Chapter 2. Antique Shop.

"Ryan, are you free this weekend?"

In a cafe on a corner of Manhattan, a girl with beautiful blonde hair summoned up her courage to invite the half-Asian man in front of her.

"Sorry, Jenny," the young blond girl really caught Ryan's eye, so he naturally didn't want to miss the chance to go out with her if he could. Unfortunately, thinking of the important upcoming event, Ryan had to reluctantly refuse, "I have a very important job this weekend, so …"

"Is that so? "A look of obvious disappointment appeared on Jenny's face.

"How about next week? I've got a bit of free time after that job is done. If you're still willing... maybe..."

"Of course, I've got time for both weeks." Hearing those words, the young girl couldn't help but blurt out her words quickly and awkwardly. She suddenly realized that she was acting too eager and blushed, "Then it's a deal! I'll see you next week, Ryan."

"Of course."

Ryan nodded his head, watched the girl leave with joy, bowed his head and gulped down the coffee left on the table.

There was a certain amount of regret in his heart. How nice would it have been if he was in an ordinary world? That way, he didn't have to be on his toes from all sorts of threats and constantly worried about some guy's universe-wide birth control plan to start at the snap of his fingers.

How did he end up in a world full of superheroes and high-risk super humans like Marvel?

That's right, Ryan wasn't from this world.

When he first crossed over to New York 2 years ago, he was dreaming of writing scripts, making movies and becoming successful in Hollywood.

Until one day, he learned of the existence of Oscorp, Stark Industries, a kingdom called Wakanda, and the rumors circulating on the streets about vigilantes in Hell's Kitchen. He realized that his dream of making it big in Hollywood was shattered. The difficulty of crossing worlds jumped from normal to hellish in one leap.

From the café, Ryan walked back down Manhattan's 8th Avenue, cutting through the crowds of people coming and going, avoiding the gathering places of certain apparently specific gangs, and stopping close to Midtown West, also commonly known as Hell's Kitchen. A narrow antique shop came into view.

"Ryan, you're as early as ever."

"Hard work is one of my strengths, Jack." Ryan smiled and greeted Jack from the laundry place next door and opened the door. From there, he flipped the sign hanging on the door, opening the shop to welcome guests.

In the antique shop, there were a wide variety of goods, but in fact, most of them were just for appearance's sake. A large number of them were wholesale goods that Ryan found in Chinatown, pricing about a couple of dollars each. The most expensive thing here didn't even reach 30 dollars.

Nowadays, of course, there weren't a lot of people who would come and mess with his shop.

Because everyone in the 8th Street knew that Ryan of the Antique Shop was a dangerous guy, or at least not an existence they could easily mess with.

In the antique shop, Ryan summoned the system.

Like the majority of dimension travelers, Ryan had a system. But it wasn't the intelligent or the legendary kind, nor did it issue tasks for him.

Ryan's system only had two functions at the moment. The first was to accumulate reputation or impressions, which simply meant that the more impressive impact Ryan had on certain people, the higher the reputation he could get. Moreover, based on Ryan's experience, it seemed that the more famous someone was in this Marvel world, the more reputation they could gain.

The second function of the system had something to do with reputation points. Ryan could open various treasure chests in the system by accumulating reputation points. The amount of reputation points to open a chest ranged from 100 to a maximum of 1 million.

The items in the treasure chests also varied.

[Wooden Treasure Chest] 100 reputation points (one hundred). After opening, you will get an E-level card and some miscellaneous items.

[Black Iron Treasure Chest] 1000 reputation points (one thousand). After opening, you will get a D-level card, C-level card fragments and small items.

[Bronze Treasure Chest] 10,000 Legendary Degrees (ten thousand). After opening, you will get a C-level card, B-level card fragments and small items.

[Silver Treasure Chest] 100,000 Legendary Degrees (one hundred thousand) After opening, you will get a B-level card, A-level card fragments and random powerful items.

[Golden Treasure Chest] 1,000,000 Legendary Degrees (one million). After opening, you will get an A-level card, S-level card fragments, and character-exclusive items.

The props part can be left aside for now, as Ryan hadn't drawn anything too powerful so far.

Rather, it's the cards that had the crucial capability and the heart of the whole system.

By obtaining cards from the system's treasure chests, Ryan would gain access to various character abilities. Excluding some of the purely hilarious E-level task cards, the most important card in Ryan's hands at the moment was a D-level that he got by accumulating reputation points for half a year.

[D-level card -- Phantom Thief Kid]

[Skills: Magic, Disguise, Escape, Treasure Identification.]

[Background: A legendary and internationally acclaimed Phantom Thief, with the international criminal code 1412. He is a superb thief who possesses great talent, is proficient in disguise, voice changing and escape techniques, and uses magic tricks to commit crimes targeting jewelry and other valuable artworks.]

That's right, the real face behind the Phantom Thief Kid, who sparked media coverage throughout New York, and was wanted by the police, was actually Ryan.

The reason why he painstakingly used the Phantom Thief Kid's identity, naturally, was for reputation points.

In the past, Ryan had to suffer a lot in order to obtain the 1,000 reputation points needed to open the Black Iron Treasure Chest, especially in this area of Manhattan, which was known as Hell's Kitchen. He worked diligently for half a year to save up the necessary reputation points for the Black Iron Treasure Chest.

In the end, Ryan wasn't disappointed by the result.

The Phantom Thief Kid card, in particular, was a great tool for harvesting reputation points, and Ryan had already saved up around 800 reputation points in just over a month.

With one more big scene, the [Black Iron Treasure Chest] would be beckoning him.

It's no wonder Ryan was so obsessed with opening treasure chests. The main reason was that being in the Marvel world was too unsettling, and even if he didn't mess with anything and lived quietly, one day a bunch of aliens would suddenly fly in from the center of New York and send him back to God.

It was hard to cross over to this world, and even if it wasn't very welcoming, Ryan didn't want to meet God or some other being so soon.

So, naturally, he had to make frequent appearances in front of the New York public, using Phantom Thief Kid's figure, to collect reputation points.

...

-:Binge:-

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