The world was frozen.
The thug's heavy, dirt-caked boot hung in the air.
A single, horrifying millimeter from beginning its crushing descent.
The leader's face was a mask of cruel satisfaction, savoring the moment.
The system's glowing message was a brilliant, sun-bright lifeline in the absolute darkness of Leo's mind.
"Ready for breakthrough."
A single thought, a desperate scream of pure, undiluted will, erupted from the depths of his soul.
BREAK THROUGH!
Golden light exploded behind his eyes.
It was not the gentle, trickling warmth from before.
It was a tidal wave.
A tsunami of clean, pure, unimaginable power that surged from the center of his chest.
It washed through his entire body in a single, glorious instant.
The feeling was so good, so overwhelmingly powerful, it made him want to cry out in sheer ecstasy.
It was the feeling of being empty, broken, and hollow.
And then suddenly being made full.
POP!
The sound was loud and sharp in the quiet, rain-soaked alley.
It was the sound of his broken rib snapping perfectly, cleanly back into place.
The deep, agonizing ache in his side vanished as if it had never been there.
It was gone.
A warm, tingling sensation swept across his cheek as the raw, bloody scrape from the brick wall knitted itself shut.
The torn skin mended, leaving smooth, unblemished skin behind.
The metallic taste of blood in his mouth was gone, replaced by a clean freshness.
The pounding, splitting headache that had felt like a nail being driven into his skull was gone.
Replaced by a crystal-clear focus he had never known.
He felt… strong.
Not just healed.
Strong.
Strength poured into his weak, scholarly muscles, filling him up like an empty vessel being held under a waterfall.
His limbs, which had felt like useless bags of wet cement just moments ago, were now light.
They were humming with a vibrant, restless energy.
"Breakthrough successful," the system announced with its calm, neutral, impossibly serene tone.
"Host has reached the Elementary Body Tempering realm."
With a single, smooth, effortless motion that felt more natural than breathing, Leo pushed himself off the filthy ground and stood up.
The three thugs stared.
Their jaws hung open in slack-jawed, stupefied disbelief.
The wiry thug's cruel smirk was frozen on his face, an ugly expression of confusion.
The leader's foot was still awkwardly hanging in the air from his aborted stomp, his entire body locked in a state of shock.
One moment, they were about to permanently cripple a half-dead, bleeding boy.
The next, that same boy was standing before them.
Completely untouched.
The blood was gone from his face.
The cuts were gone.
The scrapes were gone.
His cheap clothes were still torn and dirty, but the body within them was radiating a faint, almost invisible energy.
His eyes, once wide and full of pathetic, pleading terror, now held a cold, sharp, predatory focus.
A focus that made them shiver instinctively.
"What… what the hell?" the leader finally stammered, his voice losing its confident snarl.
He slowly, uncertainly, lowered his foot to the ground.
He was a man of violence.
He understood breaking things.
He understood pain and fear.
This, he did not understand.
It felt wrong.
It felt unnatural.
It felt terrifying.
"It's some kind of trick!" he snarled, trying to regain his composure, trying to force the world back into a shape that made sense to him.
He forgot about stomping and threw a clumsy, powerful punch straight at Leo's face.
He just wanted to put the freak back on the ground where he belonged.
To the old Leo, the punch would have been a blur.
An unavoidable impact.
A ticket to unconsciousness.
To the new Leo, it felt like it was moving through thick molasses.
He could see everything.
Every detail of the motion.
The tensing of the man's shoulder.
The slight, clumsy shift of his weight.
The predictable, looping arc of his fist.
"Pathetic," Kaelan scoffed in his mind.
The spirit's voice was dripping with the bored contempt of a grandmaster watching a fumbling child.
"His form is sloppy."
"His guard is completely open."
"He leads with his chin, exposing his entire flank."
"Tilt your head to the left."
Leo's body moved before he even consciously thought about it.
It was a small, economical movement.
Barely a twitch.
The massive fist whistled past his ear, so close he could feel the breeze of its passing.
The thug stumbled forward, off-balance from his own missed punch.
