Chapter 2

"Spatial expansion right?" I asked softly as I entered the Continental Hotel and mostly tried to only look around in front of me so I didn't look like a complete fool. The hotel entrance was clearly spatially expanded with several cordoned off area's that I wouldn't be surprised if they were for people teleporting in or something.

"That is correct sir, now I have some paperwork for you to fill out." Charon then went on to explain the paperwork as his guards left him behind as they entered any of the elevators that filled the long hall in the expanded Continental Hotel. " Doing so will allow you to download our app to get missions wherever you are and act as a beacon to teleport the rewards for missions directly to you." Charon explained and I looked at him sideways with a raised eyebrow and he chuckled.

"Yes typically that would indeed be an example of the direst invasion of privacy but the Continental is a safe neutral area with many factions using our services and we have a dedicated force completely organized to hunt down internal traitors so even after four hundred years of using teleporting rewards and even after a decade of using more technological means of which to turn in missions, we have no had any true issues that lasted more than an hour." He finished coldly and I realized that those 'issues' must have been dealt with most severely.

I just shrugged as I had Tik Tok downloaded on my old phone, if I didn't care about China getting my data, I didn't care about some magical mercenaries getting my info if I even used the new phone I picked up.

"So where is the magical library or stores sir?" I asked respectfully after Charon put the codes into my phone to download the Continental App so I could get missions and rewards teleported to me.

Charon nodded at my question as he respectfully handed me back my phone with both his hands. "Sir, you can find the free magical library owned by the Continental on the six hundred and sixty-sixth floor... Granted the magical knowledge within is barebones but it is supposed to act as a primer to allow initiates to find a study they have talents for and thus they will need to pay the relevant school or services to get further knowledge depending on the topic." Charon explained and I grimaced as I saw the pricing for magical lessons in the App and they were... Prohibitively expensive.

"I see thank you very much for your time and advice Charon, have a good day." I said nodding my head to the man as I turned and followed my app's instructions to the magical library of the Continental.

-

"This is fucking bullshit!" I whined hissing in absolute fucking disgust at my circumstances as my [Homeless Emperor] skill/debuff had completely turned off the possibility of just yoinking magical skills out of books. Sure I could absorb skill books that were recipe books as well as martial art books and I even found some really good ones as well... But I wanted to be a baby bitch Gamer and throw fucking fireballs dammit!

But no, the biggest issue was the actual prices of the books as they had everything from Eastern Taosism and Bhuhdism, Martial Arts/Cultivation to more Western, Magic Knight body refinement methods and martial arts.

Hell, they even had pieces of the Jade Emperor's martial arts and apparently, the weird body refinement technique that Merlin used to make Arthur Pendragon a monster that could slap gods aside using the blood of dragons and had the weird ability to boost the strength of his mounts due to the core of his blood being from the Red Dragon D'Draig.

The prices for these martial arts and techniques were clearly not meant to be bought as just below the price there were missions you could accomplish for the super valuable martial arts/magic or lessons. For example, one mission I saw was how if I could find a way to solidify a soul into a gemstone I could get magical lessons directly from Mephisto himself with a contract stating the devil would in no way come to enslave the accomplisher of the mission...

"I think I should just stick to lower-level stuff for now." I whispered wryly as I changed the settings of my app to show the cheaper stuff and finally I found a decent weapon-based Viking martial art that was focused on awakening the 'intent' within the user to strengthen the user, his weapons, and his connection to said weapons.

Sure it didn't allow me to make giant wind blades or whatever but this ['Berserker's Introspection'] was highlighted as being very compatible with my [Weapon Master] job and most importantly... It was affordable for me to buy and allow my Gamer System to devour it.

So I went to the front desk of the magical library and blinked at the perfect example of a slutty secretary sitting in the kiosk so I used 'Observe' on her as almost everyone I had seen within this hotel was wearing a suit or some style of formal wear or high-class clothes in general.

When the information popped up my face twitched at the scary information on it. [Ariana, Fallen Angel daughter of Athena LVL ???] So I steeled my expression as I finally walked over to her as I finished reading her information.

