The Protagonist Already Knows

Chapter 9: Anubis’s Gift

The images of the bloody train station, the terrifying specter, and Peril quickly faded out of sight, instead replaced by pure and utter darkness, as if the train were in a tunnel.

Lying on the train’s ground, gazing up at the silver ceiling, I felt as if I were dying...well, because I was.

Blood streamed out of the countless wounds on my body endlessly, while I was barely able to breathe with my ribs clearly broken from jumping off the stairs earlier.

Still, I gazed upward at the most beautiful thing I had ever seen

A stream of light-blue notifications, like fireflies lighting up the night-black sky.

[Congratulations, Hero Ash! You have uncovered your Gift!]

[Determining Gift Rank...]

[Determining Gift Rank...]

[ERROR]

[ERROR]

[Your Gift already exists!]

[Congratulations, Hero Ash! You have successfully inherited a Gift!]

[Anubis, the guardian of Death and Death’s loyalest servant, fell to the human favored by the Sun, sealed away in the underworld. Yet, even in defeat, Anubis obeyed Death’s rules, determined to find a loophole within them.]

[He created an inheritance that should never have been inherited by anyone other than himself. A trap created for vessels.]

[However, a boy from another world committed the greatest insult to death: resurrection. He walked into the kingdom of the dead and left with the Guardian of Death’s Will.]

[His blood lies on the streets of the underworld. Beside it, a single child vessel.]

[The forbidden Inheritance has been inherited. The ledger has finally found its new keeper.]

[Death’s Ledger]

===Status Menu===

[User: Ash Fell]

--> Rank: G+ [Breakthrough]

--> Strength: G

--> Stamina: G

--> Intelligence: F-

--> Speed: F

--> Mana Pool: G-

--> Luck: G

[Gift: Death’s Ledger] / [Rank: EX] / [Element: Death]

--> [Your eyes may perceive the souls of others directly: You may mark other souls to bear a portion of their pain or transfer a portion of your pain to their soul. Additionally, you may understand the internal emotions of marked souls further. Your passive regenerative abilities and power over the domain of death are also furthered.]

---> [Souls Reaped: 1]

--> [Gifted Ability: Anubis’s Ferry]: [Turn Intangible for a short period of time.]

[Skills]

--> [N/A]

"Ah..."

Coughing up clumps of blood, I slowly sat up, leaning against the train wall as it continued spiraling forward in the endless abyss of darkness.

At the very least...I didn’t seem to be dying.

My new gift’s regenerative abilities seemed to be kicking in, managing to slowly heal my body while keeping me on the verge of death.

Though...the pain had yet to subside.

*CLANG*

*CLANG*

As glass shards slowly removed themselves from my skin and dropped on the train floor, as if someone were controlling them, I closed my eyes.

An EX gift? One of five that appeared throughout the entire novel?

Not bad, not bad at all.

My stats also had increased greatly despite me not doing much besides running... probably because of the fact that I was facing off against an S-rank beast.

Additionally, breaking through from G+ to F- rank would at least put me on par with the bottom 20% of students at the academy, stat-wise.

As for the "Souls Reaped," Ren had a similar ability with his gift, where the more Dregs he purified, the faster he would become.

Pausing for a moment, I reread my Gift’s description.

"If I gather enough souls, could I become invincible...?"

As my thoughts slowed, my eyelids shutting involuntarily as exhaustion plagued my mind, I sighed.

A long path, likely filled with much more pain and exhaustion, awaited me. Live a lavish and rich life...what was I thinking, seriously!?

This was just the beginning: I hadn’t even made good on any of my vows... yet perhaps now I had at least earned, maybe... let’s say, 5% of the right to live?

Yeah, that sounds right!

To accomplish your goals, you’ll always have to pay a price.

Perhaps, if my body were the price, I could have a positive impact on this world.

This wasn’t Earth: I wasn’t some random with no special attributes.

I knew the future, the fate; I knew everything in this world. I had a...moral obligation to use this special knowledge to make this world a better place, didn’t I?

Perhaps...it was stupid of me to think in this way: after all, I had owed nothing to these people in this world.

But this is what I wanted.

I wondered for a moment: did this make me a good person? Was I one of those selfless heroes who sacrificed themselves for the greater good?

But...didn’t having those very thoughts, in fact, make me a selfish person?

I was trying to be seen as a hero by others rather than letting it happen naturally as a result of my righteous actions.

Was I selfish for following my own egotistical desire to use my knowledge to save others, or righteous for attempting to better the world?

What was a "hero," and what was a "selfish" person?

More importantly...which was I?

With my last moments of consciousness, I muttered.

"Ah...I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I haven’t even bettered this world yet."

...

...

...

Waking up, I immediatly felt a hundred times better, mostly because I could see out of both my eyes now.

What I saw was the street corner where Tartarus sat.

Leaning against the wooden door of the mini-castle, I stared up at the light-blue sky, allowing the sunshine to envelop me for a moment.

Scanning my body, noticing it was practically back to normal except for some red scars on my skin, I slowly stood up and tapped my smartwatch, my body sore as if I had been asleep for a decade.

[August 18]

Thankfully, it had only been a day.

Pausing for a moment, I turned around, facing the wooden doors of Tartarus.

"..."

The voices stemming from inside the building seemed to have subsided, and there was not really any danger inside the building unless you were afraid of the dark.

"But...can I really leave it like this!?"

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the paper with Peril’s face on it and posted it on the wooden doors.

Hopefully, it’d dissuade anyone from coming near the building even if it was safe at that moment.

Shifting my gaze back to my smartwatch, I opened the navigation and rapidly typed my destination.

[The Sunken Pearl]