Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
I didn't know what woke me up first, the sun stabbing at my eyes or the crick in my neck.
For a moment, I was completely lost as I tried to sit up and gather my bearings. My entire body felt stiff, like I'd fallen asleep somewhere I absolutely shouldn't have and was now paying the price for it.
I was lying on a... park bench?
Since when did I sleep on park benches?
What the hell was going on?
The questions chased each other around my skull as I slowly pushed myself upright and looked around. Trees stretched overhead in every direction, their leaves filtering the afternoon sunlight into shifting patches of green and gold. A paved path wound lazily between rolling lawns and clusters of granite outcroppings while joggers, dog walkers and tourists drifted through the distance entirely unconcerned by the fact that my brain appeared to have misplaced several important pieces of itself.
Central Park.
The realization surfaced immediately.
New York.
I knew that.
At least I was pretty sure I knew that.
My name was Ethan Creed.
I knew that too.
Everything beyond those two facts became increasingly unreliable.
As I tried to sort through the growing mess inside my head, a strange prickling sensation crawled across the back of my neck. Then the air above me shimmered, and I froze as something appeared overhead for the briefest of moments.
Not a symbol exactly, but a shape.
A vast circle of darkness suspended impossibly in midair, though darkness wasn't quite the right word either. It wasn't black. It wasn't empty. Looking at it felt disturbingly similar to staring into a hole punched straight through reality itself. Around that impossible void drifted countless pinpricks of silver light, swirling slowly around its edges like distant stars trapped in orbit.
The entire thing only existed for a heartbeat.
One second it hung there above me, the next it fractured into drifting motes of gold and vanished.
I continued staring upward long after it was gone.
"... Right."
That seemed unlikely to be a concussion symptom.
Before I could make sense of any of it, shimmering motes of light gathered directly in front of my face. The air rippled as they coalesced and gathered into a scroll that unfurled itself in front of me.
This wasn't a metaphor or a trick of the light.
An actual parchment scroll appeared in midair and calmly rolled itself open as though magical office supplies manifesting in public parks was a perfectly normal occurrence.
I gaped at the scroll. The scroll silently glowered back and briefly I found myself stuck in the world's most bizarre staring contest (one which I somehow yet distinctively felt I was losing… badly).
The floating parchment, unfortunately, appeared perfectly comfortable staring back despite (or perhaps because of) its lack of eyes.
Golden lettering slowly burned itself across its surface.
[WELCOME, ETHAN CREED.]
I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder as the thing somehow addressed me by name (and then I had to resist the much harder urge to say "You talkin' ta me?"). The golden lettering lingered for several moments before slowly fading away, replaced by a fresh line of text.
[DIVINE HERITAGE AWAKENED.]
I frowned as more words appeared, before my eyes widened as I realized that I had somehow had been reading the Greek alphabet flawlessly without even questioning it.
[LINEAGE IDENTIFIED: CHILD OF KAOS.]
The name hit me with a strange sense of familiarity.
Not recognition exactly, the feeling was closer to hearing a word you knew you should understand while simultaneously realizing you had absolutely no idea what it meant.
The parchment, unfortunately, seemed determined to continue as a fresh line appeared.
[THE PRIMORDIAL ENTITY KNOWN AS KAOS CURRENTLY SLUMBERS.]
[THE LINK BETWEEN PROGENITOR AND DESCENDANT REMAINS ACTIVE.]
[DIVINE HERITAGE SUCCESSFULLY AWAKENED.]
The golden lettering pulsed softly.
[ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM UNLOCKED.]
[TRAITS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH GREAT SURVIVALS, TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES AND NOTABLE DEEDS.]
[ABILITIES MAY BE EARNED THROUGH THE COMPLETION OF QUESTS AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS.]
[SKILLS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH MASTERY, EXPERIENCE AND REPEATED SUCCESS.]
[ITEMS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH NOTEWORTHY KILLS, DISCOVERIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.]
The words vanished and before I could even try and comprehend what the waterfall of ancient Greek had tried to explain, new ones immediately took their place.
[AS A DESCENDANT OF KAOS, FRAGMENTS OF CREATION ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM.]
