Chapter 3: Solving for B
The fury in my chest was a cold, quiet thing. The math problem was on the board. Variable B, for Bakuda, had to be removed from the equation of my continued existence. The trouble with math, though, is that you need the right tools. I had a phone that could probably calculate the last digit of pi, legs that wouldn't quit, and a wallet that lied better than a politician. It wasn't exactly a well-stocked toolbox for hunting monsters.
But I had one more thing. A single, flimsy, conceptual lottery ticket.
The bronze ticket felt pathetic in my mind, a sad little cousin to the golden ones that had given me my current, bizarre loadout. Using it felt like a waste. Saving it felt like hoarding a single bottle cap for the apocalypse. My cynical side, who had been quiet while I was riding the high of my new toys, spoke up.
When you're going into a gunfight with a pointy stick, and someone offers you a rock, you take the damned rock. It might not be a gun, but it's better than nothing.
I had a point. The odds of a bronze ticket giving me a city-leveling death ray were probably somewhere south of zero. But maybe I'd get a rusty knife. Maybe a bulletproof jockstrap. At this point, I'd take anything that wasn't actively detrimental.
"Alright," I whispered to the stale air of the room. "Let's spin the wheel one more time."
I closed my eyes, focused on that little scrap of bronze potential in the back of my skull, and tore it. There was no sound, no flash of light. Just a quiet little pop of information blooming in my awareness, like a bubble of swamp gas rising to the surface of a pond.
[Digestive Expulsion Independence]
| Trash Trait |
You never piss or shit. Don't ask where all the waste in your body goes.
I opened my eyes. I stared at the water-stained patch on the ceiling that looked vaguely like Kris Kristofferson. I re-read the mental text. Then I re-read it again, just to make sure I wasn't having a stroke.
The silence in the room stretched out, thin and taut. It was a perfect, profound silence, the kind you get in a tomb. Then a sound broke it. It was a choked, gurgling noise, like a man trying to laugh while being strangled. It took me a second to realize it was coming from me.
I laughed. I laughed until my ribs ached and my eyes watered. I doubled over on the groaning mattress, gasping for air, howling at the sheer, magnificent, weaponized stupidity of it all. The universe wasn't just a son of a bitch with a poet's sense of irony. It was a stand-up comedian, and I was the punchline. My grand power, my secret weapon against the bomb-happy lunatic who was about to turn the city into her personal fireworks display, was a lifetime supply of cosmic Tucks pads. I was now blessedly, permanently, free from the tyranny of the toilet.
The laughter died down, leaving a hollow ache in my chest. The cold fury was gone, washed away by a tidal wave of absurdity. My plan to be a proactive, variable-removing badass had just been shivved in the kidneys by a joke-shop deity. I couldn't fight Bakuda. I was a kid with a phone, an eternal gym membership, and a digestive system that operated on the principles of a black hole. My resume was not 'Cape Killer'. It was 'Ideal Candidate for a Long-Haul Trucker'.
Panic, that old predator, started to circle again. Its shadow fell over me, cold and familiar. But my cynical side just shook his head.
So the rock turned out to be a lump of dried dung. You still have the pointy stick. Time for Plan B.
Plan B. The coward's plan. The survivor's plan. My plan. I picked up the Omni Phone. A quick search brought me to the PRT ENE's official tip line page.
A cold understanding settled in. The faded, phantom knowledge of the story laid out the whole ugly chain of consequence. The bombings were just the bloody arithmetic she was using to solve a different problem. All that fire and chaos was a smokescreen, a city-sized misdirection play to cover the real goal: Lung. My fingers moved with a new, sharp purpose. A vague tip about the bombings was useless; they'd be reacting to explosions all night. I had to give them the answer to the test.
I typed.
Breakout attempt on Lung tonight. The city-wide bombings are a distraction. Guard him.
I hit 'send'. The message vanished. Passing the buck felt good for about three seconds. I had done my part, played one smart move on the strategic map to keep a dragon in its cage. But I hadn't solved the whole equation. The story's script was brutally clear on what happened next. The Undersiders would fight her in the Trainyard. They'd hurt her, yes. But she would get away.
The canon outcome, where they wounded the monster but let it crawl back into the woods, just meant it would be killing someone else tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. For ten days, my life would depend on not being the person it decided to maul.
The image of my pathetic little apartment, this whole sad building, being turned into a crater by a bomb I never saw coming flashed through my mind. It was a vivid, ugly picture. The pragmatic fury came back, colder this time. I had to go to the Trainyard. I had to finish the job the Undersiders were only destined to start.
It was a horrible, stupid decision, the kind of choice that gets people like me killed. And the moment I made it, the moment I chose to walk into the fire, a clean, sharp message bloomed in my awareness.
[Achievement Unlocked: Skin in the Game]
You've decided to stop watching the movie and start throwing rocks at the screen. Welcome to the cast.
[Reward: 1x Bronze Ticket.]
