The first thing I noticed about my new body was that it was cold.
Not dramatically cold. Not "ice dragon breathing on you" cold, which I would later learn was a very real and specific category of cold that existed in this world of course. Just the ordinary miserable, seeping cold of a stone alley at some hour of the night when the temperature has dropped below what a person wearing only a thin shirt and trousers should reasonably be expected to tolerate.
The second thing I noticed was that I was sitting inside a cardboard box.
Not beside it. In it. The box was roughly the size of what in my previous life might have contained a small refrigerator. The sides were damp and the flap I had apparently been using as a door was hanging out. Someone had written something on the side in black ink that I couldnt read because it was in some magical language script I didn't recognize, which somehow I was able to translate into meaning "DO NOT STACK."
I looked at my hands. They were my hands more or less, except the knuckles were rougher and there was callus on my right palm that hadnt been there before, the kind that develops over months of doing something physical and repetitive. My nails were clean which was surprising because I had expected the universe to be less considerate after MAKING ME HOMELESS. My clothes, as mentioned, were thin and slightly too short and they had a tear along the left sleeve that someone had attempted to mend with thread of a completely different color.
I got used to my situation quickly though.
I was surrounded in this alley way by stone walls on both sides worn smooth by age. A narrow strip of sky overhead showing the kind of stars that only exist in places without light pollution, which was beautiful in the way that things which are also inconvenient can sometimes still be beautiful. The smell of fish coming from somewhere nearby. The sound of distant city noise people and carts and something that might have been music. A pile of what appeared to be my earthly possessions: one blanket, one small bag, one dented cup and, for reasons I could not immediately explain, half a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth.
I picked up the bread. It was stale. Of course it was stale.
"Okay," I said to myself. "New world. Homeless. Cardboard box. I can work with this."
I could not actually see how I was going to work with this. But one of the things I had learned in twenty four years of being Rymur Kaito was that saying things out loud with moderate confidence sometimes helped them become more true. My old manager had called it "manifestation mindset." I had called it "lying to yourself until reality cooperates." We had both been describing the same thing.
And then, without warning the voice came back.
Not the deity voice. Something different. Something that spoke not as sound through ears but as text through the mind.
[ SKILL ACTIVATION NOTICE ]
[ User has entered a new world. Preliminary scan in progress. ]
[ Unique Skill: DRIFTER'S DOMINION Active ]
[ Passive Skill: GUTTER INTUITION Active ]
[ Passive Skill: UNCLAIMED TERRITORY Active ]
[ Latent Skill: CELESTIAL BEGGARY Dormant. Conditions for awakening: Unknown. ]
[ System voice initialized. This unit will be referred to as ORACLE. ]
[ Current status: Vagrant, Grade 0. No fixed abode. No party affiliation. No recorded history in the Kingdom of Velthas. ]
[ Note: Several additional latent skills detected. Classification pending. Origin: Undefined. ]
"Oracle," I said slowly.
"Confirmed," the voice in my head said.
"You're the... system voice. The skill guide thing."
"That is an acceptable description."
"What does Drifter's Dominion do."
"Drifter's Dominion," Oracle said with the composed neutrality of someone reading from a manual they definitely didnt write, "is a Unique Skill that allows the user to claim temporary authority over any unclaimed or abandoned space, object, or territory. The user is treated by all passive magical systems as the acknowledged owner of that space for as long as they occupy it. Additionally the user passively accumulates residual ambient magical energy from any space they claim, which feeds into the reserve used for skill activation."
I looked at my cardboard box.
"So right now," I said, "I own this alley."
"Technically you own the specific portion of this alley that you currently occupy. Ownership radius scales with level and intent."
"And Gutter Intuition."
"Gutter Intuition is a passive skill that enhances the user's ability to read their immediate environment for threats, opportunities, and useful information. It functions similarly to danger sense but operates primarily through social and environmental cues rather than magical detection. Essentially it gives you an extremely accurate instinct for when something is about to go wrong, who is lying to you, where something valuable has been discarded, and which way to run."
"Thats actually useful."
"It is optimized for the lifestyle category of Vagrant, Grade 0 through 5. It was presumably included in your kit by accident as its natural pairing is with someone who has been surviving on the streets for an extended period. You have not. However it will function."
"And Unclaimed Territory."
"Unclaimed Territory allows you to interact with, perceive, and navigate spaces that are magically sealed or hidden from ordinary detection, provided those spaces have been abandoned, forgotten, or are otherwise considered ownerless by the ambient magical field. Dungeons, ruins, sealed vaults and so on. Anywhere that belongs to no one is somewhere you can enter."
I sat with this for a moment in my cold alley, on my damp cardboard box, with my stale bread.
"Oracle," I said.
"Yes."
"These are actually good skills, arent they."
"They are substantially above the baseline for a Grade 0 Vagrant, yes. The Gutter Intuition alone would be considered an A-rank passive by the Kingdom's Adventurer Classification Board. Drifter's Dominion has no existing classification because nobody has ever had it before."
"Because it was a mistake."
"The system registers it as a distribution error, yes."
"Great." I took a bite of the stale bread. It tasted like bread had given up halfway through trying. "What about Celestial Beggary."
"Unknown. The skill is dormant. Oracle does not currently have sufficient data to provide a description. Its energy signature suggests it is of divine origin."
"Divine," I repeated.
"Yes."
I chewed my stale bread. I looked at my damp cardboard box. I thought about the prophecy the deity voice had mentioned before dropping me here, the one about the Celestial Hero arising from this exact alley.
"Oracle," I said.
"Yes."
"I'm supposed to save the world, arent I."
A brief pause. "The available data suggests this is a statistically likely outcome, yes."
"From a cardboard box."
"You have excellent skills for someone with no home."
"Thats genuinely the least encouraging thing anyone has ever said to me."
"Oracle will note your feedback for future interactions."
I finished the bread. It wasnt good. But it was food and I was in a new world, and I had accidentally been given abilities meant for gods, and there was apparently a Demon Lord planning to unmake reality, and somewhere in this city there were probably people who would either try to help me or try to kill me depending on which way the wind was blowing.
I stood up. Pulled my thin blanket around my shoulders. Picked up my battered cup. Stepped out of the alley into the edge of the wider street, where the sounds of the city at night filtered through with all the warmth and indifference of a place that did not yet know I existed.
The city of Caldenmere stretched out before me, lit by soft magical lanterns in shades of amber and pale blue, a medieval fantasy city that managed to look both beautiful and deeply thoroughly lived-in. Buildings leaned against each other companionably. The streets were cobblestone and uneven. The smells were complex and mostly food-adjacent which was encouraging. In the far distance over the rooftops, I could see the upper towers of what looked like a castle or a very serious government building, lit against the dark sky.
A person sleeping in a doorway nearby opened one eye, looked at me, decided I was not interesting and went back to sleep.
I had arrived in a new world as a homeless person with no money, no history, no reputation, and no fixed address.
I had also, accidentally, arrived with skills that nobody else in this world had ever seen.
"Oracle," I said quietly.
"Yes."
"Where's the nearest place that might have discarded food."
"Gutter Intuition indicates a fifty-three percent probability of edible scraps within forty meters, northeast, near the fish market's back entrance."
"Perfect," I said. "Then that's where we're starting."
I walked northeast. The city breathed around me. Somewhere above the clouds, if the deity voice was to be believed, the stars were watching.
I hoped they werent expecting anything too impressive right away. I had literally just got here.