Chapter the Second

After a while, I reached a part of the city without as much damage as the rest, the sun was already setting by then. There was no one in sight… they had probably been evacuated before or during the attack. 

This is all to my advantage, I can steal weapons and supplies, look for directions and dip! Finally, I'll be able to eat good food and maybe even sleep comfortably! My luck took its time to turn around but now that it has, let's enjoy it!

Alright. My new watch shows it's been two hours since I got here…

What have I found of interest? Everything. I got a backpack, tent, all the camping I could find… 

Don't worry, I still intend to one day fight against monsters. So I got heavy weights to lift later too.

No gun shops to steal from so I'll presume that's not very widespread stuff in the OPM world.

There's also an odd ability I seem to have. Everything is written in Japanese yet I can understand it as if it was in English.

Looking at some news and ads on the buildings of the city, something caught my eye. I was wrong about everything, somehow. "Join the devil hunter association, you don't need powers to be a hero." This isn't fucking OPM… It's Chainsaw man. I remember even less about that verse than I do about OPM. It's not even my fault I didn't know, since when are there OPM like monsters in Chainsaw man?!

Fuck… the craters… that was the gun devil! Does that mean… I am the roach devil?! Are you serious right now? Is this a fucking joke?! 

Wait… Did I take over the reincarnation of the roach devil? That's… messed up. 

And what if this is a crossover? Yeah, I'm fucking screwed. Logically, everything from the chainsaw verse would be upscaled to coexist with the OPM verse… How am I going to survive?

Eventually, I saw helicopters flying over the city, probably just observing the damage and evaluating repair costs. By this point, it's proba safe for people to come back, but there is the possibility they may just have abandoned the city…

Wait, I just realised. I can fly away.

Soaring over rooftops is great. I feel free. But I'm probably easy to spot so let's just fly out of here… What's that sound? Ive heard it somewhere before, like a… rocket! Shi–

"Die, monster!" And boom!

The collision sent my crashing through a wall, I didn't even have time to rise to my feet when mini rockets came flying straight at me, blowing me even further away into the building, then out, only to come crashing down into the concrete below.

Everything hurt, I never felt pain so excruciating before… Now I know what it's like to get beaten up in Japanese media.

Someone in armor came flying down to stand over my mangled form.

"Filthy creature, you look like a fucking roach. Whatever you did in your life as a human to turn into this, killing you will be a mercy!"

Yet hs didn't have the mercy to just kill me, he started to punch me in the face, over and over again, nearly faster than my eye could see, I never spewed blood like this before. In fact, I think some parts of my organs were spewed out too.

Even under all that punishment, by anime logic or thanks to adrenaline, I somehow mustered the strength to strike back.

And then he stopped. He was just stuck in one place, unable to move.

"What… the hell? What did you do to me?! Are you… A devil?"

And then the armor he was wearing began to heat up. It was glowing red. The man inside was screaming in agony. A sort of black steam was escaping from the metal, it began to glow brighter and brighter… 

The screams stopped, not the heating up of the armor that use to contain the man. The smell of burnt flesh was filling the air, it was horrific.

What have I done?!

The thing was glowing so bright that even with my eyes closed, it was still hurting. And then finally, it all stopped.

When I opened my eyes, what I found was utterly confusing. The armor had been turned into gold.

I stood, or well, laid there, flabbergasted. Then I chuckled. My jaw was too mangled to properly laugh. I cried too. So I was given the power to turn things into gold… As an individual who will most definitely be forced to live outside of any society where that would have ANY value.

Where am I supposed to sell this shit? You think monsters care about MONEY?! WHY this STUPID POWER?!

Sure. I might be able to turn metals from whatever to gold but what then if it doesn't work on living things? Am I supposed to use a golden katana to fight when gold is absolutely terrible for weapons?! Even if I CAN turn living things to gold, half of the things I am likely to encounter will beat the shit outta me before I can even land a SINGLE HIT!

Right now, I wish I could spit at the sky, I'm too broken to do even that.

So as expected, I am really hard to kill. It took a whole day but I managed to regenerate enough to start walking again. Another inconvenient ability to have. Everyone else that can regenerate does so in a dozen of seconds but I am stuck having to wait for hours. I think this really is a comedy where I am the joke.

All these abilities represent something I wanted in my previous life. Freedom with the wings, liberation from death with the regeneration, wealth with the Midas touch… But all of it was made as inconveniently as possible.

Someone is mocking me. Well you know what? Its not fucking funny, grow up. I can already hear the "It's just a prank, bro."

After eating a little, I got back to my mission: finding my way out of this city. And finally, I did. I don't even understand how my flight can be so slow it takes me this long. Or maybe cities are gigantic in this world, It should't take hours to find a fucking forest. But when I finally did, I didn't waste time with celebrations, I have work to do.

