The next morning, Noah woke feeling refreshed, the fatigue of the previous day completely gone. Sunlight spilled warmly into the room, the breeze pushing the curtains apart in slow, gentle waves.
Still half-buried in his sheets, Noah yawned, stretching the stiffness from his body. After a moment to gather his thoughts, his mind immediately went to the one thing he had been waiting for—his system. Today he could finally confirm whether he truly gained new abilities every twenty-four hours.
"Sys—" he began, but froze.
Out of the corner of his eye, a familiar blur launched toward him. Toothless—tongue out, tail flicking—was making his usual attempt at a chaotic morning greeting.
Before Noah could even think, his body moved. His pupils contracted sharply, his thoughts exploding into clarity as if his brain had been supercharged. Muscles tightened, tendons stretched taut like drawn wires, and time itself slowed to a crawl.
He could see everything—the twitch of Toothless's claws, the flutter of curtains behind him, even dust drifting lazily in the sunbeams.
Then his arms jerked upward, impossibly fast, faster than he could ever remember moving. His hands closed, and the next thing he knew, the squirming reptile was clutched firmly in his grip.
Noah froze, staring blankly for a second, but Toothless's continuous, relentless attempt to lick his face clean quickly snapped him back to attention. He tossed him into the air before using his telekinesis to gently place him down.
Surprised and curious, he quickly opened the system interface.
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[Name: Noah Silver]
[Age: 17]
[Gender: Male]
[Height: 185 cm / 6'1"]
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[Abilities]
— Hypermotility — Lv.1 (New)
→ Status: Awakened | 1% XP to Lv.2
— Telekinesis — Lv.1
→ Status: Awakened | 96% XP to Lv.2
— Genius Intellect — Lv.6
→ Status: Master | 78% XP to Lv.7
──────────────
[System Functions]
— Ability Synthesis-Fusion
— Ability Upgrade
— Auto-Train (1/1)
— Mission
──────────────
[System Data]
— Daily Ability Refresh: 17h 41m
— Ability Points: 0
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Noah's gaze immediately darted toward the new entry that appeared on the interface. Hypermotility? Noah contemplated, his curiosity urging him to view more details.
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Hypermotility — Lv.1 (New!)
Status: Awakened
XP: 1% to Lv.2
Description: Allows the movement of the body at extreme speeds with enhanced reaction time, agility, and reflexes.
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Noah's expression slowly morphed into a grin. Hypermotility… mostly heightened reflexes and reaction time. Enhanced agility should be a byproduct necessary for the ability to work. I wonder whether it can indirectly increase my strength. His blood boiled with excitement. He had a lot of tests to run.
He wondered just how high his reaction time was. The human average is anywhere between 150 to 350 milliseconds, with the lowest possible being 100 milliseconds. Just how much has mine been pushed at level one?
Noah didn't waste another second on the bed. He climbed off and, with a wave of his fingers, the bed rearranged itself—neat, tidy, and smooth. His telekinesis had come far and was just on the cusp of leveling up. In a few hours, he'd see what changes leveling up abilities would bring.
He cleaned up quickly, fully relying on his telekinesis. He had now grown completely immersed in its utility. After dressing, he grabbed his phone and headed downstairs.
Walking down the stairs, he could already hear the sound of utensils clattering below. No doubt Debbie was already awake.
"Good morning, Aunt Debbie," he said, grabbing an apple from the counter.
"Morning, Noah," she responded, glancing his way. She was busy flipping pancakes on the skillet, hair tied back, humming faintly to herself. "Right on time, as always. It's like you've got a built-in alarm clock." She said this knowing full well Noah didn't usually use his alarm—just pure instincts and training.
"Yeah, I make sure to wake up early. It's easier to think in the morning," he said, shrugging.
"Hmm, you will grow up to be a very responsible young man," Debbie said, patting Noah on the shoulder.
"Are you going somewhere?" she inquired, eyebrows raised as she noticed the bag hanging on his shoulder.
Noah nodded slightly before speaking. "I'm heading to the warehouse. I need to take care of a few things."
"A few things?" Debbie questioned, her curiosity piqued, but she didn't press. Noah was always so secretive. Though he'd never lie if you asked him directly, his responses were often so vague he might as well not say anything. Debbie had long since learned not to poke around unless he was willing.
"Won't you wait for breakfast?" she asked, returning to the sizzling pans.
"Nah, I'll get something on the way," Noah responded after some thought. He had a lot on his plate; time was of the essence.
"Okay, be safe," Debbie said, watching Noah's back as he exited the door.
After Noah left, Debbie sighed, her shoulders dropping. She fell into deep thought, her eyes turning misty. She grabbed the silver necklace resting on her neck and couldn't help but get lost in thought.
