Chapter 2
The rush of that first emotion, and it was, I won't pretend otherwise, an extremely positive emotion, faded and left behind cool calculation and an itching curiosity. Without hesitation, I mentally reached toward the system, willing myself to engage with it. Surprisingly, the transition was completely mundane, with no special effects, no fanfare. It felt as natural as reaching out a hand, as though I had been using this interface my whole life and it was simply an extension of my thoughts. But what I saw inside it left me, to put it mildly, at a loss.
Floating weightlessly at the center of the semi-transparent interface was a hammer, or rather the sketch of one. Not a carpenter's or a machinist's hammer, but a true blacksmith's hammer.
A massive head of some unknown metal, covered in intricate runic patterns that glowed with a soft, unearthly light. The handle was wrapped in something resembling reptile skin and decorated with complex engravings that seemed to constantly shift shape. It looked more like a priceless museum exhibit or an Asgardian war-god's weapon than any working tool. My old, faithful metalworking hammer with its ash handle, perfectly fitted to my grip over years of use, would have looked like a pathetic beggar standing next to it. And yet, in that moment, I knew I would not trade my reliable tool for any divine weapon in existence. My hammer had been real. This one was still just a pretty picture.
Beneath the hammer, a line of text in a clean, elegant font read: "Forge Reality! Cost: 100 OP." I focused on it mentally, and a small information packet immediately flowed into my mind.
Each Forging attempt grants access to technologies from infinite variations of the Multiverse.
And that was it? I spent 100 OP, struck the virtual hammer, and received a "technology"? There were too many unknowns. How would I actually receive it?
As a physical prototype that materialized in front of me? As a direct information download into my brain with full instructions on how to build it? Or just a stack of blueprints that I would still have to spend years working from without the necessary resources or equipment? And what kind of technologies, exactly? Kree bioengineering?
The magic of this world, which seemed to operate by clearly defined laws, did that count as technology or not? The word itself could be interpreted so broadly that my head started to spin. Fine. I would figure it out in time. For now there were more questions than answers.
Above the hammer were three tabs. The first, "Forge Reality," was the one currently active. The second read: "Technologies." Anticipating something, I switched to it, only to exhale in disappointment. Empty. Completely empty.
They had not even bothered to include a single sample technology as an example. Cheapskates.
The third tab read: "Inventory." Now that was interesting. If it worked the way inventory systems did in classic LitRPG, this would not just be a help but a genuine cheat code in the real world. Holding my breath with a low flutter of excitement, I opened the inventory. Before me spread a grid of five by five cells, twenty-five in total. Not a lot, but enough for a start.
I looked at the old laptop on the desk. I touched it, mentally pictured it moving into one of the cells, and focused on that intention. What happened before my eyes was pure, unambiguous magic. The laptop did not vanish in a flash of light. It simply dissolved, like a mirage, leaving behind nothing but a dusty rectangle on the desk's surface.
"Now I believe," I said quietly, staring at the empty spot, then at the laptop icon sitting forlornly in the inventory's first cell.
I mentally clicked the icon and a brief description appeared:
"Laptop, brand Zuun Electronics. Rarity: Common. Condition: 73/100."
The inventory also served as a kind of simplified catalog. Convenient. With another act of will, I returned the laptop to its place. It materialized on the desk with a quiet, barely audible click. Incredible. There was a difference between watching system quirks flicker in front of your eyes and watching something physically impossible happen in the real world. This changed everything. The possibilities a pocket warehouse like this opened up were genuinely limitless, from carrying heavy loads to, well, anything at all.
The three main tabs were accounted for. The last visible element was a panel in the upper right corner of the interface: "0 OP." The local currency needed for "rolls." The only remaining question was the most important one: how did I earn it?
OP (Points): the currency required for Forging Reality and unlocking technologies. Earned through the manifestation of the user's Creator's Spark in the process of making something.
"Well, nothing's clear, but it's very interesting," as the saying goes. Fine, I was being coy with myself. In broad terms it was obvious enough: I needed to make something with my own hands. The question was what exactly fell under this vague concept of "something."
I glanced at an old wooden chair in the corner, one of its legs noticeably wobbly. Old habit took over. I walked over and flipped it upside down. Just as I'd thought: the screw had come loose. No tools on hand, but the edge of a coin from my pocket worked well enough as an improvised screwdriver. A couple of minutes, and the leg sat perfectly flush. The familiar satisfaction of a job done right settled in my chest and then: silence. I waited for a system notification, a pop-up, some kind of sign. Nothing came. Apparently, repairs did not count as "creation." The system wanted something new, built from nothing. That was an important and fairly unwelcome clarification.
My gaze drifted around the room in search of inspiration and landed on a student notebook sitting at the corner of the desk. Drawing, maybe, or origami.
