The next weeks settled into a rhythm, a machine of small rituals. Max learned to wage his days like a strategist: mornings for Titan's Trial, daytime for classes and the odd repair run at the engineer's bench, evenings for stealth missions to gather Saint's Leaves and scavenged parts. The headset at his neck hummed like a second pulse, steady and attentive. Feona's voice was rarely intrusive; she was a tutor who spoke when necessary, a scalpel of logic and a soft voice in the dark.
"Daily regimen recommended," Feona said one morning as Max stretched the sleep from his limbs. "Two boosted Titan's Trials per day, one mission run every second day, and a minimum of eight hours rest. Micro-adjustments will occur with repetition. Track: agility, strength, durability, reflex."
He adopted her categories the way a player adopts stats on a new build. Agility meant footwork and balance. Strength was raw force and how much he could carry or hurl. Durability tracked how long a hit left him winded. Reflex was the polish Feona had already been sharpening. He watched their tiny growth like a gardener watches seedlings: day by day, an almost invisible climb.
The first visible change came like a whisper and then a little cheer in his HUD. The overlay pulsed a soft green: AGILITY +2. He grinned at the monitor like someone who had caught a lucky spawn.
He trained with a devotion that felt like prayer. Titan's Trial demanded everything he had: weighted sprints that burned his calves into a hot, humming wire, resistance walls that taught him to climb with hip torque rather than brute pull, timed carry runs where the weight felt intent on becoming another person. Each test left him raw and elated. Feona's micro-guides flicked through the HUD—breathing windows, foot placement tweaks, the exact second to micro-burst the thrusters so his legs didn't eat all the work.
Strength rose in small, satisfying increments. He discovered the miracle of leverage: how a hip twist turned a shove into a throw, how a passive bracing made a strike glance. Durability came as a duller, steadier meter—each bruise now healed into a quieter tolerance. Reflex, Feona's favored child, ranged up as she exposed him to harder simulations. Small windows of improved reaction multiplied into a competence he could feel when he reached for a handle or bent his knees.
In the quiet hours between practice and study he wandered markets for parts, for low-cost nutriments, for anything that could be sold for coin or converted into a patch. That's how he found the bag.
It was a small cloth sack under a vendor's table, tucked between tins and a chipped radio. The vendor, a woman whose face was a map of patient lines, sold it without fuss. "Found it under a bridge," she said, counting coins in a slow, satisfied rhythm. "No name, no brand. Yours if you want."
He paid what he could and unwrapped the cloth like someone opening a gift with nails and the press of a good memory. It looked ordinary—simple fabric, a drawstring—but when he opened it a faint glyph pulsed on the inside flap and the small display in his HUD blinked.
INVENTORY BAG — CAPACITY 0/20
He laughed out loud, a short, astonished sound. Inventory systems like this were standard in the kind of games he'd spent years inside, but to find one bleeding into his real life felt like a private joke. When he took a small rock from the bag and dropped it back in, the capacity readout flickered to 1/20. He realized then that this bag was more than fabric; it was a pocket that obeyed different laws—like game logic leaking into the mundane.
"Found new item: Inventory Bag," Feona said, her voice light with algorithmic curiosity. "Bag identified as limited-space cache. Capacity noted. You may store weapons, consumables, and minor loot. Recommend: secure medical supply, stamina sachets, and one emergency leaf."
The bag became his secret, a small altar for possessions that would otherwise be too bulky or too suspicious.
He started to fill it with practical things: a few nutrient sachets scavenged from missions, a humble stun device from Market Alley, bandages and spare seals for the headset. He placed one Saint's Leaf inside as if tucking a sleeping animal into a warm pocket. The sense of having a discreet cache both calmed and thrilled him—he was hoarding possibility.
Something else happened with the bag, too. It seemed to respond to need. When he dropped in a dented coin tin from a mission, the display read COIN: +small amount, and the purse increased in his HUD. He could not tell whether that was the bag's doing or simply Feona integrating two systems, but the result felt like a blessing. Each coin moved him closer to pills he could not yet afford; each leaf extended his capacity for boosted Trials.
Training grew more deliberate. Gide's sparring was still a necessary cut—he trained twice a week at the guild yard, worked on the old rituals of grappling and leverage, practiced minding distance the way a cartographer minds a coastline. Gide's corrections were merciless and efficient. "Pull weight through the hips," Gide barked one afternoon between rounds. "Your arms can only do so much. Stop being proud of your arms."
But Duels in the yard were a singular strain. The virtual space Feona had hinted at—an optional overlay that opened a different layer of reality—was the thing Max had learned to crave. The bag and Feona's overlay combined one evening into a small miracle.
He was fettling a sensor array when Feona suggested something that made the hair rise at the back of his neck.
