And just like that, a few days passed.

Max was still stuck in the hospital, and—shockingly—no one had bothered to visit him after day one. Truly heartwarming family dynamics at work.

With absolutely nothing better to do, he spent most of his time buried in research, digging through anything and everything related to magic, runes, and how this world actually functioned.

Honestly? The learning part wasn’t even that hard.

Thanks to his weird, totally-not-suspicious ability to understand runes, most of it just... clicked. Like he’d skipped the tutorial and jumped straight into mid-game content.

But even then, that wasn’t what occupied most of his thoughts.

No.

What really had his full, undivided attention...

...was his golden finger.

Or more specifically—the system.

And even more specifically than that—the currency.

Forbidden Points.

Yeah... the name alone already told him everything he needed to know.

According to the system, you earned them by performing what it called "forbidden acts of lust."

Max stared at that description for a long, thoughtful moment.

Then leaned back slowly, a grin creeping onto his face.

Because the funny thing was...

Those "forbidden acts"?

Yeah.

He’d probably end up doing those anyway.

But right now, there was a problem.

A big one.

Because despite all his enthusiasm, all his planning, and all his completely reasonable ambitions... Max was stuck.

The system had only given him one task so far—and he hadn’t been able to complete it.

Which, frankly, was starting to feel like a personal attack.

The screen read:

[Forbidden Act: Touch a female with perverted intent]

[Reward: Unlock new forbidden acts]

And yeah...

Max had absolutely failed at it.

Which was... honestly kind of embarrassing.

Not because he hadn’t been around women—he had. Plenty, actually. Nurses came and went all the time. Checkups, bandages, "are you still alive?" routines—he’d taken full advantage of those opportunities.

Maybe a little too much.

At one point, he’d insisted on multiple "rechecks" for something that definitely didn’t need rechecking. The nurse had looked about two seconds away from slapping him into the afterlife.

Only his carefully maintained "harmless, innocent patient" face saved him from getting reported.

But still...

Nothing.

No notification. No reward. No progress.

Which meant one thing.

"...What the hell does it mean by perverted intent?" Max muttered, frowning.

Because clearly, whatever he was doing...

Wasn’t enough.

So, deciding it probably wasn’t worth risking an actual complaint—or getting smacked into next week—Max reluctantly put a stop to his... highly questionable research methods.

No point harassing nurses for zero progress.

That would just be inefficient.

Instead, he shifted his focus to other things this world had to offer—power, magic, runes... all the useful stuff that would eventually help him rise to the top.

Protector of the world?

God?

Supreme being?

He wasn’t too picky.

He’d let the people figure out the title later.

As long as they got the respect part right.

Mana—or magic, or whatever you wanted to call it—had been discovered about sixty years ago. Max assumed that by now, knowledge about it would be easy to access. Hah. Joke’s on him. Searching through his memories and the local equivalent of the internet, he realized it wasn’t that the info was hard to find—it was that nobody cared. Only three in ten people could even sense mana, and of those hundred who could, barely a dozen could actually use it without instantly killing themselves.

Turns out, his step-grandmother was one of the lucky few who could sense it—and even use it. Impressive, right? Well... not really. She was utterly pathetic at it. If she’d been competent, the family wouldn’t be scraping by, and her daughter wouldn’t have to raid patients’ leftover fruit like a produce pirate just to make ends meet.

But she still hadn’t given up her obsession with mana. Well... technically, her dreams had already been fulfilled by her granddaughter when the girl turned sixteen and awakened her own talent. That should have been the end of it, right? Nope. Some people just can’t let go of their magical delusions.

That aside, the thing was, knowledge about magic wasn’t just rare—it was restricted. And for good reason. Mana wasn’t exactly kid-friendly; one mishandled spell could be catastrophic. We’re talking incidents so bad they made nuclear bombs look like firecrackers, rendering entire areas of the globe uninhabitable. Naturally, the world government stepped in to keep everyone alive—or at least, mostly alive.

There was another catch: runes weren’t plug-and-play. Just knowing what a rune represented didn’t make you able to use it. You had to get some kind of epiphany, a magical "aha moment," and to even have a chance at that, you needed to be able to sense mana.

Some people who couldn’t sense mana at all still managed to scrawl runes and make them work, though. These rare souls were called rune mages—kind of like the weak side characters in every RPG. Useful in a pinch, sure, but don’t expect to wipe out a continent with them.

Another thing he noticed? Most people didn’t actually care about learning magic—even though it practically guaranteed wealth and status in this world. Turns out, power came with strings attached. If you could use mana, you were expected to use it—for protection, for duty, for fighting off demons, monsters, and whatever else crawled out of the usual fantasy checklist.

Max, naturally, skipped over that part.

Saving the world? Fighting for humanity? Yeah... no thanks.

Not like any of that would matter anyway.

Because once he awakened and showed off his completely-not-normal, never-seen-before talent, even gods would have to step aside.

Yeah, like he said before, his stepsister had awakened at sixteen. Around here, everyone found out at that age whether they could sense mana—or if they were stuck being normal humans for life. Sixteen was basically the official "magical audition" age: either you got the talent, or you didn’t.

Max, of course, didn’t really care whether he awakened or not. He was already eighteen, and while most people unlocked mana around sixteen, late awakenings weren’t unheard of—as long as your brain finished cooking properly.

And honestly? Awakening wasn’t even mandatory. Sensing mana was just the popular way to use it. The flashy, socially approved route.

There were other methods.

Like carving or painting runes directly onto your body—symbols that could boost strength, sharpen reflexes, speed up healing, or even patch up minor illnesses. No talent required. No dramatic awakening ceremony. Just ink, pain tolerance, and a healthy disregard for safety regulations.

Pretty convenient, all things considered.

But writing runes and being a mage were two very different things.

Several articles had made that distinction painfully clear.

Being a mage was about sensing mana, controlling it, refining it—working directly with the raw force itself.

Rune writing, on the other hand, was something else entirely.

Understanding runes, designing them, engraving them...

That leaned closer to what cultivation novels would probably call a Formation Master.

A specialist of magical structures rather than pure magical power.

Which, incidentally, was exactly what the doctors had been doing for him over the past few days. His injuries were bad enough that half the staff looked personally offended by the fact he was still breathing.Max, of course, had already figured out the reason.

’Main characters don’t die.’

He didn’t say it out loud, though. No need to ruin the suspense for the side characters.

Priorities.

And speaking of priorities—Max wasn’t particularly interested in grinding his whole body to peak physical condition the old-fashioned way. Why would he? With the system, he could just enhance whatever he wanted.

Strength, speed... or, you know—his penis.

Efficiency mattered.

Why waste effort when you could optimize?

Still, even with that mindset, he knew he couldn’t ignore everything else forever. Power was power, and this world clearly had a lot to offer.

Which was how he eventually found himself standing in front of a room filled with books.