and the silence of her exhaustion was the most honest tribute to her triumph.
The stadium erupted in a catharsis of noise.
Thousands of people, oblivious to the promise of chocolate ice cream, celebrated the sheer epicness of a will that refused to be broken.
The awards ceremony was a blur of lights, flashes, and rhythmic applause.
As Laura stepped onto the highest tier of the podium, Max watched her from a distance.
She looked radiant, even though her chest was still rising and falling in search of air.
When the tournament official placed the gold medal around her neck, the metal glinted under the afternoon sun with an almost blinding intensity.
Right then, the familiar ding resonated at the core of Max’s consciousness—crisp and triumphant.
[Side Quest: Trackside Support completed!]
Your support was a decisive factor in the victory.
Exceptional performance detected!
Rewards granted:
Affiliation Increase: Laura Soler (Gym Friend -> Good Friend).
Passive Skill Acquired: [Coach’s Eye Lv.
1].
Resources: +3 System Points (SP).
Max felt a new layer of information filtering into his mind.
[Coach’s Eye] wasn’t just a vision upgrade; it was an instinctive understanding of fatigue, balance, and biomechanics.
Now, looking at the athletes, he didn’t just see people running; he saw kinetic chains, tension points, and the flow of kinetic energy.
As the ceremony wrapped up and photographers began to scatter, Laura didn’t look for her coaches or teammates.
Her gaze scanned the railing until she found Max.
She hopped off the podium with a renewed, almost electric energy and ran straight toward him.
Ignoring protocol and the curious stares of onlookers, she threw herself into his arms in a fervent, desperate embrace.
Max felt the impact of her body, the heat radiating from her sweat-drenched skin, and the familiar scent of track and adrenaline.
“I did it, Max!
I won!” she cried, her voice vibrating against his shoulder, full of raw, unfiltered joy—the kind of happiness born only after walking along the edge of the abyss.
Max, initially caught off guard by the intensity of the physical contact—a reminder that he was dealing with real people and not just variables in a system—hugged her back.
With an awkwardness that betrayed his lack of familiarity with selfless affection, he gave her a few gentle pats on the back, allowing himself, for a moment, to be part of that triumph.
“Of course you did, champ”, he replied, and his smile was the widest and most genuine he had shown since his return.
“I never doubted you.
Not for a second.”
There, in the midst of the crowd that was still celebrating, their bond transformed.
It was no longer just a strategic investment or a gym acquaintance; it had solidified in the heat of battle.
The chocolate ice cream had become a symbol: the contract of a loyalty that money couldn’t buy.
Max looked at Laura and, thanks to his new skill, saw the perfect alignment of her posture and the latent strength in her fibers.
He knew that the next time he saw her compete, his understanding would be far deeper.
He hadn’t just gained a powerful ally; he’d gained a new way of seeing human greatness in motion.