On the sixth morning since awakening in this world, Dohyun noticed something unmistakable.
His senses had sharpened again.
Not dramatically. Not supernaturally. Just enough that the air felt different on his skin, footsteps carried farther, and the city's distant hum layered itself into individual sounds.
Workers' chatter. Car engines. Wind hitting a billboard somewhere above.
His awareness expanded.
He sat at the dining table of the empty house, a bowl of ramen steaming in front of him, untouched. His chopsticks hovered midway as he slowly realized:
He could hear three separate conversations outside, behind closed windows.
Acquisition was beginning to affect more than just muscle memory.
His fight-or-flight instincts weren't human anymore.
He forced himself to eat even though his focus drifted constantly.
He knew where this led. Not now, not yet, but eventually.
Every Lookism monster had a trait.
Gun's pressure.
Goo's chaos.
James Lee's presence.
Dohyun wasn't there yet, but he could feel the earliest hints of something forming.
Something dense.
Something sharp.
Something alive.
He left the house again and headed to an abandoned construction lot he found two days earlier. High fences, dusty concrete, no workers on weekends.
Perfect training ground.
He walked through the cracked asphalt, took a stance, and began moving.
Shadowboxing first.
His punches now sounded like fabric tearing through air.
His footwork was evolving without explicit training, shifting to maximize weight transfer and minimize openings.
Every time he threw a punch too wide, his shoulder spasmed and realigned.
Every time he moved off-balance, his hips jolted into correction.
He moved faster.
Harder.
Deeper.
Sweat dripped off his jaw as he continued pushing. He hadn't rested properly in days—not truly—but Acquisition kept reinforcing him, strengthening him from the inside.
He punched a rusted metal pole lightly.
It dented.
He stepped back, heart pounding.
That wasn't strength.
That was technique.
Perfect angle. Perfect rotation. Perfect transfer.
No 17-year-old should move like this.
He stared at his knuckles, trembling with adrenaline. They weren't bruised. Not even reddened. His wrists didn't ache.
His entire kinetic chain was adapting to protect him.
He exhaled shakily.
"If I can do that now… in only six days…"
His thoughts trailed off.
A sound behind him.
Gravel crunching.
Footsteps.
Dohyun turned slowly.
A man stepped into the construction site. Not a student. Late twenties, maybe thirties. Hair shaved close. Jacket too thin for the season. Hands in his pockets.
A delinquent. Not high-tier. But not a harmless civilian either.
The man froze when he saw Dohyun.
Then smirked.
"What's a kid like you doing here? This place isn't a playground."
Dohyun's pulse sharpened instantly.
Acquisition surged.
His breathing slowed.
His muscles coiled.
Not fear.
Preparation.
He didn't answer.
The man stepped closer, sizing him up.
"You deaf? I'm talking to you—"
The man took one more step.
Dohyun didn't move. Didn't flinch.
Acquisition narrowed his focus, calculating escape vectors, collision angles, impact zones. His vision tunneled around the man's shoulders and hips—the real indicators of intention.
One wrong step and Dohyun would have to act.
He didn't want to fight.
Not yet.
Not someone irrelevant.
He stepped back, deliberately showing no hostility.
The man paused.
Then scoffed.
"Tch. Whatever."
He turned and walked away.
Dohyun waited until the footsteps faded completely.
Then he let out the breath he'd been holding.
Not in fear.
But because his body had been inches from acting on instinct.
He looked down at his hands.
They were still trembling faintly—not from weakness, but from the aftershock of a near-trigger.
"…If I had moved," he whispered, "I might've seriously hurt him."
He wasn't strong enough to face the big names.
Not yet.
But he was already strong enough to break things he didn't mean to.
He wiped sweat from his eyes and resumed training, pushing himself harder.
Every impact triggered evolution.
Every strain rewrote him.
Every mistake became fuel.
By sunset, he could tell—something inside him was nearing a threshold.
A point of no return.
When he finally walked home, the city lights reflecting in his eyes, he knew one truth:
He wasn't just getting stronger.
He was becoming something this world wasn't prepared for.
And soon—
He would step beyond what any normal human, even in Lookism, could naturally become.