But fuck it. He wasn't going to let it drive him mad. He'd make her acquaintance. See what she wanted, what game she was playing, what angle she was working.
Because he knew one truth about Ashford Academy, knew it down to his bones: No one here is a good person through and through. Everyone has an agenda. And those who seem like they didn't are just hypocrites better at hiding it.
He'd never play along with Maya. Never roll with whatever she was selling and scheming in that pretty head.
Unless otherwise.
What did that otherwise mean?
Only he knew.
The system mission was the other thing occupying his mind.
[Mission Generated: Fight and win against Brett, your archenemy.]
[Rewards: Cool Aura, Basketball 60% Skills, 15 Charm Points!]
Given what had just happened—the confrontation, the challenge, the parking lot promise—a mission was overdue.
Given everything that had just happened—the hallway confrontation, the thinly veiled threats, the promise of violence waiting in the parking lot—a mission was overdue. The system had been suspiciously silent during the garbage incident, quiet enough that Phei had briefly wondered if it only bothered activating when sex was involved.
Apparently not.
Apparently, it is equally invested in me beating the ever-loving shit out of Brett Castellano.
On at least one point, the system wasn't wrong.
Brett was stronger. Objectively. Physically. Experientially. In every measurable category that mattered in a fight. Boxing since middle school. Wrestling since before that. A body built by expensive trainers, protein-heavy diets, and the lifelong luxury of never having to choose between food and rent.
Phei's stats were garbage by comparison. Strength 66. Endurance 66. Zero combat skills. A body that was currently screaming in protest from fifty miserable push-ups and thirty squats that had felt like war crimes.
On paper, this fight wasn't brave.
It is suicide.
But the rewards…
Fifteen Charm Points.
His current Charisma sat at seventy-five. Add fifteen, and he'd hit ninety. Ten points away from the system's threshold for genuinely handsome—not "interesting," not "distinct," but undeniably, statistically attractive.
That wasn't trivial.
That was everything.
Looks weren't the whole picture—he wasn't stupid enough to believe that—but he also wasn't delusional enough to pretend they didn't matter. When a woman looked at a man for the first time, two questions hit her brain before conscious thought even had a chance to intervene:
How does he look?
And how much money does he have?
First impressions were visual. Always. A woman judged your face before she ever heard your voice, made assumptions about your character based on symmetry, bone structure, posture—whether your eyes suggested safety or danger.
Only after she answers those two questions does she care about your real character after deciding on the first two questions whether she should get to know you or not!
If Phei could pass that first test—if he could make her mentally nod at his appearance before she ever got around to wondering about his bank account—that was an advantage he'd never had.
I'd fail the second test, obviously.
He was still broke.
But getting past the first gate?
That cracked doors that had been welded shut his entire life.
Fifteen points to stand within striking distance of handsome.
He'd take punches for that.
I'd take a lot of punches for that.
And the other rewards weren't meaningless either.
Cool Aura.
Whatever the hell that meant.
The name suggested something adjacent to the Dominance Aura he already had—but different. Less pressure, more… ease.
Maybe it makes me seem... cool? Composed?
The kind of composure that made people gravitate toward you without quite understanding why. The effortless charisma of someone who never seemed rattled, even when they should be.
He was probably wrong. He usually was.
The system had a nasty habit of underselling rewards that turned out to be far more disruptive than advertised.
But the real enigma was the last reward.
Basketball 60% Skills.
Phei understood exactly what that meant.
He'd read enough system novels in stolen moments of peace to grasp the mechanics. Acquiring skills from a system wasn't like learning through repetition or grinding drills or watching tutorial videos until your body slowly caught up with your understanding.
It is invasive.
It was violent.
It was decades of experience ripped from nowhere and embedded directly into your nervous system.
Muscle memory you'd never earned. Technical knowledge you'd never studied. Court awareness forged through thousands of hours you never lived. Instincts honed through relentless repetition—all of it injected like software straight into flesh and bone.
You didn't learn the skill.
You woke up one day having always known it.