"Now," Kaelan said calmly, his voice like that of a patient, lethal teacher.
"A palm strike."
"To the outside of his elbow."
"Your bones are stronger now. They have been tempered by the initial flow of Qi. It is enough."
Leo's right hand shot out.
It wasn't a wild, panicked swing like he would have thrown before.
It was short.
Fast.
And brutally efficient.
His palm connected precisely with the thug's extended elbow joint.
CRACK!
The sound of snapping bone was horrifyingly sharp and sickeningly wet.
The leader stumbled back, clutching his arm, which now bent in a gruesome, unnatural direction it was never meant to bend.
His face, which had been flushed with aggression just a second ago, was now chalky white with shock and excruciating pain.
The other two thugs were completely frozen.
Their faces were masks of pure, uncomprehending terror.
Their boss.
The man who broke people for fun.
The toughest man they knew.
Had just been effortlessly, casually crippled.
By a skinny high school kid.
In a single, clean move.
"My arm! You broke my arm!" the leader shrieked, all his tough-guy bravado completely gone.
It was replaced by the high, thin whimper of a terrified victim.
His eyes were wide with a fear he was used to seeing in others, not feeling himself.
But even in his agony, habit took over.
He fell back on the only power he knew.
Threats.
"You're dead! You hear me? DEAD! The Crimson Serpent Syndicate will hunt you down! They'll find you and they'll skin you alive for this!"
The Crimson Serpent Syndicate.
Kaelan's rage, which had cooled to a tactical ice, flared in Leo's mind like a sudden forest fire.
"Them," the spirit hissed, the sheer venom in his voice making Leo's own blood run cold.
"A dog that barks for the Cross family."
"The same filth, the same stench of corruption."
This wasn't random.
This felt like destiny.
Like the first thread of a tapestry he was meant to unravel.
The small, quiet part of Leo, the student who had never been in a fight in his life, was screaming in absolute horror.
I just broke a man's arm! I crippled him!
But Kaelan's voice was like a shard of ice, freezing the panic in his veins before it could take root.
"Good," the spirit said, a grim, terrible pleasure lacing his tone. "Let the fool name our enemies."
"Let him draw us a map to their throats."
"He has information, boy."
"He is a thread."
"We will pull on this thread until their entire world unravels."
The injured thug was on the ground now, cradling his broken arm and whimpering in pain like a wounded animal.
His two friends looked from him to Leo, their minds still unable to process what was happening.
They were trapped between the instinct to run and the absolute paralysis of fear.
"Do not let them leave," Kaelan commanded, his voice devoid of any emotion, a cold, hard statement of fact.
"He knows their hideout."
"He knows their leaders."
"We need that information."
The spirit paused, then added a chillingly practical statement that sent a shiver down Leo's spine.
"Make him talk."
Make him talk.
The idea was insane.
Just last week, Leo was cramming for a history test about the Peloponnesian War.
Now he was being told to interrogate a man he had just crippled.
He looked down at his own hand.
It was perfectly steady.
It felt powerful.
It felt… right.
He looked at the whimpering man on the ground, at the ugly crimson serpent tattoo on his neck.
He remembered the man's cruel, casual laugh as he kicked him when he was already down.
He remembered the words, "You get to be the lesson."
He was the first piece of the puzzle.
The first step on a very, very long road to a vengeance that was not his, but now lived and breathed in his soul.
The fear in his stomach began to cool, replaced by something else.
Something hard.
Something cold.
Something terribly, terribly patient.
He took a slow, deliberate step forward.
His shadow fell over the injured leader, swallowing him in darkness.
The thug flinched, trying to crawl away from him like an insect scrambling to escape a boot.
"Stay back! Stay away from me!" he yelped.
Leo looked down at him, his expression unreadable, a calm mask hiding the war raging within him.
The scared student who had entered this alley was gone, broken and reforged in pain and power.
The warrior was listening.
And the student was learning.
He understood now.
In this hidden world, there was only one rule that truly mattered.
Might makes right.
And for the very first time in his forgotten, unremarkable life, he was the one with power.