Pain.
That was the first transaction.
Silas tasted copper and ash. His lungs burned like they were stuffed with broken glass. He tried to inhale, but his throat seized, forcing a wet, hacking cough that splattered black blood onto the cobblestones.
He opened his eyes. The world was a blurred smear of neon rain and suffocating smog.
This wasn't his penthouse in Miami. This wasn't the underground poker room where a desperate debtor had put a 9mm bullet through his chest.
This was a filthy, rain-slicked alleyway smelling of rotting meat and ozone.
Where am I?
A sudden, violent spike of agony drove a nail through his skull. Memories that didn't belong to him flooded his fading consciousness.
Magitech floating cities. The Azure Empire. Divine bloodlines leased from the heavens.
And a name. Silas Vance.
He had the same name, but this Silas was a disgraced noble. A piece of aristocratic trash stripped of his family's wealth, cast down into the Under-Market slums, and left to rot.
Except, he hadn't just been left to rot.
Someone had slipped a vial of Abyssal Rot-Weed into his cheap ale ten minutes ago.
Poisoned, Silas realized, his analytical mind cutting through the panic. I was murdered on Earth over a two-million-dollar debt, and now I've transmigrated just to be murdered again.
His fingers dug into the mud. The poison was melting his veins. His heart fluttered, skipping beats, preparing to shut down entirely.
He was dying. He had maybe sixty seconds left.
Silas gritted his teeth, a bloodstained smile twisting his lips. "I don't default on my life..." he wheezed. "I collect."
[Ding!]
A sound, sharp and clear like a cashier's bell, echoed in his mind.
[Host Vitality reaching critical threshold. Default imminent.]
[Absolute Debt System initializing...]
[Scanning Host Assets and Liabilities...]
A translucent, neon-blue screen materialized in front of his eyes.
[Name: Silas Vance][Rank: Mortal (Trash)][Net Worth: 5 Stat Points][Cosmic Debt: 0][Status: Terminal (Abyssal Rot-Weed Infection - Depleting 1 Stat Point per 10 seconds)]
Silas stared at the glowing blue text.
A system?
He had read enough light novels during his downtime between breaking kneecaps to know what this was. But the terminology—Net Worth, Liabilities, Default—this wasn't a hero's fantasy. This was a ledger.
"System," Silas rasped, coughing up another glob of black sludge. "Define the poison."
[Abyssal Rot-Weed is currently classified as a Host Liability. It is actively seizing your Vitality assets.]
"How do I clear a liability?" he asked, his vision darkening at the edges.
[Host may utilize the [Liquidate] function to dissolve hostile assets, or declare [Bankruptcy] to restructure internal bodily debts. Note: [Bankruptcy] requires a sacrifice of existing assets.]
He had 5 Stat Points. The poison was draining 1 point every 10 seconds. He had about forty seconds before he hit absolute zero and died.
"I'm not sacrificing my own assets to pay off a debt someone else forced on me," Silas growled, his sociopathic pragmatism flaring to life. On Earth, he was the apex creditor. He didn't take losses. He forced them on others.
"System. Can I appraise the poison itself?"
[Appraising... Abyssal Rot-Weed contains 50 units of raw, chaotic mana.]
"It has value," Silas's eyes narrowed. The pain was excruciating, tearing at his heart valves, but his mind was crystal clear. It was just a numbers game now. "It's a foreign asset invading my territory. It doesn't belong to me, but it's in my account."
[Correct. It is an unregistered deposit.]
"Then I'm seizing it as a processing fee," Silas commanded, his voice cold and unwavering. "System, activate [Liquidate] on the Abyssal Rot-Weed. Convert the raw mana into raw stats to pay off my bodily damage."
[Warning: Liquidating a highly toxic asset without a proper magic core carries a 90% chance of extreme agony.]
"Do it."
[Executing [Liquidate].]
Fire. Absolute, unadulterated fire ripped through his bloodstream.
Silas threw his head back, his jaw locking as a silent scream tore his throat. It felt as if his veins were being scrubbed with wire brushes and battery acid. His back arched off the filthy cobblestones, his muscles pulling so taut they threatened to snap.