[DOMAINS, BLESSINGS, TALENTS AND POWERS ASSOCIATED WITH GODS, SPIRITS, MONSTERS AND CONCEPTS MAY BE ACQUIRED.]
[ALL THINGS ORIGINATE FROM THE SAME SOURCE.]
My eyes slowly tracked back up the parchment, to Central Park still brimming with life, oblivious tourists and preoccupied New Yorkers, then back down to the scroll again that apparently only I could see. I still wasn't entirely certain what any of its golden words meant as the scroll continued.
[AWAKENING REWARD GRANTED.]
[GOLD TRAIT DRACHMA 1]
A brilliant golden coin materialized in the air before me.
Moments later, a second followed.
[GOLD ABILITY DRACHMA 1]
For several long seconds I simply stared at the floating coins.
Then at the parchment.
Then back at the coins.
"... why the hell do I suddenly know what a drachma is?"
The parchment offered no response whatsoever, which was rather unfortunate, because I had roughly several thousand questions and the growing suspicion I was about to receive answers to absolutely none of them.
Actually, scratch that. I couldn't hope to understand it all, but my fragmented memories were slowly pulling together to fill in some of the blanks. The problem was that the part I did understand raised considerably more questions than it answered.
Kaos.
The name stirred something buried somewhere inside the tangled mess my mind had become. Not much, just fragments of Greek mythology that rose to the forefront of my shattered memories. A primordial void. The very first thing. The thing that existed before everything else.
A sort of 'Let there be light!' type of deal.
At least, that was how the stories went. Apparently the floating magical parchment hanging in front of my face had very strong opinions regarding those "stories" because it wasn't presenting Kaos as a myth or even as a god. The wording seemed almost deliberately careful on that front. Source. Origin. Wellspring. The thing from which gods, spirits, concepts and creation itself had emerged.
Not sure how literally I was supposed to take that though. Wasn't the point of most Greek myths that they were, like, parables or something? Stories that ultimately conveyed a moral, or a lesson? Though most of those often boiled down to (in the words of Kendrick Lamar Himself) "sit down, be humble".
However, if those myths were really just dressed up metaphors... what did that make me? According to the scroll, I was a direct descendent of Kaos, one of his sons. Her sons? Their? It?
And if Kaos was real, did that mean the rest of Greek mythology was real too? Was Zeus actually sitting on a fluffy cloud somewhere throwing lightning bolts at people? Did Poseidon genuinely rule the oceans? Was Hades managing an actual underworld full of actual dead people? Had humanity somehow stumbled across the greatest cosmic revelation in history several thousand years ago and collectively decided to file it under mythology?
And somehow, according to the magical parchment, I was the son of a primordial entity that may or may not have existed before reality itself, Greek mythology was apparently a great deal less fictional than advertised and I had just been rewarded for awakening my divine heritage with two glowing gold drachma whose purpose remained entirely unexplained.
That should have sounded completely ridiculous. Instead the knowledge settled somewhere in the back of my mind with an uncomfortable sense of familiarity, like I had stumbled across a fact I already knew and simply hadn't realized I'd forgotten. The sensation lasted only a moment before slipping away again, leaving behind the growing suspicion that my missing memories knew considerably more about what was going on than I did.
Just how many other important facts were currently buried somewhere inside my head?
"… what the fuck is going on? What even am I?"
The scroll remained every bit as helpful as it had been thus far, which was to say not at all. Honestly, I wasn't entirely certain what I had expected. A customer support department perhaps. A frequently asked questions section. Maybe even a convenient pamphlet titled So You've Just Discovered You're The Descendant Of A Primordial Cosmic Entity.
Instead I got silence.
"Right," I muttered, rubbing at my temple. "Fantastic."
Silence, two coins and an unhelpful mysterious piece of magical parchment-
Said parchment suddenly vanished as it dissolved into drifting motes of golden light that scattered into the afternoon air and disappeared.
I stared at the empty space where it had been.
"... Okay, scratch that." I muttered, frustrated.
My gaze dropped back toward the two drachma resting in my palm.
"Two coins and a fat load of nothing."
