He had practically broken the sound barrier once he reached the end of the block.

Luckily the warehouse districts weren’t too popular so it wasn’t difficult to weave through the minimum traffic there. He had continued speeding until he left the area, and then made dozens of false turns to try and make sure he lost any potential tails. He hadn’t noticed anyone around, the building had calmed down and over half of the people had left after the main attraction had died. Even more left since the day had almost begun. However he was used to fear of being followed at this point, and if weaving through the city alleviated that he’d be more than happy to do so.

He had made a promise, broken it immediately, spat in the face of a Goddess and been punished heavily for it. Nearly getting eaten by a wolf, somehow not being killed for the act of surviving, and then making enemies of people he had no chance of beating in any kind of fight. He didn’t know if he would be punished even more for the stupid shit he’d done, but he wouldn’t blame Virasuta in the slightest for any of it.

The sense of Deja-vu was strong, and irritating.

At this point he was out of the east side of the city, in the middle of the north side. And he just had to drive straight to get to the area he lived, then he nearly crashed into a parked vehicle when a realization hit him.

The Box.

While he had been in a hurry to get away he’d completely forgotten about the box of cash he’d received from the guard.

Tracking magic was rare, but not rare enough to discount the idea of it being used by someone employing a damn B-Class. Let alone the fact she had said he would only be safe in her territory, nothing else.

Slowing down before parking on the side of the street he looked around for the box before finding it on the passenger side floor. Grabbing it he looked over to find the unlocking mechanism on the side. As it began to fall open he panicked at the thought of it having a bomb inside of it, which would also fulfill the ‘territory’ part of her safety requirement. If he had opened it in his apartment, then blew to shit, she wouldn’t have caught any flack for breaking her ‘code of honor’ or whatever.

His fears were short lived, as he would have been if it had been a bomb, when the box opened from the bottom and dumped a small mountain of cash onto his passenger side seat. He was so shocked by the amount that the fears of a tracking spell being placed had been wiped clean. The cash was easily more than the message offered, far more. Sifting through the wads of cash he flicked through a few of them when he saw that they were all fifty dollar notes. With there easily being over twenty bound wads and each one having twenty to thirty bills per bunch. Fifty multiplied by twenty, multiplied further by another twenty… twenty thousand? She gave me ten times the amount expected. Twenty thousand dollars… nearly enough for the treatment?

He had previously needed to make around twenty-seven grand in the next year, impossible with a normal job due to the fact he had almost zero education after highschool and a background that made most employers deny him on the spot. His name being spread through the media and his mother’s actions had tainted him, and most employers would turn him away before he even got to the interview if they could find out who he was. This left jobs where the employers didn’t care who you were, such as the factories, the military, or the transport crews.

Seven thousand however? He could scrounge that up in a few months if he worked in a factory and borrowed the last bit he needed from someone. Even if no one was willing to lend him the cash… he could always borrow from ‘creditors’.

It generally took the company a few months to tell someone whether or not they were even accepted to the program, even if they took the downpayment beforehand. This means that I can't wait until a week or two before the infection becomes inoperable.

“Jesus Christ.”

He could see his hands shaking as he counted the cash, feel his heart speeding up in his chest. He didn’t need to fight anymore, hell he didn’t even need to break the law to gather the last bit of cash he needed. A simple job, anywhere working some long hours for a few months would be enough to afford the treatment, if he got two jobs he’d easily be able to afford it in three or so months, even if he hated the long hours and even small amount of sleep he’d get.

He almost immediately became alarmed of the fact that he had no small amount of cash simply out in the open, even with the street being mostly empty the fact that anyone could come by and see the cash was an obvious issue. He scrambled for some place to hide it, before picking a plastic bag from one of his earlier shopping trips to stuff everything in. Careful not to damage the bills too much he piled them in and wrapped the bag around itself several times over to hide the contents, before stuffing all of it under his passenger side seat.

Looking through his windows around his car he didn’t notice anyone eyeing him, nor did he see anyone rushing his car with a spell in hand to rob him, so it seemed he was in the clear.

Fucking stupid, why’d I open the box onto the seat instead of into a bag.

Finally getting to the reason he stopped, he popped the passenger side window open before tossing the box out onto the sidewalk.

I hope to never have to deal with this type of shit again.

Pulling out onto the street he peeled off again, this time heading straight for his apartment.

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This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When he’d finally gotten to his apartment, cash in hand, he’d practically had a panic attack. He had sorted through the bills in the underground parking lot, looking over each one for a sign that it’d been tampered with, and each had been clean. He’d also managed to fully count each dollar - twenty thousand dollars flat - that was entirely clean from any magic.

“An honest criminal, must have been the only one in the city… or the spell was on the box. Probably the latter all things considered.” He’d begun obsessing over the bills, counting, recounting, and triple counting on his coffee table. He’d checked each one over for signs of counterfeit, even going so far as to compare them to bills he’d found on his phone. If he knew a better way, even destroying the bill in the process, he’d have gladly done it just to check.

Assuming it’s real, I just made Twenty fuckin Thousand dollars.

He would have started yelling in joy if he wasn’t worried the neighbors would hear him, so he settled for stashing it. He had known that since he had to keep all the cash he made on hand, for now anyways, he wouldn’t be able to just let it pile up in a corner. So he’d hid it inside one of the walls inside a safe.

The hardest part of hiding the cash had been finding a safe that fit inside the wall, without bulging the wall out, or being so heavy it damaged the support it was hidden on top of.

Moving his sink, opening the safe, and stashing the cash he was relieved that this entire ordeal was over, and even more relieved that his mother being cured was all but certain.

Just a few more months of this, and I am done with all of it.