"Did you finally get done window shopping, looking at my tits, and attempting to scry for information on me?" She asked blandly as I stood in front of her and I bit my lip to stop from denying her as she caught me red-handed on all accounts...

In my defense, she was literally half fallen angel and goddess thus leading her to having fantastic tits. So I said evenly. "Yes... I apologize but you are the first supernatural being I have met that wasn't a monster, so your lovely form made me think you were some kind of succubus or something." I ended almost jokingly and she looked up at my book with a confident smirk as her violet eyes flashed purple with magic as her voice became a sultry massage to my ears.

"Oh and what else did you think of me and what did you see in your scrying?" She asked with her voice clouding over my mind for a split moment before ice-cold water seemed to run through my brain as a got a notification that Gamer's Mind blocked the usage of 'Charm Speak' and 'Fallen's Silver Tongue.'

I smiled as I shook my head and her eyebrows rose up in interest as she cut off her charm seeing as I was able to throw it off. "As I said before, I apologize for being uncouth but either way I would like to buy a copy of the process to learn Berserker's Introspection," I said placing down the coins required to buy the primer to this skill and she looked at the gold coins in interest before snorting.

"I see so you are accomplished at training your mind at least and this skill will help as well... But you interest me a bit as most normal humans with zero Sacred Gear cannot throw aside my Charm especially when they were already staring at my girls." She spoke as she poked a button and in a flash of light, a thin book that was labeled with the name Berserker's Introspection appeared in front of me as she swept the coins into her palm and dropped them into a pail.

At her saying I had her interest I only wanely nodded as I realized I may have gotten myself into trouble as she stared at me before chuckling. "Hey, newbie you want to earn a free martial arts book that isn't some heritage skill like the Jade Emperors you were looking at?" She asked me more seriously and I paused staring into her violet eyes before nodding.

"I do want such a thing." I said frankly and in response, she clicked her nails across the table before she sighed.

"Look kid I am not going to lie. This quest is likely going to screw you over. I want to get you in trouble saving my half-demi-god siblings but when people get involved with Greek issues they are registered to the Pantheon and the monsters will naturally be attracted to you if you are mortal." Ariana said before getting into how she wanted me to retrieve some of her brothers and sisters here in NYC that were coming of 'Greek Age' and thus were now prime monster food as Athena children didn't have any special abilities to fight.

"Of course, dear mother despite being an eternal virgin goddess, has more children than any other two or three gods on the Olympians Council so she cares little for the ones who don't make it to Camp Halfblood." She muttered hatefully but I was waiting for her to be struck by lightning or something and seeing that she explained that the Continental was warded to hell and back so no gods could hear their names being called out unless someone was extremely devotedly praying to them.

"So how many do you want me to escort to this Camp Halfblood, and I will need a map there." I said frowning as although an endless series of repeatable escort missions were annoying but it could be a decent system to level up a bit especially if she was willing to help me get high-value skill books in exchange for saving a bunch of kids.

Ariana herself nodded as I couldn't just be given a job and expected to have no idea the extent of it so she explained that she and the head of the camp Chiron were on decent terms and that I was supposed to give the children a business card of hers that carried her magical signature and once she got a call from him she would let me get a skill book for free and then with more kids she would do what she could throw books my way.

With all the details ironed I actually got a ping and the actual quest came up to me in iron terms.

[Quest, Lost Boy's and Girls of the Owl's has been accepted]

[User must deliver children in recoverable condition to Greek Demi-God camp, Camp Halfblood, and in return, the user will be given skill books below A rating]

[Warning User, Ariana is far above the user's strength and failure being the loss of lives of children may lead to Ariana killing the user.]

At the warning, I could only scream mentally as the mission auto-accepted itself as I already planned on accepting but if my 'Observe' was to be trusted... Yeah, Ariana was someone not to fuck with, to say the least.

