The light finally compressed down to a single point, then cut out in an instant, like someone flicked off a lamp.
On the cracked asphalt, exactly where the essence dust had been spinning a heartbeat earlier, lay a pair of shoes that looked… completely ordinary at first glance.
Black, low-cut , No glowing runes and no dramatic silhouette. More like sturdy urban trainers than an artifact someone might die for.
But when Leon actually looked, the system window unfolded in front of his eyes.
[Shadowstep Walkers (Rare-class artifact)]
[Extremely light, easy to wear, and automatically adapts to the body.]
[When equipped: Agility +15]
For a fraction of a second, Leon just blinked.
Then he sucked in a sharp breath and shouted at the top of his lungs, utterly forgetting where he was,
"What the fuck?!"
Valeria didn't even flinch. She glanced at the shoes, then at the system text, and let out a quiet, almost bored sigh.
"Hm," she murmured. "Unlucky."
Leon whirled on her so fast he nearly lost his balance.
"Unlucky?!" he repeated, staring at her like she'd just said something detached from reality. "That's plus fifteen Agility! I barely have twenty right now! That's basically my whole stat!"
Valeria nodded, perfectly calm.
"In raw stats," she admitted, "it's a very solid pull."
Then she added, like it was an afterthought,
"But zero special effects."
Leon tilted his head.
"Special… what?"
"Rare-class artifacts," she explained, "have a chance at additional properties. Active effects. Passive enhancements. Conditional bonuses. Those shoes are just… numbers."
Leon looked back at the system window, then at his current stats, and snorted.
"Seriously?" he shot back. "If this is unlucky, I'd love to be unlucky more often."
He didn't wait. He dropped onto the curb, set his sword beside him, and started peeling off his old, battered shoes, shoes that still remembered normal sidewalks, lectures, and sprinting for the bus.
When he slid his foot into the new artifact, nothing happened for a moment.
Then the material shifted, subtly, almost like it was alive, tightening exactly where it needed to, loosening where it shouldn't squeeze. No pressure points. No slack. Perfect.
Leon stared, mouth slightly open.
"…What the hell."
He stood carefully, took one step, then another. His brows lifted on their own as it felt like someone had just removed invisible ankle weights.
He gave a small hop.
Then, stunned by how light he felt, he looked around like the world had changed without warning.
"Okay…" he muttered.
He took a few quick steps, then suddenly accelerated, his body almost outrunning his thoughts. He turned, stopped, launched again, like he'd been built for it from the start.
A laugh burst out of him, loud, genuine, as he sprinted a dozen meters, pivoted on the spot, and was back beside Valeria again.
"This is insane!" he blurted, grinning like a kid who'd just discovered he could run faster than everyone else. "I can't even feel the ground!"
From Valeria's perspective… it was entertaining.
Yes, Leon was faster than an average human now. But he was still someone who'd only just learned to crawl in the world of essence. Like a snail that had somehow been handed rollerblades.
But if a normal level-one human had been standing there, they would've seen nothing but a blurred shape, Leon in one place, then a second later somewhere else, and they'd probably spend a long time wondering whether physics had just broken.
Leon finally stopped, breathing harder, still smiling wide.
"Alright…" he said quietly. "I'm starting to like this more and more."
Valeria watched him with a faint smile as he kept shifting his feet, testing the limits of his new speed. When he finally grabbed his sword and forced himself to stand still, she spoke with a lightly amused tone, no mockery, just… genuine entertainment.
"If you're that excited," she said, "then it's probably time you open the second box. The one that's been waiting in your backpack."
Leon froze.
Like, literally froze.
For a fraction of a second he didn't move, like her words needed time to punch through the adrenaline. Then his eyes widened, and his grip on the sword tightened instinctively.
"…Oh, fuck," he said.
And he vanished.
Not metaphorically, he was simply beside Valeria one moment, and the next the asphalt there was empty as Leon shot toward the abandoned backpack at a speed he wouldn't have believed in five minutes ago.
He stopped so abruptly he almost crashed into his own gear, dropped to a knee, and tore through the bag, tossing aside bandages, canned food, and water until his fingers hit something small and hard, buried deep at the bottom.
"There," he muttered with relief.
He pulled out the small box, still faintly pulsing with leftover essence, and only then realized Valeria was already standing beside him, as if she'd crossed the distance without effort, watching the cube with real curiosity.
"Well?" she said. "Let's see if fate feels consistent today."
