I stared at the floating blue screen for a solid minute, waiting for the punchline.
When no punchline came, I mentally tapped the glowing icon for the [Common] Tier Reward, preparing myself to receive the ultimate weapon.
I was expecting a sleek combat knife, a modern medical kit, or perhaps a lightweight ballistic vest.
Anything that would guarantee my survival in this hellish, cannibal-infested world.
‘[Opening: “Duck Tales” Dollar Store Bundle,]’ the system chimed in its lifeless, robotic text.
There was a small flash of light, and suddenly, I felt a heavy, awkward weight drop directly into my hands.
I looked down, blinking rapidly.
Instead of a weapon, I was holding exactly five thick, heavy-duty rolls of silver duct tape.
The brand name “Duck Tales” was plastered on the cheap, crinkly plastic wrapping in aggressively cheerful yellow letters.
There was even a badly drawn cartoon duck giving me a thumbs-up on the label.
‘[Item added to Inventory: Five (5) Rolls of Duck Tales Duct Tape.]’
‘[Utility: It fixes everything.
Except your impending doom.
Warning: Do not apply directly to hair.]’
I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.
I was going to die.
I was going to get eaten alive by a giant, naked monster, and my only line of defense was the ultimate dad-tool from a discount store.
I mentally opened my [Inventory], a small grid of ten empty digital squares floating in my mind’s eye.
The rolls of duct tape automatically occupied the first slot.
‘Great.
Nine slots left to store the tools of my salvation.
I’m practically invincible,’ I thought sarcastically, tossing one of the silver rolls into the air and catching it.
It had a surprisingly solid heft to it.
Eren walked over, wiping a fresh streak of dirt and blood off his chin from his recent mud-tasting experience.
He stared at the shiny silver cylinders in my hand, his intense green eyes squinting in absolute confusion.
“Kai, what is that?” he asked, pointing at the tape.
“Is that a weapon?
It looks heavy.
Can I throw it at someone?”
“It’s the structural foundation of my sanity, Eren,” I replied flatly, peeling back a tiny corner of the tape.
It made a loud, satisfying RIIIIP sound.
“And no, you cannot throw it.”
Mikasa just stared at it, her expression blank and unreadable.
Without saying a single word, she reached out, gently took one of the five rolls directly from my hand, and shoved it deep into her jacket pocket.
I didn’t question it.
I didn’t even try to stop her.
Maybe she was going to use it to tape the neighborhood bullies to a brick wall later.
If Mikasa Ackerman wanted a roll of industrial adhesive to accompany her on her path of quiet lethality, who was I to argue?
That single, depressing draw was the beginning of my five-month descent into gacha-induced poverty.
You see, the system was completely, unequivocally non-sentient.
It didn’t care about my feelings.
It didn’t care about my impending doom or my overwhelming anxiety.
It certainly didn’t care that I was an unemployed, broke nine-year-old living in a walled cage with zero career prospects.
It operated on cold, hard, unfeeling capitalism.
One free ticket a month.
That was the rule.
Anything extra had to be bought by exchanging items of ‘high value’ or local currency.
Do you know how much money an average nine-year-old has in the Shiganshina District?
Exactly zero.
We were living in a brutal, pre-industrial society where a fresh loaf of bread was considered a luxury item.
I wasn’t exactly getting a weekly allowance from Grisha for doing my chores.
I spent the first two weeks desperately trying to hustle the system.
I tried feeding it rocks.
I found unusually straight sticks and tried to offer them up to the blue void.
I even caught a particularly shiny, rare-looking beetle near the river and tried to pawn it.
The system coldly rejected all of them.
‘[Error: Item holds no tangible value.
Please insert actual currency or valuables.]’
I grew desperate.
I snuck into Grisha’s study while he was out treating patients and tried stealing his heavy medical journals.
I dragged three massive books under my bed, opened the interface, and offered them up, hoping the knowledge of human anatomy was worth at least an SSR ticket.
The system scanned them and offered me exactly one-tenth of a basic ticket for the entire stack.
‘One-tenth?’ I complained internally, furiously dragging the books back to the study.
‘It’s not even worth the grounding I’m going to get if Grisha realizes his spleen charts are missing!’
I even considered pawning my brother.
I genuinely opened the system interface one afternoon while Eren was screaming at the sky, and asked if I could trade my aggressively loud twin brother for a multi-pull.
