Chapter 19: Getting Three Traits! Damn I’m Become OP!

Chapter 19: Chapter 19: Getting Three Traits! Damn I’m Become OP!

Glancing over the doors, Michael dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged at the center of the platform, one elbow propped on his thigh, his chin resting against his clenched fist.

Michael stared long at the doors in silence.

After the string of headaches, vanishing dreams, blocked circulation, and the fact that he had somehow ended up here just as a war was about to break out, he had already accepted one simple truth:

His luck right now was absolute garbage.

Which meant there was only one thing left to do.

Gamble.

And as a professional gambler who had lost money several times in his past life on game Gacha, Michael knew one thing for sure:

When your luck was truly shit, never pick what your instincts scream at you to pick.

So, using this bizarre piece of hard-earned knowledge, he first selected the three doors that felt the best to him.

Then he deliberately chose three of the remaining four—the exact ones his gut was screaming at him to avoid.

"Hehe... If fate wants to screw me, then I’ll have to crack... I mean, screw it first."

Michael let out a small sigh, noting just how corrupted and degenerate his thoughts had become lately.

Then he turned his gaze toward the System floating before him.

"Those three," he said, pointing at the doors. "I’ll take them."

[Thank you for your selection.]

A brilliant flash of light soon erupted all around him.

Wind howled across the platform from nowhere, whipping his hair and clothes even though they were supposedly floating in an empty void. Michael raised an arm to shield his face. When the light finally dimmed, three doors stood open. White emptiness filled their frames, yet each one radiated a distinct pressure.

The pale-blue door exhaled a freezing mist that curled around his body, the cold seeping through his skin and sinking straight into his bones. Every breath he took felt sharper than the last, as if the air itself had turned into ice.

The earth-yellow door radiated a heavy, oppressive presence that settled over his shoulders like an invisible weight. It carried the exact same nauseating pressure he used to feel whenever he walked into an exam hall back on Earth—the kind that made his stomach twist before he had even seen the questions.

The purple door was different.

The moment Michael looked at it, his chest tightened. His heartbeat stumbled, then began pounding against his ribs as a suffocating pressure wrapped around his body. It felt like a panic attack had crawled out of nowhere, sat directly on his chest, and decided it wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

Michael took several steadying breaths until the sensations faded to a manageable level. Then he looked up at the floating System panel.

"Hey," he gasped. "Where are the rewards? ’Cause I doubt it’s just a view of a door."

[Inside, Host.]

His brows knitted. "Inside? Wait, didn’t you say they were one-way gateways? Does that mean people can go in but never come out?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "If so, then why would you send me in there?"

A short pause followed without a sound before the System replied in a dismissive tone.

[Clarification: The restriction works in the opposite direction. Things may exit. Nothing may enter casually.]

Michael opened his mouth to ask how he was supposed to collect anything if he couldn’t step through.

It wasn’t like his rewards could simply walk out on their bare feet. Like a glowing System panel head saying, "You just earned Super Flames," suddenly growing a human torso, two ridiculously muscular legs, and tiny arms before casually strolling out of the doorway like some bizarre notification-shaped bodybuilder.

Michael shook his head, trying to dispel the creepy image from his mind.

Then the sound of a boot hitting the ground rang out from within the pale-blue doorway.

He spun toward it, his body tensing as a foot appeared at the edge of the doorway.

Michael immediately raised his guard.

[Do not be alarmed. What approaches is your reward.]

"...My reward?" Michael muttered, a clear shiver running through him.

The rest of the figure emerged.

It was a young man in layered scholar robes of pale ivory and ink-dark blue stepped onto the platform. Wide sleeves hung past his wrists, while a high collar framed a neck wrapped in a thin silk scarf. The fabric looked expensive and lived-in at the same time; the kind of clothing worn by someone who spent more time reading than fighting.

Michael stared hard at the man’s face.

There was something deeply wrong with it.

He could see that a face existed, but every feature seemed to slide away the moment he tried to focus on it. Eyes became shadows. A nose was there one second and gone the next. Even the shape of the man’s jaw refused to stay consistent.

