Damon didn’t waste time.

The moment he was back in his dorm, he kicked the door shut, dropped the paper bag on his desk, and pulled out one of the vials. The pale blue liquid caught the light, swirling lazily inside the glass like something between water and syrup.

[BASIC RECOVERY DRAUGHT - F-RANK]

He’d read about recovery potions in his first-year courses. They were standard issue for new students after intensive training, meant to promote healing and reduce fatigue.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let him keep working out longer for the day.

Damon uncorked the vial and downed it in one swallow. The taste was faintly minty, with a bitter aftertaste that clung to the back of his throat

[RECOVERY DRAUGHT CONSUMED - F-RANK]

[EFFECT: ACCELERATED MUSCLE RECOVERY - 4 HOURS]

Then, beneath it, a new line appeared.

[SYSTEM OVERRIDE]

[ADJUSTING PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE...]

[MODIFIED EFFECT: ACCELERATED HYPERTROPHY - 4 HOURS]

Damon stared at the screen.

"Hypertrophy?"

The word was clinical.

Muscle growth.

The system wasn’t just helping him recover faster; it was redirecting the potion’s effect, turning it from simple healing into active growth.

He flexed his fingers, half-expecting to see his biceps swelling like balloons. Nothing so dramatic happened, obviously.

But beneath the lingering soreness from his earlier workout, he felt something else.

A faint heat. A hum of activity, deep in the muscle fibers.

His body was already responding.

"How much does this change things?" he muttered.

The system, as usual, offered no direct answer. But the golden screen pulsed once, and the task progress bar appeared unprompted.

[TASK PROGRESS: 1.2%]

He’d been at [1.0%] when he left the gym. Now, just sitting at his desk, the number had crept up by two-tenths of a percent.

The potion wasn’t just letting him recover. It was letting him grow while resting.

Damon grabbed the edge of his desk, his mind racing through the implications. Recovery potions were designed just to heal. But with his system modifying the effect, his muscles weren’t just repairing.

They were now building.

Every workout would count double.

Triple.

Maybe more, depending on the potion.

"One hour of training got me one percent," he said aloud, working through the math. "If I can train twice a day instead of once... and if the potions keep amplifying the growth during rest..."

He didn’t finish the sentence. The numbers were too speculative, and he didn’t have enough data yet.

But that didn’t stop him. He knew he had to experiment as soon as possible.

***

He waited exactly four hours.

Not because he wanted to. Every instinct screamed at him to sprint back to the gym immediately, to capitalize on the potion’s effect while it was still active.

But he’d spent two years being patient against his nature, and now that nature was fighting back with all its strength. But he had to control it for now; he knew that being reckless wouldn’t help him.

Overtraining was a real possibility.

Especially with accelerated hypertrophy, the last thing he needed was to heal while working out and accidentally heal the wrong way because he was in motion.

And while he liked to experiment, that wasn’t something he wanted to try at all.

So he waited.

He reviewed Lena’s notes from the past three days. He ate a good meal to pair with the potion. He stared at the ceiling, not counting tiles this time, but calculating percentages, timelines, and projections.

At the four-hour mark, the system pulsed.

[MODIFIED EFFECT EXPIRED]

[NET PROGRESS DURING EFFECT WINDOW: +0.3%]

[TOTAL TASK PROGRESS: 1.3%]

Three-tenths of a percent just from existing. From letting the potion do its work.

"I can live with this."

***

He changed back into his gym clothes, the fabric still faintly damp from the morning’s session. His muscles ached, but it was a dull, manageable soreness rather than the sharp protests he’d felt leaving the gym earlier.

The potion had done its work, along with the extra bonus he hadn’t expected.

Before heading out, he grabbed the paper bag with the remaining vials.

Three left.

At twenty credits each, he could afford to keep this pace for a while, but not forever. He’d need to budget carefully or find another source of income.

That was a problem for later.

Right now, he had an experiment to run.

The evening air was cooler than the morning, the sun already dipping below the academy’s outer walls and casting long shadows across the walkways. Most students were in the cafeteria or the recreation halls, winding down from the day’s training.

A few stragglers hurried between buildings, but no one paid him any attention.

The gym was busier than before, but not crowded. A handful of students occupied the treadmills near the back wall, and two others were spotting each other on the weight benches.

A couple of heads turned when Damon walked in, but no one really cared. It was already evening, and whatever energy they might have used to pick on him had long since faded.

’Too tired to be dicks, huh? Well, that’s good to hear.’

Damon claimed an open corner near the free weights, dropping his bag against the wall. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the faint residual heat from the potion still humming in his muscles. The soreness was there, but it was distant, manageable.

He started with stretches. Ten minutes of dynamic movement, loosening his joints, waking up the fibers that had spent the afternoon rebuilding themselves. His body felt different than it had this morning.

Not stronger, not yet. Even he would have started to think he was going crazy if it had, but it had definitely become more responsive.

Like a machine that had been doing nothing for years and was finally being oiled.

That was the best way Damon himself could describe it.

"System," he said under his breath. "Status."

[TASK PROGRESS: 1.3%]

’Still the same number.’

’Good,’ he thought.

He half-expected his progress to reset after resting for so long.

He moved to the weight bench first. This morning had been about bodyweight exercises, testing his baseline. Tonight, he needed to push further.

The bar was loaded with a modest weight. Forty kilograms total. He’d seen first-years warm up with double that, their systems passively reinforcing their muscles before they even activated a skill.

Damon didn’t have passive reinforcement. He had a body that had spent two years stagnating while everyone else ascended.

He lay back on the bench, gripped the bar, and pressed.

The first set of ten was manageable. His arms shook on the last rep, but the bar went up.

The second set was harder. By the eighth rep, his elbows were threatening to lock, and his chest burned with that familiar, deep ache.

The third set he barely finished. The tenth rep took everything he had, his arms screaming, his vision tunneling to a single point on the ceiling.

[TASK PROGRESS: 1.5%]

"I think I started with something too heavy," he panted, sitting up and shaking out his arms. "But the progress speaks for itself... that’s a lot more than earlier."