But he didn't pass out.
He focused on the blue screen hovering above him. He watched the numbers.
[Liquidating Abyssal Rot-Weed...][Processing chaotic mana...][Toxicity neutralized.][Conversion complete. 50 units of raw mana successfully liquidated.]
[Host Net Worth increased.][Vitality +5][Strength +2][Agility +3]
[Status updated: Healthy.]
The burning vanished.
The agonizing pressure in his chest evaporated, replaced by a sudden, surging rush of power.
Silas gasped, pulling in a massive breath of the smog-filled air. It tasted like heaven.
He slowly pushed himself up off the ground. He didn't just feel better; he felt stronger than he had before the poison. The chronic weakness of the original Silas Vance's undernourished body was gone, replaced by a coiled, dense energy humming just beneath his skin.
He wiped the dried black blood from his chin and looked down at his clothes. He was wearing a tattered, rain-soaked tunic and muddy boots.
Not exactly the bespoke Armani suits he was used to.
"I'll have to upgrade my wardrobe," he muttered, adjusting his collar out of habit.
He pulled up the System interface again.
[Name: Silas Vance][Rank: Mortal (Level 1)][Net Worth: 15 Stat Points][Skills Unlocked:]- [Appraise]- [Liquidate]
"A debt system," Silas whispered, a genuine, terrifying smile spreading across his face. "The world runs on magic, but magic is just a currency. And currencies can be audited. Seized. Foreclosed."
This world was ruled by arrogant nobles who thought their divine bloodlines made them untouchable gods. But Silas knew the truth about the wealthy.
No one was ever truly untouchable. Everyone owed something to someone.
And Silas was the ultimate collector.
He cracked his neck, feeling the joints pop satisfyingly. He needed to get out of this alley, find a safehouse, and figure out who exactly had tried to poison him. The original Silas's memories were fragmented, fuzzy around the edges. He remembered a tavern. A veiled woman. A drink.
Splash.
The sound was soft. Barely a whisper over the steady patter of the neon rain.
Silas stopped moving.
His newly increased Agility and Vitality gave him senses far sharper than a normal human's. He didn't turn around. He just listened.
Splash. Tap.
Footsteps. Light, purposeful, and deliberately masked.
Someone had just dropped down from the fire escape of the rusted magitech building behind him.
Silas kept his eyes fixed on a puddle in front of him. In the dim reflection of a flickering streetlamp, he saw a silhouette.
A figure wrapped in dark leather, a cowl obscuring their face. In their right hand, a jagged, matte-black dagger gleamed faintly in the low light.
An assassin.
They hadn't just poisoned him and walked away. They had sent a cleaner to confirm the job. To make sure the trash was actually taken out.
Silas didn't panic. He didn't reach for a weapon he didn't have.
Instead, he focused his gaze on the reflection of the assassin in the puddle and triggered his new skill.
"System. [Appraise]."
A new blue window snapped into existence, hovering right above the killer's reflection.
[Target: Unnamed Assassin][Rank: Iron-Tier][Net Worth: 45 Stat Points][Cosmic Debt: 8,500 Karma Points (Multiple counts of murder, theft, and unpaid life debts)]
Silas's smile widened, flashing white in the gloom.
Forty-five stat points in assets. Eight thousand five hundred in debt.
The man behind him wasn't an assassin.
He was a walking, talking jackpot of unpaid equity.
The killer stepped closer, raising the blackened dagger to plunge it into the back of Silas's neck.
"You know," Silas said aloud, his voice echoing calmly in the empty alleyway, causing the assassin to freeze in pure shock. "In my line of work, we have a saying about people who operate in the red."
Silas slowly turned around, his hands resting casually in his pockets, his eyes locking onto the terrified killer.
"Your debt exceeds your net worth. Which means, as of this second..."
Silas's eyes glowed with a terrifying, neon-blue light.
"...your life belongs to me."
[System Prompt: Target identified. Ready to apply [Interest].]