The man pulled his hand back, his face deathly pale. A cry of agony escaped his lips as he scrambled backward and fled the minimarket area.
Zen's grip was no joke. With his STR attribute reaching 40 points, his strength was now equivalent to an industrial hydraulic press. If the man hadn't left immediately, Zen wouldn't have hesitated to crush his fingers into dust. He was fairly certain his actions fell under self-defense, right?
The crowd stared at Zen in awe for a few moments before eventually dispersing.
"Thank you so much, brother..." the customer Zen had defended said sincerely. Zen simply replied with a relaxed smile and headed back inside the store.
'Man… the protagonist aura is real,' Zen muttered to himself. Being watched by so many people and teaching a thug a lesson gave him a peculiar sense of satisfaction. 'I guess I'm finally starting to feel like a main character in a novel, hahaha!'
Inside the shop, his colleagues immediately swarmed him with questions.
"Zen, how did you get that strong?"
"Which gym do you go to? What's your workout routine?"
Zen, of course, didn't give them a straight answer. He dodged the questions with a thousand excuses until the clock finally hit 8 PM. Once the store closed, he hurried home.
One thing Zen didn't realize was that deep within the Earth's core—beyond layers of rock and swirling magma—chaos was brewing. Tiny blue specks had begun to appear around the core.
The specks were microscopic, finer than a strand of hair, yet their numbers were doubling every second. Some clung to the core, while others drifted upward, passing through solid rock with a slow but steady motion. The world was beginning to change.
Meanwhile, Zen—the cause of all these anomalies—was on his way home. He hopped off the public bus and walked down a narrow alley. After navigating through puddles caused by a poor drainage system, he finally reached his boarding house at 9 PM.
Zen's place was a simple "three-room" studio. A small living area in the front, a bedroom in the middle, and a kitchen and bathroom in the back. It was the standard living space for students or single workers like him.
After resting for a bit and eating the takeout rice he bought on the way, Zen took a shower. For him, a cold shower after work was a mandatory ritual to clear his mind.
At 10 PM, after tidying up his clothes and floor, Zen sat in front of his ancient computer. He needed to find information and brainstorm: how to turn his otherworldly loot into cold, hard cash.
The first idea that popped into his head was alternative medicine. With mana energy, he was convinced he could heal various human ailments. After all, he had 10 bottles of healing potions whose effects had never been tested on Earth.
"Let's look into antiques first," Zen muttered as he started typing in the search bar.
This was his initial plan: sell antiques that contained "natural energy." Rather than studying medical techniques or memorizing complicated disease names, Zen preferred the antique collector market. Armed with some rusty junk and an infusion of energy from a Mana Crystal, he was confident he could outsmart the "cunning old foxes" in the collector world.
[Search results: Antique & Heirloom Collector Forum... Approximately 145,000 results (0.43 seconds)]
Auction - Mustika Stone: Supernatural Origin - Starting Price: Rp 50 Million
Latest Discussion: Beware of scams! A collector from Surabaya was scammed out of hundreds of millions for a 'healing meteorite' that turned out to be fake…
National News Portal: The Phenomenon of Tycoons Seeking Miracles
An anonymous billionaire family is reportedly offering a massive reward for any alternative medicine practitioner capable of curing a mysterious illness...
Zen was surprised by the results. The demand was far higher than he expected. He had assumed modern people no longer believed in the supernatural.
"Seems like these rich families are truly desperate," Zen commented casually. Rich people were usually highly educated, but when backed into a corner, even they would seek out miracles.
Zen immediately bookmarked the relevant pages. He didn't just search in Indonesia; he looked into Malaysia, Vietnam, and even developed nations like the US and Russia. Two hours passed in a flash, and Zen began jotting down key points.
"The hubs are in Asia—Indonesia, Vietnam, India, China, and Japan," he noted. "And antique prices are heavily dictated by historical value."
He marked Indonesia with yellow on his digital map, specifically targeting Java as his first area of operations. However, a dilemma arose. How could he sell these items without attracting the attention of the government or local thugs?
Thinking back to the parking attendant incident, Zen realized that a physical shop would only invite trouble.
"An online shop..." Zen nodded firmly. An online store was the best choice. Not on a typical e-commerce platform, but by building his own private website.
With today's advanced AI technology, building a simple site was a breeze. Despite his computer only having 8GB of RAM, Zen managed to finish the site in two hours. He registered a public domain name: BlackMagireal.com.
"Next, social media ads," Zen whispered. He prepared everything from copywriting to visuals using AI assistance. He even subscribed to a premium AI service to create ads with "killer hooks."
Finding wealthy collectors manually was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Zen was smart enough to know he didn't need to travel abroad; he just had to make them come looking for him.
Everything was set within 30 minutes. It was now 3 AM.
"Uaaaaah…." Zen let out a long yawn. His exhaustion had finally hit its limit. He clicked the final button: [ADVERTISE].
With that, he went to his bedroom and collapsed onto his thin, flattened mattress. His muscles, now far denser than before, felt slightly strange as he lay down, but fatigue quickly pulled him into a deep sleep.