The words had barely left my mouth when a deep growl rolled across the park, causing every muscle in my body to tense. The sound immediately set off alarm bells somewhere in the back of my skull, partly because it was close and partly because it sounded absolutely nothing like the dogs currently being walked through Central Park. Those barked. They yapped. They growled at squirrels and occasionally at one another.
This sounded more like a bulldozer that had developed anger issues and was waiting for somebody to make the mistake of letting it off the leash.
Carefully, oh so very carefully, I dared to twist around on my park bench, glancing over my shoulder.
For a brief moment my brain attempted to convince me I was looking at a dog. A very large dog admittedly, the sort of animal that would immediately become the subject of several scientific papers and at least one very concerned phone call to the nearest zoo, but still technically a dog.
Then it stepped forward.
The illusion didn't survive the movement.
Dogs didn't have eyes that glowed like burning coals, nor did they stand nearly shoulder-high to a horse. More importantly, dogs possessed a certain familiarity to them. No matter how large or aggressive they became, there was always something recognizable lurking underneath. A dog was a dog.
This thing felt wrong.
Not sick, or injured. Wrong in the same way a shark would be wrong if you suddenly encountered one in a swimming pool. Every instinct I possessed seemed to recoil from the sight of it, as though some deeply buried part of my brain had taken one look at the creature and immediately began screaming that whatever stood between those trees was not supposed to exist.
The beast continued forward at an unhurried pace, its massive paws sinking into the earth with surprising quiet for something that looked capable of demolishing a small car through sheer enthusiasm. Black fur covered its body, though calling it black somehow felt insufficient. The sunlight seemed reluctant to touch it, the dark coat swallowing the afternoon light rather than reflecting it.
Then it growled again, the sound rolling through the park like distant thunder. Finally, somewhere inside the tangled wreckage of my memories, a single word surfaced.
Hellhound. Just as the name clicked into place, the massive beast moved.
One moment it stood there between the trees, staring at me with burning red eyes and enough teeth to make a shark feel inadequate. The next it exploded forward with terrifying speed, covering the distance between us so quickly that my brain barely managed to register what was happening before my body took over. I practically threw myself off the bench, hitting the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs as several hundred pounds of muscle, fur and bad intentions slammed into the space I'd occupied a heartbeat earlier.
The bench never stood a chance.
The impact detonated it.
Wood burst apart in every direction as the creature tore straight through it, showering the surrounding path with splinters and broken fragments. By the time the hellhound landed, there wasn't much left of the bench beyond scattered debris.
For a brief moment, I felt oddly disappointed at that. Sure, I probably should be more preoccupied with the massive monster that's apparently decided that I'm to be its next lunch, but still, that bench had been the only thing I'd encountered since waking up that had actually made sense. A park bench was normal. Familiar. Understandable. It sat there. People sat on it. It had even let me sleep on it for… however long I'd been out for until it felt like my spine more resembled a pretzel. The relationship was simple and required no consideration of primordial ancestry, magical parchments or monster dogs the size of small vehicles.
Now it was gone.
And in its place stood a living tank with glowing eyes and an attitude to match its appetite.
The beast lowered itself slightly as another growl rumbled from its chest, and whatever remained of my ability to think rationally finally collapsed under the weight of the situation. The hellhound outweighed me several times over, possessed enough teeth to stock a small museum and appeared entirely committed to the idea of eating me. Meanwhile I had no weapon, no plan and absolutely no idea what I was doing. In fact, the only things currently in my possession were two glowing gold drachma that I didn't understand the purpose of and a growing certainty that I was about to become an educational example regarding the dangers of sitting alone in public parks.
Neither of those seemed especially useful against several hundred pounds of supernatural predator. Still, the coins were the only thing I had… so I threw them directly at the creature's face.
My aim wasn't especially good. At best I might have caught it in one of those glowing red eyes and mildly annoyed it before being eaten anyway.
However, halfway through their flight, both coins simply ceased to exist. There was no impact, no flash of light and no metallic clang as they struck the hellhound's skull. One moment they were spinning through the air toward the creature's face and the next they were gone, disappeared into a bloom of impossible darkness that suddenly unfolded around them like a tear in reality itself. The light around them folded inward, collapsing into a tiny point before that same impossible darkness I'd seen hanging above my head when I first woke up disappeared entirely and leaving behind only a handful of drifting silver and gold motes.
