The effect of the initial emotions—and they were, I won't lie, extremely positive emotions—ebbed away, leaving behind sober calculation and itching curiosity. Without hesitation, I mentally wished to enter, to submerge myself inside this "system." To my surprise, the transition was absolutely mundane, without special effects or fanfare. It was as if I had been using this interface my whole life, and it was as natural an extension of my thoughts as an arm is an extension of the body. But what I saw… mildly put, it baffled me.
In the very center of the semi-transparent interface, floating in weightlessness, was a hammer, or rather a sketch of one. Not a simple carpenter's or mechanic's hammer, but a real blacksmith's hammer. A massive head made of an unknown metal, etched with intricate runic patterns that glowed with a soft, unearthly light. The handle, wrapped in something looking like reptile skin, was decorated with complex flourishes that seemed to constantly change their shape. It resembled a priceless museum exhibit or the weapon of some Asgardian god rather than a working tool. My old, faithful ball-peen hammer with an ash handle, perfectly fitted to my palm over years of work, would look like a wretched beggar next to it. And yet, at that second, I realized that I wouldn't trade my reliable tool for any divine weapon. My hammer was real, while this one… this one was so far just a pretty picture.
Below the hammer stood an inscription, rendered in a strict but elegant font: "Forging the Universe! Cost: 100 OP." I mentally focused on it, and a small, even tiny information packet immediately flowed into my consciousness.
Each attempt at Forging allows access to technologies from an infinite number of variations of the Multiverse.
And that's… it? I spend 100 OP, click on the virtual hammer, and get a "technology"? Too many unknowns. How will I receive it? In the form of a real material prototype that falls on my head? Or as an information packet implanted directly into my brain about how to create this technology? Or maybe just a pack of blueprints that I'll still have to tinker with for years, lacking the necessary resources and equipment? And what kind of technologies are they? Kree bioengineering? The magic of this world, which supposedly exists according to clearly defined laws—is that a technology or not? The word "technology" could be interpreted so broadly that my head spun. Well, I hope to figure it out over time. So far, there are more questions than answers.
Above the hammer were three tabs. The first—"Forging the Universe"—was active now. The second stated: "Technologies." Expecting God knows what, I switched to it only to exhale in disappointment. Empty. Absolutely. They even skimped on some lousy test technology for an example. Oh, the misers.
The third tab was "Inventory." Now this was interesting. If it works like in classic LitRPG, it won't just be an aid, but a real cheat in the real world. Holding my breath from a slight excitement, I switched to the inventory. Before me stretched a field of 5 by 5 squares—twenty-five cells in total. Not much, but it would do for a start. I looked at the old laptop on the desk. Touching it and mentally picturing it moving into one of the cells, I focused on this desire. Before my eyes, real, unadulterated MAGIC occurred. The laptop didn't disappear in a flash of light; it just… dissolved, like a mirage, leaving behind only a dusty rectangle on the surface of the desk.
"Now… I believe," I muttered, looking stunned at the empty space and then at the laptop icon hanging lonely in the first cell of the inventory.
I mentally "clicked" on the icon, and a brief description appeared:
"Laptop brand: Zuun Electronics. Rarity: Common. Condition: 73/100."
Wow, the inventory also acts as a sort of simplified reference guide. Convenient. With a new effort of will, I wished for the laptop to return to its place. A moment later, it materialized on the desk with a soft, barely audible click. Incredible! It's one thing to see system glitches before your eyes, and quite another when something happens that breaks all the laws of physics! This changed absolutely everything. The possibilities opened by such a pocket warehouse were truly limitless: from mundane heavy lifting to… well, anything!
I had figured out the three main tabs. One visible element remained—in the upper right corner of the interface, a plate glowed: "0 OP." The local currency needed for "rolls." It remained to understand the main thing: how do I earn it?
OP (Crafting Points)—currency necessary for Forging the Universe and unlocking technologies. Earned by manifesting the user's Spark of the Creator in the process of creating something.
"Aha… I don't get it at all, but it's very interesting," as the saying goes. Fine, I'm lying. In general terms, it's clear: I need to create something with my own hands. The question is, what exactly falls under this vague concept of "something"? Would it fit, for example… My gaze caught on an old wooden chair in the corner, one leg of which was noticeably sagging. Old habits took over. I went over and flipped it. Sure enough, a screw had come loose. I had no tools on hand, but the edge of a coin found in my pocket served well enough as an improvised screwdriver. A couple of minutes, and the leg was firm. The familiar feeling of satisfaction from a job well done… and silence. I waited for a system notification, a pop-up message, at least some sign. But none followed. Hmm. It seems repair doesn't count as "creation." The system needs something new, created from scratch. That's an important and rather unpleasant clarification.
