At the start of his thirteenth lap,
Ashok crossed the line with the same quiet pace he had been keeping from the beginning.
Nothing flashy, no sudden burst of speed — just the same steady jog.
But this time, as he moved ahead, he found himself among students who had once sped far ahead of him.
They had been chasing after the main characters — Leon, Gideon, Mira — trying to stay in the top ten.
But now their feet dragged more than they ran. Their steps uneven, as if they were walking through knee-deep mud.
Their speed no different from undead skeletons or zombies.
Ashok, however, kept going like a slow cog in a clockwork machine — not fast, but not slowing either.
Looking around, he realized that he'd quietly moved past almost half the class.
Out of forty-five students, he was now somewhere around twentieth place, and even that was creeping upward. Behind him, many were still stuck trying to finish their twelfth lap, some even slipping into their eleventh.