For several long moments both the hellhound and I stared at the empty space where the coins had been.
The fact that a giant monster dog appeared just as confused by the situation as I was somehow failed to make me feel any better.
Then something brushed against my thoughts. It wasn't a voice, not in the normal sense at least. The sensation felt more like meaning than language. A concept arriving fully formed inside my head without bothering to introduce itself first.
Recognition.
Acceptance.
The feeling carried no words, yet somehow I understood it anyway: The offering of the coins had been accepted, compensation was due.
Before I could begin unpacking what that sentence implied, the parchment abruptly reappeared at the edge of my vision, hovering well off to one side. Perhaps I was projecting, but I got the distinct impression it would have preferred to be hiding behind me if that wouldn't have made it impossible to read.
Golden lettering rapidly appeared across its surface, as if it was in a hurry.
[OFFERING GOLD TRAIT DRACHMA.]
Above me, a new symbol ignited.
The vast void that had briefly appeared when I awoke flashed into existence once more, only this time it was accompanied by the image of a closed fist forged from gleaming silver metal. The symbol burned brightly against the afternoon sky before dissolving into drifting sparks.
The scroll continued.
[Adamantine Fist]
Epic Trait
Your fists are like Adamantine, unbreakable and incredibly powerful. Your fists are incredibly durable, and the power behind all unarmed strikes is greatly enhanced. All fist-based abilities are easier to use and are more powerful.
I stared.
Even the hellhound stared.
The scroll, apparently deciding there was no time for questions, immediately continued.
[OFFERING GOLD ABILITY DRACHMA.]
Another symbol erupted overhead.
This one appeared as a chain of golden fistprints suspended in the air, each larger than the last. The first was small and unremarkable, the second noticeably larger, the third larger still, until the final imprint dwarfed the others and seemed to radiate enough force to crack the air around it. The sequence lingered for only a heartbeat before dissolving into drifting sparks. Fresh text appeared.
[Combo]
Rare Ability
Every time you connect a physical hit within a 3-second time frame, your next hit is 10% stronger. As long as you hit your opponent at least once every 3 seconds, you will maintain the combo and the multiplier will continue increasing. If you fail to land a hit within 3 seconds, the combo resets.
Maximum Multiplier: 999%.
I blinked, then blinked again, just to be sure.
The hellhound chose that exact moment to stop patiently waiting for me to finish reading. There was probably a warning somewhere in the shift of its posture, a tensing of muscles. Some subtle sign that an apex predator roughly the size of a compact car was about to attempt murder.
Unfortunately, I was busy reading a LitRPG equivalent of my own superpowers.
The result was that when the beast exploded forward, by the time my brain caught up with it, the hellhound was already on top of me.
I barely managed to throw myself backward as snapping jaws closed where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier. The creature's momentum carried it past me, claws gouging trenches through the grass as it skidded across the ground before immediately twisting around for another attack.
My heart attempted to achieve orbit as the hellhound lowered itself slightly. I didn't know much about fighting, but even I could recognize the universal body language of something preparing to launch itself directly at my face.
The beast lunged and I (naturally) panicked.
The punch that followed possessed all the grace and technical proficiency of a drowning man attempting martial arts. It wasn't a technique. It wasn't even a proper punch to be brutally honest. It was a wildly flailing haymaker fueled entirely by the very reasonable desire not to be eaten.
As my fist shot forward, however, something changed.
A strange pressure gathered around my hand. Not painful. Not even uncomfortable. Just... solid. My fist felt heavier than it should have, denser somehow and impossibly sturdy, carrying the same certainty a hammer probably felt right before meeting a nail.
Then my knuckles met the side of the hellhound's jaws.
The impact detonated.
Instead of my arm being torn off clean at the shoulder as it should've, the beast's head snapped violently sideways with enough force to twist its entire body off course. Several hundred pounds of monster crashed across the grass before tumbling to a stop a short distance away, carving an impressive trench through the earth along the way.
