Fatih looked at the 24,980 SP he had received. Moments before, 6,500 of it was whisked away to repay the debt he had incurred from losing the race against Apollo, leaving him with only 18,480 SP.

With a light sigh, as he mourned the lost SP due to his wishful thinking, he immediately brought up the list of his current upgradable abilities. He wanted to go through them and see which one he should upgrade now that he had a year-long 20% discount and nearly a full year before he got into an actual F1 car at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Invictus (Limit Break)

Sponge Brain (Ultimate)

Sponge Body (Ultimate)

Aquaman (Ultimate)

Catlext (Genius)

Racecraft (Genius)

Setup Mastery (Genius)

Hypervigilance (Genius)

Mirror (Genius)

Thanks to the last-minute free improvement, all of his abilities were now at a minimum genius level. All the other abilities had been painstakingly improved over the past two years, thanks to Apollo’s brutal training in the simulation. He had put Fatih in situations that pushed him to his maximum to avoid going off track, and since Apollo had total control over everything, he kept changing the variables constantly, not allowing him even a moment to breathe.

It was also thanks to this training that he didn’t even have enough time to practice for the F3 races he was going to be participating in, as he had done during the F4 season. Apollo had deemed that he was already good enough to deal with everything preparation-wise on the actual track already and had spent the entirety of the four daily simulation hours following a special plan to push him beyond anything he had experienced. Although it was brutal, the results spoke for themselves, removing any chance of Fatih complaining or asking for things to be eased.

"The sponge abilities go first," Fatih said as he pre-selected them, as they were the foundations of everything else. They were the reason he couldn’t use the maxed-out Invictus, as his body and mind couldn’t handle it. But now, he could finally upgrade them and achieve the perfect foundation to be able to fully exploit any ability he would learn in the future.

In an instant, the total bill for those two abilities at their max shaved off 16,640 SP. Despite the discount, they still cost 8,320 SP each, and he would have had to shell out 10,400 SP if it weren’t for the discount, leaving him with a measly 1,840 SP, which wasn’t enough to upgrade anything. His mind wanted to go back to his decision of racing with Apollo, but he immediately shut it down since it now made no difference. Any sort of regret would only negatively influence him.

Apollo, who had been silently looking at Fatih, finally said, "Looks like I’m the only choice you have left to improve your abilities by the time you are in F1." He then puffed his chest with his hands locked just under it. Although he was messing with him on the outside, inside, he was thinking something completely different.

If he goes through with it, it will become the perfectly fertilized ground on which all of those abilities and training can be used as a starting point to grow rapidly. At that realization, his hair stood, despite knowing that it was coming.

"Then I’d better be fully prepared," Fatih said with a smile as he pressed the buy button. But moments after he did, a warning appeared.

[The upgrade will take twenty-four hours to fully integrate into your body. Would you like to go through with it?]

[YES] [NO]

"What, a full day?"

"You think upgrading two fundamental abilities related to your body is going to take only a few seconds?" Apollo asked while giving him the side-eye.

"Now that complicates things," Fatih said as he slapped his forehead. He knew he needed to go through with it as fast as possible so that he could have as much time as possible to exploit these abilities, but he also knew if he slept for 24 hours straight, he was going to scare his mother, stepfather, grandmother, and everyone connected to him on the motorsports side. Red Bull might want to know what condition had caused such a thing to happen.

"What is the problem? Just go ahead with it, and when everything is over, you can just tell them that you were tired and resting. After all, they won’t find anything anyway if they test you," Apollo said with a mischievous smirk.

"....." Fatih didn’t say anything as he started racking his mind for any opportunity where he could have 24 uninterrupted hours to go through with the upgrade in a safe enough location where he would have confidence that nothing would happen to him during that period, and he found none at all.

He could try to sleep over with Seraphina’s family, but if he slept for that long, even there, they might cause an even bigger fuss than if he went through with it at home. He could wait for his mother to go to work, but his grandmother would always be at home, and she would call her daughter if she heard nothing.

"Ah!" he said as his right hand hammered his left palm in a moment of Eureka. "I can spin this well enough if I time it perfectly by going to sleep at noon and waking up at noon, making them think that I had woken up at night and eaten the food before going back to sleep. It is dicey, but just enough to buy time before they call an ambulance."

Apollo didn’t say anything and just looked at him with raised eyebrows. And when no one suggested anything else, he immediately pressed the "no" button, as he would need to wait until noon the next day, and thankfully, it was Saturday, so he had as much time as he would need.

"Well, that too is something," Apollo said as he gave up even trying to converse with him about this matter. He moved the two of them to Spa-Francorchamps, with both of them in cars that had slick tires while it was raining. It was time for him to try to survive the track while driving fast enough for Apollo not to increase the variables.

When noon the next day came, he acted tired and informed his mother that he was going to sleep after canceling his practice session with Seraphina. The moment his body settled on the bed, he finally hit [YES].