"Mercer. Blackboard. Now."
Patricia Greer's voice cut across the room like a slap. She didn't even look at him when she said it — just jabbed a finger toward the front of the class while flipping through her lecture notes with the other hand.
Below, a ripple of barely-suppressed amusement ran through the seats.
"Uh oh. The Old Witch is in a mood today."
"Ten bucks says Mercer cries."
The whispers weren't quiet. They never were. The words "Old Witch" hit Greer's ears with perfect clarity, and Ethan watched her jaw tighten — a vein pulsing at her temple. But the kids who'd said it had fathers in the Education Bureau, so Greer swallowed the insult like she always did and redirected every ounce of that fury toward the one person in the room who couldn't fight back.
Or so she thought.
"What are you dawdling for, Mercer?"
Her voice climbed an octave. The class went quiet — not out of respect, but because the show was starting.
"Do you have any idea how precious my time is? How precious their time is?" She swept a hand across the room like a prosecutor gesturing at a jury. "If you can't solve it, then get out and stand in the hallway! Don't sit there disgusting me!"
Every word landed like a knife thrown at a dartboard.
The old Ethan — the one who'd existed before a glowing tattoo and an impossible dream — would have stood up, shuffled to the corridor, and spent the next forty minutes staring at a wall while his classmates snickered behind the door. That Ethan had perfected the art of making himself small. Of swallowing humiliation like medicine and telling himself it would get better eventually.
But that Ethan was gone.
The new one leaned back in his chair, looked Patricia Greer dead in the eyes, and felt something cold and precise click into place behind his ribs.
Let's find out what you're worth.
He stood up. Slowly.
Greer's expression shifted — a flicker of satisfaction. She thought he was going to walk to the hallway like a good little punching bag.
Instead, he just stood there. Hands in his pockets. Weight on one leg. Not moving.
"What are you looking at, Mercer? Do I need to roll out a red carpet for you?"
Ethan didn't move. He just spoke — steady, calm, conversational.
"I'm looking at a pathetic woman. A pug wagging its tail, begging the powerful for scraps."
The silence that followed was so absolute you could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing.
Then Class Six detonated.
"Did he just—"
"Holy shit—"
"Mercer's lost his mind!"
Even the rich kids — the ones who treated defiance like a spectator sport — sat up straighter. Talking back to a teacher was one thing. Calling her a dog to her face? That was a declaration of war.
On the stage, Greer's face went through several colors in rapid succession — white, red, then a shade of purple that suggested imminent cardiac arrest.
"Mercer! Say that again. I dare you to say that to my face again!"
But Ethan barely heard her. Because at that exact moment, a notification chimed inside his skull:
[Prestige +300]
[Current Balance: 384]
Three hundred points. From a single sentence. The emotional shockwave — surprise, outrage, glee, schadenfreude — had rippled through thirty-plus students and translated directly into Prestige.
Ethan's pulse spiked. Not from fear. From hunger.
Three hundred. From one classroom. Imagine what I could get from the whole school.
He'd spent two years being Patricia Greer's punching bag. Two years of standing in hallways, of red marks on homework that didn't deserve them, of snide comments about county kids and orphans and students who "didn't belong here." Every bit of it had been building, compounding, accruing interest.
Time to collect.
"I'll say it again, Greer. It's not that I look down on you — it's that I feel sorry for you." He tilted his head, almost sympathetic. "How many years have you been at this school? And still no promotion. Your title hasn't budged, but your age and your complaints sure have."
He paused, letting the words land.
"If I'd failed that hard at my job for that long, I'd have gone home and dug myself a grave."
The classroom didn't just explode — it went nuclear.
"Oh my God, he went for the promotion thing—"
"Everyone knows that's her biggest sore spot! He's insane!"
"This is the greatest thing I've ever witnessed in this school."
Greer clutched her chest. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and for a moment Ethan genuinely wondered if she was going to pass out. The promotion — her inability to advance despite decades of teaching — was the wound she kept bandaged and hidden. Everyone knew about it. Nobody said it to her face.
Until now.
She could already see tomorrow: the whispers in the staff room, the sideways glances in the hallway, the way younger teachers would smile just a little too wide when they passed her. This student — this nobody — had just made her the laughingstock of Ashford Prep.
When she finally spoke, her voice was low and trembling with rage:
"Very well, Mercer. If I don't get you expelled today, then every year I've spent at this school has been wasted."
Ethan, meanwhile, was watching his Prestige counter. It had stopped climbing.
Interesting. So it works like harvesting — one big emotional spike per audience, then it needs time to reset. The classroom's tapped out.
Which meant staying here arguing was pointless. What he needed was a bigger stage.
He grinned.
"You're absolutely right, Ms. Greer. I was out of line. Please — go get the Grade Director. I'd love to apologize properly."
The sincerity in his voice was so convincing that Greer almost believed it. Almost. But the rage was too thick for rational thought, so she turned on her heel and stormed out without another word.
The moment she cleared the doorway, the room erupted.
"Mercer, what the hell did you take today? You're terrifying!"
"After this, the Old Witch is done. She'll never live it down."
Tyler Banks, who'd been watching the whole thing with his mouth hanging open, recovered enough to smirk from his seat:
"Hey Mercer, make sure you apologize nice and pretty when the Director gets here, yeah? If you get expelled, who's gonna fetch lunch for the rest of us?"
A few of his cronies piled on immediately:
"Forget lunch — who's doing our laundry?"
"Quick, get some use out of him while we can. Go fill up our water bottles."
Three metal water bottles clattered onto Ethan's desk. The group dissolved into laughter.
Ethan looked at them. His expression hadn't changed — still calm, still controlled — but the flat, dead-eyed stare he leveled at Tyler made the laughter die in his throat.
"If I were you," Ethan said quietly, "I'd shut my mouth and watch from the sidelines."
Tyler's face flushed. "Mercer, who the hell do you think you're talking to? You think just because—"
He never finished the sentence.
Ethan picked up one of the metal water bottles and hurled it. Not at Tyler — past him. It screamed over his scalp close enough to ruffle his hair and slammed into the back wall of the classroom with a sound like a gunshot.
The bottle hit the floor, dented beyond recognition.
Tyler went white.
For all their big talk, these were pampered kids — the kind who'd never thrown a punch in their lives and wouldn't know what to do if someone threw one at them. Tyler had six inches and twenty pounds on Ethan, but in an actual fight, Ethan would fold him in half. Everyone in this room knew it.
A wise man doesn't pick fights he can't win. Tyler swallowed whatever he'd been about to say and looked away.
The rest of them went quiet too. The usual insults — the ones that flowed like water every single day — dried up completely. Nobody wanted to test whether the next throw would be aimed six inches lower.
The silence held for exactly twelve seconds.
Then the classroom door opened, and Patricia Greer walked back in with the Grade Director at her heels.