"You may open your virtual game space," she said. "It is a private space tied to your console. It can be used to run practice missions, to test equipment, or to simulate portal conditions. Activation will create a safe, bounded environment. Recommend: clear debug sequence and load basic arena."
He felt like a child offered a master key. The virtual space sounded like a garage where you could tune your car without worrying about traffic cops. He followed her steps: a soft press of a glyph on his HUD, the bag at his feet, the screen folding like a curtain. The room sloughed and re-sketched in his vision—faint light grids overlaid on his walls, a small arena stamped on his floor, artificial wind that smelled faintly of ionized metal.
The virtual game space was private and small and perfect. He could spawn dummies, adjust resistance, and test the suit's micro-thrusters in safe conditions. The first trial he ran was a simulation of a three-man ambush. Feona lit the variables: aggressor speed, detection windows, and environmental hazards. He practiced blocking and displacing, moving like someone composing a piece. The overlay gave instant feedback: pressure distribution, timing windows, and a tidy line graph where his balance had wavered.
He spent hours in there—not because the outside world demanded it but because each pass peeled the raw edges off his technique. The suit responded in kind. Feona, from her quiet place inside the console, refined the overlay after each run. Tiny software nudges compiled into a more efficient flow: less wasted movement, fewer wasted breaths. His stamina did not refill during the virtual space; instead, the space taught him pacing so he used less of it in the real world.
At the end of a long week, he sat cross-legged in the arena and checked the numbers. The HUD pulsed with a modest array of improvements:
AGILITY 24 (+6)
SPEED 23 (+5)
DURABILITY 21 (+3)
STRENGTH 22 (+4)
REFLEX 33 (+7)
He stared at them like someone looking at a map that finally bore a town name. The numbers were above twenty across the board—the minimum he'd once thought impossible. Reflex, the one Feona had favored and the one that had climbed the most, now read thirty-three. It felt almost obscene and wonderfully practical to hold such small, made-up measures in his chest.
He felt the heady optimism of progress.
With the virtual space cleared and the bag in place, he did something stupid and beautiful: he tried once more to register for the Pro Gamers Association.
On previous tries he had been brushed aside—rejected for not having abilities or guild backing, a name in the system that invited little attention. The PGA wanted players with heart, but more than that it wanted demonstration: skills, abilities, and a social structure to vouch for you. He had come up short before. This time he walked to the registration center with a little more swagger, a small confidence pocketed like a second heart.
The clerk scanned his profile. The screen flicked, debated, and then offered the same old dismissal.
"Your profile is at E-Rank," the clerk said without warmth, eyes on his terminal. "You're not eligible for the association trials, kid. Come back when you have a rank and a guild recommendation."
The word landed like a cold hand: E-Rank. He had not yet graduated into the formal tiers. The PGA's doorway felt like a wall he had not built enough muscle to knock down. For a moment the numbers in his HUD felt like a lie.
He could have given up. It would have been the easy way—work hard alone, sit and wait, let the system pass him by. But the taste of what the virtual space had given him and the sting of the clerk's dismissal combined into a new sort of hunger. He walked out of the registration center with a plan rather than despair.
When he found Gide later that afternoon at the guild yard and recounted the exchange, Gide grunted and slapped him on the shoulder.
"Then you train harder," Gide said, simple and final. "Or find people who believe you. But if you want the association, you need to be someone who breaks their assumptions. That's not about rank on paper; it's about what you can do on the field."
They trained until sunset. Adeola texted him—an invitation to meet and talk through the class material. He accepted. The bag lay at his feet like a little, humming promise. Feona's voice in his head was a soft, functional pride.
"Your progress accelerates through repetition and strategic practice," she said. "Continue current regimen. Consider recruiting small alliances; social proof increases acceptance probability. You have cleared the virtual space. Next objective: consolidate gains and attempt for provisional registration when stamina is above 300."
He felt the plan assemble itself: more Trials, more missions, better gear in the bag, small alliances, and the stubborn, patient repeat of practice. It was not glamour. It was not the fancy path a highlight reel would show. It was scaffolding: slow, practical, relentless.
He left the guild yard that evening with the metallic taste of effort in his mouth and the bag snug against his hip. The numbers blinked like a second map direction. The road toward the Pro Gamers Association was longer than he had hoped—steeper—and it would take more than talent.
But the game had taught him something that felt, for the first time, like a truth and not a fantasy: progress compounded. A thousand small moves could add to something that did not look like luck at all. It looked like skill.
He sent Adeola a brief message: Study tonight? She replied with a smiley and a time. The world was full of small intersections: dungeons and libraries, late-night runs and warm dinners. He intended to be in as many of them as possible.
Feona's words hummed like a benediction as he jogged toward the market to pick up a spare leaf for the next day's Trials.
"Consistency over speed," she said. "Lot by lot, you will build what you need."