"Here," Ariana said passing me a medallion, and as I took it into my hand her hand grabbed mine in an iron grip as she spoke blandly. "This Medallion is my magnum opus... It allows the owner to find traces of divinity and trace them accurately, due to a number of issues I myself am tied to the Continental and cannot leave due to having pissed off certain gods. Anyway do not under any circumstances lose the medallion to monsters or I will hunt you down to your afterlife after I get it back from the monster. Do you understand?" She warned me and I understood what she meant.

Monster's getting what amounted to being an easy demi-god locator for them to munch on, would be terrible so I didn't blame her warning towards me.

"Alright, I get it," I said flatly as she let go of my hand and as she leaned back I got to see her large breasts bounce in the motion as she thumped against the padding of her chair and at her smug smile I realized she did that on purpose to smooth over how forceful she was as she winked at me.

"Alright young man get going. My bastard, half-siblings are waiting for their savior." She said blandly waving me off as I took the Berserker's Introspection book with me and discretely put it into my inventory as I left the library and the Continental through one of the many elevators.

-

Once I got out of the Continental I sighed as I brushed my hand through my hair at all the revelations that had been thrown into my face. Especially the almost certain confirmation of this world being some kind of mix of DXD and Percy Jackson's supernatural worlds.

But then my face twitched as my system pinged with a message. [Intergration with Greek Divinity Radar is complete. Minimap will now display Greek monsters and demigods in different colors on the minimap.]

Just to prove that, just across the street from me at the Continental, I saw the entire building outlined in a massive dot that blocked off closer inspection and clearly told me that there was some bigger fish in the building if it wasn't just Ariana my system was picking up.

"Fuck it, lets get this skill book out of the way first." I muttered as I took out the Berserker's Introspection book and then it broke apart into golden motes of light filling me with the knowledge within and making my system ping again to announce the skill creating itself.

[Martial Intent Lvl 1]

[Martial Intent, is the process in which the user's mental power is combined with the user's spiritual power and finally channeled through the body's physical power to damage spiritual entities and generally become stronger as the Intent refines the body as it's conducted through a weapon of choice.]

"Isn't this just shitty Armament Haki?" I said blandly as the small pocket knife I took out of my inventory was coated in a dark sheen with my mana dropping a couple of points but in doing so, it felt like the knife was a true extension of my body. To the point that even when I poked the knife with my other hand's finger I could actually feel a dull response from the knife like I poked my fingernail or something.

I looked around furtively around the almost empty sidewalk I was on and seeing no one react to the knife I had for a second I put it back in my inventory as I decided to go check the more suburban parts of NYC as that would probably be the best place for me to find demi-god kids rather than just walking around the stupidly busy streets of downtown NYC.

"Now where the hell do I find a bunch of children of the Athena," I muttered before I snapped my fingers and got onto another bus.

And low and behold as I stepped onto the campus of some preppy high school I got a couple of pings on my minimap for people with connections to the Greek Pantheon.

"Did you hear about that brat Brianna pulled a fire alarm in the engineering wing?" I heard a girl speak and I perked up as I listened and put together how that Brianna girl was someone who got into the High school early and was sometimes pulled into troublesome situations that were almost certainly of the supernatural variety.

But her high grades and her winning several scholarships to Columbia University across the city kept the school from expelling her despite the trouble she caused as she was supposed a know-it-all, genius.

So to get into the school I used the tried and true method of wearing a maintenance and electrical complete outfit with overalls and literally came into the school with a big heavy ladder I picked up at the nearby job site.

"Excuse me but I was told to check the engineering wing for the fire alarm pull that may have shorted out some appliances?" I said and asked the school armed guard asking for directions as I didn't know my way around and when he asked why the school's maintenance man wasn't doing the work, I just said I was a temp worker due to the main guy working on the boiler and the guard rolled his eyes saying stuff about how the boiler was older then the school itself and how we just needed to knock a hole in the building to bring a new one in.

So yeah I shot the shit with the guard for a bit so he would give me a guest pass in the school so I wasn't considered an intruder that was going to shoot up the school or something as well as telling me how the engineering section of the school was on the shop section in the back of the building, thankfully still on the ground level.