My gaze wandered around the room in search of inspiration and landed on a student notebook lying on the corner of the desk. Drawing or… origami?
Taking the notebook and finding a ballpoint pen in the desk drawer, I first tried to draw something. I wasn't an artist by any stretch of the imagination, nor, for that matter, was John. After several crooked sketches, receiving no response from the system, I tore out one sheet in frustration. Paper. What can be created from paper? The answer had come to me even earlier when I was choosing. Origami. I began to fold a classic everyone knows—a crane. Something slightly more complex than a primitive airplane, but not an abstruse legendary dragon that only a couple of people in the world could assemble. After a few minutes of slow and careful work, the paper crane was ready. It stood crookedly on the table, pleasing my eye, but my eye was even more pleased by the system notification that popped up!
[Simple art product created: Origami. Difficulty: Minimal. Received +1 OP!]
"Loot's here!" I couldn't resist the legendary gamer phrase. The first point in the treasury of my future greatness! Only ninety-nine more such cranes to go, and I can spin the wheel… or rather, strike with the hammer! The main thing is that there are enough sheets in the notebook.
Motivated by the first success, I forgot about both researching the internet and building plans for the future. There was only one goal, simple and clear—to earn the first hundred OP. The whole world shrunk down to my hands painstakingly folding paper and short flashes of system notifications.
[Received +1 OP!]
[Received +1 OP!]
…
[Received +1 OP!]
[Attention! The limit for receiving OP in the field of creating simple Origami has been exhausted!]
The last message hit me like a gut punch, instantly cooling my enthusiasm. In total, I was able to get a measly 10 OP from the cranes. Ten! And I had already prepared myself for a meditative grind, like in that tale about a thousand cranes for the sake of a wish… Well, I won't see any easy paths. At least, the addition "simple" origami indicated this unambiguously. Consequently, if I do something more serious, there's a chance to start farming OP again.
I had to go on the internet after all, though for a completely different reason than I had originally planned. After spending half an hour looking through websites and video tutorials, I regretfully concluded: my skills were definitely not enough to create a conditional Elephant, let alone a Dragon, whose diagrams required a hundred steps. And not just steps, but steps backed by scary words like: "bird base" with additional folds, "reverse folds," "rabbit ear," "wet folding"… This was already some kind of higher mathematics, not handiwork.
But a way out was found. Elegant and, as it seemed to me, perfectly suited for farming—modular origami. The most obvious option was a kusudama, a paper ball. The same "Electra" kusudama, according to guides, required 30 identical modules. The complexity of each module was not much higher than a crane, but their aggregate should have given the desired result.
I tore another sheet from the notebook and set to work. And immediately ran into a problem. My fingers, used to rough work and heavy tool handles, seemed like clumsy sausages. I cursed when I once again couldn't make a straight, sharp fold. I, a man who could assemble a furniture board or carve a perfect table leg with my eyes closed, couldn't handle a lousy piece of paper! Absurd!
Somehow, after ruining a couple of sheets and spending a lot of nerves, I finally got the hang of it. By my calculations, it would take about half an hour to create one kusudama. However, there was another catch—the sheets in the notebook were rapidly running out. I'd have to go to the store. Rummaging through the pockets of my shorts and in the desk drawers, I scraped together a couple of crumpled dollars and a handful of change. Not much. The nearest convenience store met me with the smell of cheap coffee and disinfectant. Under the indifferent gaze of the Indian cashier, I chose the simplest pack of office paper. Returning through the deserted night streets lit by rare lanterns, I felt like a complete idiot, because the potential risks of going out on the night street of this disadvantaged district were absolutely not worth it. I didn't risk going out to throw away the trash, but I risked it for the sake of buying paper; it'll be funny if this comes back to bite me (joke)...
Hell's Kitchen at night was a completely different place than during the day. It cast off the mask of an ordinary poor neighborhood and showed its true face. From a dark alley came the crash of an overturned trash can and a vicious cat hiss. On the corner, under the flickering neon of a Joe's Pizza sign, stood a group of guys in baggy clothes. They weren't doing anything illegal, just smoking and talking quietly, but an aura of lurking threat emanated from them. I quickened my pace, trying not to meet their eyes. In this world, one wrong look could be enough to get a knife under the ribs.
The air was thick and humid, smelling of damp trash, cheap food from convenience diners, and exhaust fumes. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed again—an integral part of the soundtrack of this city, and this neighborhood in particular. I suddenly clearly realized my vulnerability. In my old body, I wasn't Hercules, but I could stand up for myself. Ten years of physical labor had done their job. Now I was in the body of a flimsy student who, judging by memories, had last fought in middle school, and unsuccessfully at that. Any of those guys on the corner could break me in half. And no Devil of Hell's Kitchen, whom I remembered earlier, would come to the rescue. Matt Murdock might be a hero to some extent, but he isn't all-seeing and all-powerful. He deals with gangs and murderers, not saving every idiot who decides to take a walk through a night district. This walk sobered me better than any cold shower. I needed more than just "technology" from the system. I needed strength. Or at least something that would help me protect this fragile new life.