The harder Michael looked, the less he remembered.

It was as if his mind itself was refusing to acknowledge what stood in front of him.

The scholar lifted a long calligraphy brush and gave it a casual flick.

A single drop of black ink left the tip and floated forward at an almost insulting speed. Michael could track every slow rotation of the droplet.

His body, however, refused to move.

For a long moment, the entire world narrowed down to that tiny bead of ink before it struck the center of his forehead.

The moment it did, knowledge slammed into him.

The dreams that had been restlessly tormenting him for days—the ones that always seemed to slip away whenever he tried to remember them—came roaring back in full color.

Golden eyes.

Rivers of dragon blood.

The silent king that slaughtered its own kind.

Michael clutched his head and hissed through his teeth. "What the fuck—"

Swish.

In the next instant, the pain vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

[All status effects have been purged by the Wish-Granting Space.]

Michael slowly lowered his hands.

When he looked up again, the scholar was still standing there.

Except he wasn’t.

The man’s lower body had melted into a mass of shifting, ink-black tentacles that writhed silently beneath his robes.

Michael’s breathing stopped, and for half a second, the world went completely silent.

The man’s impossible face shifted.

Every feature suddenly snapped into place.

Michael could see him.

Not just see him.

He could understand him.

And somehow, that was worse.

The scholar smiled.

It was a perfectly ordinary smile.

The kind a teacher might give a student who had finally understood a difficult lesson.

Then his face blurred again.

The entire figure dissolved into black sparks, and the pale-blue door sealed shut.

Michael remained frozen, staring at the empty doorway.

He couldn’t explain what he had just seen.

Worse...

He couldn’t remember the scholar’s face anymore.

Not even the face he had just been able to see.

Ding!

[Trait acquired: Dragon Intuition]

[Description: Grants great comprehension of all things draconic—energies, elements, and magical structures that carry even a trace of dragon essence. Allows the user to perceive weaknesses, flaws, and falsehoods within such forces. Non-draconic matters remain unaffected.]

[Rank: Unranked. Ranks are for mortals.]

A wide grin split Michael’s face.

’This was exactly—’

The grin faded.

’Way too convenient.’

He glanced at the System interface with sudden suspicion. Getting precisely the tool he needed at the exact moment he needed it felt less like luck and more like a script.

Like he was living inside a story while being self-aware enough to recognize the tropes.

And somehow, that made him strangely unsettled.

Still, he shook the thought away. ’Plot armor? Whatever. I’ll take it.’

Excitement returned almost at once.

Then he turned toward the second open door.

This time, a different man stepped out.

Torn, patchwork clothes hung from a thin frame, with dirt staining the cuffs and hems. Nothing about the beggar looked impressive except for a pair of razor-sharp eyes that seemed to measure everything around the astral space.

Thanks to his newly active Dragon Intuition, Michael could see the man’s face clearly.

The beggar smiled, flicked a dull gold coin upward with his thumb, and spat on it at the peak of its spin.

The coin shot straight toward Michael’s eyes.

This time, his body responded.

He raised a hand on pure reflex, and the coin sank into the back of his right hand without resistance before vanishing, leaving behind a faint merchant’s mark etched into his skin.

By the time he lowered his hand, the beggar was already gone.

Ding!

[Trait acquired: Beggar’s Vault]

[Description: The world is full of beggars—rich and poor alike. So why suffer begging when you can just save? Yes, you heard me right! You can store nearly anything inside the Vault: System Points, lifespan, stats, memories, even fragments of consciousness. Every full year an item remains stored, its value doubles as interest!]

[Note: Interest stops accumulating the moment the item is withdrawn.]

Michael’s mouth opened.

No sound came out.

He stared at the System. "Is this real?"

[Yes.]

He glared at it with pursed lips. "Well, it sounds like one hell of a scam promo."

As if suddenly struck by self-awareness, he exhaled hard and shook his head. "If I get rewards like this just from pushing one woman’s affection to eighty, I’ll be unstoppable by tomorrow."

