Borrowed Talent at Number One

By 1:40 a.m., Lin Zhou had climbed to thirty-ninth. Instead of queuing again, she opened the firing range. Moving targets rose from twelve directions. Her average reaction time over the past year had been 218 milliseconds. After three tests, the screen showed 209. Nine milliseconds was no miracle, but it proved Reality Projection was real. She unplugged the network cable. The server remained online. This was not an ordinary client. It was a door that opened one way. Lin Zhou backed up the hundred-player roster, ranking changes, and every replay. The record of first-ranked OBSIDIAN-K was glaring: a perfect win rate and dozens of games ending before five minutes, as if every opponent had agreed to donate points.