Returning to the apartment, I set to work with renewed vigor. Forty minutes of concentration, gritting teeth, and quiet curses, and the first kusudama was ready. It turned out a bit lopsided, but quite recognizable.
[Art product created: Origami. Difficulty: Medium. Received +3 OP!]
Excellent! Medium difficulty was counted, and the reward of three points was a pleasant bonus. Even if I could have made more cranes in the same 40 minutes if not for the limit, the main thing was something else—the OP farm had moved from a standstill.
Looking at the clock on the laptop—two in the morning—I realized what I would be doing in the coming hours. The thought of college flashed and went out. Thursday, a school day… However much I considered this college a useless waste of time, it could become a source of information. Mary Jane studies there, and Harry Osborn might pick her up. These are no longer just extras, but key, albeit secondary, figures. So visiting the college is worth it. And now—grind!
The next few hours passed as in a fog. My hands mechanically folded modules and joined them into finished balls. To keep from going crazy from the monotony, I turned on a news channel on the laptop. I became so adept that one kusudama took no more than twenty minutes. I assembled the first ten by half past five in the morning. But the eleventh ball met me with another unpleasant surprise.
[Art product created: Origami. Difficulty: Medium. Received +1 OP!]
[Attention! The limit for receiving OP in the field of creating medium-difficulty Origami has been partially exhausted! For the next 9 products, +1 OP will be awarded.]
So, now I have 10 + (10 * 3) + 1 = 41 OP. And another 9 points I can squeeze out of these paper balls. Total—50. Exactly halfway there. Not so bad. Besides, modules can be folded during lectures at college. So there was no point in suffering here and now, especially since I was beginning to feel inescapably sleepy. John's memory suggested that tomorrow there are three classes starting at 10:15. It's a half-hour walk to college. So I have three to four hours for sleep.
Collapsing onto the sofa, before going into the realm of Morpheus for the second time in this mad day, I pondered. My life had turned not just upside down, it had done a somersault over its ears. The Marvel world, a strange, not-too-generous system, a new body… Remembering my old, measured life, I felt a sting of longing. There, I created things that could be touched, that served people, or rather, primarily me. A sturdy table, a reliable roof. A tangible, real result. And here? I create fragile paper crafts for the sake of ephemeral points to get an unknown "technology." There's some cruel irony in this. It's as if I traded real mastery for a video game with a doubtful prize.
What if this version of Marvel is one of the darkest? What if Galactus is already flying toward Earth? Or, God forbid, this is a zombie apocalypse universe? Better to be in Warhammer than in Marvel Zombies... While I mused on cosmic horrors, the sound of a broken bottle and a drunken scream came from the street below. The thin walls didn't save from the noise. I felt a cold draft from a gap in the window frame. A gust of cold air sobered me a bit, and my thoughts again returned to making sense of the events that had happened to me, specifically what concerned the process of creation.
My fingers still remembered the sensation of paper, the monotonous, measured movements. I had made hundreds of identical modules during the night. And with every new fold, a dull irritation grew within me, turning into a quiet rage. It was wrong. Creation, in my understanding, was always a meaningful process. You take formless material—wood, metal, clay—and put your labor, your skill, a piece of your soul into it to create something useful. Something that will serve. A chair you can sit on. A plate you can put food into. A tool you can work with. It was a dialogue with the material. But what I was doing now was a profanation. Soulless, mechanical work for the sake of virtual points.
These paper balls, kusudamas, were empty inside and out. They carried no function other than aesthetic, and even that was questionable. They were fragile and meaningless. And the system rewarded me for creating this trash. I felt like a monkey in a lab pressing a lever to get a banana. Was this really my Spark of the Creator? Folding papers according to someone else's scheme? This thought was offensive. No, I definitely must accumulate these cursed hundred points as soon as possible and get the first technology. To start creating something real. Something that will have weight, strength, and meaning. Something I can proudly call my work.
But even so, before worrying about great creations and no less great dangers in the form of World-Eaters, I need to survive tomorrow in this cardboard box in the most dangerous district of the city. And this thought here and now was much more sobering than any Galactus.
I pray to all the gods who here, unlike in my world, are not just a hollow sound, that this version turns out to be… well, at least not the one where everyone is doomed to annihilation. Under these encouraging thoughts, I fell asleep, looking forward to the new day.