The mission prompt blinked like an electric fly and then the screen shoved a decision under Ethan's nose: Accept this mission now?He stared at it until the grin slid off his face. For a second the whole morning felt like an afterimage from the night before — mud under his nails, that stupid tank card still cold in his head, the ring on his finger like a silent promise.
No. Not now.
The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous accepting on impulse seemed. Where would the system drop him? Middle of the sea and I die choking on salt water? In the middle of a battlefield and become some anonymous corpse? What if time moved differently there—an hour there, a year here? What about the café, the rent, the people who relied on him for a cheap place to log on?
He clicked "Postpone." The system told him, flat and boring: You may delay the task up to thirty days; after that it auto-activates. Good to know. Thirty days to plan. He told himself that aloud and tried to believe it.
Outside, sunlight pushed through the hole in the curtain and painted the counter in a lazy rectangle of gold. The café smelled like stale coffee and the faint river-sour of last night's mud that clung to him like perfume. He looked at the storage ring — matte black, nothing flashy — and tested it with his thumb. Real. The whole mess had been real.
Customers would start drifting in soon but Ethan did not have time for normalcy. He grabbed two folding tables and shoved them together, dragging treasures out from the ring and the backpack and laying them where he could see them all at once. Inventory, stage one: know what you've got, and stop pretending the system was going to sort itself out.
There were the system rewards — things the interface had spat out when he'd finished the last task. The light armor, which was surprisingly solid and weirdly light, went back into the ring without debate. The manual — not the old name, but the one he'd been careful with — the Nine Talons of the Abyss; that too went straight into storage. Too dangerous to parade outside, too valuable to carry loose.
Everything else he spread on the counter. Armani suit — crisp, absurd, delivered like a joke by the system. White sneakers, brand-new and annoyingly perfect. Cash — actual bills, two little miracles: the wallet from the cemetery had held $668.08; the handbag in downtown had another $100 and a glossy VIP voucher for some spa he didn't have the nerve to use. He'd counted the bills twice before letting them rest in his palm. Real money feels heavy even when it isn't much.
He poked at other finds: a handful of USB sticks, a watch with a cracked face, a tarnished silver bracelet, and something ridiculous — a fishing rod. Of all the things the radar had pointed to, a fishing rod felt like the universe's sense of humor. Even moreso was the paperback he fished from under a pile: some dated "Nunchuck Practical Course," printed, apparently, in 1992. The system had classified it as a Level-1 secret-book item. Ethan blinked and pictured a librarian rolling her eyes. If this counted as "treasure," he could go to the library tomorrow and clear the scoreboard.
Then there was the mud chunk he'd pulled from the riverbed — the so-called "inkstone." He'd scrubbed it until his fingers went numb. Once he'd chipped away the worst of the filth and the ugly yellow spots, what remained was an oval stone about the size of his palm. It had a hairline crack near the base. The system labeled it Level 3. Ethan stared at it and thought about museum glass, authenticators, the kind of buyer who pays for the story more than the object. Maybe that crack was the story someone would pay for. Maybe not. He didn't know—he just knew that selling taught him a hard rule: stories make price.
He sat back and let the problem sit between his ribs for a minute. Point conversion was possible — the system let you trade treasures for points — and points were everything in this new game. But points didn't buy rent or food, and he had the landlord showing up in his nightmares. You could convert a handful of junk into points for a card later, yes — but now, in the raw immediate, cash mattered. You could not feed a landlord with "ten system points."
Decision time. Some things were worth converting later; some he needed to turn into cash now. The LV bag smelled like a bet. Clean the strap. Gloss it. Sell it to someone who loved the name more than the seam. He stuffed the sellable things into a battered backpack, left the real heavy stuff in the ring, and walked out into the morning.
Gulley Market—what he called Market Street—was two blocks away. Two intersections of city noise and opening stalls. He'd worked here before; he knew the shopkeepers, the barters, the corners where you could haggle without going full predator. This place favored negotiation and favors remembered. Perfect.
The handbag shop smelled faintly of leather and perfume. The owner — a woman with a practiced eye and hands that had spent years handling straps and seams — looked up when the bell chimed. Ethan set the bag on the counter like a man offering a confession.
She handled it like a pro: inside lining, tag, stitching, the little marks none of them could fake. Then she held it under a small lamp, squinted, and finally looked up at him.
"Real leather," she said, blunt. "One scuff on the bottom. Strap's got a loose stitch. I'll give you two dollars."
Two dollars. The number landed like an insult. Ethan had rehearsed his lines while he walked here; he'd learn the cadence of sellers, where to play meek and where to stroke the ego.
"From a friend," he said. "They asked me to move it. Came in without paperwork. It's the latest model." He stretched the truth like taffy. The woman's eyebrows lifted; anyone who bought and sold for a living liked the idea of inside connections.
She chewed it over for a beat and named another number. "Four," she said, defensive as if to cover herself.
Ethan made a noise, small and theatrical. "I can go to the other place on the corner—get five there. But you and I have a relationship. You want me to come back, right? I can bring you the next thing first."
She wanted to feel important. People did. He played that tune and she moved. She glanced at the register, counted, and after a bit of pantomime, slapped five dollars on the counter. He took it with both hands like some absurd offering. Five dollars felt like the moon.
Outside, he ducked behind a trash-receptacle, palms sweating, and shoved the crisp bills into the ring. The storage swallowed them without a sound. He stood there, ridiculous grin plastered on his face. He was not rich. He was barely scraping. But the ring made the cash feel like weightless promise.
He went back to the café carrying a little more spring in his step. He set the "sell" pile in a separate box and the "maybe" pile in another. The Nine Talons manual and the light armor stayed in the ring, silent as guardians. Twenty-five points still blinked faintly on his HUD. Ninety glared like a mountain peak in the distance.
He sat down and mapped things out on a paper napkin. Batteries, spares, sneakers for when they wore through, a cheap first-aid kit. Translation card—someday. He made the kind of plan that looked small and ugly on paper and somehow felt like salvation in his gut.
There was something intoxicating about walking Market Street with a purpose. Small scores stacked; they became a ladder. The system wanted big things and it paid in big risks. That had always been the bargain for people like him: risk for the chance to breathe for a little while. He'd take the gamble, little by little, and stack wins until the world tilted in his favor.
The golden dots of the radar blinked in his head like distant liars and saints at once. He laughed then—soft, ridiculous, a sound that was half relief and half terror—and the café swallowed it. "Okay," he said to the empty room and to the ring and to whatever luck was left out there. "Let's grind."
He felt richer than when he'd come in. He felt dangerous. He felt like a man who'd found a new way to chew through his problems, not by pretending they weren't there, but by doing the work, day by day. The system had given him tools and temptations; he'd find a way to use them without letting them use him.
That night, when the city went quiet and the neon fell their tired light over the street, Ethan would check the HUD again and see the mission timer fading like a heartbeat in the distance. He'd sleep badly, he'd get up earlier, and he'd go out with a backpack and a hat and a knack for noticing what other people didn't. Tiny finds. Quick trades. A little cash to keep the roof over his head while the bigger prize waited.
And in the ring, tucked away behind the armor, the manual rested. It was a heavy thing to carry, even hidden. But weight, he decided, could be a good thing to shoulder.
He smiled, then, properly. Not the manic, breathless grin that came with a sudden windfall. A steadier one. He had a plan. He had a list. He had five dollars and a ring that ate cash like an empty pocket. That was the start. That had to be enough.
For now.