The crimson dot pulsed.
In the dark of his mind, it was the only source of light, a silent, rhythmic heartbeat of pure potential. Rajendra lay motionless, but his consciousness was locked onto it, a predator spotting a single anomaly in a featureless plain.
Tap.
It was not a physical gesture. It was an act of will, a mental command sharper than any click.
The System interface shuddered.
It wasn't a glitch. It was a release. Layers of static, menus he'd taken for granted, the familiar blue-and-silver aesthetic of his Tier-0 marketplace—they all dissolved like mist burned off by a sudden sun. What remained was not a new screen, but a space. A stark, minimalist void, and in its center, a single line of text, rendered in a font of cold, crystalline light he had never seen before.
Merchant Level Advancement Available
Current Level: 6
Accumulated Progress: 217%
The numbers hung there, an accusation in pure data.
Two hundred and seventeen percent.
He had overflowed the vessel. He had been trading, building, manipulating cosmic credits and earthly empires, all while the mechanism measuring his very right to do so had been stuck, ignored, forgotten. He'd been driving a starship with the parking brake on, convinced the grinding resistance was just the friction of reality.
Two lines of text materialized beneath the progress bar.
❖ Pending Benefits Locked
❖ Interface Restrictions Active
Of course they were. The System hadn't been a partner. It had been a governor. A limiter. It had given him a playground but kept the real toys locked in a high cabinet, watching him play in the sandbox with the contemptuous patience of a parent.
A final prompt coalesced, outlined in flickering amber:
Confirm Advancement to Level 7?
⚠️ Warning: Advancement may cause irreversible exposure.
Exposure. The word was a cold splash. Not just to the wider market, but to himself. To whatever he became when the training wheels came off. The System was asking for permission to stop treating him like a child.
His thoughts, usually a torrent of calculation, were still. There was no risk-assessment to run, no cost-benefit analysis. This was not a trade. This was a threshold.
In the quiet Pune night, with his wife sleeping down the hall and his mother across the house, Rajendra Shakuniya made the simplest, most profound decision of his life.
He looked at the pulsing red dot, the symbol of his own unconscious restraint, and willed a single, silent thought.
Confirm.
The void in his mind detonated.
It wasn't pain. It was scale.
Sensory data—not of sight or sound, but of concept—flooded him. The "interface" didn't rebuild; it shattered and reconstituted itself from fundamental principles he suddenly understood. The childish icons were gone. In their place was a fluid, multidimensional workspace where listings weren't items but pulsating nodes of potential, their value and danger radiating like heat from a star.
Old restrictions—limits on concurrent trades, filters that hid "inappropriate" markets, dampeners on the psychic "noise" of higher-tier commerce—snapped like glass threads. The mental walls he hadn't even known were there came crashing down.
UNLOCKS FLASHED IN HIS AWARENESS:
✅ Enhanced Virtual Interface: Perception and data manipulation within the System increased by 400%. Time-dilation capabilities for market analysis activated.
✅ Fragment Hall Projection (Limited): Consciousness may now project an avatar into the sub-reality nexus used by Tier 3+ entities for direct negotiation. Physical entry not permitted. Risk of psychic feedback: HIGH.
✅ Merchant Authority Expansion: Credit lines auto-extended. Access to Mercenary Contractor listings, Strategic Concept markets, and Limited Sovereignty trades granted.
⚠️ New Markets Detected: Real-time notifications for high-stakes auctions, planetary-scale asset liquidations, and… Civilizational Assessment bids.
The flood receded as quickly as it came, leaving him gasping mentally in the new silence of his upgraded mind. The ceiling cracks were the same. The hum of the fan was the same. But he was not.
Floating in the center of his new, vast, and terrifyingly elegant mental interface was a final message. It held no emoji, no chirpy tone. It was a statement, clean and absolute.
"Welcome back, Merchant."
A pause, as if the System itself was recalibrating its address to him.
"You were overdue."
Rajendra opened his physical eyes. The dark room was preternaturally clear. Every detail was sharp, every shadow holding potential information. The idle dread was gone, burned away in the crucible of the upgrade.
He hadn't been weak.
He had been restrained.
And he had just, with a single thought, taken the first voluntary step out of his cage.
The red dot was gone. In its place, a soft, golden "7" glowed steadily on the now-unobscured status bar.
The quiet after the wedding was over. The real work was just beginning.