A sense of déjà vu lingered in his mind—the specific configuration of the eye-cast projection felt mystically familiar.
Closing his eyes, he chased the origin of the memory. The realization hit him with jarring force.
'You have got to be kidding me.'
He mentally face-palmed in grim disbelief.
'Is this a joke? Don't tell me this thing is some kind of system.'
Once the initial shock settled, his focus went back to the mechanics. Supposedly, if he was led to believe in his current hypothesis, there was a method to this madness.
If this really was a system or system adjacent, it made sense for his knowledge of popular light novels and manga that used a similar concept to dictate his next steps.
"Alright, kid, that's all the handouts you're getting from me. The streets ain't getting any friendlier while you stand there catchin' flies. Drag yourself somewhere else."
Felix spun around, meeting the imp's bewildered stare. The little creature was looking straight at his face, a look of unblinking confusion.
It was the classic rule of the trope. It was supposed to be invisible to the rest of the world.
"Right. Moving."
He stepped past the little creature, his gaze locked on summoning the mystical sigils like before.
Walking out the exit, Felix took a deep breath. He looked left, right, up, and down, absorbing the energy of his new home: Pentagram City.
Standing in the front of a dingy storefront, he looked out at the broken pavement. The whole street looked completely run-down, lined with crumbling brick buildings and cramped little apartments crammed together.
Naturally, everything filled him with excitement and awe.
Groups of strange, grotesque demons shuffled past him on the sidewalk. Some had too many eyes, others had no eyes at all, and they came in every shape and gender imaginable.
Even though the neighborhood was clearly a low-income dump, Felix couldn't tear his eyes away from the sheer uniqueness of it all.
Once he was on the move, it became a matter of keeping his head down. For now, the best thing was to explore the demonic cityscape.
He briefly thought about checking his system but quickly dismissed the idea, remembering he was now in a completely foreign world—literally in Hell.
* * *
He found a quiet restaurant and slipped inside. His stomach twisted and growled. Desperate, he snatched a crusty breadstick from a nearby table once he confirmed no one was looking.
It had been maybe an hour, possibly more, since he had left that old store. Felix quickly observed that telling time from sight alone was impossible.
The crimson sky offered nothing but confusion, frozen in color and appearance.
Without clocks or calendars, the mind unravels into insanity. One has to wonder if Hell exploited this exact flaw, using timelessness as its most cruel torment.
That was another one of Felix's realizations: Hell completely defied expectation.
Early Christian theology never envisioned a fiery underground realm. Instead, it evolved from Greek mythology, a framework Felix knew only loosely, before the New Testament reframed it as a place of purifying punishment for the wicked.
Later, Dante's Inferno molded the modern imagination through influential literature. Reality, however, provided no tour guide. This Hell was simply a twisted parallel Earth.
That was Felix's advantage.
He finally found a place to sleep: an empty dumpster in an abandoned alley. After throwing out the trash, the space was tight, but his small frame fit inside.
The foul odor barely registered; he was well-acquainted with the smell and had slept in similar positions before.
Felix stretched to release his joints, but a loud pop made him freeze. A shiver ran through him at the strange sensation of a body completely alien to the one he had inhabited for seventeen years.
He curled into a tight ball to maximize the space.
Finally able to say he was one hundred percent safe, Felix summoned the mystical sigils once more.
As he read, two specific details captured his attention.
The first was something he first saw when he was inside the store, appearing to be statistics about himself.
No moniker, and a ranking of 'low-tier hellborn'—whatever that was supposed to mean. Apparently, the grand superpowers he had gained began and ended with avarice inducement and quality sense.
Avarice inducement was relatively self-explanatory, the ability to induce avarice, the excessive desire for money or things. He would need to test if this applied to just himself or others.
Quality sense was uniquely broad. He ended up with the idea that it allowed him to sense something's quality. How that matched with his other ability, he didn't know.
And the second detail—
[Message from '????': "Aspirant! Welcome to my world."]
That was at the very bottom.
A set of supernatural attributes had been forced upon him by a ruling entity. Supposedly, he was an aspirant: someone seeking a high position or a great goal.
'The description fits', he freely admitted.
The truth within the message was blinding; a demon was responsible for this.
That definitely posed a ton of questions, but now wasn't the right time to ask them, as that would lead to him questioning every minor detail.
With no sleep to speak of, he had ample time to test his new ideas.