And whatever that did to you afterward?
The system never bothered to explain.
That was what skill rewards meant.
The system didn't teach you. It didn't ease you in with tutorials or helpful pop-ups. It just reached into your skull and installed competence.
Raw, invasive, no warranty included.
All that knowledge got dumped straight into your head, and suddenly you could use the rewarded skills instinctively—like you'd been born doing it. Like you'd grown up shooting hoops on cracked asphalt courts even if you'd never touched a basketball in your life.
You'd wake up knowing things you'd never learned. Your body would move in ways it had never practiced.
Your hands would know when to pass, when to shoot, where to be without you consciously deciding any of it. You'd perform at a level that should have taken decades to reach, because as far as your muscles and neural pathways were concerned, you had spent those decades training.
Congratulations. You are now gaslighting your own biology.
That was what made system skills obscene.
Instant expertise.Total knowledge transfer.No student loans.
But that immediately raised the question that had been scratching at the back of Phei's brain since the reward popped up:
Sixty percent of what, exactly?
Everything had tiers. Categories. Ranks. Basketball wasn't a monolith—it was a ladder that went from kid who can't dribble without staring at the floor all the way up to genetic anomaly whose highlights get played on loop for generations.
Was the system giving him sixty percent of amateur basketball skills? That would be nearly worthless. He could reach that himself with a few months of practice, a YouTube rabbit hole, and a court that didn't smell like regret.
Sixty percent of recreational pickup-game skill? Still underwhelming. He'd stop embarrassing himself, sure, but no one was building statues for that.
Sixty percent of advanced high-school level? Better. Respectable. He'd be solid on Ashford's team. Useful. Absolutely not terrifying.
Sixty percent of professional skill? Now things got interesting. That would make him genuinely good—possibly the best player in the school by a humiliating margin.
Sixty percent of elite professional—NBA-tier skill? That crossed into prodigy territory. Scouts would start breathing heavily in his direction.
Sixty percent of the greatest players to ever live?
That was bordering on sacrilege. That would make him better than everyone except a tiny handful of genetic freaks currently employed by billion-dollar leagues.
The percentage meant nothing without knowing the baseline.
And the system—true to form—wasn't telling him.
He wouldn't know until after the fight. Until the reward slammed into him and rewired his nervous system like a hostile takeover.
But the real question—the one that actually mattered, the one that made his brain itch in that deeply uncomfortable way—was much simpler.
Why basketball?
This was a fight mission. Beat Brett. Win the parking lot confrontation. Survive an encounter with a trained boxer who outmatched him in every physical category that mattered.
By every rule of system logic Phei had ever absorbed, the rewards should align with the objective. Intimately. Obsessively. That was how systems worked.
You weren't given random nonsense. You were given tools precisely calibrated to help you complete the task the system had assigned.
System Design 101.
If the mission was to become a shadow wolf—hunt in darkness, kill unseen, stalk the night—then the rewards would be shadow-related.
Stealth abilities. Night vision. Sound dampening. Darkness manipulation. Predatory perks. Things that made you better at being a shadow wolf.
The rewards and the mission always fit together like puzzle pieces cut by a sadist.
So in a mission that explicitly said fight and win against Brett—he should be getting fighting skills. Boxing technique to match Brett's training. Defensive maneuvers to survive his attacks. Combat instincts. Pain resistance. Stamina to outlast him. Tactical analysis to exploit weaknesses.
Not basketball.
Basketball made no sense. It violated the internal logic of every system novel he'd ever read. It was like being tasked with slaying a dragon and being rewarded with a fishing rod. It was like being told to defeat a dragon and receiving a fishing rod as your reward. Completely disconnected from the mission.
Unless— he thought.
Phei stopped mid-step.
The realization hit him hard enough that he leaned against the wall outside the bathroom, movement automatic, breath shallow.
His hand rose to cover his mouth as the pieces slammed together.
The answer was stupidly simple.
Embarrassingly obvious.
The mission wasn't about fighting Brett.
It was about beating Brett.
And Brett—