Another bronze ticket. Great. A cosmic pat on the back for choosing the path of most resistance. It felt like being handed a paper towel to put out a grease fire. Still, a tool was a tool. With a sense of grim duty, I reached into my mind and tore the flimsy new ticket.
[Digestive Expulsion Independence]
| Trash Trait |
You never piss or shit. Don't ask where all the waste in your body goes.
I stared into the middle distance, my brain refusing to process it. The universe was telling the same stupid joke twice. It was the most profound, soul-crushing anticlimax I had ever experienced. Then, a flicker. A new message, clean and sterile, overlaid the old one.
[Duplicate Trait Detected. Rerolling...]
My breath caught in my throat. A reroll? The system had rules. It had a pity clause. For the first time all day, a sliver of genuine, unironic hope sparked in my chest. The new information bloomed.
[Carapace]
| Uncommon Ability |
Allows you to grow a tough carapace over your flesh like an armor to bolster your defences. Its toughness scales with your physical stats.
The information settled, and I knew, with a sudden, instinctual certainty, what it meant. I needed to see it. I walked out of the small bedroom and into the even smaller bathroom, my shoes scuffing on the cheap linoleum. Standing in front of the cracked, water-stained mirror, I took a breath and focused, willing the change to happen.
A thin, oily film of grey liquid began to bead on my skin, pushing up through every pore like a strange, metallic sweat. The sensation was bizarre, a cool, greasy feeling without any actual wetness. The droplets swelled and ran together, a creeping tide of viscous fluid that flowed over my entire body, obscuring my reflection. As it streamed down my legs, I heard the tortured groan of leather giving way. A sharp pop-rip sounded from below as my worn-in sneakers split apart at the seams, unable to contain the new mass. The liquid sheen vanished in an instant, the fluid locking into place with a faint, dry whisper.
The man in the mirror was gone, replaced by a seamless grey statue. The armor was formed from thousands of tiny, interlocking plates that gave it a segmented, insectoid look. The face was a blank, terrifying mask, vaguely skull-like in its contours, with no mouth and two large, black, emotionless eye-lenses. I looked down. The remains of my shoes were splayed out around my newly armored feet like shredded husks. My eyes drifted back up to the horrifying stranger wearing my clothes, trapped with me in this grimy little room.
Just as that thought settled, a new sensation began. It started deep in that other-space of my soul where the Gacha lived, a strange, conceptual indigestion. It was a pressure, a bubbling up of raw potential, as if the system itself had hiccupped from the sheer statistical improbability of what had just happened.
The world tilted on its axis.
[Achievement Unlocked: The Universe Has a Stutter]
You have achieved the statistically miraculous feat of rolling the exact same trait twice in a row. The system is confused, impressed, or possibly just mocking you. In any case, here's a prize for breaking its brain.
[Reward: 3x Bronze Tickets, 2x Silver Tickets, 1x Gold Ticket.]
A tidal wave of potential crashed through my mind, an overwhelming surge that had all the force of a physical blow without the impact. A moment ago, I had one new tool. Now, an entire arsenal had been dumped on my head. There was no time to waste. My mind, now sharp with a terrifying, electric focus, ripped through the bronze tickets first.
Rip.
[Receptive Body]
| Uncommon Trait |
Your body is incredibly receptive and open to change without getting damaged and curbing negative side effects. Healing is more effective on you and you are less likely to suffer from negative effects from changes like super soldier serum or abilities that cause physical instability.
A gentle warmth bloomed within me, and something shifted between me and the armor. It wasn't a physical change, but a new layer of understanding, of possibility, that unfurled in my mind. A moment ago, I'd been a man locked inside a shell. The carapace was an all-or-nothing proposition; effective, yes, but dumb. Limiting. Now, I could feel how [Receptive Body] had slithered into the code of the thing, remaking it from a static covering into a truly defensive tool.
I focused on that new awareness. With a simple act of will, the blank faceplate dissolved. The feeling of the grey fluid flowing back into the skin around my neck was bizarre, a cool, effervescent tingle against my throat. It wasn't like getting wet; it was like my skin was thirsty, every pore opening to drink the strange substance back in. I felt a faint, cool pressure under the surface as it settled, a feeling of mass returning to some unseen reservoir within me. The entire process was utterly silent.
I took a deep, shuddering breath of the stale bathroom air, my own familiar face now staring back from the monstrous body in the mirror. My curiosity piqued, I pushed the control further. The sharp, segmented edges of the armor all over my body softened, the seams between the thousands of tiny plates flowing together like warm wax. The insectoid look gave way to the smooth, unbroken contours of a nightmare's anatomy lesson, looking less like a bug's exoskeleton and more like the smooth inside of a clam's shell. The dead weight of it was gone. Now it felt alive, a layer of responsive tension that followed my will.
Rip.
[Nimble]
| Common Trait |
You are pretty nimble, granting you slightly faster reflexes and speed.
