Roan quickly pulled up his mental status panel to confirm the data.
Physical Fitness: C-Rank.
His competitive metrics—lap times, racecraft, strategy—were forged in the fires of thousands of high-level online races. He trusted them implicitly. However, the high-end motion simulator earlier had sown a seed of doubt regarding his physical conditioning. To him, the default settings on that rig had felt heavy—unnecessarily so.
The question was: was that just a setting preference, or was that the actual weight of a real racing machine?
Ever the calculator, Roan wasn't about to gamble with his safety on a whim.
"Fine. Let's start with the 4-stroke," Roan said calmly.
His willingness to start at the bottom, despite his obvious talent, struck Marcus as remarkably rational. Most teenagers with half his skill would have demanded the fastest machine immediately. To have god-tier hands and a humble respect for the track... that was the hallmark of a professional.
Three minutes later, at the pit exit.
The influencers and casual guests had been ushered to the grandstands, leaving the tarmac to the machines. Sunlight hammered the asphalt, creating visible heat shimmers that danced over the gray surface. The air was thick with the scent of spent fuel and scorched rubber—the perfume of burning money.
Coach Miller, the track manager, rolled out a red kart. It looked skeletal. No windshield, no mirrors, no dashboard. Just a welded steel frame, a tiny engine tucked away almost out of sight, and an exhaust pipe devoid of a muffler. It was wrapped in heavy black rubber bumpers—practical, but as elegant as a cheap lifebuoy.
"4-stroke, 270cc, 9 horsepower," Miller announced, his voice stern as he handed Roan a scratched, communal full-face helmet. "Right foot gas, left foot brake. No differential. Don't sneer at the power. Top speed might only be 60 km/h, but when you're three inches off the ground, it'll feel double that. Remember, this is real. If you hit something, it hurts."
Roan took the helmet. It was heavy, and the liner smelled of the collective sweat and hair oil of a thousand strangers. He didn't flinch. He pulled it on.
"Justin gave special instructions," Miller said, pointing to the far end of the track. "Marcus is going to do a lead-lap in the 2-stroke competition kart to show you lot what professional pace looks like. Then, you start your 4-stroke session. This circuit has 7 lefts, 9 rights, and a massive elevation change. Watch yourselves."
VROOOOM!!!
A high-pitched scream tore through the facility. Roan looked up to see a blue-and-white blur streak down the main straight.
Fast.
It was Marcus in the 2-stroke. The high-frequency wail of the engine carried a violent pressure that seemed to shred the very air. The scream of the tires at the apex and the raw, unrendered aggression of the machine provided a sensation no monitor could ever replicate.
Zack and the others were shouting; the girls in the stands were cheering. But Roan's world narrowed into a singular focal point: that screaming machine. His heart rate spiked—the pure, cold adrenaline of a hunter spotting its mark.
He turned away from the blur and stepped toward his "industrial half-product." He slid into the cockpit.
Hard. Punishingly hard.
There was no foam, no padding. His tailbone clattered directly against the rigid plastic seat. His spine immediately protested against the crude ergonomics. It was a foreign, uneasy sensation. In this world, there was no 'Restart' button, no pause menu. An aggressive error meant broken bones, not just a red lap time.
But as his feet found the metal pedals, as his hands gripped the steering rim, and as his knees bent into a perfect 90-degree angle... his body screamed back: I know this place.
It was a strange hybrid of the familiar and the new. It was like a veteran gamer who had spent decades perfecting his "technique" in isolation finally experiencing the real thing. The medium had changed, but the underlying logic was identical.
Behind him, the pull-cord snapped.
Chug-chug-chug-chug—
The rough, rhythmic vibration of the single-cylinder engine surged through his frame. The high-frequency chatter rattled his bones, shaking away his unease. This wasn't the simulated, gear-clattering rumble of a G29 motor. This was a series of real explosions—pistons hammering in a cylinder.
Roan flipped down his visor. His field of vision narrowed to a strip of gray asphalt. He tentatively pressed the throttle. The zero-latency feedback of a mechanical cable made the corners of his mouth twitch upward beneath the helmet.
Same recipe. But this time, the ingredients were real.
Let's race.
Out-lap. Turn 1.
While most rookies were tentatively testing the brakes or swerving like drunks, Roan's kart dived into the apex as if pulled by an invisible wire. He didn't need a feeling-out process.
After last night's session, his iRating had climbed to 6200. In this moment, those thousands of hours of muscle memory performed a seamless takeover of the real-world physics engine.
He braked hard. His body pitched forward, the harness digging into his collarbones. Longitudinal G-force.
He bled off the brake, trailing the pressure as he rotated the wheel into the corner. Trail braking.
The resistance in the steering rack increased, the front tires fighting the pavement. Self-aligning torque.
He fed in the power on exit. The rear stepped out by a fraction, the tires hunting for the edge of adhesion. Slip angle.
In a simulator, Roan had to deduce these variables from a screen and simulated feedback. But here, his "glutes" were the high-precision sensors. Without looking, he could feel that the front-left tire had less bite than the right. He glanced down at the next stop; he was right—the left tire was noticeably more feathered.
He was greedy. He drank in every sensation, every weight transfer, every thud over a curb. It was robotic in its precision, yet pulsing with a terrifying, kinetic passion.
"I can take this entry later," Roan muttered to himself, already remapping the circuit. The asphalt was coarser than he expected, the friction coefficient higher. "Deeper entry, earlier throttle. I'll drain the straight dry."