"Ethan Reed, Talent Awakening: F-Rank. Ability: Basic Item Gift."The cold, mechanical voice of the Awakening Crystal echoed across the crowded plaza of the First Horizon Academy.
A collective wave of snickers and outright laughter erupted from the thousands of students watching.
In a world where the Horizon Rift had opened twenty years ago—forcing humanity into a global game of survival against cosmic beasts—Talent was everything.
An F-rank talent meant you were destined to be cannon fodder. A logistics worker. Slum trash.
"Basic Item Gift?" sneered Tyler Vance, the heir of the prestigious Vance Corporation, standing at the front of the VIP section. "So your grand power is acting as a delivery boy? What a waste of academy resources. No wonder your family went bankrupt."
Ethan stood on the stage, his fists clenched tightly inside his pockets until his knuckles turned white.
His parents had died in a dungeon raid six months ago, leaving him with nothing but a mountain of debt and a younger sister to feed.
He had risked everything on this day, hoping to awaken a combat talent to change his fate.
Instead, he got a garbage utility skill.[Basic Item Gift (F-Rank): The user can gift a low-grade item to another person once a day. The recipient feels a slight increase in friendliness.]
"Move along, Ethan," the proctor said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion.
"Next!"
Ethan walked down the steps of the stage, keeping his head straight. The whispers followed him like a swarm of locusts.
He walked past his classmates, past the girl who had promised to stand by him but was now deliberately looking at her shoes, and exited the academy gates.
He didn’t stop walking until he reached the damp, cramped alleyways of the Outer District slums.
Entering his run-down apartment, he threw his worn-out jacket onto a creaking wooden chair.
He was broke. The landlord had already threatened to evict them by the end of the week.
"Brother? Is that you?"A frail girl with pale skin and large, worried eyes peeked out from the kitchen.
It was his fourteen-year-old sister, Lily. She was suffering from a chronic mana-poisoning condition, and her medicine cost 5,000 Credits a month.
Right now, Ethan had exactly 50 Credits left in his bank account.
"Yeah, it’s me," Ethan said, forcing a warm, reassuring smile onto his face. He didn’t want her to worry.
"The awakening went fine. Don’t worry about the money."
"Did you awaken a good talent?" she asked, her eyes lighting up with a spark of hope.
Ethan swallowed the bitterness in his throat. "I awakened a support talent. It’s... very specialized. I just need to figure out a few things first."
Lily nodded trustingly. "Okay. I made some basic nutrient broth. It’s not much, but we have to share it."
She placed a small, cracked bowl of gray liquid on the table. It was the cheapest nourishment available, barely enough to keep a human alive. There were two stale pieces of hard rye bread next to it.
Ethan looked at the food, then at his sister’s thin wrists. He wasn’t hungry. Even if he was, his despair had completely eaten away at his appetite.
"You eat it, Lily. I ate at the academy," Ethan lied smoothly.
He picked up the piece of hard rye bread and handed it to her. "Here, take mine too. You need to keep your strength up."
The moment the bread left Ethan’s hand and Lily’s fingers brushed against it, time seemed to freeze.The ambient light in the dingy apartment turned a blinding, crystalline blue.
A massive, holographic screen materialized directly in front of Ethan’s vision, blocking out the dirty walls.
[DING! Congratulation Host! The requirements for the hidden cosmic law have been met.]
[Detecting the F-Rank Talent: Basic Item Gift... Altering concept... Injecting Primordial Rules...]
[Your Talent has mutated into the unique, Cosmic-Grade Concept: The 10,000x Return System!]
Ethan’s breath caught in his throat. He blinked hard, but the glowing words remained.
[System Rules: Whenever the Host sincerely gifts, gives, or invests an item, resource, or technique into another living being without demanding immediate compensation, the System will trigger a random multiplier return ranging from 100x to 10,000x!]
[Notice: You have gifted ’Stale Rye Bread (Trash Grade)’ to your sister, Lily Reed.]
[Triggering Return Multiplier... Calculating... Congratulations! You have triggered the maximum capped return: 10,000x Multiplier!]
[You have received: 10,000 pieces of Stale Rye Bread! Due to the enormous volume, the System has automatically upgraded the reward quality to prevent spatial overflow.]
[Final Reward: 1x Box of Heavenly Elixir Pastries (S-Rank Consumable) has been deposited into your System Space!]
Ethan stared at the screen, his mind completely blank. S-Rank? In the global market, an F-rank item was worth a few Credits. A D-rank item could buy a decent meal. A B-rank item could buy a car. An S-rank item... was an invaluable national treasure that could cause wars between major guilds!
With a trembling thought, Ethan opened his newly unlocked System Space. Sitting in a void of dark light was an elegant, golden-trimmed wooden box.
He focused his gaze on it, and its description popped up.
[Box of Heavenly Elixir Pastries (S-Rank): Made from the compressed essence of celestial spiritual herbs. Eating one piece completely purges all bodily impurities, permanently increases all core stats by +50, and instantly cures any chronic illness or mana-based degradation below the SS-Rank.]
Instantly cures any chronic illness or mana-based degradation. Ethan’s eyes locked onto those words. His heart began to hammer against his ribs like a wild animal.
Lily’s mana poisoning—the disease that the doctor said would require hundreds of thousands of Credits to manage but could never be cured—could be wiped out by a single pastry from this box.
"Brother? What’s wrong?" Lily asked, looking at him with confusion. She was still holding the stale piece of bread he had handed her. To her, no time had passed at all. She couldn’t see the glowing blue screen.
Ethan looked at his sister, a genuine, fiercely sharp smile finally breaking across his face.
The academy thought he was trash. Tyler Vance thought he could step on him forever. The world thought he was done for. Even he had thought himself nothing.
But....
"Lily," Ethan said, his voice ringing with a confidence he hadn’t felt in years. "Put down that bread. I just got a very special support gift from the academy. I’m going to give you something much better."