A longer pause followed.

[Unfortunately, that will not be the case, Host.]

"What do you mean?"

[After today, reaching any specific Affection threshold will NOT grant free rewards. I, the System, was seeded with a limited number of starter gifts. This moment was selected as the appropriate time to distribute them.]

Michael stared at the empty air for several seconds.

Then his expression slowly collapsed.

"...Oh."

He turned away with a dry laugh.

’Thank God I found out now.’

Truthfully... his brain had already gone several steps ahead.

He had already imagined himself jumping from one beauty to another, collecting Affection Points like a shameless capitalist, then retreating into the Astral Space to cash out free rewards until he became an untouchable monster.

Hell, he had practically designed his retirement plan.

Beautiful women outside.

Free rewards inside.

And Michael sitting safely in the middle, getting stronger while doing absolutely nothing.

It was beautiful.

It was perfect.

It was—

Fucking gone.

Still, the Vault itself remained absurdly useful.

He could bank unused Growth Points, dump mediocre stats into it, and let them compound. The mental image of sealing away his own rank, vanishing for a few years, and returning twice as strong was almost enough to make him giddy.

’Okay... maybe the System isn’t totally against me.’

He shifted his gaze to the final door.

Just like the others, when he focused on it, the final figure stepped through with measured grace.

He wore official robes of deep indigo, the fabric embroidered with silver patterns that marked him as someone high in a court’s hierarchy—a prime minister, perhaps, or a chief strategist.

Flowing indigo hair framed a handsome, unreadable face.

A folding fan rested in one hand.

Snap.

The fan opened.

With one lazy wave of his hand, a blast of biting cold exploded across the platform.

Michael’s breath caught as frost raced across his skin. The cold struck so suddenly that his entire body shuddered.

Then—

It was gone.

The cold. The man. The door.

All of it vanished as though it had never existed.

Ding!

[Trait acquired: Ledger of Conduct]

[Description: All actions—virtuous, wicked, or neutral—are recorded and rated. The user may request a summary across daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, biannual, decade, or century timescales. Ratings range from Poor to Peak, with each rating having further categories from (★) to (★★★★★). Rewards scale with both rating quality and the length of the measured period. Checking a shorter timeframe resets progress toward longer ones.]

Michael blinked.

"I get rewards just for living?"

[Correct.]

His eyes widened before narrowing again. ’Can’t get excited yet. I need to fully understand this.’

He rubbed his chin. "Can you show me an example?"

A new panel bloomed in front of him.

[Would you like a life-summary rating?]

[Please select a timeframe:]

• Daily

• Weekly

• Monthly

• Yearly

• Biannual

• Decade

"Wait, a decade? So I can check everything from the moment I transmigrated?"

Even without the System giving him any answers, he understood that everything he had done since transmigrating—every scheme, every relationship, every stupid risk—was about to be graded.

A confident smile tugged at his mouth.

He had lived hard enough to deserve something good, right?

His finger hovered over Decade.

Just as he was about to click it, the panel flashed bright red, a warning symbol appearing at its center.

[Alert: Host’s current residence is under attack. Target Seraphine Voss is actively searching for you. Continue with the Decade Summary, or return immediately? Note: The summary process may require extended time.]

"What? Under attack?"

His heart jumped.

For one brief second, every instinct screamed at him to abort the summary and rush back.

Then Michael closed his eyes.

One breath.

Two.

Three.

He forced the panic down.

Seraphine was a Sovereign.

If an enemy could kill her in the few minutes this process might take, then running back to her side wouldn’t save her. It would only give them another target to kill.

Even if they weren’t that strong and he returned now, what could he actually do?

Nothing.

He would be dead weight.

Worse, he might become a weakness she had to protect.

Michael’s eyes opened again, the panic gone.

There was no hesitation left in them.

His clenched fingers slowly loosened as he clicked on the Decade option.

"Continue with the summary."

[Confirmation required. Proceed with Decade Summary?]

Michael didn’t blink. "Yes."

His voice was flat. Cold. Final.

"Do it."