Klein and Peter parted ways at the entrance of the café.
He stood there for a moment, watching Peter's slightly slouched figure disappear into the noisy afternoon crowd — that particular kind of dejected walk that said I wanted to do something good and couldn't. The guilt was written in every step.
Klein let out a quiet breath.
Then he shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans, turned around, and started the walk back toward his apartment.
The afternoon sun filtered down through the gaps between the high-rises, cutting the sidewalk into alternating strips of light and shadow. Klein kicked a small pebble along the pavement as he walked, not really aiming anywhere, just letting his thoughts unspool on their own.
An internship. He snorted quietly. Right.
The corner of his mouth curled.
Over a month of washing dishes and running deliveries. Over a month of working himself raw just to cover rent and groceries, scraping the bottom of the barrel so consistently he'd started to think the bottom was where he lived. All of that had been survival — necessary, unavoidable, the price of existing in a city that didn't care whether you made it or not.
But that was before the system dropped into his lap like the universe had finally remembered it owed him something.
Now that he had it — a genuine, actual superpower sitting loaded and waiting behind his eyes — why in the world would he spend October fetching coffee at an Oscorp exhibition, smiling politely, making himself useful to people who wouldn't remember his name by November? All for a modest stipend and a resume line that might pay off someday?
What would be the point of transmigrating?
Besides — and Klein was honest enough with himself to admit this mattered — he had some pride left. He'd work hard, sure. He didn't mind grinding. But there was a difference between building something for yourself and being a cog in someone else's machine for the privilege of calling it experience.
He wasn't there yet. Not while the system existed.
More practically: the Oscorp biotech exhibition in October was Peter's moment. That was canon. That was the spider, the bite, the beginning of everything that made Peter Parker who he was meant to become.
Klein had no business walking into that particular scene and potentially stepping on a butterfly.
What if the spider bit someone else? What if his presence shifted something?
No. That wasn't his lane. Peter's story was Peter's. Klein had his own to figure out.
He kicked the pebble one last time, watched it skitter into a drain, and turned the corner toward home.
The apartment building came into view — tired-looking brick, a buzzer that worked maybe half the time, stairs that announced every footstep to the whole floor. Klein climbed them at an easy pace, key already out, and let himself in.
The familiar smell hit him immediately. Old wood, cheap cleaning spray, and something underneath both of those that he was starting to think of simply as his. Strange how quickly a cramped ten-square-meter room became the one place in a foreign world that felt like it belonged to him.
He closed the door behind him, muffling the street noise to a distant hum.
Then he crossed the room in three steps and dropped onto the sofa bed, letting it catch him, sinking into the cushions with a long exhale.
Just lay there for a minute. Staring at the ceiling. Letting his brain idle.
Then he closed his eyes, pulled his attention inward, and reached for the system.
System.
The pale blue screen materialized immediately in his mind's eye — quiet, steady, waiting.
Klein took a moment to think through his question carefully before asking it.
"Which version of the Marvel universe is this? The movies? The main comics continuity? Some kind of parallel branch? An animated timeline?" He paused. "Or some combination of all of them?"
It wasn't a small question. The movie universe, for all its chaos, at least had a readable timeline. The stakes were high but the rules were consistent. You could plan around it.
The comics continuity, on the other hand, was a different animal entirely — a place where cosmic resets happened on a schedule, entire realities collapsed for storyline reasons, and beings capable of rewriting existence showed up on a Tuesday. Surviving that universe was a different problem altogether.
And if this was some hybrid of multiple continuities, all bets were off.
He needed to know what he was working with.
The system's response came immediately.
[Ding!][Host — why does it matter what universe this is?][With your System here, you can walk through ANY universe.]
The text seemed to physically swell on the screen, bold and flickering, like it was puffing itself up.
[Do you understand what I am? The MYRIAD WORLDS. SUPREME. LUCKY DRAW SYSTEM.][With me present, you are destined to ascend to heights beyond reckoning. A mere Marvel universe? The Celestials? The Living Tribunal? Small fry, all of them. Even the One Above All had better watch its step.][I will not be taking questions at this time.]
Klein stared at the screen for a solid two seconds.
Then something shifted in his chest — a feeling he hadn't expected, rising up from somewhere he'd forgotten existed.
The system was completely unhinged. Absolutely, magnificently full of itself. It spoke like a final boss who hadn't met a worthy opponent in centuries and was bored about it.
And somehow, against all logic...
It worked.
Every cautious, calculating thought he'd been carrying for the past month — what universe is this, how bad can it get, what's the threat ceiling, how do I survive long-term — dissolved like sugar in warm water.
Who cares?
He had a system. A real, actual, working cheat code dropped into his life by whatever force governed the traffic between worlds. And that system had just told him, with complete confidence, that the Celestials were speed bumps.
Maybe it was delusional. Maybe it was exactly the kind of overconfidence that got protagonists killed in chapter forty.
But right now, lying on a sagging sofa bed in a ten-square-meter apartment in Queens, New York, Klein felt the tension drain out of his shoulders and something that had been coiled tight in his gut finally loosen.
Yeah. Okay. Let's go.
He sat up, slapped the armrest, and grinned at nothing in particular.
"You know what?" he said to the empty room, his voice bright with the specific energy of someone who has just decided to stop being cautious and start being dangerous. "I've been eating ramen for a month straight."
He stood up.
"That ends today."
He snapped his fingers — a clean, sharp sound in the small apartment — and the grin spread wider.
Step one: the classic move of the newly-powered underdog throughout history.
Take from the rich. Give to the poor.
The poor, naturally, being Klein himself — currently broke, currently hungry, currently very interested in changing both of those facts as quickly as possible.
The rich? Well. The definition was flexible.
Anyone with more money than him qualified.
And in New York City, that was a very long list.
[End of Chapter 3]
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