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The next morning Levi woke up to find Don Quixote already gone.
He sat up on the mattress and glanced at the narrow window.
The pavement outside was dry and the sky was clear.
Uncle was back on the job site hauling bricks.
When he stepped out of his section he saw the plate of beef shank he’d left for Don Quixote was completely cleaned.
A small stack of letters sat on the table instead.
Levi picked them up out of curiosity.
The bold red lettering on the envelopes looked ready to bite.
He opened the first one.
The return address was the New York City Department of Finance.
[Dear Mr.
Cervantes, your parking citation for vehicle GDT-592 is now past due.]
Levi scanned the bottom.
Fine: $115.
Late fee: $10.
Total due: $125.
In New York the street sweepers came on a schedule.
Park in the wrong spot at the wrong time and you got tagged.
“Street sweeping ticket…” Levi shook his head and opened the next envelope.
“Con Edison?”
[As of this month your account is past due $342.45.
If full payment is not received by August 25 we will be forced to shut off your electric and gas service.]
“Three hundred forty-two dollars in electric?” Levi looked around the dark, damp basement that barely had any appliances.
“How long has he been behind?”
The rest of the pile was the same story—electronic toll violations, water bill, legal fees, more warnings.
Seven or eight envelopes in one morning, easily seven or eight hundred dollars total.
This really was the heart of Blackheart Capitalism.
Now he understood exactly how brutal Don Quixote’s life was.
Sixteen-hour days, no days off, maybe three thousand a month after taxes.
Then two thousand in alimony plus all these bills ate everything.
Levi opened the last one from a law firm demanding the next two-thousand-dollar alimony payment and shook his head.
He pulled a hundred and fifty dollars from his pocket and left it on the table.
“When I make it I’ll pay the rest,” he said, grabbing a piece of bread and his bag.
“This is all I can do right now.”
Yesterday’s shooting had shut down the 8th Avenue station, but when Levi arrived today the usual crowd was already moving like nothing had happened.
He glanced at the bullet holes, dried blood stains, and the yellow tape still sectioning off part of the platform, then decided against hopping the turnstile like some of the Latino kids.
On a B-2 visa turning into an F-1 he couldn’t risk a misdemeanor arrest and getting deported over three dollars.
He paid the $2.90 and bought a ticket to Madison Square.
The concrete stairs down into the station were covered in black gum stains.
A blast of complex, unidentifiable air hit him from below, pushed up by giant industrial fans.
With his Spirit at 1.1 the station looked painfully sharp: big patches of white subway tile missing and exposing red brick that looked like dried meat, white lime stains running down the walls, and corners that smelled like yesterday’s rain mixed with homeless piss and crack smoke.
A teeth-grinding metallic screech tore through the tunnel.
A rush of hot, rusty air blasted out as an N train covered in graffiti and scratches burst from the darkness like a steel worm.
The doors opened and thumping bass exploded from inside, right alongside a new system notification.
[Adventurer Levi, you have made first contact with the Steel Dragon.]
[The Steel Dragon is one of the magic empire’s primary modes of transportation.
Its semi-enclosed ecosystem has given birth to a breed of ratmen that radiate mental interference and noise.]
[New Quest: Spirit Barrier]
[A true knight can build an absolute sanctuary of silence inside his mind even on the loudest battlefield.
Your will must not waver against the ratmen’s mental assault.]
[Complete one full section of knight coursework without distraction before the ratmen finish their performance.]
[Reward: Spirit +0.1]
“Ratmen?”
Before Levi could process it he was shoved into the packed car.
“What time is it?!” A Black teenager in a crooked baseball cap and sagging pants burst out of the crowd, grabbed the overhead bar with both hands, and swung himself into the air like a monkey.
“It’s showtime!”
The sardine-can crowd magically parted, carving out a narrow strip of open space down the middle of the car.
Levi got pushed toward the corner bench and took the seat.
So these are the ratmen, he thought, watching the teenagers spin, flip, and split on the poles.
He sighed, pulled out his AP Macroeconomics book, and started reading.
It was hard, but he eventually forced himself into flow.
He didn’t look up until the music cut off.
[Quest Complete: Spirit Barrier]
[You held the line against the ratmen’s mental pollution.]
[Reward: Spirit +0.1]
[Spirit 1.1] → [Spirit 1.2]
It felt like mint water poured straight onto a burning CPU.
The world sharpened another notch.
Everything he’d just read locked into his memory with almost perfect clarity.
Both recall and comprehension had jumped again.
Levi watched the same teenager now walking the aisle with his cap out for donations.
He could even see the exhaustion in the kid’s eyes.
It wasn’t full analysis yet, just a strange, instinctive sense of things.
[Spirit upgrade detected — Clumsy Eloquence has evolved]
[Effect: 60% chance to convince weak-willed greedy people] → [Effect: 70% chance to convince weak-willed greedy people]
[Knight’s Tempering: Stage One complete — Spirit attribute reached 1.2.
Gold Coins +3]
Three heavy coins dropped silently into his pocket.
Four gold coins now, Levi thought.
And the skill just leveled again.
I wonder what my odds are against that goblin merchant Lyon now.
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