A subtle current ran through my body, loosening joints and sharpening my senses. The world seemed a fraction of a second slower.
Great, my inner cynic grumbled,
now I'm twitchy.
Rip.
[Deus Eggs Machina]
| Trash Trait |
You will be able to find a regular chicken egg anywhere in opportune moments.
With a soft pop of displaced air, a single brown chicken egg appeared, hanging for a split second about a foot from my face. My hand was already moving, my newly nimble fingers closing around the smooth, fragile shell before it had a chance to fall. My cynical side went silent. The new reflexes were a quiet, shocking revelation. I stood there, a bug-man holding an egg, and tore the first silver ticket.
Rip.
[Durable Baseball Bat]
| Common Item |
An extremely durable baseball bat, it would take at least a nuclear bomb to deform it.
A common item from a silver ticket. The universe was a casino, and the house always had an edge. Still, a familiar weight appeared in my other hand. A simple Louisville Slugger. It felt solid, real. It felt like an answer.
Rip.
[Inventory DLC]
| Rare Trait |
You get your very own Inventory Page added to your system! The inventory addon allows you to store objects inside the System as long as their weight does not exceed what you can carry under optimal conditions. Items originating from the gacha are exempt from this and can be stored without problem.
There was no screen, no grid. It was an awareness, a feeling of a new, empty space opening up in the back of my mind, a secret storage shed that was mine alone. I focused on the bat in my hand, gave it a nudge of will, and it simply vanished.
It wasn't gone; I could still feel its conceptual weight, its shape, its splintery reality, just… somewhere else. I pulled, and it snapped back into my hand with a satisfying thud. The implications of that simple act hit me a second later, and they were staggering. I was a man with no safe place to keep anything, and I had just been given the perfect safe. More than that, I could walk down any street, past any cop or cape, and be completely, totally armed. The baseball bat vanished again. The egg followed it into the void.
A pocket the world can't pick.
It was a paranoid's dream come true, a perfect little slice of personal security in a world that had so far offered me none. A man could build a life out of a power like this. The sheer utility of it was a stark, screaming contrast to the pathetic, cabbage-scented room I was standing in.
But there was no time to dwell on it. The gold ticket was still waiting. It sat in my mind, a terrifying, beautiful weight. I took a deep breath.
Rip.
[One-Eyed Ghoul]
| Epic Trait |
Race(Tokyo Ghoul) - You are a One-Eyed Ghoul, which despite how it sounds is more powerful than the average ghoul. As a One-Eyed Ghoul you have superhuman stats and a flexible super organ called a kagune of your choosing. You get stronger by consuming human flesh but unlike a normal ghoul, you don't need to and can simply eat human food.
Pain slammed into me, a physical reality so absolute it bulldozed every other thought from my mind. It started deep in my bones, a sickening pop that echoed up my spine. My muscles were on fire, a searing agony as every fiber was torn apart and re-woven into something stronger. And the hunger… it was a living thing, a hollow predator awakening in my gut. It didn't just want food. It wanted to chew through the thin plaster wall of my apartment and find the soft, warm bodies in the next room. It was a vile, specific craving that screamed for a kind of meat I refused to name.
But as the monstrous need crested, threatening to overwhelm me, [Receptive Body] met it with open arms. The screaming void in my stomach was pacified, the primal urge soothed and brought to heel. It was still there, a low hum of predatory potential, but I was the one holding the leash now.
Then the agony focused, lancing into my left eye. It was a sharp, specific torment, like a hot coal being pressed into the socket. I cried out, stumbling forward, my hands slapping against the grimy sink to keep my balance. I looked up, my vision swimming, and stared into the mirror as the transformation took me.
The me in the mirror was already a monster, but the left eye was becoming an abomination. The sclera turned a flat, dead black. The iris blazed a blood-red. Veins like black lightning cracked across the skin around the socket. The word for it bloomed in my mind, another piece of knowledge dropped into place like a stone in a pond.
Kakugan. A mark of the monster.
And apparently, my new body agreed.
Before I could fully process the horror, [Receptive Body] went to work again, identifying the un-changed eye as a flaw, an imbalance. A second, searing pain erupted in my right socket, an agonizing echo of the first. I squeezed both eyes shut, my knuckles white as I gripped the edge of the sink, gritting my teeth as my own power brutally enforced its sense of biological symmetry.
When I could finally force my eyes open again, I looked back at the mirror. The face staring back at me was now horribly symmetrical. The abyss stared back at me through two black and red portals. Then, as I watched, they faded in unison, until they were just my normal, boring grey eyes again.
I stood there in the pathetic little bathroom, my new body humming with a terrifying, alien energy. The old plan, the one that involved scrounging for cash to buy a crowbar, felt like a memory from someone else's life. "Well," the bastard in my head noted calmly, "I guess we're skipping the part where we try a crowbar."
That person was a cockroach, hoping to stay out of the way, hoping not to get stepped on.
That person was gone.
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