The walk back to my apartment felt different than the walk out.
This morning, I was a kid playing hooky, sneaking around with a head full of theories and no proof that any of my abilities would actually work. Now I had a burger in my stomach, a plastic doll in my pocket, and the quiet confidence of someone who knew—really knew—that the power inside him was real.
I pulled my hood up as I walked through the nicer part of town. The electronics district was about twenty minutes from the bridge, a stretch of stores that sold everything from smartphones to gaming PCs to industrial printers. Big glass windows, bright signs, the kind of places that smelled like new plastic and air conditioning.
I found what I was looking for on the second block.
A Best Buy-style store called TechWorld, with a parking lot full of cars and a trash can right by the entrance. Perfect.
I hung around for a few minutes, pretending to look at my phone, waiting until nobody was watching. Then I casually flipped open the lid of the trash can and started digging.
It was gross. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't. Old coffee cups, crumpled wrappers, some guy's half-eaten sandwich that had turned into a science experiment. But people throw away receipts without thinking, and that's what I was here for.
I grabbed everything that looked like a receipt, stuffed them in my backpack, and walked away like I hadn't just been elbow-deep in garbage.
Three blocks later, I ducked into an alley and sorted through my haul.
Most of it was junk—fast food receipts, a grocery list, a coupon for ten percent off car tires. But buried at the bottom was gold.
A receipt for a brand new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, purchased yesterday. Total price: $1,399.99.
Another one for a Dell XPS desktop computer. $2,499.99.
A third for a 65-inch 4K TV. $899.99.
And the big one—a receipt for a Lexmark CX625adhe color laser printer. $1,429.00.
I stared at the printer receipt for a solid thirty seconds. A multifunction printer that could print, scan, copy, and fax. Color laser, 40 pages per minute, with a built-in scanner that could handle up to 100 sheets at a time. This wasn't just a printer. This was a machine.
I looked at the other receipts I'd grabbed. There were two more for ink cartridges—one for black, one for color. Both from the same store, both purchased in the last week.
My heart was pounding.
I found a bus stop, sat down, and waited for the bus that would take me back to my neighborhood. The whole ride, I was turning the receipts over in my hands, running through the math in my head. My cognitive enhancement was already kicking in—I could process numbers faster, hold more variables in my head at once.
Here's what I figured out by the time I got off the bus:
I had receipts for about $6,000 worth of electronics. But the real value wasn't the items themselves—it was the system I could build with them. The printer meant I could make copies of receipts. And if I could make copies, I could use the same receipt over and over again.
But there was a catch, and I needed to be absolutely sure about it.
---
My apartment was exactly how I'd left it. Cramped, dirty, depressing. But right now, it was the perfect place to work.
I locked the door behind me—both locks, plus the chain—and sat down on the floor in the middle of the living room. I didn't want to be near anything flammable when I started doing this.
I pulled out the printer receipt first and held it in my hands.
Contractual Reclamation.
I pushed my Cursed Energy into the paper, and it started to glow. The same orange light, the same burning sensation, the same feeling of reality bending around me. The receipt dissolved into light, and the light coalesced into a massive box that appeared on my floor with a heavy thump.
The Lexmark CX625adhe. Still in its original packaging, still sealed, still brand new.
I stared at it for a moment, then laughed. "Okay. That's a printer."
I used the other receipts the same way. One by one, they burned and became real.
The Samsung phone, still in its box with all the accessories.
The Dell desktop, tower and monitor and keyboard and mouse.
The 65-inch TV, which was honestly way too big for this apartment but whatever.
Two boxes of ink cartridges—one black, one full color.
When I was done, my living room looked like a Best Buy warehouse. Boxes everywhere, stacked on top of each other, taking up every inch of floor space. The TV alone was leaning against the wall like a giant black monolith.
I sat in the middle of it all, surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of electronics, and I let myself feel it. The power. The potential. The sheer absurdity of being able to pull anything I wanted out of thin air as long as I had a piece of paper to prove someone had bought it once.
But I wasn't done yet. I needed to test something.
I took the printer box and ripped it open. Setting up a printer wasn't hard—plug it in, connect it to power, load the paper tray. I didn't have Wi-Fi yet, but I didn't need it for what I was about to do.
I grabbed one of the ink cartridge boxes, opened it, and installed the cartridges into the printer. The machine hummed to life, its little screen lighting up with the Lexmark logo.
Now for the real test.
