Aman walked up to the third cubicle in the washroom and reached behind the toilet.

There, wrapped in a plastic packet was a change of clothes.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened.

The very first time the boys had decided that it would be a good idea to spoil his uniform, he had to go and sit in the infirmary in his underwear till the clothes dried.

Once bitten, twice shy.

He had taken precautions against such a thing happening in the future and that is how, ten minutes later, he was out of the washroom in a clean set of clothes while the soiled ones were in the plastic packet under his arm.

More laundry.

The bell for the end of lunch had already rung and he didn’t want to go back to class just yet.

Seeing him in a new uniform minutes after they had so imaginatively soiled the old one would give the brutes ideas.

Ideas that involved doing it again after class.

No thank you. He had stuff to do after class and doing it wet and stinking of ammonia wasn’t his idea of fun.

Actually, come to think of it, he had very little interest in the classes following lunch.

History, Physics and physical education.

They were either subjects that involved rote memorization, subjects he had studied ahead or subjects which his current body couldn’t keep up with.

He might as well get the task out of the way.

Having decided to skip school, Aman made his way to the lockers.

That was where he kept most of the important stuff like his wallet and ID card.

As for his bag and notebook…

Rummaging around in the bushes below his classroom window netted him his bag.

Thankfully nothing was missing. They at least hadn’t stooped to thievery.

Shouldering his bag, he made his way out of the school gates and took a bus downtown.

After switching between two buses and an auto-rickshaw, he finally reached his destination.

The black market.

Or rather, the entrance to the black market.

The true market was underground and little boys like him, who hadn’t even passed out of school weren’t welcome.

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He would have to make do with the stalls that had spilled out from the black market and set up on the periphery of its entrance.

Sometimes jokingly called the grey market, this area was half as lawless and correspondingly half as economically friendly as the darker version underground.

As the proverb went: “Risk and riches go hand in hand.”

A dazzling array of goods were up on display.

Signs reading “Tier 1 gene ampoules for 20% off!” or “Tier 2 gene ampoules with maximum compatibility rates guaranteed.” In bold lettering in neon colours were everywhere.

Aman didn’t let the signs distract him though.

He was here for a purpose and he knew what he had to do and was familiar with where to go.

After all, it wasn’t his first time here.

As he weaved his way through the streets crowded with buyers from all walks of life, he was stopped short by a sign in front of a shop.

“10 % off on the latest Soul Sensors. Limited time offer. Hurry and buy now!”

Aman’s reason for coming to the grey market was two-fold. Firstly, he wanted to raise some cash by selling his genes.

Secondly, he wanted to use that money to have his soul sensor replaced.

Aman had a plan.

Despite selling off his genes little by little, he hadn’t lost faith in his ability to bounce back from the cusp of adversity.

It was because of his intelligence stat. It was 9.

The maximum value for a stat that a human can have is 10. It is the limit of the human body.

Let us take the strength stat for example. A value of 5 would be considered average while an Olympian weight lifter would have a stat of anything between 8 to 10.

Now, you are probably confused by this. Shouldn’t the Olympian have a stat value of 10?

The stats actually reflect the potential of the genes present in the body of the person being evaluated.

Say for example a man has a stat of 10 but he doesn’t exercise at all. Then he won’t be able to lift a weight that a trained lifter with the stat of 8 will be able to.

So, while stats are important, they aren’t the be all, end all.

Aman was one of the few people who lived up to the potential his stat claimed.

He was extremely proficient at academics and his IQ test results showed that he could utilize his level 9 intelligence genes to their full potential.

That was why he was extremely confident in his future prospects.

So what if he was weak and ugly now?

Give him five years and after he graduates from the best engineering college in the country and gets a high-paying job, he’ll be able to buy all that back with his first salary.

Like all technology, gene tech was getting cheaper and cheaper as the days went by and the production processes were optimized. By the time he got his first salary, maybe the required gene ampoules would be cheap enough that he would be able to get all his stats to 10?

Actually, nowadays, there was a trend slowly catching on.

It was called build optimization.

The term originated from RPG lingo, where there were several categories of players like mages who focused on mana based stats like int and wis while the warrior classes focused on the physical stats like str, end and const.

In reality, there were some people who were trying to optimize their stats.

They did so by classifying stats as hard and soft stats.

The strength, agility and endurance stats were the Hard stats while the intelligence and the charisma stats were called the Soft stats.

Depending on their occupation, they sold off the stats in one category and used the money to purchase stats in the other.

For example, a software programmer would want to invest in the soft stats while a weight lifter or athlete would want to invest in the hard stats.

The logic was that everything was difficult at the beginning. With the optimum stats one could get a huge boost in their career early on and then after getting promoted, they would have enough money to fill out the stats they had traded away before.

What Aman had planned was based on this logic.

But instead of more soft stats, he had bought his sister’s health.

The money for the operations and chemotherapy was urgently needed and selling his genes was the only way he or his mother could think of to meet that demand.

But after the bullying today, he had lost his patience. He wanted to take a risk. Gamble that the dubious soul sensor would be capable of reversing his fate.

Thus, he had no qualms in trading away the last of his high stats: Agility.