Leo stared at the name on the screen for several seconds: Elias Carter.The trail ended there. There was no hidden owner, no unknown investor, and no mysterious organization. His father had been paying for the facility all these years.Leo slowly closed the laptop. The decision was easy, he was going.An hour later, Leo's car rolled down a quiet road on the outskirts of the city. The bright lights of downtown had long disappeared behind him, replaced by thick lines of trees flanking both sides of the asphalt. The further he drove, the quieter everything became.Eventually, a large steel gate appeared ahead, causing Leo to slow the car. A faded sign stood beside the entrance:CARTER ADVANCED RESEARCH CENTERLeo stared at the words. His father's name was right there. not hidden, not disguised, but simply written on the sign for anyone to see.The gate opened automatically as his vehicle approached, and Leo drove inside, his eyes widening slightly. The property was enormous. Several mass

The morning after receiving the System's new mission, Leo arrived at Nexus Cryptics earlier than usual. The city was only beginning to wake, traffic remained light, and the streets were calm. Yet Leo's mind was already working. The Global Ascension mission wasn't like any task he had received before. Marcus had been a personal enemy, Victor Whitmore had been a powerful opponent, and the Whitmore family had been a corporate empire. But this? This was different. This wasn't about defeating one person; it was about entering an entirely new, international arena. For the first time, Leo would be competing against people who had never heard his name. That thought excited him, because it meant his rise was far from over. By 9:00 AM, the main conference room at Nexus Cryptics was filled. Mr. Sterling sat near the front, Samuel Wright sat beside him, and department heads from both Nexus Cryptics and Carter Advanced Research Center occupied the remaining seats. Several screens displayed fina

The conference hall remained intensely busy. Executives moved seamlessly between meetings, investors discussed opportunities worth millions, and journalists continuously chased interviews. Technology demonstrations attracted thick crowds from every direction.Yet, Leo Carter's attention remained completely fixed on a single financial screen.Apex Dynamics. The company everyone in Singapore admired, the company international investors trusted, and the company whose CEO had publicly mocked Nexus Cryptics only minutes earlier. According to the raw numbers displayed before him, something was fundamentally wrong.Samuel stepped closer, his voice hushed. "What did you find?"Leo didn't answer immediately. Instead, he pointed a finger toward several specific figures on the master financial report. "Look at these growth numbers."Samuel adjusted his glasses, his eyes systematically moving across the terminal. Revenue growth, operating profits, asset valuation—everything appeared exceptionally

The following morning, Leo woke long before sunrise. Singapore's sprawling skyline stretched beyond the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of his luxury suite, illuminated by tens of thousands of glittering neon lights reflecting across the dark, glass-like surface of Marina Bay. Most people would have spent hours admiring the breathtaking view.Leo barely even noticed it.His complete attention was fixed on the heavily encrypted corporate reports resting on the table before him. Orion Technologies, Apex Dynamics, and Victor Tan. The fragmented pieces of the puzzle were finally starting to connect in his mind. And the more Leo intensely studied the metrics, the more obvious one definitive fact became.Victor Tan wasn't trying to forcefully acquire Orion Technologies because he wanted it. He was trying to acquire them because he absolutely needed them.That subtle psychological difference mattered. A lot. A person who simply wanted an asset could easily walk away when the price became to

The next morning, Leo woke up far earlier than usual. It wasn’t because of a persistent System notification, an emergency boardroom meeting. It was because of pure, unadulterated curiosity. Rachel Lim’s text message from the previous night remained open on his phone screen, glowing softly in the dim morning light: 'I have a proposal.' Four simple words. Yet those four specific words had completely occupied his thoughts ever since his high-level meeting with Victor Tan. Because in the brutal world of corporate warfare, timing mattered above all else. And Rachel had chosen her timing with absolute, surgical precision. Leo stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling window of his luxury hotel suite, a steaming mug of black coffee in hand as he watched the sun slowly rise over Singapore. The sprawling city looked incredibly peaceful from this height—orderly, pristine, and breathtakingly beautiful. But beneath that calm, hyper-modern exterior, countless invisible battles were actively ta