It was deep into the night.
Leon's eyes burned with excitement.
The more he thought about what The Eternal Club could become—its reach, its influence, the sheer force it might one day wield—the more he felt his blood surging through him.
Ambition spread through him like wildfire.
There had always been clubs in this world that stood above the rest.
Places where influence gathered.
Places where old money, power, pedigree, and status were quietly concentrated behind closed doors.
Membership in those circles wasn't just social access. It was proof of rank.
A private yachting club founded by shipping dynasties, with only a hundred members worldwide, the kind of place people whispered about as the final destination of the ultra-rich.
Yale's Skull and Bones, shrouded in ritual, secrecy, and myth—an alumni society so powerful that presidents, judges, and men who shaped the American state had once passed through its doors.
And beyond those, there were institutions like Augusta National, elite social clubs in Hong Kong, billionaire networks, invitation-only circles of capital and influence.
Every one of them held enormous power.
But if the thing Leon envisioned truly came into being—
then all of them would pale beside it.
Because none of them, no matter how exclusive, could offer what his could.
None of them could trade in life.
None of them could sell more years to the dying.
None of them could stand above mortality itself.
The Eternal Club would.
And if that happened, then every so-called top club in the world would become secondary.
At best, decorative.
At worst, irrelevant.
Leon's mouth curved upward.
He lowered his pen to the page and wrote:
The Eternal Club shall have one and only one Chairman, to be held by its founder, Leon Li, whose status within the Club shall be sacred and supreme.
He kept going.
Leon Li shall be the sole final authority over all major affairs of the Club. He shall possess the power to direct, command, and overrule all members and all internal bodies. Any instruction issued in his name shall carry inviolable force within the organization and shall not be subject to challenge or refusal.
In simpler terms:
He would be the center of it all.
The founder.
The final voice.
The one man inside the Club whose authority could not be checked.
He continued drafting the structure.
Below the Chairman, there would be a governing council.
Twelve seats in total.
One President of the Council.
One Vice President.
Ten member representatives.
A Secretary-General.
Departments could be added later.
Internal review bodies, too.
Enforcement, intelligence, financial screening, member assessment, resource allocation—
By the time Leon was done sketching out the organizational framework of The Eternal Club, he had written through more than half the notebook.
When he finally looked up, a faint blush of morning had already begun to rise beyond the window.
At some point, the rain had stopped.
Leon capped his pen, flipped back through the pages he had written, and then closed the notebook.
This club—this thing that didn't yet exist except in paper, in theory, in hunger—would be the central project of his life for the foreseeable future.
He slid the notebook into his desk drawer.
Then he turned his attention to the two remaining aspects of his power:
Accelerate Time
and
Slow Time
He had not yet purchased any additional lifespan from anyone else.
That meant if he used either of those abilities now, he would be spending his own life.
Even so, Leon didn't feel particularly worried.
As far as he was concerned, lifespan would soon become the one resource he lacked the least.
Before testing anything, he focused inward and checked his own status.
Name: Leon Li
Age: 27
Remaining Lifespan: 68 years, 88 days, 18 hours, 58 minutes, 59 seconds
He did the math.
If nothing had changed—if he had never received this power—he would have lived to ninety-five.
Honestly, that surprised him.
He worked as a software engineer. Late nights were standard. Overtime was standard. Burnout was standard. Every industry had its horror stories about coders working themselves into the ground.
"Not bad," Leon muttered.
"Guess I was built to outlast the rest of the programmers after all."
Then he refocused.
"Acceleration first."
He sat naturally in his chair and let the thought form.
The moment he did, a line of information appeared in his mind.
Select acceleration multiplier.
"Two times," Leon said.
A strange sensation flowed through his body almost immediately.
Then the change began.
Leon raised his head and looked around the room.
At once, everything seemed wrong.
Or rather—slower.
The sounds around him dragged.
The sights in front of him dulled into reduced speed, as if the whole world had abruptly dropped to half pace.
Leon turned to the computer screen on his desk.
He fixed his eyes on the clock in the lower-right corner and started counting silently to himself.
A little while later, he confirmed it.
By the time he had counted to one hundred and twenty, the minute on the screen had only advanced by one.
He stood up and glanced out the window.
Down below, an older man was out walking his dog.
But both the man and the dog seemed to be moving in slow motion—everything outside running at half speed compared to him.
Leon narrowed his eyes.
"So my time is no longer flowing at the same rate as the outside world."
"My personal rate is faster."
He thought about it—and immediately pushed it further.
Ten times.
At once, the ratio became ten to one.
In Leon's vision, a falling leaf outside the window now drifted downward with absurd slowness.
Pedestrians moved like snails.
The entire world had become sluggish.
Even sound stretched and warped, slowed to the point of strangeness.
"My time is ten times faster than the outside world... which means everything I see appears ten times slower."
He felt excitement rush through him.
"In other words, from everyone else's point of view, my reactions would be ten times faster."
He paused only a beat.
"And if I stack even more time than that?"
A smile spread across his face.
There was something else he could feel, too—
a faint sense that the range of the altered time flow could be expanded outward from himself.
But doing that would require far more consumption. The amount of lifespan spent would multiply sharply.
Even so, the potential was obvious.
This ability was terrifyingly strong.
It gave him something priceless.
Self-preservation.
At ten times speed, a hundred times speed, or more, Leon would become almost untouchable in any ordinary confrontation.
At last, he released Accelerate Time.
Then he checked his status again.
Remaining Lifespan: 68 years, 88 days, 18 hours, 46 minutes, 59 seconds
Leon quickly reviewed what had happened.
From the outside world's perspective, only two minutes had passed.
But during that time, he had spent one minute at double speed and another minute at tenfold speed.
Which meant he had personally experienced twelve minutes in total.
And twelve minutes had been deducted from his lifespan.
The math checked out.
Leon clenched his fist, grin widening.
"Holy shit," he said under his breath.
A moment later, he moved on to the last ability.
Slow Time.
This one was effectively the reverse—stretching a single unit of his personal time outward so it lasted longer relative to the world outside.
Once activated, the scene beyond him seemed to accelerate.
Cars in the distance moved faster. Small motions completed themselves more quickly. The world no longer crawled—it rushed.
Leon watched carefully, then nodded to himself.
"This is probably what I looked like to the outside world just now."
As far as immediate usefulness went, though, he felt this ability was much less valuable to him than Accelerate Time.
At least for now.
Still, that didn't mean it was weak.
It only meant he hadn't found the right use for it yet.
And with powers like these—
who knew what else they might become?