By dawn, Jace couldn't move his left arm.
His ribs screamed with every breath. His knuckles were raw and torn, wrapped in blood-streaked tape that reeked of iron and sweat. He sat slumped against the cage wall inside the Iron Den, eyes half-lidded, body wrecked.
He'd sparred three more times through the night no breaks, no mercy. Each session worse than the last. One opponent bent his arm the wrong way. Another threw elbows like hammers. The third, a wiry brawler with twitchy eyes, kept faking takedowns and then slamming Jace's chin with uppercuts.
He'd survived, somehow. Barely.
[TEST OF IRON – DAY 1 PROGRESS: 22%]
[Condition: 58% HP | Fracture Risk: High]
[Endurance XP: +12 | Reflex XP: +6 | Grit XP: +9]
[Pain Tolerance I – 48% to Level II]
[SYSTEM ADVICE: REST RECOMMENDED]
[RYUU'S ADVICE: SHUT THE HELL UP AND MOVE]
Jace lay flat on the mat as the Iron Den's buzzing overhead lights burned down like interrogation lamps. He could hear someone in the next room hitting a heavy bag thud, thud, thud like war drums echoing through the concrete.
"Up."
Coach Ryuu's boot slammed down an inch from his face, rattling the mat.
Jace groaned, barely opening one swollen eye. "You serious?"
Ryuu didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Instead, he grabbed something heavy from behind him and dropped it on Jace's chest.
WHUMP.
A 25-kilogram weighted vest hit him like a stone slab.
"Put it on," Ryuu said, voice cold. "Time for the death run."
Jace blinked. "The what?"
The Alley Gauntlet
Outside the Iron Den, Ryuu had his own version of a running track. It wasn't a nice oval around a turf field. It wasn't even a loop in a public park.
It was an alley.
Narrow. Cracked concrete. Slick with rain and oil. Strewn with broken glass, trash bags, and rusted nails. A rust-colored wall ran alongside it, tagged with old gang graffiti. The far end turned uphill, and Ryuu had apparently been feeding the feral dogs that patrolled it.
A single lap was roughly 900 meters.
A complete circuit meant navigating collapsed crates, hopping a broken pipe, sprinting a slope littered with rat carcasses, and ducking under a low-hanging fire escape that bit flesh if you weren't fast enough.
Ryuu cracked his neck. "Ten laps. You finish them wearing that vest."
Jace stared, already sweating from the weight. "What happens if I… I dunno. Black out?"
"You don't get back up," Ryuu said. "That's the game."
[NEW TRIAL OBJECTIVE: THE IRON GAUNTLET]
Survive 10 weighted laps with ≥ 30% HP
Bonus XP for maintaining running pace
[FAILURE: Temporary System Lockout – 12 Hours]
(During lockout, you may experience full body collapse)
Tip: "Quitting is for people with working teeth."
Lap 1–3: Humiliation
Jace staggered forward with the vest clinging to him like a cinder block. The alley stretched ahead like a warpath.
Twenty steps in, he coughed blood onto the pavement.
His legs buckled near the halfway point of Lap 2. He fell hard, face-first into a puddle that stank of gutter water and gasoline. Gravel sliced into his palms.
The system chimed like it was mocking him.
[Stamina Reduced: -5%]
[Endurance Gained: +6 XP]
[XP Gained for Struggle: +4]
[NEW TRAIT (MINOR): STUBBORN BASTARD I]
Resist mental collapse by 3% when under physical stress.
Jace staggered upright. Rain began to fall lightly. The weight vest dragged at his shoulders like regret.
Ryuu leaned against the alley wall with a stopwatch, expression unreadable. "You're slow," he called out. "But I've seen corpses that quit faster."
Lap 4–6: The Hallucination Zone
By Lap 5, Jace's vision blurred.
Ghosts flickered around the corners of his eyes.
He saw his younger brother, Kenji, running beside him, smiling like he used to in the schoolyard. He saw Coach Imamura from high school yelling corrections from the sidewalk. He even saw Big Mikey from the Pit laughing behind a dumpster, taunting him with every step.
"You're still just a punk," the phantom spat. "No matter how many laps you run."
But the pain was real.
So real.
And something inside Jace… cracked.
And reformed.
[PAIN THRESHOLD REACHED]
[Pain Tolerance I → II]
Moderate damage resistance when HP < 40%
Reduces movement penalties by 10%
[TRAIT EVOLVED: ENDURE & ADVANCE]
When below 30% HP, movement XP gain is doubled.
The pain didn't vanish. It simply became irrelevant.
His body was still screaming, but the fear of it, the hesitation... vanished.
He ran.
Lap 7–10: Birth of a Pattern
By Lap 9, the vest felt like part of him.
His feet pounded rhythm into the alley floor:
Breathe. Step. Bleed. Repeat.
His heartbeat no longer panicked. It thundered.
He didn't dodge the low-hanging pipe. He slid under it. He didn't flinch at the slope. He sprinted. And when one of the alley dogs growled and lunged?
He roared back.
On Lap 10, he dropped to one knee halfway up the final incline. But he didn't stop.
He pushed off with a scream not of pain, but of rage.
At the world.
At the System.
At the people who forgot him.
At himself.
He stumbled across the line, lungs burning, tears mixed with rain and sweat.
He fell to the pavement, gasping and laughing at the sky like a madman.
[TRIAL COMPLETE – THE IRON GAUNTLET]
Bonus XP: +87
Trait Evolution Available at Level 5
[Endurance: E+ → D]
[Pain Tolerance II: 2%]
[NEW PASSIVE UNLOCKED: IRON ENGINE I]
Regenerate 1 HP every 90 seconds while moving at pace.
(Does not activate while stationary.)
[TEST OF IRON – DAY 1 COMPLETE: 33%]
Ryuu walked over and looked down at him, rain dripping from his brow.
"Didn't think you'd make it," he muttered.
"I didn't," Jace whispered. Then passed out on the pavement.
That Night
The Iron Den never slept.
Even as the city outside quieted, the gym buzzed with fluorescent lights and the sound of heavy bags getting pummeled. Jace lay in a corner of the storage room, wrapped in gauze, bandages, and a layer of sweat that refused to dry.
He stared at the cracked ceiling, heart still hammering in aftershock.
His system display hovered above him, soft blue, pulsing like it was breathing with him.
[Body Status: 34% HP | Recovery in Progress]
Muscle regeneration active. Neural fatigue detected.
[XP Bonus Pending: Next Combat Encounter]
[Note: System Sync Rising — 11% → 17%]
Higher sync rate increases instinctual performance.
Everything hurt.
His back. His legs. His fingers. Even his teeth ached. His skin had taken on the waxy sheen of overtraining. But there was something else layered beneath the suffering now.
Something that hadn't been there in years.
Purpose.
He touched the side of his bruised temple with one trembling hand.
"Still want to be the greatest?" he asked aloud, voice hoarse.
No answer.
"Still think you can be more than trash?"
He thought of Kenji. Of his mother's silence. Of the photo in the news, three years ago, showing his face beside the words "DISGRACED ATHLETE."
He felt the fire again.
Even now, half-dead, broken, bleeding into his sheets
He felt alive.
Jace smiled weakly, eyes burning as the System dimmed above him like a lullaby.
"…Yeah," he whispered. "I do."