The front gates clicked shut behind them as they finally reached home. The two-story bungalow loomed dark against the night sky, quiet and welcoming.
Rohan climbed the stairs to the first floor, leaving his parents to their own bedroom downstairs on the ground floor. His own room was a simple, uncluttered space that felt comforting after the sterile hospital environment.
Fatigue hit him in heavy waves the moment he crossed the threshold. He pulled off his clothes, quickly changing into his loose nightwear.
He stared at his hands in the dim light, a sudden urge striking him. *I'm too tired,* he thought, rubbing his heavy eyelids. *I wanted to test the new superpower tonight, but it will have to wait until morning.*
Plugging his phone into the charger, he set his alarm for exactly five in the morning. He needed every minute of the early dawn hours to experiment without interruptions. Minutes later, he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The sharp, rhythmic blare of the alarm shattered the morning silence. Rohan’s eyes snapped open instantly.
Before awakening his new ability, he would have dragged his feet, fighting the heavy pull of exhaustion and low willpower. Now, things were entirely different.
With Perfect Control, he simply made the mental decision to stand up. His muscles fired with absolute efficiency, and he rose from the bed in one smooth, instantaneous motion. He reached out and clicked the clock silent.
He slipped out of his room and headed down to the training room. His father, a dedicated martial artist, had built the space on the ground floor, packing it with every piece of equipment found in a high-end gym alongside full gymnast rigs.
Rohan didn't waste a single second. He walked to the center of the mats and dropped into a pushup position, determined to find his physical baseline through calisthenics.
Usually, his muscles would begin to burn and shake violently by the time he hit seventy or eighty reps in a single go. Today, he breezed past eighty without his heart rate even spiking.
When he reached a clean, effortless hundred, he stopped and stood back up. Plain pushups didn't hold any meaning for him anymore.
He shifted his weight, balancing entirely on one hand, and lowered himself again. Before today, his absolute limit for one-handed pushups was a shaky, straining ten.
Now, Perfect Control allowed him to distribute his weight flawlessly. His posture remained perfectly straight, channeling his raw strength with mechanical precision until he hit fifty repetitions.
He could feel the deep vibrations of his muscle fibers, receiving clear feedback from his own nervous system. He knew he could push past fifty, but the sensation warned him that doing so would cause actual physical damage to his tissues.
Moving to the pull-up bar, he leaped up and gripped the steel. On a normal day, he could manage ten to twenty strict pull-ups before failure.
He began to pull his chest to the bar, his movements fluid and unhurried. He hit fifty pull-ups without feeling the slightest hint of fatigue, but on the fifty-first, a sharp strain rippled through his shoulders. He let go and dropped lightly to the mat.
*There are still so many discoveries I need to unearth here,* he realized, wiping a thin bead of sweat from his forehead.
He decided to test advanced bodyweight skills—movements that used to leave him utterly exhausted and sore.
He kicked up into a flawless handstand, then shifted his weight to balance perfectly on just one hand. He dropped down and moved to the rings, exploding upward into consecutive muscle-ups and even a few one-armed variations. Every motion felt effortless.
Standing in the center of the quiet gym, his heart finally thumping, he could clearly map out his new boundaries.
It wasn't just that Perfect Control allowed him to execute every single physical action with flawless form. His baseline physical strength and stamina had also surged by a massive margin.
*It must be a side effect of awakening a new superpower,* Rohan thought, looking down at his hands as they flexed. *The raw energy of the awakening must have reinforced my body.*
He glanced at the digital clock on the wall; nearly an hour had slipped by during his physical trials.
Now, it was time for the test he had actually been waiting for.
He walked over to a heavy, reinforced door at the back of the gym and stepped inside the dedicated superpower training room. His mother, Anjali, had heavily fortified this space using her own high-level magic to absorb stray impacts.
The room was completely bare, devoid of any furniture, decorations, or windows. The only features breaking the stark emptiness were glowing geometric symbols etched into the walls.
These glowing runes pulsed with faint magical energy, ready to contain whatever force was unleashed within the perimeter.
Rohan took a deep breath and stood right in the center of the runic circle. He decided to start from the very beginning.
He closed his eyes and summoned his very first superpower, deliberately holding back his Perfect Control to see how it functioned on its own.
He stood completely still, blocking out the memory of his new ability. He wanted to feel the raw, unfiltered strain of his original superpower just as it had always been.
He drew on the energy deep within his core, channeling it upward toward his chest and neck. Immediately, a familiar, harsh resistance pushed back against his focus.
His muscles grew tight, and a dull ache began to form behind his temples. A sudden, scorching heat built up directly behind his eyelids, burning with a jagged, chaotic friction.
Without the smooth coordination of Perfect Control, the thermal energy felt erratic and incredibly strenuous to hold back. It threatened to spill over before he was even ready to aim.
Sweat instantly beaded along his hairline from the sheer mental strain. It was exactly as he remembered—a stubborn, heavy force that demanded everything he had just to keep the beams from misfiring.
His vision blurred as the raw power gathered in his retinas, vibrating with an intense, unguided pressure. He forced his eyes wide open, aiming squarely at the bare wall ahead.
Thin, flickering red lines of laser energy cut through the air, cracking like static electricity as they struck the reinforced surface. The beams wobbled and drifted, completely lacking a steady trajectory.
Instantly, the runic writing on the wall flared into a bright, protective blue. The magical characters hummed softly, drinking in the erratic thermal heat and neutralizing the stray energy before it could damage the structure.
Rohan let out a sharp, ragged breath, his chest heaving as he cut off the flow. His eyes stung fiercely, watering from the immense strain of trying to control the output with his raw willpower alone.