--- (General POV) ---
The heavy church doors opened, scattering dust around the dusty, abandoned place that was once a resting point for certain women. Spiders scurried away as the first human being in a long time entered the building.
Niall looked around, unable to see anything due to the darkness that enveloped the place. He moved forward and, before advancing further, grabbed a small lamp he had bought earlier that day when he felt as favored by the goddess Aphrodite as if she had kissed him on both the lips and cheek.
"This place could use some renovation... but aside from that, I have to check the state of a hidden room beneath this church." He began looking for a hidden lever or anything that might be a concealed switch.
"This thing is hidden well; after ten minutes of searching, I still can't manage to find whatever the switch may be." Niall was feeling dead tired but had to continue his search; even after finding the switch, he needed to block the doors so no one could enter the church.
Five more minutes passed, and the boy finally found the hidden lever. "For fuck's sake, this is indeed a good hiding spot. If it weren't for my anime knowledge, I don't see how anyone random could find this place."
He moved forward to the secret room beneath the building, making his way down the stairs as he pointed the lamp ahead.
Niall found himself in a cozy-looking room that wasn't in as bad a shape as the upper floor. With some cleaning, the place would be a fine place to live for the foreseeable future. Sitting on the couch that Hestia used to sleep on in the anime, Niall relaxed and took a deep sigh.
"Ugh, my legs hurt from all the walking I've done. Now that I've locked the church doors and closed the one connecting to this room, I can check my status and see if there's anything new that I should know."
Summoning the book in his right hand, Niall opened it and immediately noticed the new pages of the book that glowed red. But first, he needed to see what had changed in his status, and the result was rather great.
--- --- ---
Name: Niall
Race: Human? (00.1%/100) ???
Level: 1
PWR: 145 I
SRV: 102 I
DUR: 94 I
POWERS
(Azathoth's Blessing)
● Gives a user a different state of mind, removing emotions and offering protection against charms and any attack on a user's mind.
● Granting the user his own self-efficient Falna connected to the Necronomicon. In exchange for needing an achievement to level up, the user must max out all its stats to 1500 to level up. Blessing will grant limit removal if they wish to pursue greater strength.
(Chaos Sultan)
Sends a spatial energy wave that nullifies any armor, once the wave hits its opponent, the receiving side will experience fatigue and stamina loss.
QUESTS
● Unseal the Dungeon in Melen
- Progress: Uncompleted
● Kill 100 People using Chaos Sultan Ability
- Progress: 54/100
● Eat the 50 of any Monster Cores
- Progress: 0/50
--- --- ---
Niall looked dumbfounded at the quests he had just read. "My status progress is kind of good, but these quests make me question the gods' motives... Perhaps they want me to prevent the future heroes from sealing the dungeon properly, but the real question is... why?"
Turning a page, Niall noticed a huge eye suddenly appearing from the page, a large, sluggish green eye that blinked patiently at the sight of the boy.
Niall stood unamused; the eye blinked back in response, only for a couple of moments later to break the silence.
"Hello again, my child. I see that you are doing well in this new world. We wanted to let you know that your soul has successfully been hidden from prying eyes. You have evolved, and evolving in such a brief period deserves worthy praise."
Niall remembered that the new information had appeared next to his race stat, most likely indicating an evolution, but he was unsure of what kind exactly. He remained silent for a few moments before finally deciding what he should say.
"You knew that the more troublesome gods would notice my soul, didn't you? But you wanted to test me and made it visible for a brief period," he stated. The eyes blinked in response, only for a human male laugh to be heard shortly after.
"Of course! That was fun to see, and because of that, you moved one atom closer to becoming a higher being. The moment you wished for that third wish was the moment I knew we would take you under our ranks."
Niall pondered for a moment. 'Sure, becoming a god-like being wouldn't be bad, but I am not sure what awaits me to reach that point.' He sighed and looked back into the blinking green eye that stared directly into his soul.
"Fine, speaking of which, I wanted to ask you something. What are these quests of yours? I don't remember asking for a system like in other fiction." The god's eye blinked before replying with a neutral voice.
The green light continued to glow from the open pages of the book as Niall remained silent, formulating his next question.
"That's fine by me; I've always loved completing quests, so that'll be a good thing for me. Also, is there any way for me to gain some building power? Like being able to create and repair buildings instantly, something like Minecraft's Steve?"
The voice behind the book merely laughed in amusement, this time in a deeper female voice that reminded Niall of Konan from Naruto.
"Asking for reality-warping abilities so early on? Haha, well, to be fair, you're already a beast of your own. Fine, when you complete the 'Monster Core' and 'Chaos Sultan' quests, you will receive a building ability which you will use to build a temple in my name when the time comes."
Niall nodded, thinking how lucky he was that God was in such a good mood today, even if he didn't know whether the god had moods at all.
"I have many questions to ask you, so—" Niall was cut off by God's voice, which sounded the same as before, with no change in tone.
"Patience, my child. You will be able to ask me anything you want, all in due time. Now I bid you farewell and wish you plenty of luck." With that, the eye disappeared, and the strange light was gone too, leaving Niall alone once more.
"Well, it looks like I've taken up more of his time than he expected. Anyway, I've got to start working on these quests as fast as possible if I want to live in a nice place since I was a pretty good Minecraft builder."
Niall sent his book back to a shadow realm and settled onto the old couch, eventually falling into a deep slumber.
---
Above the surface, Orario was booming with life, and the nightlife was much more developed than in the rest of the world. The most populated place during the night in the city was the Red Light District.
A place where men and women, mostly adventurers, went when they needed to have their stress taken care of.
"And I'm telling you, the boy was throwing these odd waves at me like crazy. He didn't get tired, not for a moment, which is odd for a mage, right?" the amazoness who had a small fight with Niall before spoke about the boy to her friends.
Aisha, an experienced amazoness who was also a level 3, listened to her friend's story with genuine interest. Next to Aisha, a pair of other Amazonian girls stood, also listening to the story with great interest.
"But that wasn't the most important thing about him; the boy was quite a looker. He had silver hair and green cat-like eyes, which was odd since he was human. He just missed having a pair of cat eyes and a tail..."
The girls raised their eyebrows. "That sounds like a blatant lie. How is something like that even possible?" one of the girls pointed out, expressing her suspicions about the new friend's story.
"Wait, there's a rumor that Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, was walking around town today with a boy that matches her story. People said that she kissed the boy from time to time on his cheek and lips, but I'm not sure about the truth behind those rumors since we're talking about Aphrodite after all."
Aisha sighed at the commotion this story caused. "You guys believe anything a horny man would say. Most likely, some horny drunkard saw a woman walking with her man and just thought she matched the look of Aphrodite..."
The amazoness who fought Niall before couldn't decide what was true or not, so she decided to end her story right then and there. She swore to herself that if she ever saw the boy again, she would make him her slave.