I grabbed the notebook and found a ballpoint pen in the desk drawer. I tried drawing first. I was no artist in any meaningful sense, and neither had John been. After a few crooked sketches and no response from the system, I irritably tore out a sheet. Paper.
What could you actually make from paper? The answer came before I even finished asking the question. Origami. I began folding the classic everyone knows, the crane. Something a step more complex than a basic paper plane, but nowhere near the legendary dragon that only a handful of people in the world could actually assemble.
After a couple of minutes of patient, careful work, the paper crane was finished. It stood a little crookedly on the desk, which pleased my eye, though what pleased my eye even more was the system notification that popped up.
[Created simple art piece: Origami. Complexity: Minimal. Received +1 OP!]
"Let's go!" I couldn't hold back the old gamer phrase. First point in the piggy bank of my future greatness. I just needed to fold ninety-nine more of these and I could strike the hammer. The main thing was having enough pages left in the notebook.
Motivated by that first success, I forgot entirely about researching the internet or making any kind of plan for the future. The goal was simple and clear: earn the first hundred OP. The whole world compressed down to my hands methodically folding paper and the brief flashes of system notifications.
[Received +1 OP!]
[Received +1 OP!]
...
[Received +1 OP!]
[Warning! OP earning limit for the area of creating simple Origami has been reached!]
That last message hit like a punch to the gut, instantly killing my enthusiasm. Ten OP from cranes. Ten total. And I had already settled into the idea of meditative grinding, like something out of that old tale about folding a thousand cranes to earn a wish.
Apparently, there were no easy roads for me. The word "simple" attached to the origami note made it clear enough: if I made something more complex, there was a chance to start earning again.
I had to get on the internet after all, though for an entirely different reason than I had originally planned. After half an hour of browsing tutorials and video guides, I concluded with regret that my skills were nowhere near good enough for a full Elephant, let alone a Dragon, whose diagrams ran to a hundred steps and required a working knowledge of terms like "bird base with additional folds," "reverse folds," "rabbit ear," and "wet folding." That was closer to higher mathematics than a craft hobby.
But a solution presented itself. An elegant one, and what seemed to me an ideal approach for farming OP: modular origami. The obvious option was a kusudama, a paper ball. The "Electra" kusudama, according to the tutorials, required thirty identical modules. Each module was slightly more complex than a crane, but the assembled whole should be enough to qualify as a step up.
I tore out another sheet from the notebook and got to work. And immediately ran into a problem. My fingers, accustomed to rough work and heavy tool handles, felt like clumsy sausages.
I cursed under my breath when I failed yet again to make a clean, even fold. I, a person who could assemble a furniture panel with his eyes closed and turn a perfect table leg on a lathe, could not handle a single piece of paper without making a mess of it. Absurd.
After ruining a couple of sheets and spending a fair amount of nerve endings, I eventually got the feel for it.
By my estimate, one kusudama would take about half an hour. The only other problem was that the notebook pages were disappearing fast. I would need to go to the store. I dug through the shorts pockets and the desk drawers and scraped together a couple of crumpled dollars and a small handful of change. Not much. The nearest twenty-four-hour shop greeted me with the smell of cheap coffee and disinfectant.
Under the indifferent gaze of an Indian cashier, I picked out the simplest pack of office paper available. Walking back through the deserted, sparsely lit streets of the neighborhood, I felt like a complete idiot, because the risk of stepping out onto these streets at night was absolutely not worth a pack of paper. I had not risked going out to throw away the trash, but I had risked it for this. That would have been funny if it had actually cost me something.
Hell's Kitchen at night was a completely different place from Hell's Kitchen in the day. It shed the mask of an ordinary, down-at-heel neighborhood and showed its true face. From a dark alley came the crash of an overturned trash can and the angry shriek of a cat. On the corner under the flickering neon of a "Joe's Pizza" sign stood a group of guys in baggy clothes.
They were not doing anything illegal, just smoking and talking quietly, but something about them radiated a low, coiled threat. I picked up my pace and kept my eyes forward. In this world, one wrong glance could be enough to earn a knife between the ribs.
The air was thick and humid, reeking of rotting garbage, cheap food from the late-night spots, and exhaust fumes.
Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed again, the permanent soundtrack of this city, and of this neighborhood in particular. I suddenly felt my own vulnerability with sharp, physical clarity. In my old body I was no Hercules, but I had been able to handle myself. Ten years of physical labor had made sure of that.
But now I was in the body of a skinny student who, according to the memories I had inherited, had last been in a fight back in middle school and had lost. Any one of the guys on that corner could have snapped me in half without breaking a sweat.
