Leo was sitting in meditation in his room at the Yale Bulldogs training facility. He had ordered a spiritual root tester off of Amazon One Hour delivery and checked his spiritual roots.

  [Spiritual Roots: 25 Wood, 15 Fire, 26 Earth, 13 Metal, 61 Water]

  He had gained 40 water root from the demonic heart. A huge increase.

  Leo began his cultivation routine, drawing spiritual energy into his meridians in the familiar pattern. The difference was immediately apparent. He ran the numbers in his head. Roughly forty percent faster than his previous baseline.

  After finishing his daily cultivation in a little under six hours, Leo opened his laptop and navigated to a website. Someone had built a calculator for optimizing cultivation schedules, accounting for spiritual root quality, daily recovery rates, and diminishing returns from extended sessions.

  He plugged in his new values.

  The calculator churned for a moment, then spat out its recommendation. Six hours of cultivation per day would produce optimal results. Any more than that and he would hit diminishing returns that made additional time inefficient.

  Leo stared at the number.

  He ran the projection forward. At this rate, with consistent daily cultivation, he would reach the perfection of Qi Refinement soon after his eighteenth birthday in March 2029.

  More importantly, the math opened up new possibilities. Even if he used his Divine Sense Press every fifteen hours, and didn't enter the Azure Profound Continent game world, he would have some extra time each day.

  With only six hours of cultivation needed instead of eight, that left four hours of genuine free time every two days.

  Leo sat with that realization for a long moment. He had been grinding so hard for so long that the concept of leisure time felt almost foreign. What did normal people even do with free hours?

  He checked the Yale Bulldogs' standings. Four losses. Eliminated from playoff contention. The season was effectively over, which meant there was no point staying at the training facility in New Haven.

  Time to go back to school.

  ---

  His dorm room at Phillips Exeter Academy looked exactly as he had left it. The space still tested the definition of the word "room." Everything was crowded together to fit the two VR Pods.

  Tom's side remained decorated with his collection of New York Giants memorabilia. It had expanded since Leo last visited, with a new championship banner taking up space above the bed.

  Tom Wheeler was there, his broad-shoulders and atheltic frame looking cramped in his tiny desk. He looked up when Leo walked through the door.

  Tom had been Leo's roommate since their first year at Exeter, though "roommate" had become increasingly theoretical as Leo spent more and more time away.

  "Leo?" Tom blinked, clearly struggling to believe what he was seeing.

  "Holy crap. Leo Chen. In the flesh."

  "Hey, Tom."

  "I haven't seen you in like... a year? More than a year?" Tom stood up, navigating the narrow channel between furniture with practiced ease.

  "Where the hell have you been, man?"

  Leo dropped his bag on his bed and sat down. The mattress creaked in familiar protest.

  "Still technically enrolled here. Just... busy."

  "Busy doing what?" Tom's curiosity was genuine, friendly rather than prying.

  "You missed the entire Sophomore year! Even the rich kids don't do that."

  "Just training," Leo said vaguely. "You know how it is."

  "I really don't, but okay." Tom seemed to accept the non-answer with characteristic good humor. "So you're back now? Going to start attending class again?"

  Leo changed the subject. "Are there any VR games worth playing these days?"

  Tom's face lit up immediately.

  "Dude. Dude." He grabbed Leo's shoulder with genuine excitement. "Have you played the new Elden Ring? The VR version?"

  "There's a VR Elden Ring?"

  "It came out like a month ago. Full release, complete remake from the ground up." Tom was practically bouncing. "Fifteen percent realism. It's incredible. Everyone's playing it."

  Leo felt a spark of genuine interest. He had played the PC version before his transmigration, back when he was just a normal human in a normal world. The memory felt distant now, almost like it belonged to someone else.

  "Fifteen percent realism?" Leo asked. "That's pretty high for a game."

  "They got special permission because combat is such a core mechanic. They even left the pain feedback at fifty percent, to give it a more hardcore feel. When you swing a sword, it actually feels like swinging a sword. When you roll, your whole body moves."