As he left his kitchen he went for his bedroom, he opened the door and looked inside. Still the same as before, and thankfully empty of anyone who had followed him, he walked inside. As he was walking towards his closet for a clean pair of clothes for another needed shower however he saw something on his bed that he didn’t recognize.

A small black necklace.

No one has a key but me, and Donovan. But why the hell would he leave a necklace? Unless it wasn’t him. Someone from the pits?

Walking towards his bed he picked up the necklace, and he was quick to realize who it was from, or what.

The necklace was small, sure, but its signature was obvious. Black, with a single red jewel in the middle covered in black tentacles. When he looked into the Jewel he could practically feel the pull he felt when he was in the dream, but far more tame compared to before. It seemed to be calling out to him.

He almost dropped it in shock when the tentacles began to move, but he found that the necklace had other ideas when it latched onto his right wrist. What had originally been half a dozen inch long tentacles quickly morphed to the size of a fist, before morphing large enough to entrap his entire arm.

In full panic mode at the sudden attack he began pulling on the orb now attached to his wrist, but it seemed welded to his body. The tentacles had begun tightening once they fully enveloped his arm, and didn’t stop until he could hear the distinct sound and pain of his bones being crushed.

“MOTHERFUCKER!”

The pain brought him to his knees as he began smashing his fist into the orb, trying to break it and make the pain stop. He wailed on it dozens of times as he could feel, and hear, his arm being slowly crushed into mulch. He smashed his fist into it twice more when the crushing had finally stopped, before the pain entirely disappeared, replaced by a void of feeling on the right side of his body.

Holding his fist above the orb again he attempted to catch his breath as he waited to see what it would do next. His wailing had done nothing but cause his own knuckles to bleed, while the orb was entirely unharmed. Looking down he could practically feel the aura Virasuta had exhibited during the dream, alluring but terrifying.

“Couldn’t just text a man like a normal person, Goddesses have to have some flair.” The shock of the pain, then the sudden numbness seemed like a dream, and he didn’t like it. He could feel himself slowing while looking into the orb.

Peeling his eyes off the orb with more effort normally required he looked up, and the numbness started to disappear. “Bloody magic, bloody necklace. Shouldn’t have gone near it, shouldn’t have touched it. Stupid.”

Cursing himself out he tried to stand up, and his right arm responded with his left. Shocked at the arm moving he tried waving it around, and besides the lack of feeling it still seemed to operate as normal. His arm was covered by the tentacles, each swirled around as if they were trying to twist his arm instead of hold onto it, almost like a drill bit. His wrist, which held the orb he was trying not to look at, was a perfect smooth black, with his hand and fingers being covered in what seemed more like a glove than anything else. His arm was still the same size, besides the odd shape, but it seemed to react almost too quickly. Like his brain was sending a signal and his arm reacted to it before his own body could.

He could also feel it tugging at him, not the allure but something else, like it was trying to make his heart shift.

“This is obviously Virasuta, but why? She could be angry about the fight… or angry I almost died early.” Like my father. Moving his arm around a little bit, then experimenting by flattening it across his back in an angle that he couldn’t do previously, he realized the simplest answer was usually the correct one.

“I’ll pray to her, then go to sleep. Ask her what the fuck her problem…” Mark trailed off, realizing that getting uppity with a literal Goddess might not be a good idea. “Ask her why she sent me this ‘gift’ and get this whole Champion issue done with.”

He hadn’t thought much of the Champion offer once he’d signed for the fight, besides some small ideas on what he might be forced to do as her Champion, but he had time now before he went to sleep. The prospect of having to fight in a war was both terrifying and exciting, to be the first against a horde of monsters, looked upon by everyone as a hero. However the idea that he’d have to fight horrifying monsters bent on killing him and everyone he knew was stressful enough without the additional point being that if the world was taken they’d also probably use their souls to fuel their Warmachines.

The fact that there was a real chance that Virasuta might throw him away after his fuckup also put him down. Mark had almost died in a pit to a starved dog literally a few hours after he’d been told he’d been chosen as the Champion of a Goddess, if that wasn’t stupidity bordering on an insult to her he didn’t know what was.

“Message received, don’t be a dumbass, I guess,” Attempting to control his breathing as he rubbed the carapace around his arm he could feel the smooth black surface reacting, vibrating slightly to his touch.

Testing his new arm he reached out to his closet and opened it, ripping the small door off its hinges and nearly smacking himself in the face with it. “And now I have to fix that, damn.” Resting the door on the ground he moved his new arm to his chest, keeping it there to hopefully minimize any new damage to his home. Grabbing some clothes from his closet and dresser he turned and went for his shower. Hope I don’t break anything else today.

--------------

Finally finishing up his shower, he entered his bedroom and struggled on how to proceed. He went over the different ways different religions Prayed, how each one had slightly different rules or laws for it.

Deciding the simplest method was also probably the safest, he kneeled. Clasping his hands together he closed his eyes and tried for the life of him to think of a decent prayer, something more than ‘hey I’m here, wanna chat?’. He went over his prayer several times before singling out the one he thought was the best.

“Goddess Virasuta, I have returned to you this day to accept your offer. I wish to be better, more than anything I wish to be the person my mother and father wanted me to be. I pray for you to forgive me for my faults, and watch over me as I strive to improve, as both a person and as a man. I pray to you now, to prove to you and myself that I am ready for whatever comes next, and to strive to meet your expectations for us all.”

As he opened his eyes, finishing his prayer, he could feel the vibrations within his arm increase, almost to the point where he could hear a buzz. As quickly as they started, the vibrations stopped, before his arm almost entirely stilled as it had before he’d prayed.

Now to sleep, and start this new life in full.