With my directions taken care of, I used the disguise of a maintenance man with an actual guest pass to get through the school with the teachers only glancing at me before looking away not considering me anything more than a passerby.

"Oh... Yup, that's a child of hers." I muttered as I saw this Brianna girl sitting alone in the corner of the robotics division with her arms crossed over her chest and petulantly glaring at the students who were working across the workshop on some kind of RC car or something.

When I came into the workshop I had to show a bogus work order the guard gave me to get him to let me fiddle with some stuff and pretend to be checking the electrical work but as he went back to loudly teaching his almost fifty students large class I worked around to eventually be around Brianna who was still glaring at her teacher and the other students.

This Brianna girl was a dead ringer for being a daughter of Athena with her trademarked stormy grey eyes that complimented her long brown hair and even my 'Observe' confirmed it. [Brianna Arso, Daughter of Athena, LVL 13]

But as I played at working on the electrical crap I realized that I had no way of actually getting this girl to actually come with me and you know dragging a girl that isn't even in her teen years out of a classroom kicking and screaming... Yeah, that was too much for me, to say nothing of her being a spitfire demigod who will likely stab me in the face with the metal pen she was stabbing into the table in front of herself.

So I did the big brain thing and after fiddling with some stuff I went outside the classroom and then I wrenched the fire alarm open and broke the lever while putting it back so it looked like that one wasn't the one that was pulled. "Hey, I heard on the radio that there was an electrical issue across the school," I said keeping a calm expression as I spoke to the teacher with him being an engineer, he knew that if there was an electrical issue that resulted in the fire alarm being pulled that meant that there was probably an electrical fire.

So the teacher quickly opened up the garage door outside to the back lot of the school as the shop section of schools typically had garage doors so the bigger machinery could be more easily brought in.

A minute later as I stood out in the parking pot as students were being led out I was watching with my radar picking out the students that had traces of divinity in them with the use of my minimap.

"You were the one who pulled the fire alarm weren't you." I heard a female voice speak and I looked down, and yup Brianna was staring at up me with her arms folded over her chest with her cloudy grey eyes attempting to pin me in place so I decided to come clean as it were.

"Yup, that I did. So you wanna leave with me on a grand adventure so you don't get eaten by monsters or stay in a boring school where that math teacher will eat you?" I asked pointing at the teacher with a pocket protector. And as I spoke, the man looked over and his eyes flashed sickly yellow with fangs appearing and I felt Brianna sidle behind me.

"How did you know Mr. Sanquinus was... whatever he is?" She demanded from behind me and I scoffed as I rolled my eyes as the teacher approached me I pushed my hand into my hoodie pocket and took out a knife from my inventory.

[Sanguinus the eighty-ninth, Vampire Newly Baron, Lvl 23] I saw from my observation of him and as he approached I wondered why the sun wasn't killing him before I realized that this was fucking NYC during the winter and the sky was filled with dark clouds that covered any of the natural sunlight that might have killed such a vampire.

"He is coming closer!" Brianna hissed as her hands grabbed my jacket and I silently held my hand behind my back and with a flourish of light I made a large bowie knife appear in my hands that gathered her attention.

"Keep it," I said softly and even mangled my words a bit so if the vampire that was walking towards me could lip-read he would get garbage. And once he got like ten feet away from me and I realized the normal people around us seemingly were spaced out and not paying attention even as the fire alarm was cut off inside the building I spoke to the leech who stopped like three meters across from me.

"She is my ward now... Find other prey." I said coldly and the vampire snarled with his brown eyes turning burning yellow and his teeth all becoming jagged devices for tearing out someone's throat rather then pincers to suck delicately from their prey like movies wanted us to think.

"Or what little hunter? You will dust me here and now?" He hissed before grinning but that grin fell away as I bluffed to all hell as I took out a fucking MGL, the grenade launcher with a rotating system like a revolver and even the vampire froze as I spoke.