I took the printer receipt—the original receipt that I'd used to create the printer—and placed it on the scanner bed. I closed the lid, pressed the scan button, and watched as the machine whirred to life, its light bar sliding across the glass.
Thirty seconds later, I had a perfect digital copy of the receipt on my new computer's screen.
I loaded paper into the printer tray and hit print.
The machine hummed, spat out a sheet, and there it was. A perfect copy of the receipt. Same font, same paper texture, same everything. A carbon copy of the original.
I held the copy in one hand and the original in the other. They were identical.
Now came the moment of truth.
I took the copy of the receipt and fed my Cursed Energy into it.
Contractual Reclamation.
The paper glowed. It burned. And a second Lexmark CX625adhe appeared on my floor with a heavy thump.
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.
It worked. The copy worked.
But I remembered what i had said in the void: "I can only use original receipts or direct, perfect copies. No copies of copies. The technique will know the difference."
That meant I couldn't take the copy of the receipt, scan it, print another copy, and have that work. The chain would break. The technique would look at a copy of a copy and go nah, that's not valid.
But as long as I had the original receipt, I could make as many first-generation copies as I wanted. And each of those copies could be used to create the item.
Which meant I had infinite printers. Infinite phones. Infinite computers.
As long as I never lost the original receipts.
I carefully took the original printer receipt and slid it into a plastic Ziploc bag I found in the kitchen. Then I put that bag inside a hardcover book on my bookshelf. It wasn't a safe, but it was better than leaving it out in the open.
I did the same with the phone receipt, the computer receipt, the TV receipt, and the ink receipts. Every original went into its own bag, and every bag went into a different hiding spot. Under the mattress. Inside a shoe. Taped to the back of a drawer. Between the pages of a textbook I was never going to open.
Paranoid? Maybe. But these were my keys to the kingdom. Lose them, and I lost my ability to make more. And I wasn't about to let that happen.
---
Now came the part I'd been thinking about all day: making money.
I sat on my couch—which was really just a stained futon that had seen better decades—and pulled out my new phone. It was already charged, already set up, ready to go. The autopilot version of Ren had never owned a smartphone, so this was my first time really using one.
I searched for ways to sell items online.
There were a lot of options. Facebook Marketplace. Craigslist. eBay. Depop. But they all had problems. Fees, accounts, questions about where the stuff came from.
Then I found something interesting.
An app called FreeTrade. It was one of those peer-to-peer marketplace apps, the kind where anyone could list anything for sale and the app just connected buyers and sellers. No fees. No account verification. No questions asked. You listed your item, someone messaged you, you agreed on a price and a pickup location, and you did the deal in cash.
It was perfect.
I downloaded the app, created an account under a fake name—"Mike Chen"—and listed my first item.
The Samsung phone. Retail price $1,400. I listed it for $1,100. Under retail, over used. A good deal for someone who wanted a new phone without the store markup.
Within ten minutes, I had three messages.
The first one was some guy offering me $500 and a "slightly used" PlayStation 4. No thanks.
The second was someone asking if I could deliver. Also no.
The third was a woman named Sarah who said she'd been looking for this exact phone for her son's birthday. She offered $1,000 cash, pickup today, anywhere I wanted.
I messaged her back. "Public parking lot, corner of 5th and Main. One hour."
She said yes.
My heart was pounding again. This was really happening.
---
I grabbed a backpack—one of the old ones from my closet, not the one I'd used earlier—and headed out. On the bus ride to 5th and Main, I kept going over the plan in my head.
The phone was at home, sitting on my desk. I hadn't brought it with me. That was intentional.
When I got to the parking lot, I found a spot behind a dumpster where nobody could see me. I pulled out the original phone receipt—the one I'd hidden under my mattress before I left—and held it in my hands.
I waited until I saw a woman pull into the lot in a minivan. She got out, looked around, checked her phone. That was her.
I ducked behind the dumpster, fed my Cursed Energy into the receipt, and watched it burn.
A box appeared in my hands. The Samsung phone, brand new, still sealed.
I walked out from behind the dumpster, holding the box, and waved.
"Hey, Sarah?"
She smiled. "Mike?"
"Yeah. Here it is." I handed her the box. She opened it, checked the phone, checked the accessories. Her face lit up.
"It's perfect. Brand new."
"Yeah, my cousin works at the store. Gets employee discounts. I flip them sometimes."
She nodded, not asking any more questions. She pulled a thick envelope out of her purse and handed it over. I counted it without being obvious about it. Twenty fifties. $1,000 cash.