And no Devil of Hell's Kitchen was going to materialize to save me. Matt Murdock might be a hero in some sense of the word, but he was not all-seeing and he was not all-powerful. He went after gangs and killers. He did not rescue every idiot who decided to stroll through a rough neighborhood after midnight.
That walk sobered me up better than any cold shower. I did not just need "technology" from the system. I needed strength. Or at least something that would let me protect this fragile new life.
Back in the apartment, I threw myself into the work with fresh resolve. Forty minutes of concentration, teeth-grinding, and quiet swearing later, the first kusudama was done. It came out slightly lopsided, but recognizable.
[Created art piece: Origami. Complexity: Medium. Received +3 OP!]
Good. Medium complexity counted, and the three-point reward was a welcome bonus. Even if those same forty minutes could theoretically have produced more cranes before the limit hit, that was no longer the point. OP farming was moving again.
I glanced at the time on the laptop. Two in the morning. I had a clear picture of how the next several hours were going to go. The thought of college flickered through my mind and faded. It was Thursday, a class day.
As much as I considered that college a useless drain on time and energy, it was also a source of information. Mary Jane studied there, and Harry Osborn was likely to show up for her at some point. Neither of them were background noise anymore. They were key figures, even if secondary ones. Going was worth it. But first: grinding.
The next several hours passed in a blur. My hands folded modules mechanically while I ran a news channel on the laptop to keep from going insane with the monotony. I got quick enough that one kusudama took no more than twenty minutes. By half past five in the morning I had assembled ten of them. But the eleventh ball was met with another unwelcome surprise.
[Created art piece: Origami. Complexity: Medium. Received +1 OP!]
[Warning! OP earning limit for creating medium complexity Origami has been partially reached! The next 9 items will award +1 OP each.]
So the running total was: 10 + (10 × 3) + 1 = 41 OP. With 9 more points left to squeeze out of these paper balls, that brought me to 50. Exactly halfway. Not bad at all.
And I could keep folding modules during class. So grinding away here at this hour made no real sense, especially since an irresistible drowsiness was starting to pull at me. John's memory told me there were three classes tomorrow, starting at 10:15, with a half-hour walk to college. That gave me three to four hours of sleep.
I collapsed onto the couch and lay there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling before drifting off. My life had not just been turned upside down. It had done a full somersault through my ears. The Marvel universe. A strange, not particularly generous system. A new body. Thinking of my old, steady life sent a pang of melancholy through me. Back there, I had made things you could touch, things that served a purpose, even if mostly my own.
A solid table. A reliable roof. Tangible, real results. And now? I was crafting fragile paper balls for ephemeral points in exchange for some unknown "technology." There was an ugly irony in that. As if I had traded real craftsmanship for a video game with a dubious prize.
What if this Marvel was one of the darkest variants? What if Galactus was already on his way to Earth? Or, God forbid, this was the zombie apocalypse universe? Anything would be better than Marvel Zombies. While I turned those cosmic horrors over in my mind, a drunk shout and the ring of a breaking bottle floated up from the street below.
The thin walls did nothing to muffle it. A cold draft pushed through a gap in the window frame and hit my face.
The chill of it pulled my thoughts back to the night's work, and specifically to the act of creation itself.
My fingers still remembered the feel of the paper, those monotonous, precise folds. I had made hundreds of identical modules over the course of the night.
And with every new fold, a low irritation had grown in me, sharpening gradually into something close to quiet rage. This felt wrong. Creation, in my understanding, had always been a deliberate process. You took a shapeless material, wood, metal, clay, and you invested in it your labor, your skill, a piece of yourself, and out of that you made something useful.
Something that would serve someone. A chair you could actually sit on. A plate you could put food on. A tool you could work with. That was a conversation with your material. What I had been doing tonight was a profanation of that. Soulless, mechanical repetition in exchange for virtual points.
These paper balls, these kusudamas, were empty inside and out. They carried no function beyond the vaguely aesthetic, and even that was debatable. They were fragile and meaningless. And the system was rewarding me for making them. I felt like a lab monkey pressing a lever to get a banana. Was this really my "Creator's Spark"? Folding paper according to someone else's diagrams? The thought stung.
No. I needed to stack up these hundred points as quickly as possible and get the first technology. I needed to start making something real. Something with weight and strength and purpose. Something I could actually call my work.
But before I could worry about great creations and the no-less-great dangers lurking in the form of world-devouring cosmic entities, I needed to survive tomorrow in this cardboard box of an apartment in the city's most dangerous neighborhood. That thought, here and now, was far more sobering than any Galactus.
I said a quiet prayer to whatever gods existed in this world, and unlike in my old one, they were not empty words here, that this particular version of the Marvel universe would turn out to be at least something other than the kind where everyone was already doomed. With those encouraging thoughts, I finally fell asleep.
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