Leon didn't hesitate this time. The moment the familiar prompt appeared, he answered instantly, practically cutting the system off,
"Yes."
The Brown Box shivered. Its surface broke apart into tiny particles of light that rose into the air, swirling thickly, much faster than the first time, as if the essence inside was more restless, less willing to settle into a stable form.
Leon held his breath.
The light began to compress.
Particles fused, contours taking shape, something new, not fully visible yet but already undeniably solid.
Both Leon and Valeria watched in silence, waiting to see what kind of "reward" this ruthless new world had decided to hand him next.
The light condensed a second time, but this time it didn't explode outward. It sank down slowly, layer by layer, as if something heavier and more stable was assembling itself out of essence.
When the last motes faded, Leon saw a coat floating in the air, rippling faintly as if reacting to a breeze that wasn't there.
It was long, reaching from neck to knees. A deep dark tone, not pure black, more like graphite, like the shadow right before dusk. The cut was simple and clean, elegant without being flashy, the kind of coat that would look perfectly normal on someone walking alone down an empty street at night.
A system window appeared immediately.
[Veil of Silent Ward (Rare-class artifact)]
[A long coat covering the body from neck to knees.]
[Provides complete protection against physical attacks below the penetration threshold.]
[Capable of stopping bladed weapons and small-caliber firearms and automatically adapts to the body.]
[When equipped: all attributes +5]
Leon read it once. Then again. Then he looked up at the coat like he was trying to decide whether the system had glitched.
"Stop… any attack?" he repeated slowly. "Like, what, does a shield pop up? A barrier? Does it knock things away?"
Valeria shook her head immediately, calm, like she was correcting a very basic misunderstanding.
"No," she said. "It's simpler. And more brutal."
She stepped closer, studying the coat with mild interest.
"If someone hits you with a sword, a club, anything, and their force doesn't cross the coat's penetration threshold, then the blade simply won't go through. The fabric absorbs the impact, disperses the energy, and that's it. You don't get injured."
Leon stared at it again, then at his hands, the absurdity finally landing.
"So…" he muttered. "I can take a hit to the chest and nothing happens?"
"As long as the attacker isn't strong enough," Valeria confirmed. "Or isn't using the right artifact."
Leon nodded, processing.
But Valeria reread the description, then tilted her head in that way of hers, too innocent-looking to be trusted, and asked with complete sincerity:
"…What is 'small-caliber firearms'?"
Leon looked at her slowly, like he needed to confirm he'd heard her right.
"You… don't know what, like, a pistol is?"
Valeria shrugged.
"Sounds like the name of some primitive ranged artifact," she said, then added, genuinely puzzled, "I've traveled a lot of worlds, but I've never seen that definition."
Leon sighed and, for a moment, tried to figure out where to even start. The longer he thought about it, the more ridiculous it felt, explaining 21st-century tech to someone who'd seen planets, races, and beings he couldn't have imagined yesterday.
"It's not an artifact," he began, uncertain. "I mean… not in your sense. It's a weapon. Small. You hold it in your hand, you pull a trigger and it… shoots."
He hesitated, waved a hand, searching for simpler words.
"There are little metal projectiles inside. Gunpowder pushes them out at insane speed. They fly in one direction, and if they hit a body, they… yeah. They punch a hole. Usually a lethal one."
Valeria listened in silence. The longer he spoke, the more something seemed to click into place behind her eyes. Finally, she nodded like it had become obvious.
"Ah. You mean a kinetic launcher," she said calmly. "In my worlds, it's usually called an impulse-thrower."
Leon blinked.
"…What?"
"Simple technology," she continued. "Mechanically accelerating a small object in one direction. Very common in lower worlds, before people start working with essence or energy. Basically standard."
She sighed lightly, more disappointed than surprised.
"Looks like I've run into yet another world that reached the same development stage. You've just given it a different name."
Leon listened, silent, and somewhere inside him, something quietly cracked.
A pistol. A gun. The symbol of power and fear in his world, one of humanity's most dangerous inventions,
…and in the context of the wider cosmos, it was just… banal. A step. A waypoint on a road countless other worlds had already walked.
"So…" he murmured, "what we treat as the peak of killing at range is, for the rest of the universe, just… obvious."
Valeria glanced at him from the side.
"Exactly."
Leon let out a slow breath and looked back at the coat, at the description, at the words "small-caliber firearms," and only now did it fully sink in, how small, how young, how naïve Earth really was on the scale of the cosmos.