For several long seconds both the hellhound and I simply stared at one another across the torn-up grass. The creature's expression somehow managed to communicate profound confusion despite being attached to a giant supernatural murder-dog, which was fair because I was having similar difficulties processing the fact that I'd apparently just punched a monster through several yards of Central Park.
A strange sensation settled into the back of my mind, bringing with it an instinctive awareness of time passing. Three seconds. I couldn't explain how I knew that number, but I knew with a startling, absolute certainty that it was counting down.
The creature somewhat sluggishly began pushing itself upright while the strange sensation in the back of my mind continued its steady countdown. I watched it struggle back onto its feet and found myself focusing less on the hellhound itself than on the rapidly shrinking window of time attached to whatever I'd just triggered. The realization arrived a heartbeat later. If the feeling disappeared before I landed another hit, I'd be starting over from the beginning.
Just as the hellhound finally got its paws beneath it, I charged.
The decision wasn't brave. It wasn't fueled by some sudden sense of burgeoning heroism. If anything, it was probably one of the dumber things I'd done in recent memory, though admittedly my recent memory currently consisted of approximately twenty minutes and a park bench.
The important thing was that it worked.
The hellhound clearly hadn't expected me to be the one closing the distance. Its glowing red eyes widened slightly as I barreled toward it, throwing another messy punch before it had fully recovered from the first one.
The strike landed awkwardly against the creature's hindquarters. Under normal circumstances it should have been a terrible hit. The angle was wrong, my footing wasn't much better and punching a monster in the ass generally seemed like the sort of tactic employed by people who had completely run out of better ideas. Despite all that, the impact still carried enough force to make the hellhound stumble sideways, and the moment my fist connected, the strange sensation in the back of my mind immediately reset to its starting point.
Three seconds.
Another countdown.
'That's good enough confirmation for me. How did that song go? Right, 'just keep swinging, just keep swinging, swinging, swinging…'
The fight rapidly abandoned any resemblance to skill from there on out. There was no technique involved, no carefully practiced martial arts and certainly nothing that would have impressed an actual fighter. It was just me desperately throwing punches at whatever part of the hellhound happened to be within reach while the creature attempted to figure out why the bedraggled young man it had tried to eat was suddenly beating the shit out of it.
At first the beast tried to push through the blows and only hastily placing my literally unbreakable fists in between me and its chompers saved me from experiencing what it's like to be on the inside of a blender. It snapped at me whenever it found an opening, attempted to force its way back into the fight with a snarl, a lunge or a swipe of its claws, seemingly convinced that eventually I would tire before it did. That confidence began to erode surprisingly quickly, however somewhere around the point where my punches started blasting fist-sized holes through its hide. The more punches landed, the harder they became. The increase wasn't dramatic individually, but it accumulated frighteningly fast. Every successful strike fed the next one. Every reset of the timer pushed the number higher and before long the hellhound stopped trying to overpower me and started focusing on creating distance instead.
The sharp impacts of fist meeting flesh became explosive cracks that echoed through the park like gunshots. Golden dust burst from the creature wherever my knuckles connected, leaving behind small holes in its dark hide as though parts of the hellhound were being erased rather than injured.
Another punch blasted a chunk from its shoulder while the next drove into its ribs hard enough to spin the beast sideways. By the time a third hit (now at almost 200% power of that first punch) nearly folded one of its legs beneath it, the fight had stopped resembling anything remotely fair. The hellhound still snarled and snapped whenever an opportunity presented itself, but every attempt to fight back was now accompanied by an equally obvious desire to get away from me.
The realization almost caused me to miss my next punch.
'The thing is… scared?'
It had charged me without hesitation less than a minute ago, utterly convinced that I was prey. Now it was giving ground every time I advanced, trying desperately to create distance while I chased it across the torn-up grass. Somewhere along the way our roles had reversed, and judging by the panic beginning to creep into the creature's movements, the hellhound had noticed it too.
It began shrinking away from me, trying to create distance every time I stepped forward. Its snarls had lost some of their confidence, its movements had become hesitant.
And every punch I threw kept getting stronger.
By now they sounded less like punches and more like small explosions.
