The team signed up as "Vanguard Unit Four."

Renna was the one who suggested it. No one else could think of anything better, so Holden had let go of Team Soup.

Back at the house, he sat at the kitchen table and went through the mission briefing again.

Three days inside a Rank 2 danger zone. Beasts running faster and hitting harder than anything they should be able to fight at their rank. Plus, they had to deal with the toxic fog, which acted like a slow poison, eating away at their cultivation with every breath they took.

And somewhere in the all of it, a plant he had to find alone, without his team knowing, in a section of the ruins that Vespera had told him was deeper than any of the marked safe routes.

He closed the projection and stared at the table.

Five-Star.

That was where he stood right now. His foundation was clean, his technique was god-tier, and his system would multiply everything he threw at any enemy a hundred times over.

But clean technique only got you so far when the monster in front of you outweighed you by four hundred pounds and had been soaking in toxic fog long enough to turn its fur into armor.

He needed more raw power behind it.

He needed to be stronger. And he needed it before the mission.

His eyes moved to the cabinet above the sink, where he’d locked away the small card holding his academy credits.

Fifty thousand Vanguard Credits.

He’d been thinking of it as his emergency funds.

He pulled the card out and pocketed it.

He waited until after midnight to sneak out through the back of the estate.

The Aegis Array buzzed quietly as he passed through it. He reset it from outside with two taps on the control crystal.

He walked across the far side of the school grounds, staying away from patrol paths.

Most students didn’t know the underground market existed. Holden had grown up in the slums, where you learned early on that every system has a secret world hidden beneath it. Schools had back alleys. Markets had basement rooms. Academies had their own version of both.

It took him four days after arriving to figure out where it was.

He found the entrance behind the groundskeeper’s storage building, near the eastern side of the campus. It was a low stone arch, with no sign above it.

He lowered his head and stepped inside.

The underground market was smaller than it sounded.

It was one long corridor carved into the bedrock beneath the academy. Along each side, booths were set up and separated by thick curtains.

Nobody used their real names here. Nobody made eye contact unless they wanted something.

Holden walked slowly, scanning the curtains.

Most of the items for sale were the typical black-market stuff. There were skill manuals that were normally restricted to higher ranks and power-boosting potions that the academy had banned for being too dangerous.

He passed a woman selling something in a sealed glass case that was rattling on its own.

He moved faster past that one.

Near the end of the corridor, he found what he was looking for.

The stall had no display. Just a low table, a locked chest, and a man sitting behind it.

The merchant wore a long coat with too many pockets and the expression of someone who had spent a long time deciding they didn’t care what anyone thought of them.

He was reading a book. He didn’t look up.

"Are you looking or buying," he said.

"Buying," Holden said. "Luminous Serum."

The merchant turned a page.

"I don’t sell that."

"You sold it three weeks ago," Holden said. "I asked around."

"Three weeks ago isn’t now."

Holden set his fifty thousand credits on the table.

The merchant finally looked up.

He glanced at the card. Then at Holden.

"You’re a first year?" he asked.

"I am."

"You want the serum?"

"I do."

"You know what it does to a first year’s body?"

"I guess," Holden said.

The merchant looked at him for another moment. Then he reached under the table, opened the locked chest without letting Holden see the combination, and came back up with a bottle the size of his thumb.

The liquid inside glowed.

It moved slightly on its own, changing between gold and white.

The merchant set it on the table between them, one finger still resting on top.

"Full explanation before you touch it," he said.

"Go ahead."

"Luminous Serum is a forced-evolution drug," the merchant explained, his voice becoming flat. "A single dose basically gives you the results of two years of good training. The moment it enters your bloodstream, it tries to upgrade your whole system at once."

"That sounds good," Holden said.

"It kills most people."

Holden kept his face neutral. "How many is most?"

"Everyone who drank the whole bottle at once." The merchant tilted his head. "And before you ask, yes, that’s what you have to do. The Serum degrades in contact with air. You can’t sip it. You can’t split the dose. You open it, you drink all of it, and then your body either handles the output or it doesn’t."

"And if it doesn’t?"

The merchant tapped the bottle once with one finger. "The energy has nowhere to go. It builds up faster than your body can vent it. Then it finds its own exit."

He let that land.

Holden thought about the word "exit" in that context.

"So it explodes you," he said.

"That is a blunter way to put it, yes."

Holden looked at the glowing bottle.

He thought about his System. It made everything a hundred times stronger. Every move he made, all of his energy, and even the physical stress his body took would be multiplied by a hundred.

The Serum would hit him and his cells would try to process two years of growth in one second. For a normal person, that was too much.

But Holden’s body didn’t process things at normal speed.

It processed them at one hundred times normal speed.

He reached across the table and picked up the bottle.

The merchant let go of it.

"I’ve said my own," the man said. "I’m not responsible for what happens when things go south."

"Fair enough," Holden said.

He kept the bottle carefully into the inner pocket of his jacket.

The merchant picked up the credit card from the table, looked at the balance, and gave a small nod. "Best of luck."

"I don’t need it," Holden said.

He turned and walked back through the corridor.

He had one stop left.

Home.