‘[Error: Living organisms cannot be exchanged.
Also, host’s offered item possesses severely negative survival value.]’
‘Even the system thinks you’re a liability,’ I muttered to myself, watching Eren aggressively chop firewood until the axe handle nearly snapped.
Over the course of five grueling months, I resorted to pure, unadulterated scavenging.
I became a menace in Shiganshina.
I was the weird kid who walked ten paces behind merchants, staring intensely at the dirt, diving on dropped copper coins like a starving seagull.
I hung around the taverns, waiting for drunk Garrison guards to drop their loose change in the mud.
I checked the grates near the canal.
I hustled older kids in games of marbles and sold the marbles for scraps of copper.
Carla became genuinely concerned for my mental health.
She caught me digging through the couch cushions one evening and asked Grisha if I had developed some sort of compulsive hoarding disorder.
“He’s just…
very financially motivated,” Grisha had sighed, rubbing his temples.
That massive, exhausting, utterly humiliating effort brought my grand total to ten draws over five months.
Ten chances to change my destiny.
Ten opportunities to become a powerhouse before the Colossal Titan arrived.
The results were, frankly, insulting.
Draw number two gave me a passive ability.
Finally, a skill!
My heart had pounded as the system finalized the text.
‘[Ability Acquired: Nap Anywhere (Passive).]’
‘[Description: Host can instantly fall into a deep, restful sleep in any environment, regardless of noise, temperature, physical comfort, or imminent danger.]’
Honestly?
I wasn’t even mad about that one.
In a world this stressful, where Eren screamed at a wall every three hours and Mikasa brooded silently in the corner, the ability to instantly check out and take a nap on a jagged rock was an absolute godsend.
I used it the very next day.
Eren was yelling at me about joining the Survey Corps, and I just closed my eyes while standing up.
I was asleep before I even hit the floor.
Draw number three was a basic survival tent.
It was actually somewhat useful.
It was made of highly durable modern canvas, came complete with a waterproof tarp, and had mosquito netting.
The only problem was that it took up an entire inventory slot, and I couldn’t exactly pitch a neon-orange modern camping tent in the middle of our wooden living room without Carla asking some very uncomfortable questions about where I bought synthetic nylon.
Draw number four was a single, slightly damp white athletic sock.
The system classified it as a ‘miscellaneous artifact’.
I classified it as absolute garbage and threw it in the river.
Draw number five…
well, draw number five was the one that nearly made me quit the system entirely.
I had saved up enough copper coins for an exchange ticket.
I spun the digital wheel while standing in a secluded, empty alleyway behind the butcher shop, hoping for a weapon.
The slots clicked.
The screen flashed bronze.
Suddenly, a massive shadow appeared above me, completely blocking out the afternoon sun.
My average-guy panic flared.
I dove into a pile of rotting hay just as a solid, ten-foot-tall, incredibly thick concrete pillar slammed into the dirt where I had just been standing.
The ground shook violently.
A miniature earthquake rattled the alley.
Dust plumed into the air in a massive grey cloud, causing me to choke and cough uncontrollably.
‘[Item Acquired: Roman-Style Concrete Pillar.]’
‘[Utility: Very heavy.
Excellent for holding up ancient roofs.
Incredibly hard to move without heavy machinery.]’
I just lay in the hay, staring at the massive chunk of solid masonry completely blocking the alleyway.
It had crushed three empty barrels and cracked the cobblestones.
‘How am I supposed to put that in my pocket?!’ I screamed internally.
I heard the frantic shouts of Military Police approaching from the main street to investigate the noise.
Panicking, I scrambled out of the hay, pressed my hand against the rough concrete, and frantically tapped the screen to store it in my digital inventory.
The pillar vanished into thin air just a second before two guards rounded the corner, leaving them staring at a very suspicious crater and a coughing ten-year-old boy.
It took up my fourth inventory slot.
A giant, completely useless concrete pillar.
What was I going to do when the Armored Titan attacked?
Drop it on his toe?
Draws six through nine were equally depressing, a testament to my terrible luck and my utter lack of funds.
Draw six was a coupon for a dry cleaner located in New York City, which expired in 2018.
Very helpful for getting Titan blood out of my jackets, assuming I could invent dimensional travel.
Draw seven was a half-eaten ham and cheese sandwich wrapped in plastic.
I actually ate that one.