"Pleasure doing business," I said.
"You too. Thanks again."
She got back in her van and drove away. I walked in the opposite direction, my hands in my pockets, trying not to grin like a maniac.
I had just made a thousand dollars in about thirty seconds of actual work.
---
I didn't stop there.
I went back to my apartment, grabbed the computer receipt and the TV receipt, and headed out to a different part of town. Different parking lot. Different buyer.
This time it was a college kid who wanted a gaming rig. He paid $2,200 for the Dell desktop—under retail, but still way more than I'd ever seen in my life.
The TV went to a family who'd just moved into a new house. $800.
I did three more sales that afternoon. A laptop I'd created from a receipt I found outside another electronics store. A tablet. A second phone.
By the time the sun went down, I had $8,400 in my backpack.
I was exhausted. Not from the work—the work was easy. But from the stress. Every transaction was a risk. What if someone asked too many questions? What if someone tried to rob me? What if someone recognized me from the last sale?
But the money was too good to stop.
I found a 24-hour diner, ordered coffee and a burger—paid with cash, obviously—and sat in a booth in the back, counting my money again. $8,400. In one day. And I hadn't even sold everything yet.
I had two more receipts in my pocket. One for a high-end laptop from a different store. One for a professional-grade camera.
I finished my food, paid the bill, and headed out for one more round.
---
The laptop went for $1,800 to a graphic designer who'd been saving up for months.
The camera went for $1,200 to a photography student who looked like she was about to cry when she saw it.
I caught the last bus home, my backpack heavy with cash, my mind buzzing with numbers. I added it all up when I got back to my apartment.
$11,400.
Wait, no—I'd forgotten the first phone sale. $12,400.
And then I remembered the two extra sales I'd done earlier, before I started keeping track properly. Another $7,600.
Total for the day: $20,000.
I sat on my floor, surrounded by stacks of bills—twenties, fifties, hundreds—and just stared at them.
Twenty thousand dollars. In one day. From nothing.
I could have kept going. I had more receipts, more ideas. I could have made fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, more. But something told me to stop.
Too much, too fast, too noticeable. People would start asking questions. Someone would remember the kid who showed up with brand new electronics at suspiciously low prices. Someone would get curious.
Better to take the win and disappear for a while.
I gathered all the cash, separated it into piles, and started hiding it around the apartment. Some in the freezer, behind the ice tray. Some taped under the kitchen sink. Some in a shoe box under the bed. Some in the toilet tank—classic movie hiding spot.
Paranoid? Yeah. But I had twenty thousand reasons to be paranoid.
---
When the money was hidden, I sat down on the couch and let out a long, slow breath.
The day had been insane. My whole life had been insane, starting from the moment I woke up in that void. But this was real now. I had money, I had power, I had a plan.
I pulled out the doll from my pocket—the one from the kids' meal—and held it in my hands. I pushed my Cursed Energy into it, feeling the Puppet Manipulation strings connect, feeling the sensory link snap into place.
Through the doll's eyes, I saw myself sitting on the couch. Tired, thin, pale. A kid who looked like he hadn't eaten properly in years.
But under that, I could see something else. The Cursed Energy flowing through me, visible now that I was looking for it. A faint blue glow, like bioluminescence, tracing the lines of my veins, pooling in my chest, radiating outward.
I let the connection drop and leaned back.
I needed to get stronger. Not just the power inside me—that was already solid. I needed my body to be stronger. I was too thin, too weak. If I ever got into a fight—and in this world, I would eventually get into a fight—I'd be dead in micro seconds.
And I needed my mind to be sharper.
The cognitive enhancement from Puppet Manipulation was already working, but I could feel it was passive. It was making me faster, smarter, but I wasn't using it actively. I wasn't learning anything new.
I needed to change that.
---
I pulled out my new laptop—the one I'd created for myself, not the one I'd sold—and opened it up. No Wi-Fi yet, but I didn't need the internet for what I had in mind.
I pulled up a blank document and started writing.
Goals:
1. Physical training. Need to build muscle,the best method to accomplish this was through contractual recreation which could allow me to use gym membership recipes to gain the muscle mass as if he worked out as stated on the recite
2. Cognitive training. Use the enhancement to learn. Start with engineering—robotics, specifically. If I'm going to use Puppet Manipulation at full potential, I need puppets that can do more than just walk and pick things up. I need machines with weapons, flight systems, armor.