My arms felt like they were on fire. Sweat poured down my face. My lungs burned. Every muscle in my shoulders and chest screamed in protest each time I threw another wailing strike, but the timer kept resetting and the number kept climbing and somewhere along the way the possibility of stopping had ceased to exist.
The hellhound made one final desperate leap and exhausted as I was, I reacted on pure instinct.
With a yell that probably wasn't an actual word anymore, I raised both hands above my head and brought them down with everything I had left.
The impact landed squarely on top of the beast's skull and for a brief moment the hellhound seemed to compress beneath the blow, every muscle in its body tensing at once. The beast hung there beneath my clasped hands, suspended at the apex of its leap as though reality itself needed a second to process exactly how much force had just been introduced into the situation.
Then the monster just… came apart.
Honestly, I wasn't entirely certain what I had expected. Gore, probably. The thing looked like it had crawled straight out of somebody's nightmare and the word hell was literally part of its name. Fire seemed like a reasonable possibility too. Some kind of dramatic supernatural death throes perhaps?
What I wasn't expecting was dust.
The creature simply came apart beneath my hands, its dark fur, massive frame and excessive collection of teeth dissolving into an expanding cloud of fine golden particles that washed across the park like a sandstorm.
Unfortunately, the center of that sandstorm was me.
The resulting wave of monster remains hit me with all the precision and restraint of a hurricane. Golden dust filled my eyes, my nose, and my mouth.
I staggered backward, coughing violently as several pounds of what I sincerely hoped wasn't hellhound ash coated me from head to toe. Every attempt to breathe only succeeded in inhaling more of the stuff, which immediately triggered another coughing fit.
For several deeply unpleasant seconds I was less a victorious monster slayer and more a man actively losing a fight against airborne dog remains.
Somewhere in the distance people were screaming.
Meanwhile I was standing in the middle of Central Park, drenched in sweat and covered from head to toe in what appeared to be the powdered remains of a mythological apex predator.
'… I miss my bench…'
For a moment the only response was the sound of distant screaming, my own ragged breathing and the unpleasant sensation of discovering new places in which golden dust could apparently accumulate.
'Anakin Skywalker, you were right. Sand is the worst…' I thought as I tried to clear my sinuses while simultaneously trying to rub my eyes.
Out of nowhere the parchment reappeared, because of course it did. I was beginning to suspect the thing possessed a deeply unhealthy addiction to dramatic timing. I hadn't even noticed it leaving at some point, though to be fair I was just literally up to my wrists in Hellhound guts.
The scroll itself again offered no explanation of its own, instead hovering above the ruined remains of my late bench with what I was rapidly coming to interpret as entirely too much self-satisfaction.
Fresh lettering immediately began appearing across its surface.
[KILL CONFIRMED: HELLHOUND]
I squinted at it through a layer of monster dust.
"Thank you," I said. "I was there."
The scroll ignored me as more text appeared.
[First Monster Encounter Survived]
[Reward: Bronze Skill Drachma 1]
[First Hellhound Slain]
[Reward: Bronze Item Drachma 1]
The lettering lingered for a moment before another line emerged beneath it.
[Combat Achievement Recognized]
[Victory Achieved Through Unarmed Combat]
[Additional Recognition Recorded]
[Reward: Bronze Skill Drachma 1]
[Rewards Dispensing]
Golden motes immediately began peeling away from the dust still scattered throughout the park. Tiny particles of light rose from the torn-up grass, drifted free from my clothes and lifted away from the remnants of the hellhound before gathering together in front of me.
Three separate swarms formed.
They spiraled through the air like miniature galaxies before condensing into three bronze coins that dropped neatly into my open palm, as I caught them automatically.
They felt noticeably different from the gold drachma. Lighter. Less... significant somehow. Or perhaps just less powerful.
'I guess beating a Hellhound to a pulp ranks as less impressive in the grand scheme of things than being the literal offspring of the primordial void at the beginning of creation itself... I mean, when I think about it that way...'
Actually, I really rather not think about my origin story right now, considering everything that had happened in the past twenty minutes. Trying to distract myself, I rolled one of the bronze drachma across my knuckles while studying the others. They were identical at first glance, each bearing unfamiliar symbols stamped into weathered bronze, though I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was inside them differed considerably.
