The bus stop on Madison Avenue looked pretty much like any bus stop back home, except it was at least ten thousand times cleaner than the ones on 8th Avenue in Brooklyn.
No gang graffiti, no homeless guys sleeping inside, no piss stains under the sign.
Levi quickly found his route.
Take any of the M1 through M4 lines south, get off somewhere between 42nd and 59th, then grab the crosstown M34 over to 8th Avenue.
Only problem was the schedule.
“Buses every twenty minutes?” Levi raised an eyebrow at the posted times.
“For three bucks a ride I guess I can live with that.”
After seeing the hundred-twenty-dollar Uber price, three dollars suddenly felt like a bargain.
The schedule lied like a bad date.
Levi waited almost half an hour before a tired yellow bus finally wheezed up.
He was lucky he was on Madison Avenue.
On 8th Avenue he never would’ve stood in one spot that long.
He tapped his phone for the $2.90 fare and took a seat in the back corner.
Only a handful of passengers around his age—mostly Black and white kids who looked like they’d just finished shifts nearby.
The ride was going to take close to ninety minutes.
Perfect time to start reviewing the high school material.
The second his ass hit the seat, the system voice spoke.
[Quest: First time reading an Ancient Stone Tablet — Complete]
[You successfully deciphered the cryptic ancient stone tablet and unlocked its secrets.
The Arcane Council should etch your name into the annals of history.]
[Reward: Free Attribute Points +0.1]
Levi rubbed his nose. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
He wouldn’t go that far, but he wasn’t complaining.
He pulled out the AP Macroeconomics textbook he’d grabbed from the school basement and started reading.
Real estate transaction commissions… interesting.
After a while he glanced out the window.
Now he understood why New York streets were numbered avenues and numbered blocks.
Back in 1811 some commission had sliced Manhattan into neat rectangles so land could be sold in clean, standardized units.
Numbers made everything easier to manage and expand.
An hour later, as the yellow bus rattled from 5th Avenue toward 8th, Levi closed the book and tried to recall what he’d just read.
“Wait,” he muttered.
“When exactly was that commission plan published again?”
[Spirit 1.0] → [Spirit 1.1]
[Spirit upgrade detected — Clumsy Eloquence has evolved]
[Effect: 50% chance to convince weak-willed greedy people] → [Effect: 60% chance to convince weak-willed greedy people]
The moment one of his stats crossed the normal human threshold, the whole world and his memories shifted in a way that was hard to describe.
It felt like an old, laggy computer that had been running too many background processes suddenly got its RAM cleared and a brand-new SSD installed.
Before, when he read, the words had to go through this slow mental translation process—chew, digest, then stick as short-term memory.
Now, with Spirit at 1.1, everything felt sharper.
Like the world had gone from frosted glass to crystal clear.
The page about the 1811 commission plan floated back into his mind and locked in perfectly.
It wasn’t just memory.
The bus AC hum, the two guys up front arguing about last night’s NBA game, the vibration of the tires on the road—all the background noise that used to annoy him suddenly had layers.
He could focus on any single sound or tune everything out and stay locked on the textbook.
So this is what being a little genius feels like.
The rush lasted about thirty minutes before the excitement faded and the shitty environment started wearing on him again.
Back in Brooklyn the air hit him with the usual mix of cooking oil, leaves, and seafood.
Instead of heading straight to the basement, Levi turned into a Chinese grocery store.
Now that he had a little money he wasn’t eating discount bread and charity food anymore.
He picked through the meat section and grabbed two thick-cut beef shank steaks—cheaper than ribeye or strip, lower fat, higher protein.
Added a big jug of skim milk and a bag of rice.
When he pushed open the basement door the familiar mold smell rolled out.
Don Quixote was unusually quiet.
After days of hauling bricks in the morning and washing dishes at night he was finally wiped out.
He lay on the stained mattress clutching his damp knight novel, snoring like a chainsaw.
Levi shook his head, walked over to the little gas stove in the corner—thank God it still worked—and started cooking.
The cheap beef shank sizzled in the pan.
The Maillard reaction quickly pushed the rich meat smell over the basement funk.
He only added a little black pepper, cooked it to medium, and plated it.
He left a portion for Don Quixote, then demolished his own.
The heat and protein spread through his limbs.
Whether it was the system or just the Constitution gains, he was eating way more than before.
He could comfortably put away a full five hundred grams of steak in one sitting now.
Back in his section he lost himself in the textbooks.
Time was tight.
He had two weeks to push his stats high enough for the class change and the gold reward so he could move out.
On top of that he had to pass the school entrance tests and make the football team tryouts in a month.