Meanwhile, Noah, on his bicycle, quickly left the confines of the suburban neighborhood behind and crossed into the bustling atmosphere of Chicago.
After several turns and bends, nearly an hour had passed by the time he finally arrived at his destination. He quickly walked up to the warehouse. It was one of the few properties he owned in the city, among several others.
Noah approached the entrance, glancing around out of habit. Then he pressed his thumb on the security lock he had personally designed. With a hum and a click, the door opened, revealing the interior. Noah quickly stepped inside, sharply locking the doors behind him.
The warehouse lights flickered on automatically as Noah entered, bright strips chasing the darkness into the corners. He took in a sharp breath, satisfaction flickering across his expression.
The air inside carried a faint sterile tang—recycled, filtered, and purified several times over. Rows of sleek workbenches lined the space, scattered with equipment most people would consider cutting-edge.
Microscopes tuned to the nanoscopic scale, automated centrifuges that could separate compounds within seconds, cryogenic tanks storing his biological samples—every corner of the warehouse had something humming, whirring, or glowing faintly.
He casually walked around, checking that everything was in working order, his eyes landing on the broad holo-display that came to life on the far wall.
A neat grid of system readouts unfolded, showing gene-sequence data, metabolic simulations, and live monitoring of his cultures. The processors running behind the walls were custom-modified.
The bio-labs took up most of the space—glass partitions enclosing sterile chambers where incubators, growth tanks, and fluidic bioprinters stood alongside countless other machines.
Biology might have been his strong suit, but his technical abilities weren't far behind. The warehouse alone contained technology that wouldn't be invented for decades.
After making sure everything was in order, Noah made his way over to the raised clearing in the center of the room. As he approached, monitors flickered to life automatically.
Noah skimmed through the displayed readouts. Everything was in order—cultures thriving, simulations still running smoothly, no errors in the automated sequences. He lingered for only a moment, tapping the display to flag a few minor adjustments before stepping back.
He'd come here to test the hypermotility ability, even if it was still level one. It likely already pushed him beyond the ordinary human limit.
.
.
.
Four hours passed in the blink of an eye, and the series of tests quickly came to an end. Utilizing the warehouse's lab-grade toys—most of which Noah had built himself from parts and half-forgotten schematics—he had turned an unused corner into a mock human-performance lab.
He'd learned to do things properly: not just fling himself into drills and hope for results, but instrument them. Hypermotility might make him feel faster, but he wanted numbers he could compare, trends he could track, and a clean way to tell just how much level-ups actually changed things.
Noah's rig sat like a small battlefield of tech in the middle of the floor.
A matte-black cube of equipment hummed softly: a stimulus computer with a custom program he'd called BlinkTest. A strip of LEDs—fast, surgically bright—was mounted on a sway arm that could swing left or right with a servomotor.
Tiny pods (borrowed design from something he'd seen online) dotted the floor and wall—his "light pods"—that flashed in programmable patterns. A high-speed camera with a bright ring lens hung on a gimbal.
An instrumented tile in the floor served as a force plate; a narrow button pad with millisecond timing sat by Noah's left hand for keyboard-precision trials.
Around his forearms and calves were thin bio-patches—crude EMG analogues he'd wired from micro-amplifiers and biopotential film—not hospital grade, but more than good enough to pick up onset signals when he tensed.
Above everything, the holo-display blinked against the jet black surface with live streams from each sensor.
Noah ran a quick calibration—an LED flash to the photodiode on the camera, a test pulse to each pod, a single stomp to the force tile—then hit START.
He had three goals today: get a baseline simple reaction time under controlled conditions, measure choice and go/no-go performance for decision latency and inhibitory control, and test reactive agility and explosive-response time, first-movement latency, and time-to-contact with the light pods and the force tile.
He set up the blocks in sequence so fatigue wouldn't confound sprint-like efforts. He used the same warm-up he always did: dynamic stretches, three submax reps of each movement, and two practice blocks of each test.
Not to bore you with too many details, Noah's results came out better than he'd expected. He'd broken the measurements into three separate fields; after all, the body had different forms of reaction.
His visual reaction result came out just between 100 to 120 milliseconds, auditory reaction between 80 to 100 milliseconds, and finally touch reaction between 70 to 90 milliseconds.
To put it into perspective, the best athletes' visual reaction times usually range from 180 to 200 milliseconds, auditory reaction from 140 to 160 milliseconds, and touch reaction from 120 to 140 milliseconds. In other words, Noah was reacting almost twice as fast as peak human performers.
While his numbers hadn't crossed into the realm of the outright superhuman—where reactions should dip below 50 milliseconds, bordering on instinctive precognition—they placed him on the razor's edge of possibility.
Against a normal opponent, his speed would feel inhuman. Even against elite fighters or athletes, Noah's reactions would give him a decisive edge, allowing him to move as though time itself slowed in those critical moments.