He slowly considered what the golden writing had told him as the wind sent snowflakes tumbling past.

New writing appeared now, a sterile black font devoid of all embellishment.

I am your scrivener. I will now inform you of how I expect you to interact with me, any deviation is discouraged.

I can hear any thought you direct towards me. If you understand, please indicate so now.

“Yes.” was all he could think of to say in response to this new font.

As a spark, you hav-

“What’s a spark?” he thought towards the writing.

There was a pause before the writing resumed.

I am your scrivener. I will now inform you of how I expect you to interact with me, any deviation is discouraged.

Ah, it’s going to be one of those conversations. He thought to himself.

As a spark, you have the ability to detect and collect grace.

Any grace you collect, I will record in my ledger.

With grace, you may buy any power you wish.

Once you have collected sufficient grace, I will notify you how to do so.

I am obligated to respond to questions you may have about this system and grace collection.

I am not, however, obligated to answer those questions.

I will not respond to any non-system, non-grace questions.

I will not respond to any inane prattle, small talk, pleading, or other such nonsense.

You may contact me at any time by directing a thought in my direction.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

This concludes your introduction to the system.

Well, that was also... something.

As he floated there, considering if and how to respond, he noticed a gentle flow of energy around him. It was faint, but he felt it slowly coming off of the trees and from the ground beneath him. It moved and flowed untouched by the wind, but moved by other unseen factors. This was clearly the vision gifted by the golden script. It moved in a way that he struggled to understand; it wasn’t like a gas or a liquid, but those were the closest comparisons he could think of.

“Scrivener, what is this energy I can see?”

That is grace.

Curious, he moved towards a collection of it, hovering about 3 foot above the ground over the clearing. As he reached it, the grace flowed towards him and he felt a faint subsidence in the hunger like feeling had noticed earlier. This wasn’t enough though, not even close. He could feel it. It was like feeding a starving man a grain of rice.

“I collected the grace?”

Correct.

“is it enough to buy a power?”

There was a long pause before the scrivener responded.

No. You now have 0.000000001 grace. The weakest powers I can give you start at 1 grace.

Well crap, this could take a while.

“Is there a way to collect grace faster?”

Yes.

“will you tell me how?”

No.

He thought about this as he noticed the sun had finally set.

To do anything, I need grace.

He watched the movements of the grace; it seemed to ignore the surrounding environment, but there was a pattern to it; it seemed to pool in certain places. Where he’d gathered the grace more was already returning.

He decided to see if he could find a place where a large amount of it had pooled together. Rising, he began flying over the trees, looking for signs and indications of where grace might be pooling. The darkness made the details of the world almost impossible to make out, but despite that, he had no difficulty sensing the flow of grace.

After about an hour of flight, he found the opposite of what he was looking for. There was a clearing below him and large quantities of grace were flowing away from that spot. He flew down to investigate.

It took him a few minutes to work out in the dark what was there. A dead deer, ripped apart by predators. It looked like it had been there for a while. More grace than he had seen before was slowly ebbing out of the carcass.

A creature dying must release grace. I wonder how much more was here when it died.

He absorbed the grace, not wanting to lose any more.

“Do I have enough grace now?”

No, you have 0.0000098.

I know I’m supposed to be immortal, but it’s going to take me years to even get my first power at this rate.

He hovered there feeling incredibly discouraged.

What I need is somewhere where lots of things die.

He considered his options

A city, I need a city. I’m not sure I want the grace of dead people, but they have abattoirs, butchers. Lots of things die in cities.

He rose and set forth, looking for a city.