"I guess… I just… throw you in the air? Again?" I hazarded, even sneaking a peek at the scroll from the corner of my eye, but frustratingly (and predictably) it gave no answer.
Sighing, I took one of the bronze coins and casually flipped it in the air with a flick of my thumb, the 'ping!' surprisingly pleasant until that same void twisted itself into existence to whisk the coin away. Again that sensation came from deep within me, of acceptance of a bargain, or perhaps a transaction as the sparks (bronze this time) left behind by the tear in reality coalesced into a new symbol over my head.
This one resembled a staff wrapped with a serpent, rendered in shimmering bronze light that cast strange shadows across the torn-up grass before slowly fading from view.
The parchment immediately updated.
[OFFERING BRONZE SKILL DRACHMA.]
[Novice Medicine]
Common Skill
You are about as skilled as a doctor in training. You know how to perform first aid, how to apply medicine, what most medicines do, and in a pinch improvise medical tools to perform basic surgery.
The knowledge hit a second later. Not exactly painful in the physical sense, not as the fight with the Hellhound had been. Just… overwhelming. One moment I was staring at the parchment and the next I suddenly knew approximately seventeen different ways to clean and dress a wound, could identify a disturbing number of faults in over-the-counter medications by sight and possessed entirely new opinions regarding proper field sanitation.
"... That's… actually really useful." I mused as I looked down at my scraped knuckles.
The realization surprised me almost as much as the magical knowledge download itself.
Considering recent events, I'd half expected the System to reward me with something like Advanced Basket Weaving or Competitive Bird Watching. Instead I'd apparently become medically competent enough to recognize that my right hand was beginning to swell slightly and that I should probably avoid punching additional supernatural monsters with it for at least several hours.
That seemed fair.
The second coin was considerably more interesting. The moment I activated it, another symbol ignited above me. A long black coat appeared suspended in the air, its silhouette outlined in bronze light before the image slowly descended and solidified.
The coat itself followed a heartbeat later and I barely managed to catch the surprisingly heavy leather before it hit the ground.
[OFFERING BRONZE ITEM DRACHMA.]
[Father Garcia's Trenchcoat]
Common Item
Faith the Unholy Trinity - "True faith looks forward, not back."
An iconic black trench coat worn by Father Garcia. It is fairly durable and has the property of warding off curses and negative energy from the wearer.
"... I have absolutely no idea who Father Garcia is."
Honestly, after the day I'd had, receiving a mysterious magical coat from an equally mysterious priest ranked surprisingly low on the list all things considered. With the shrug, I pulled on the trenchcoat, only mildly surprised at this point to find it an absolute tailor-made perfect fit.
The final bronze drachma rested alone in my palm. Part of me hoped for something combat related. Monster lore would have been nice too. A map even. Some explanation regarding why giant hellhounds were apparently roaming around Central Park.
I activated the coin. A final symbol appeared above me, suspended in the air like all the others before it. Unlike the others, however, this one didn't immediately inspire thoughts of combat or ancient cosmic significance. Instead I found myself staring upward in growing confusion before eventually arriving at the only explanation that made any sense.
"... Is that a steering wheel?"
The parchment immediately informed me that it was, in fact, a steering wheel.
[OFFERING BRONZE SKILL DRACHMA.]
[Novice Driving]
Common Skill
You know how to drive most vehicles, you are no expert but you won't fall off your bike or start driving into pedestrians.
The knowledge arrived instantly, bringing with it an understanding of traffic laws, road signs, how to check your mirrors, parallel parking, vehicle operation and the proper procedure for navigating a four-way intersection. I stood there for several long moments while my brain attempted to reconcile the fact that I now possessed practical driving knowledge despite not remembering how I'd ended up asleep on a park bench twenty minutes earlier.
Eventually I looked down at the parchment, then around at the cratered battlefield surrounding me before returning my attention to the scroll.
"... I just beat a hellhound to death with my bare hands, and your reward was teaching me how to drive."
If parchments had shoulders to shrug, it would've.
AN: If you want, you can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon (same name over there)