  Tom mimed a dodge roll in the cramped space, nearly knocking over his desk lamp and bumping against his VR pod.

  "It's amazing. The boss fights are insane."

  "Hmm."

  "You should try it. I can send you my referral link, get us both some battle pass xp."

  Leo found himself nodding. Four hours of free time every two days. He could spare some of that for Elden Ring. The idea of doing something purely for enjoyment felt almost decadent.

  Tom's expression shifted, becoming more serious. "But hey, real talk. Are you actually okay with missing all your classes? The semester's almost over. You're going to have to repeat the year if you don't catch up."

  "I'm probably not going to college," Leo said.

  "What?"

  "I've got more important things to focus on." Leo sat down on his bed, the VR pod's casing cold against his knee.

  "I've been working really hard. I think I deserve a break."

  Tom was quiet for a moment, processing this. Then he nodded slowly, a knowing look crossing his face.

  "You're going military, aren't you?"

  "What?"

  "Makes sense, actually. Skip college, sign up early." Tom sat back down at his desk, his posture relaxing.

  "My older brother did the same thing. Said there's no point getting a degree when you're just going to get drafted anyway."

  Leo opened his mouth to correct the assumption, then closed it. Let Tom think what he wanted.

  "Drone corps?" Tom continued. "That's the smart move. Get in now, learn the systems, and you're golden. Way better than waiting until they draft you into infantry."

  "Something like that."

  "Smart. Really smart." Tom pulled up something on his laptop. "Oh, I almost forgot. Coach Tracy was looking for you the other day."

  Leo frowned. "Coach Tracy? The Flying Aces coach?"

  "Yeah. He came by the dorm asking if anyone had seen you. Seemed pretty eager to talk." Tom shrugged. "I told him I haven't seen you for over a year, and he seemed a little concerned."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "I'll go see what he wants," Leo said, standing up.

  "Cool. Hey, when you get back, I can show you the Elden Ring tutorial. The mechanics are kind of different from the original game."

  "Awesome! I can't wait to check it out."

  Leo grabbed his jacket and headed for the athletic complex, leaving Tom to his studies.

  ---

  High School Flying Aces was the most popular pastime among American kids, heavily promoted by the government. It made football and basketball from Leo's pre-transmigration life look like club sports.

  The TV broadcasts of the high school playoffs broke rating records each year. Even the military made sure that troops stationed in the deepest parts of the Catacombs could watch.

  The government subsidized the development of High School Flying Aces because the positions of Flyer, Soldier, and Gunner translated directly to military roles.

  Most Flying Aces players enlisted in the military after graduation. The sport was possibly the most important recruitment tool the government had. So the government poured enormous amounts of money into subsidizing and encouraging high schoolers to try out and play.

  High School Flying Aces operated very differently any sports program Leo had previously known. Primarily because too many players competed for too few positions.

  Collegiate and NFL Flying Aces operated pretty similarly to Leo's pre-transmigration life. The only notable difference was the schedule wouldn't overlap very much. The leagues had coordinated to not compete with one another for TV viewership.

  At the collegiate level, talent distributed itself naturally across the nation. Young masters and top talents sought open roster spots wherever they could find them, moving during the transfer portal, spreading across dozens of competitive programs.

  High school possessed no such mechanism.

  Almost every young master of significant backing attended one of the four elite preparatory schools: Phillips Exeter Daoist Academy, Phillips Daoist Academy Andover, Choate Rosemary Immortal Hall, and Deerfield Daoist Academy.

  These institutions had educated the children of American aristocracy for centuries. Their Flying Aces programs were extensions of that tradition.

  Opposing them stood the four elite magnet schools: Montverde Academy in Florida, Long Island Lutheran in New York, Prolific Prep in California, and St. Raymond in the Bronx.

  These were the magnet schools of the magnet schools, public institutions bolstered by Federal funds that existed primarily to identify and develop athletic talent.

  The best sophomores from across the nation transferred to sports magnet schools for their junior year. The best juniors from those magnet schools transferred to the four elite magnet schools for their senior seasons.