First, I set up the tent near a river I found. Then, I ate some more before going to sleep. Well deserved, I think. At least here, no one will come to bother me. Only in my dreamless nights can I ever find a peace not unlike death, without the fright that comes with it. Even with all the shit I've gone through up to now, I survived quite well. A good reason to hope that tomorrow can only be better…

Wow. Morning rain. That sucks. Now that I bother to wake up early instead of wasting hours doing more or less nothing of worth, this is my reward? Hell nah.

So what's my plan for the day? Simple. I have to test my new abilities. What are the limits? Does it work on living material? Is there a time limit? What is the range of the spread of my power? Because if I can turn whole city blocks, this power might not be that useless…

Naturally, I tested my touch on a tree and tried to concentrate. At least I have control over this thing. A few seconds later, I can already feel the power coursing through my body from my heart, into my arm and then into the tree. At first, nothing happened until it suddenly burst into flames.

Okay. Maybe I also have fire abilities? I really don't get it… Am I supposed to call myself Fire Golden Roachman, now? The heck is this shitty ass mash up of attributes?!

The fire is clearly weird. For one, it doesn't spread anywhere at all. For two, that black smoke smells is the worst thing I have ever smelled and I am pretty sure it's not just my enhanced nose causing this. For three… It's been on fire for five hours. What the fuck?

Update. I spent a whole day looking at that thing. It's still one fire and smoking. Alright. So it's kind of like Amaterasu. Though that three doesn't even look hurt. So useless flames. Yay.

When I tried it with a rock, it turned to gold in only a few seconds. Probably that complex organic matter takes time to convert.

Update second. I've been lazing around looking at this glorified bonfire when suddenly, the flames dissipated, leaving behind a… Bronze three. Now normally, this would be the part where I complain about the ridiculous amounts of time it takes for the process to unfold, the fact that it didn't even turn gold, etc. But you see, things aren't so bad after all.

The first thing I noticed is that the branches were still swaying in the wind, as if they weren't made of solid metal. Secondly, When I had the brilliant idea to taste one of its weird ass berries, I found out they were actually really fucking good. Finally, when I tried to cut it using an axe I stole the day before yesterday… The fucking AXE broke. In one swing!

I'm not Midas, I don't just turn shit into gold and bronze or whatever, I upgrade it! This is actually so good as far as powers go!

I naturally tried it on the first thing that came to mind, my food. The process was much shorter, only a few hours. And then a new variable added itself to the mix. Some stuff had turned to bronze, others to silver. The gold ones were actually the minority. 

I don't see a pattern, It's not random, I think. But most things turn bronze. Those ones have a time limit of 24 hours before reverting. The silver ones last for 48. One would think that the gold would last for 72 or 92 hours… But even after waiting for a full week, they didn't revert.

The things that I managed to upgrade tasted like heaven. It's just so damn good it acts like a drug. I ain't ever eating normal food again. In fact, this is my new normal.

I wanna specify because some things cannot be upgraded. Something already upgraded can't be upgraded until it first wears off. And liquids are also impossible to affect. Same for gases like air.

I would have used it on myself but… I feel like being on fire for hours, without the possibility of jumping in the river to stop the pain (I threw some shit in the river and the fire didn't seem to care), isn't really pleasant. I rather suffer doing push ups and sit ups… For now. 

So that's what I did. One hundred push ups, one hundred sit ups and a run in the forest for a distance I have no way of counting. I just know that after a while, I could do it for longer and longer.

I'm disappointed to say that as expected, my results weren't extraordinary.

Today is a grand day. I just captured a mother frickin wolf. The ultimate test. Yes this is animal cruelty. But I am a man of science. Better it than me.

Its screams were horrible. Fucking Trauma inducing. Try sleeping after putting something living through that amount of pain!

Two fucking days for that poor thing to finally just… die.

I don't think I'm ever trying that again… Maybe there's a complexity limit… or just a certain chance of total failure… I'm not taking that risk with myself.

At least now I know it's an optional weapon… Though there is still a chance that the people I use it on survive and end up much stronger.

The worst in all of this is that I can't practise however I like. That smoke is really nasty and the winds are pushing it towards the city. I would rather not attract attention to myself.

Listen. Comes a time in a man's life where the intrusive thoughts win… I tried my power on a few trees and one of them turned Gold! But that wasn't enough… So I tried my power on another wolf. Sorry Peta.

Good news! This time, it worked, he turned silver.

Bad news? Now he's crazy powerful and trying to kill me!

At least I've got wings! 

"Bite the dust you fucker!"

Hey… what's the dog doing?

And then it leaped from the ground up to me and BIT ME! HOW?!

"Ouch! Get the fuck off!"

It bit off my whole right wing, this thing is going to rip me apart!

I'm a ROACH, I can't even fight! Chill!

We crashed into several trees but even that didn't stop the damn beast.

I can't outrun it, I can't fly away… Do I really have to fight?!

I see no other options as it dashes towards me… I prepare myself… And then I die.

No. Literally.

It bit my head off. I saw the light and everything. I mean, weren't you listening when I was explaining how much more powerful than a normal wolf it was? What did you expect? Some kind of Deus Ex Machina?!

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Why are you still even reading???

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