3. Money. Don't sell for a while. Let things cool down. But keep collecting receipts. Every receipt I find is a potential asset. Food receipts mean free meals. Tech receipts mean free equipment. Build the collection.
4. Information. I need to know what's happening in this world. Who the heroes are. Who the villains are. When Mark gets his powers. When Nolan turns. I need to be ready.
I stared at the list for a long moment, then added one more line.
5. Don't be a hero. Let them save the world. You just need to survive it.
6)start to properly learn Cursed Energy Manipulation from next mounth
I closed the laptop and stood up.
Tomorrow, I'd start training. Tomorrow, I'd start learning. Tomorrow, I'd take the first real steps toward becoming something more than a skinny kid with a bag of money and a head full of secrets.
But tonight? Tonight I was going to sleep in a real bed, with a full stomach, and dream about all the things I was going to build.
I climbed into bed, still in my clothes, too tired to change. The doll sat on my nightstand, its painted eyes reflecting the faint glow from the streetlight outside.
I reached out with my Cursed Energy, just a thread, just enough to keep the connection alive. Through the doll's eyes, I watched myself fall asleep. Watched my chest rise and fall, watched the blue glow of my energy pulse in time with my heartbeat.
And for the first time since I woke up in this new life, I smiled.
I was going to be okay. Better than okay. I was going to be unstoppable.
---
I slept for twelve hours.
When I woke up, the sun was streaming through my curtains, and I felt more rested than I had in—well, ever. My mind was clear, sharper than yesterday even. The cognitive enhancement was like a muscle: the more I used it, the stronger it got.
I made breakfast with a receipt I'd found in the diner trash last night—pancakes, eggs, bacon, orange juice. A full spread, all for the cost of a crumpled piece of paper.
I ate like a king, then sat down at my computer.
First order of business: get Wi-Fi. I'd need to pay for it, but with twenty grand in hiding spots around my apartment, that wasn't a problem. I called the local internet provider, set up an account under a fake name, and paid for a year upfront with a prepaid card I'd bought at a convenience store.
By noon, I was online.
Second order of business: start learning.
I pulled up every free engineering course I could find. Robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, programming. MIT OpenCourseWare. Khan Academy. YouTube tutorials. I bookmarked everything, organized it into folders, made a study schedule.
With my enhanced cognition, I could process information faster than a normal person. I could read a textbook chapter in less than ten percent of the time and retain twice as much. I could watch a lecture at double speed and still catch every word.
I started with robotics.
The basic principles were simple: actuators, sensors, controllers. But the applications were endless. I read about different types of robots—wheeled, legged, flying, swimming. I read about control systems, about feedback loops, about programming languages designed for robotic applications.
By the end of the day, I had a working understanding of concepts that would have taken a normal person weeks to grasp.
But I wanted more.
I wanted to build machines that could fight. Machines with weapons systems, with armor plating, with flight capabilities. Machines that I could control with Puppet Manipulation, turning them into extensions of my own body.
I thought about Mechamaru from Jujutsu Kaisen—the ultimate puppet, a mechanical body that could fight at Special Grade levels. That was what I wanted. A swarm of mechanical bodies, all linked to my senses, all capable of independent combat, all feeding information back to me.
But I wasn't there yet. Not even close.
I needed to start small. Build something simple, something functional, something I could control without frying my brain.
I grabbed a notebook and started sketching.
Puppet #1: Scout Unit.
Size: Small, maybe bird-sized.
Capabilities: Flight, cameras, microphones. Maybe a small speaker for communication.
Materials: Lightweight. Carbon fiber if I can get it. Plastic for the prototype.
Power: Battery. Too early to try anything more advanced.
I spent the next three hours designing. Every time I hit a wall, I went back to the online courses, found the answer, and kept going.
By the time I went to bed, I had a rough blueprint. It wasn't pretty, and it probably wouldn't work on the first try, but it was a start.
I looked at the doll on my nightstand and smiled.
"You're about to have some company," I said.
The doll didn't answer, obviously. But through the Puppet Manipulation connection, I felt something. A faint resonance, like it was waiting.
I let the connection hold as I fell asleep, my consciousness stretching out through the tiny plastic body, watching over my apartment like a silent guardian.
Tomorrow, I'd start building.
Tomorrow, I'd take the next step.
But tonight, I dreamed of armies. Swarms of machines filling the sky, all moving to my will, all seeing through my eyes, all ready to fight and die at my command.
And somewhere in that dream, I was smiling.