  The poorest children from the most remote towns could find themselves competing against scions of cultivation dynasties. The government recognized this pathway and subsidized it accordingly to give every high school student a fair chance at playing Flying Aces.

  However because of the concentration of wealth and talent into the four elite prep schools and four elite magnet schools. The regular season was also very different. For College and NFL Flying Aces, every regular season game mattered, as it was very easy to be eliminated from the playoffs.

  The NFL and CFL regular seasons were both twelve weeks long, and if you wanted to secure your playoff position you only could have a few losses. This made good entertainment and great profit for the teams.

  High school was the complete opposite.

  Half of the class at elite prep schools were young masters whose family all donated lots of money to the school. And each of them wanted their moment in the spotlight. For the magnet schools, there were hundreds of promising athletes competing for attention, and coaches needed a fair way to identify which players deserved the limited playoff roster spots.

  So high school took the opposite approach of the CFL and NFL. High schoolers played thirty-two straight Fridays of games stretched from September through April. Each week an entirely new roster of students would play.

  In addition teams would continue to play even if they were mathematically already eliminated based off of points.

  In collegiate and NFL Flying Aces, once a team had an insurmountable lead, the losing team immediately forfeited. Collegiate players and professionals knew better to risk injury playing meaningless quarters.

  High school operated differently. Once a team surrendered, the game continued. The quarter reset to zero. Both teams substituted freely, bringing bench players onto the field. The score became irrelevant. What mattered was that every senior got their chance to compete.

  Playing a regular season Flying Aces game in your senior year very important, even if you only touched the field after your team had already conceded. The reason was simple: you would meet these people again.

  Almost all younger officers in the modern military had played Flying Aces at some level. Cliques formed around shared experiences. Players who competed in the same year, whether as teammates or opponents, often found themselves serving together years later.

  The connections made on high school arenas echoed through entire careers.

  The playoffs represented the pinnacle of this system.

  Each of the four elite prep schools faced one of the four magnet schools in the first round. Since rosters turned over completely each year, with seniors graduating and new talent arriving, every playoff was genuinely unpredictable.

  Being selected as a starter for a playoff game marked you as destined for greatness.

  Each team had seven starter spots. The five flyers, as well as the captain of the soldiers, and the gunner captain of the defense.

  Seven starters per team. Eight teams in the playoffs. Fifty-six names, selected from hundreds of thousands of players across the country. These fifty-six would be celebrated. They would represent the class of their year.

  History showed that playoff starters went on to distinguished careers. Military heroes, officers, CEOs, and startup founders, could often trace their prominence back to a single high school playoff game where they introduced themselves to the world.

  Coach Matthew Tracy of Phillips Exeter Academy understood these stakes better than most. He had coached the Flying Aces program for eighteen years, guiding dozens of young masters to successful careers.

  Every day representatives from great families would try to talk to him to secure one of Exeter's seven spots. He knew exactly what a playoff starter position meant for a young person's future.

  Which made his current plan somewhat unusual.

  He was planning to fill one of those precious starter slots with a Mid-Stage Qi Refining sophomore that no one had ever heard of before.

  ---

  Coach Tracy's office occupied a corner of the Exeter Athletic Complex, its windows overlooking the indoor Flying Aces arena where the team practiced.

  Trophies lined the shelves, photographs of past championship teams covered the walls, and a massive tactical display dominated one corner, currently showing formations from last week's game against Andover.

  The coach was in his fifties, his face lined from decades of standing on arena sidelines. He gestured for Leo to sit, then pulled up something on his display.

  "I've been reviewing your recordings from Yale," Tracy said without preamble. "I've also talked to Coach Williams. He's had a lot of good things to say."

  Leo settled into the chair across from Tracy's desk.

  "What did he tell you?"

  "That you are a monster." Tracy leaned back. "That he feels sorry for the class of 2027 to have someone like you mess up their playoffs."

  Leo laughed, a little nervously.

  "It's okay. It's just an hyperbole. The real problem is something else"

  Tracy pulled up another display, this one showing regulations.

