Chapter 94: Ten Thousand Times
The rain had stopped by the time Holden reached the Prime Zone.
He moved through the villa’s back garden, his Shadow-Weave boots making no sound on the wet grass. The security wards Maeve had monitored were still glowing faintly along the fence line. Good. She had kept everything running.
He climbed through his second-floor window and closed it behind him.
The villa was quiet. No lights. No movement. Maeve was asleep. Renna was asleep. Everyone was asleep.
Holden locked his bedroom door. He pulled the heavy curtains shut, plunging the room into total darkness. Then he sat down on the floor and leaned against the bed frame.
He pulled up his System screen.
[Current Balance: 133,390 KP]
[Available Upgrade: 10,000x Multiplier]
[Cost: 100,000 KP]
[Purchase? Y/N]
Holden stared at the number.
He had over one hundred thousand points. He had started with nothing. A slum orphan with no future, no backing, and no chance. Now he was sitting in a luxury villa with enough points to unlock the legendary tier of his cheat.
He didn’t hesitate.
"Yes."
The screen flashed.
[100,000 KP Spent!]
[Current Balance: 33,390 KP]
[Multiplier Upgrading...]
[1,000x... 2,000x... 5,000x... 8,000x...]
[UPGRADE COMPLETE!]
[Current Multiplier: 10,000x!]
The blue light exploded.
It wasn’t a gentle flash. It was a blazing pillar of energy that shot from the System screen directly into Holden’s skull. His vision went white. His body locked up.
And then his mind split open.
It felt like someone had taken his brain and unrolled it like a scroll. Every thought, every memory, every piece of information he had ever absorbed was suddenly being processed at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible.
The world around him froze.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
He could see a dust mote floating in the air near his curtain. It wasn’t moving. It was frozen mid-fall, suspended in space. His perception had accelerated so massively that a falling speck of dust looked completely still.
He could feel the energy in the room now. The residual Aether in the air slowly around him. He could see the microscopic cracks in the villa’s stone walls. He could hear Maeve’s heartbeat three rooms away, steady and slow in deep sleep.
His body hummed.
Every cell in his muscles vibrated with dormant potential. The 10,000x multiplier wasn’t just making him think faster. It was optimizing his entire body in real time, refining his nervous system, sharpening his reflexes, preparing him for power he hadn’t earned yet.
Holden exhaled slowly.
Time resumed.
The dust mote fell. The room felt normal again. But Holden’s mind was anything but normal. It was a supercomputer running at impossible speeds.
He reached into his pack and pulled out the Rank 3 Aether-Battery.
The blue cylinder glowed in his palm. Five thousand units of pure, refined Aether energy. The kind of power that could fuel a small fortress for a month. The kind of power that would have torn his body apart an hour ago.
Now, it felt like a glass of water.
Holden wrapped both hands around the cylinder and squeezed.
Crack!
The metal crumpled like thin foil. The casing split open.
Whoosh!
A massive wave of blue energy erupted from the broken battery. It surged into Holden’s palms, flooded up his arms, and crashed into his meridians with the force of a massive wave.
The pain was immediate and extreme.
It felt like liquid fire pumping through his veins. His muscles seized. His bones vibrated. Every fiber of his being screamed as the dense Rank 3 energy forced his body to evolve or die.
But the 10,000x multiplier was ready.
It caught the wild energy and processed it instantly. Where his old multiplier would have choked and wasted ninety percent of the power, the new multiplier absorbed every bit of it.
The energy flooded his core and exploded outward.
His aura ignited.
A shimmering wave of blue-white light burst from his body, pressing against the walls of his room. The heavy curtain billowed. The desk shook. The floorboards creaked under the pressure.
His Rank 2 core, which had been stable at 1-Star for weeks, began to crack.
[Breakthrough Detected!]
[Rank 2 (1-Star) -> Rank 2 (2-Star)!]
The energy kept coming. The battery had been packed with five thousand units, and his multiplier was drinking it all.
His muscles ripped.
He could feel the muscle fibers in his arms and legs tearing apart under the strain of the rapid evolution. Agony flared through his body.
But before he could even gasp, the 10,000x multiplier rebuilt them. The torn fibers healed instantly, becoming thicker and harder.
[Rank 2 (2-Star) -> Rank 2 (3-Star)!]
His bones ached. The marrow inside them was boiling, reforming, crystallizing into something harder than iron. His skin tightened, the cells compressing and layering until his Iron-Body felt less like armor and more like part of his soul.
[Rank 2 (3-Star) -> Rank 2 (4-Star)!]
The energy was running out. The battery was dry. But the momentum it had built was unstoppable. Holden’s core swallowed the last dregs of power and pushed through one final barrier.
[Rank 2 (4-Star) -> Rank 2 (5-Star)!]
The aura collapsed inward.
The blue-white light sucked back into Holden’s body like a vacuum. The room went dark again. The curtains stopped moving. The desk stopped shaking.
Holden sat on the floor, breathing hard. Sweat poured down his face and soaked his shirt. His entire body throbbed with a deep, aching heat, like he had just run a marathon while on fire.
But underneath the ache, he felt something incredible.
Power.
He clenched his fist and felt his knuckles press against skin that could stop a blade.
He opened his mouth and breathed out.
A cloud of hot steam poured from his lips.
Holden looked down at his hands. They looked the same. No glowing marks. No visible changes. But he could feel the difference in every single cell. He was four times stronger than he had been an hour ago. His body was denser, faster, and more durable than almost anyone at this academy.
And nobody knew.
He was still the lucky Rank 1 freshman on paper. The orphan who got promoted early because of his smart sister.
Holden leaned his head back against the bed and closed his eyes.
A small smile crossed his face.
Not bad for a slum kid.