London always felt gray in the morning. Not the harsh gray of storm clouds, but the soft, sleepy kind that draped over buildings like wet fabric. Leon Dániel Vas sat on the windowsill of his bedroom, hoodie drawn over his head, staring out at the street below.
It had been two days since the system appeared.
He hadn't told anyone. Not his parents, not his friends—assuming the two classmates who occasionally messaged him counted as friends. He had barely spoken to anyone since the event, and every hour that passed only made the experience feel more real, not less.
He'd spent most of that time experimenting with the system's interface. Even without being able to spend Store Points (SP) yet, he could still observe. Watch. Run simulations. Study how the world reacted to different variables. It was like playing a god-level version of a global strategy game—except this was real.
Real consequences. Real lives.
And apparently, real enemies.
He opened the interface now. The same floating dashboard flickered into place in front of his vision, translucent and cool. He had learned how to mentally call it up, even without touching the laptop. Another sign it wasn't just "technology" in the human sense.
SYSTEM: PASSIVE MODE ENGAGED
Strategic Planning Phase: Day 3
SP BALANCE: 100,000 (Locked)
Objective: Initiate a long-term plan to accelerate human progress
He navigated to the data overlay. The dashboard now tracked "Relevant Societal Entrenchment Factors"—a fancy way of saying "what's holding humanity back." The top three were always the same:
Concentrated Wealth – Controlled by less than 0.01% of the global population.
Information Gatekeeping – Academic knowledge locked behind paywalls or exclusive institutions.
Legislative Capture – Policy manipulated to serve monopolies, not people.
Leon sighed.
These weren't things a single person could change with a blog post or even a new app. This was the kind of rot that required surgical precision—and deep, careful infiltration.
And that, he was beginning to realize, meant he would need more than just brilliance or secret tools.
He would need power.
That evening, during a rare shared dinner, Leon sat across from his parents at the dining table. The smell of rosemary lamb filled the room. His mother, elegant and efficient in both her words and movements, poured a small glass of red wine. His father was typing on his phone with one hand, eating with the other.
Leon cleared his throat.
"I've been thinking," he said quietly.
Both parents looked up at once. That was unusual in itself—Leon starting a conversation.
"I might want to go to university in the U.S."
His mother's brow lifted. "MIT?"
"Or Caltech."
His father nodded. "You qualify. Citizenship from my side. Your grades are good enough. We could have the Pasadena place ready again."
Leon kept his expression neutral. "Yeah. Maybe it's a better fit. A more open environment."
He didn't say the real reason. That America's loophole-ridden legal system, its obsession with entrepreneurship, and its rampant deregulation would make it the perfect breeding ground for the empire he now needed to build.
NOTE: Candidate awareness expansion detected. Political Infrastructure Projection Unlocked.
His breath hitched slightly as the message blinked faintly across his vision. But he kept his face still.
His mother gave a small smile. "I think it's good. You've always been... different, Leon. Maybe it's time to see what that difference can accomplish."
She didn't know how right she was.
Later that night, alone again, Leon opened the Political Infrastructure tab the system had just granted access to.
It showed networks. Not friendships. Not votes. Networks of influence. Board memberships. Donor trails. Interlinked lobbyists, PR firms, senators, think tanks, and media conglomerates—all quietly reinforcing one another.
He stared at it for almost an hour.
He hadn't even spent a single Store Point yet, and already he was seeing how the world truly worked.
He flipped open his notebook and scrawled:
If I want to break the machine, I have to first become part of it.
He paused, then wrote something else, for the first time admitting it even to himself:
I need to become someone powerful.
And if the world was a game rigged in favor of the rich, then he had just received the only cheat code that mattered.
He closed the notebook.
Tomorrow, he would start planning in earnest.