  "I want you as a starter for the playoffs. But your lifebound flying sword is illegal."

  Leo frowned. "The La Ferrari Eclipse? Anyone can buy one. It's not even that expensive. Quite affordable in my opinion. Great value for money."

  "It's a flying sword with Tier Four formations inscribed by Ferrari's master artificers. Designed to provide Upper Tier Three Strength." Tracy scrolled through the regulations.

  "High school rules cap treasures at Tier Two. The rules never anticipated someone your age with your Divine Sense, but the limits exist for good reason. If we allowed unrestricted treasures, gunners would just load Gold Core level shells into their flak cannons and bombard enemy fliers out of the sky in seconds."

  Leo understood the logic, even if he didn't like it.

  "So I can't use my sword."

  "You can't use it as currently configured."

  "What's the alternative? Spend six months lifebonding with a new sword?" Leo shook his head. "I don't have that kind of time."

  "I agree." Tracy smiled, the expression of a coach who had already thought three moves ahead.

  "Which is why I'm proposing something different. We wipe the formations from your La Ferrari Eclipse entirely. Strip it down to base materials. Then we reinscribe it with Tier Two formations, making it high school legal. The formation masters are already on their way."

  "You want me to destroy my sword's formations?" Leo's voice carried an edge. "My parents paid a lot of good money for my sword."

  Leo began to regret calling it affordable. He had grown attached to his Eclipse.

  "Temporarily." Tracy held up a hand. "And don't pretend it'll hurt. Coach Williams already told me you're lifebonding with the most expensive T2 Flying Sword he's ever heard of."

  "More importantly, after the playoffs are over, Yale and Exeter will jointly cover the cost of wiping the formations again, modifying and reinscribing the treasure with new formations. Change it into a lightsaber. High Stage Gold Core tier, optimized for CFL tier combat."

  Leo paused. "You can do that?"

  "The base material of your La Ferrari is exceptional quality. It was designed as a flying sword, so it will always perform better in that role than as anything else. So with state of the art formations, we can only bring it up to High Stage Gold Core rather than Peak Stage."

  "Even then you might prefer a lifebound Upper Tier Three weapon over a non-lifebound Peak Tier Three weapon. At the very least you will have much greater control over a lifebound weapon. In addition it can always serve as a secondary weapon even if you prefer a lightsaber of a higher realm. Good for sneak attacks."

  Arthur, Mike, and Kevin had all done something similar. They all took their flying swords to Ferrari and had them inscribed with the patented Forbidden Tier Four formations to turn them into Eclipses.

  The offer was exactly what he needed. Leo had been trying to figure out how to get a decent weapon into the Azure Profound Continent game world. He currently had to slam his La Ferrari Eclipse into enemies head on, which not a good long term solution.

  "Alright," Leo said. "I'll do it."

  Tracy's smile widened. "Excellent. I'll arrange for the formation work to begin immediately. We have a few weeks until the playoffs."

  "One more thing." Tracy stood, walking to his window to look out at the arena below.

  "You're going to be a starter. That means you're taking a spot that every senior on this team has been dreaming about since they were kids. They've trained for years. They've earned their place. And now a sophomore is walking in and claiming what they've worked for."

  "I understand."

  "I want you to show them why you deserve this." Tracy's expression was unreadable. "Tomorrow practice. Full contact scrimmage. You against the starting lineup."

  Leo laughed.

  The sound surprised Tracy, who raised an eyebrow.

  "Something funny?"

  Leo thought about yesterday. Luo Mingxia.

  The terror of facing a Nascent Soul, a domain three tiers above his own cultivation pressing against him. The black water filling his lungs. The visions that forced themselves into his mind. Charging into that domain again.

  A creature that shrugged off the self detonation of hundreds of Gold Core flak rounds.

  And now he was here back at school, to bully some kids?

  "Would it be bad," Leo asked, smirking, "if I destroyed the team and broke their confidence right before playoffs?"

  Tracy studied him for a long moment. Then the coach smiled back, a predator's expression that matched Leo's own.

  "That's exactly what I'm hoping for."