Wasting free food in this economy was a sin, and frankly, the processed deli meat tasted significantly better than Carla’s unseasoned potato stew.
Draw eight was a pair of plastic aviator sunglasses with one missing lens.
Eren found them later, put them on, and walked around the house looking like a visually impaired pirate.
Draw nine was the final nail in the coffin.
Another massive, earth-shaking thud in an alleyway.
Another frantic scramble to store a heavy object before the guards arrived.
‘[Item Acquired: Roman-Style Concrete Pillar.
Utility: You now have a matching set.
Aesthetics improved.]’
‘[Warning: Inventory approaching capacity.
Please discard items to make room.]’
I ended up permanently deleting the dry-cleaning coupon and throwing the sunglasses away just so I could carry two giant Roman pillars in my back pocket.
You know, for architectural emergencies.
By the end of the fifth month, I was completely exhausted, completely broke, and severely lacking in overpowered abilities.
I had spent half a year grinding for copper coins in the dirt, dodging drunks, and stealing discarded nails to sell to the blacksmith.
And all I had to show for it was the ability to sleep through a hurricane, a bright orange tent I couldn’t use, four rolls of duct tape, and enough ancient concrete to build a very small, very ugly porch.
The year was now 844.
The Colossal Titan was getting closer every single day.
The creeping dread of Wall Maria’s fall was constantly hovering over my head like a suffocating storm cloud.
I sat on the edge of my bed late one night, watching Eren aggressively sleep-punch his pillow in the dark.
He was probably fighting invisible monsters in his dreams.
“We are so incredibly doomed,” I whispered to the wooden ceiling, tossing a roll of silver tape up into the air and catching it.
I had one draw left.
The final free ticket of the fifth month.
If I got a third concrete pillar, I promised myself I was just going to walk out the front gates and let a Titan end my misery early.
It would be vastly less stressful than trying to survive with a digital inventory full of masonry.
I opened the system interface.
The cold, blue light illuminated my tired face in the dark room, casting long shadows against the walls.
‘[Current Inventory: 1 Free Monthly Ticket.]’
‘Just do it,’ I thought, rubbing my exhausted eyes.
‘Give me the trash.
Let’s get it over with so I can use my passive skill and go to sleep.’
I mentally tapped the glowing ticket.
The digital slot machine appeared and began to spin.
I waited for the familiar, depressing bronze glow.
But this time, it didn’t flash bronze.
It didn’t even flash silver.
Instead, the screen began to glow with a brilliant, blinding, incandescent gold.
The slots spun faster and faster, emitting a high-pitched, escalating chiming sound that made my heart leap directly into my throat.
‘Wait.
That’s not the animation for a Common draw,’ I realized, sitting up straight so fast the bedsprings shrieked in protest.
The slots slammed to a halt.
The golden light exploded across my vision, forcing me to physically shield my eyes with my forearm.
‘[Congratulations!
Host has reached the 5-Month Survival Milestone!]’
I lowered my arm, blinking away the bright spots in my vision.
Milestone?
Since when did this cheapskate algorithm have milestones?
I hadn’t seen a single mention of pity timers in the tutorial!
‘[As a reward for enduring five months of consecutive low-tier draws, and maintaining an active user status despite extreme poverty and terrible luck, the System is issuing a one-time compensation.]’
I stared at the text, completely speechless.
It knew.
The non-sentient algorithm somehow tracked that I had been rolling absolute garbage and basically took pity on me.
The golden light coalesced into a single, glowing ticket that floated gently down into my digital inventory, forcefully pushing one of the concrete pillars aside to make room.
‘[Item Acquired: Guaranteed SR (Super Rare) Template Draw Ticket.]’
My jaw practically unhinged.
SR?
Super Rare?
Template?
That meant actual powers.
That meant real, tangible survival skills that didn’t involve duct-taping my enemies, dropping ancient pillars on people, or sleeping through the apocalypse.
I wasn’t getting a household utility this time.
I wasn’t getting a rock, a sock, or a half-eaten lunch.
I held the glowing golden ticket in my mind’s eye, feeling a sudden, terrifying wave of hope wash over my lazy persona.
If I played this right, I might actually survive long enough to legally move out of my parents’ house and find a quiet place in the interior to take a nap.
‘Okay, system,’ I thought
, a genuine, completely un-lazy smile creeping onto my face for the first time in months.
‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’