"Or these grenades that are filled with holy water and made from holy nails will certainly dust you," I said coldly as I hefted the plastic BB gun the vampire utterly froze before he swirled into mist as he rushed me and I threw the toy gun at him.

"You fool, I cannot sense any holy energy!" The vampire hissed as he appeared out of his cloud form behind me with his clawed hands going to tear out my neck but I met his clawed hands with a long dagger clad in Martial Intent and I realized that going for weapons was the smart idea as I saw how even this low ranked baron vampire's claws met the enhanced steel of the blade without issue but then the vampire gasped and I saw a silver hint of metal pointing through his stomach.

"Mr Sanguinius... I feel like a damned fool to not have thought you a vampire with how you kept on pushing for damned blood drives." Brianna snarled as she twisted the bowie knife that she shoved into the vampire's back as for whatever reason the vampire didn't consider her a threat.

The vampire whirled around and I heard a cracking noise as his hand whipped back and backhanded the child of Athena hard enough in the chest that she flew back four or five meters and rolled across the pavement.

But even as the vampire ripped the blade out of his back I wasn't just standing there, as I took out a bigger weapon and as he was focused on pulling out the blade that Brianna pushed into him I surprised him with an enhanced wood cutting axe slammed into his shoulder and into his neck somewhat making him scream with the spell over the people slightly breaking with the people looking around before dully going back to staring at nothing.

"Fucking filthy human I am going to use your skull for a chamber pot!" He hissed swinging his clawed hands at me to gouge and grapple me as I dodge around him and I didn't want to pull out an actual gun due to the noise and attention it would cause.

I still had another trick and as he swirled into mist and attempted to pin me by leaping out of his mist form I swirled and compressed my mana together with some habanero powder so when he came at me, I slapped him across the eyes with the mana laced mega pepper spray. The mixture forcing itself into his eyes temporarily blinding him but before he could recover I began repeatedly stabbing another knife through the vampire's head as I pulled him into a headlock.

Then with a splash of fog, the vampire broke apart into black mist and stuff fell to the ground as I panted in place with my upper body and arm coated in blood from the vampire and the small gouges he managed to land with his long and sharp fingernails.

Wordlessly I bent over and threw everything into my inventory as I limped over and grabbed Brianna in a princess hold and swiftly left the school parking lot as I saw on the radar that more dots that had tokens of divinity within them heading my direction.

-

When I got my breath back and got a bit from the school I quickly drank a health potion I got from the Jersey Devil and used my inventory to change my shirt into something clean as I made my way through the streets of NYC with Brianna being shifted so it looked like she was hanging on me in a piggyback ride.

"Where are we going?" She eventually groaned as we got a couple of streets away and I sighed with relief as I hefted her up.

"You good to stand?" I asked.

"My chest hurts really bad." She said wheezing and I put her in a bench and gave her another health potion.

"Drink this. It will help a lot." I said before I kneeled and looked her in the eyes seriously before I began to speak. "Look Brianna, I am going to take you to a special place where you will be safe from monsters... That vampire there? Yeah, its common in this world so we need to go as you are acting as bait for them." I spoke as I considered if knocking her out would make this coming challenge harder or easier but thankfully the child of Athena was smart and after seeing a vampire attempting to eat us she decided to trust me a bit.

"Where are we going other than just somewhere safe?" She asked drily and for a moment I considered if telling her would make it more difficult before I shrugged.

"Its called Camp Halfblood, it's for children with special powers like you when you awaken them to train and not get eaten by monsters," I said avoiding the whole demigod bit, in case the whole knowledge of the blood would attract monsters more was still a thing here in this universe.

"Do I need money or-" To her obviously coming onslaught question I silenced her with a finger as I stood up from where I bent over to meet her eyes as my radar picked up a divine signature and as I looked towards it and I saw a large snowy owl looking at me judgingly.

I didn't need to be a genius to realize that, that owl was in fact Athena or some kind of familiar of hers. So I nodded to the owl as I helped Brianna to her feet and guided her into the upcoming bus so we would be sent outside NYC and into the countryside towards Camp Halfblood.