Lucien stared at the Devil's Bargain option.
Everything about it screamed danger, from the name to the vague warnings the system had provided. But he'd clicked "Yes" to view the terms, and now the full description appeared before him.
[Devil's Bargain]
Price: 1 Gold
Effect: Purchasing this item will add a new option to your status menu. You may activate this option whenever you wish, but it can only be used once.
Note: To gain something, you must lose something as well. This is the fundamental law of equivalent exchange.
Gains:• 5% of Ashborn's True Power for a duration of 1 minute. (No additional shadows will be granted during this time)
Losses:• The world shall suffer consequences along with you.• You shall go through a trial in another world, and only if you pass it can you return to your world.• The system shall be deactivated for a period of time during which the player cannot grow stronger.
Your powers at the moment of activation will remain with you, but you will gain no experience or levels during this time. Only after you complete the trial and return to your world shall the system reactivate.
Lucien read through the description twice, his mind immediately falling into thinking as he processed each piece of information.
Five percent of Ashborn's true power.
The number seemed small at first glance, but then he remembered what the system had told him about Ashborn during the Monarch's Heart trial notification.
Ashborn had surpassed his own creator.
He had slain the kin of the Supreme Being—the Itarim, beings known as the creators of universes.
He had risen from his own multiverse and traveled to others, slaying countless beings across infinite realities.
If Ashborn had been powerful enough to kill universe creators, then how strong would he be if he used five percent of that kind of power? And more importantly, how strong was he currently compared to Ashborn?
A lot of questions popped into his mind.
Lucien tried to put it in perspective. His current stats were around 300s, with his MP exceeding 11,000. He could defeat most threats on Earth. But compared to someone who had killed the creators of universes?
He was probably less than a rounding error. Less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
Which meant that five percent would represent an increase so massive that he couldn't even properly conceptualize it.
For one minute, he would be functionally unstoppable by any standard that existed.
Thor, Hulk, and the likes would be nothing more than E-Rank monsters compared to an A-Rank hunter… or so he thought.
But all of this was nothing more than an assumption, as neither did he know how strong Ashborn was nor did he know how he himself fared against him.
Shaking off those thoughts, Lucien looked at the offer again, this time focusing on the price.
One gold coin.
Clearly a devil's bargain indeed.
The monetary cost was so trivial that it might as well be free. He could afford it without even noticing the expense. But the price here wasn't measured in gold—it was measured in what he would lose once he accepted the offer and actually used it.
The system was his strongest asset.
It had been the foundation of everything he'd accomplished since awakening in that research facility.
The daily quests, the dungeons, the level-ups, the stat allocations—all of it came from the system. If that was stripped away from him, becoming stronger would definitely get much tougher.
Though it wouldn't disappear forever, which brought him to the second and third conditions.
"The world will suffer consequences along with you."
What did that even mean?
He tried to think of different interpretations, running through various scenarios in his mind. Would it trigger some kind of global catastrophe? Would using Ashborn's power damage reality itself somehow? Would it attract the attention of cosmic entities that might retaliate against Earth?
Nothing he could think of made complete sense.
The system was being intentionally vague, which meant it either couldn't or wouldn't specify exactly what those consequences would be.
That uncertainty was arguably more concerning than a known threat would have been.
Then there was the last condition—the trial in another world.
It was probably another dungeon, likely A-Rank or above, since returning from it would reactivate the system. It wouldn't be anything lower than A-Rank because he could clear those relatively easily now, and the principle of "no risk, no reward" had held for every system-generated challenge so far.
Lucien sat there for several minutes, weighing the pros and cons.
The Devil's Bargain was essentially an emergency nuclear option.
One minute of godlike power that could theoretically solve any problem he might face, but at the cost of potentially catastrophic consequences and an extended period of stagnation in his growth.
When would he need something like this? What kind of threat would justify using it?
But having the option available… that had value in itself. Just knowing he had a way to access such power provided a safety net that might prove invaluable.
He made his decision.
Lucien purchased the Devil's Bargain for one gold coin.
[Devil's Bargain - Purchased][New Option Added to Status Menu]
He immediately pulled up his status screen and saw the new button that had appeared at the bottom.
[Devil's Bargain]
Lucien closed the status screen and leaned back on his bed.
The system continued to surprise him every time. Every time he thought he understood it, something new appeared that made him rethink everything about it.
At that moment, a loud boom echoed through the air like thunder, followed immediately by the sound of something massive crashing into the ground.
The shockwave that followed was strong enough that the windows in his apartment rattled violently, and he heard glass breaking somewhere in the building.
Lucien's senses immediately activated, his perception expanding outward to identify what had just happened. The impact point was close—maybe two blocks away, in what looked like an empty lot between buildings.
The object that had crashed was radiating a distinctive energy signature.
"Mjolnir," Lucien muttered, already moving toward the window.
Thor's hammer.
The legendary weapon of the God of Thunder had just fallen from the sky and buried itself in New York City. But there was no sign of Thor himself anywhere in Lucien's perception range.
That was concerning. Mjolnir didn't just fall out of the sky randomly. If the hammer was here but Thor wasn't, that suggested something had happened to separate them.
Lucien opened his window and looked in the direction where Mjolnir had landed. Already, he could sense people starting to gather around the impact site.
Normal civilians drawn by curiosity, but also some individuals with powers.
This was already attracting attention.
He needed to decide quickly whether to get involved or let others handle it.
On one hand, this wasn't necessarily his problem. Thor was an Avenger, and the Avengers would handle the situation.
On the other hand, he was curious about the situation altogether.
Lucien made his choice.
He was not going to get involved in the situation and decided to go clear another dungeon.
Now that he was aware of the Devil's Bargain, an unprecedented feeling of becoming as strong as he could rose within him.
He did not want to use that option, and to make sure such a situation never arose, he needed to be strong enough to handle anything thrown at him.
Strength was the answer to a lot of things. Not everything, but a lot of things.
In a world like Marvel, where people vanished into dust just because a purple potato was trying to impress the woman who represented the aspect of Death… or a woman with the power to overwrite reality itself who had family issues decided to change reality multiple times, once quite recently, leaving the number of mutants dwindling.
This world was something of a cosmic kitchen, and the chef could not care less whether he threw the ingredients in or out of the pot while cooking.
And some beings surpassed even these people with issues.
Abstract entities that had been living for God knows how many billions of years, and yet fell for a human on a planet that did not even exist a few million years ago.
Lucien really hoped that Ashborn at least surpassed these beings—or had something to counter the reality warping.
Because even though he did not read many comics, he knew for a fact that Earth was like a treasure trove of problems.
And in the near future, more and more problems were going to arise, and even if Lucien wanted to stay away from them, he wouldn't be able to.
Even Lucien knew that, and that was exactly why he needed to get stronger.
Little did Lucien know that a being who used to wear Eternity as his cloak, Death as his war club, Phoenix Force as his armor, and Infinity as his shield had set his eyes on Earth and was coming for it.
And an abstract entity, which had once been used as a cloak for the previous entity, was also preparing itself and had infested the body of the mutant Storm Goddess, as it had no intention of being used again.
No matter how things unfolded, one thing was for sure… Earth was going to suffer, and so was the entire universe.
...
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