Ch. 4 - Mission arrives

[A/N: What's up guys! Hope you're having a great day! I just came here to let you all know that, if you haven't noticed it yet, this story will NOT be fast-paced. I will take my time to try and develop and build the world and the characters around Gabriel, and Gabriel himself, of course. Anyway, that was it. Thank you all so much for the Power Stones and support! You guys rock! Enjoy the chapter, bye-bye!]

[3194 words]

Entering his new gigantic house, Gabriel was even more stunned at its flawless interior. The decoration, the lighting, the furniture, everything was beautiful.

Spending a full hour discovering every little corner of the house, his happiness reached a whole new level with what he found.

As expected, the kitchen was filled with utensils. There were a variety of knives, spoons, forks, but that was not all. There were 2 empty refrigerators, a blender, tons of pans, and more! He now could reliably make some more food and drinks using the fruits he collected!

He also found that the large living room had an insanely confortable sofa! It was a very cozy spot of the house. It had a 49'' TV mounted on the wall, which displayed the same things as the shack's TV, but this time he had a remote! Gabriel thought he could finally get some entertainment up in this boring planet!

The master bedroom was on the 2nd floor, and it was also nothing to scoff at. It had a big queen sized bed, 2 nighstands on both sides of the bed, a few more decorations such as paintings and lamps, and another 43" TV on the wall. This was also where the Ability Machine was now. AND, THERE WAS A PC!

"THIS HOUSE IS HEAVEN!" Gabriel exclaimed when he found out about the PC.

There were a few more rooms on the house, which were all beautifully decored to perfection. He currently had no use for them, but in time he'd think of one. Maybe a storage room or something.

Not surprisingly, this house also had a garage with a small workshop inside. It was connected to the corridor on the first floor near the kitchen by a door, and it was spaceful. It could contain 2 SUVs with no problem. More importantly, it had a few tools that would surely come in handy! An axe, a shovel and an electric screwdriver were only a few of the tools present on the garage/workshop.

Very content with the outcome of his purchase, Gabriel placed his bag filled with food on the kitchen, placed his 4 Fabricators on one of the spare rooms and left his sharp stick at the master bedroom.

After setting everything down, Gabriel walked outside through the front door to breath some fresh air. But, that's when he noticed something that left him depressed.

"No no no no! GERALD!!!!" He dramatically screamed.

Gerald the tree was unfortunately removed/disappeared for the house to be built. Since it was only a few dozen meters away from the shack, the new house had to remove it for it to have the space necessary to be built.

Wanting to honor his late buddy, Gabriel grabbed the sharp stick from his room and returned outside. Walking to the back of the house, Gabriel planted the stick down on the ground. It was the one and only thing that remained from Gerald.

"Gerald, my friend, my buddy, my tree! You will be missed. Thank you for allowing me to sleep under your leaves while I had no bed, for standing there every day for me, for being a very good listener and a very quiet one. Rest In Peace." Gabriel said on Gerald's grave.

Standing on his grave for a couple more minutes, Gabriel returned back inside. He would now try to find something for him to buy with his remaining 6 Tokens. As he sat down on the living room's couch and started controling the TV via remote, he opened the Shop.

Not being a dumb guy, he first searched for the most essential, the Trash Token Fabricator, to try and buy more of them. As the Fabricator appeared on the TV screen, Gabriel pressed the buy option.

[Purchase denied. No more than 4 Token Fabricators can be purchased per grade.] [A/N: grades: trash<bad<poor<fragile<normal<good<great<amazing<magnificent<godly)

Gabriel expected something like this, at least something that would make him incapable of buying a fuck ton of Trash Fabricators. "Oh well, time to find something else to buy."

Removing the filter he had set, he started scrolling through the shop. Countless interesting items passed by the screen every second, but his eyes were immediately attracted to a certain one.

[Name: SCP-458]

[Description: An indestructible large-sized pizza box from Little Caesars'. SCP-458's ability is that, while appearing to be an ordinary pizza box, when it comes into contact with human hands, it instantaneously replicates within it the holder's subconsciously preferred choice of pizza, down to the favorite sauce, cheese, crust, and topping. It is not limited to the Little Caesars' brand, as pizza from all major pizza chains, as well as local and even handmade pizzas can be produced. There seems to be no limit to its ability, except that it cannot make anything but pizza, and its toppings must be edible by normal human standards.]

[Price: 5 Tokens]

"HAHAHA! THIS IS PERFECT! I'll finally be able to enjoy some actual food!" Gabriel was exilerated.

Quickly buying SCP-458, a large-sized pizza box appeared directly in front of him on the beautiful mat that covered the sofa and the big glass table in front of it.

Excited to see how it worked, Gabriel touched the pizza box with his right hand, and in mere moments he could feel the heat coming from inside the pizza box.

Opening it, he saw the best pizza that he had even eaten, his aunt Anna's pizza, which she made all by herself, sauce and dough included. It was one of her little secret recipes that everyone simply loved.

'This is fucking amazing...' Gabriel thought as he grabbed a slice from the pizza and ate a bite.

Spending the next 10 minutes eating the delicious pizza, Gabriel finished it, not even some crumbs were left. Not full, Gabriel repeated this process one more time, and ate everything once again.

He now had an infinite supply of his most preferred pizza! He'd definately take advantage of it. Pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was going to become his daily routine from now on.

Now left with a full belly and one last Token, Gabriel headed upstair towards the master bedroom which he claimed for himself already.

Staring at the Ability Machine for a few seconds, he started debating with himself. "Should I try it once? It'd be good to know how it works first before I need to use it at a mission. If there are any side-effects, having them appear at a mission would surely be a huge step-back. You know what? I'll get another Token in a day so what the hell!"

Deciding to just give it a try, Gabriel pressed the red 'One 24 Hour Ability' on the top of the machine.

*DING*

With a sound of confirmation that the transaction had been succesfull, the 100 pills inside the machine's glass ball started to randomly shuffle, and after 5 seconds, one came out of the slot below the glass ball.

Before he could get his hands on it, he heard an almost robotic noise coming from the machine.

*zzzzzhhhhh*

On top of the machine, a small 5'' screen started to slowly surface. In 10 seconds, it was finished. It was already on and contained a few words.

[Thou Shalt Not Die]

[Description: Thou Shalt Not Die allows the user to heal all kinds of physical external injuries of any kind for himself and others with the one condition: they must have near fatal injuries for the ability to work. The ability does contain limitions, such as being highly unlikely that a badly dismembered member will be healed; and it also cannot cure internal damage or illnesses.]

"..." Safe to say that Gabriel was completely baffled by this.

'Isn't this temporary nigh-immortality?! If I eat this I become almost immortal for 24 whole hours?! This is a damn good ability!' He said in his mind.

Suppressing his surprise and curiosity as much as he could, he began to talk to himself. "I need to know if there are any possible side-effects for these abilities, but I can't waste an ability such as this one simply just for testing! What luck and bad luck! I'm very enticed to eat this and become immortal, but this ability can be too useful in a mission! Knowing that I'll be travelling to fictional worlds give me goosebumps all over... what if my first mission is on the Marvel Multiverse? I can get erased from existence in a freaking hearbeat! Oh, boy..."

Choosing not to eat this pill at the moment, he safeguarded it by storing it on one of the nighstand's drawers. He would take this pill with him on his first mission.

Now left with 0 Tokens, Gabriel thought of what to do to spend some time until night came. It was currently 3pm, so he still had some time to kill.

Sitting himself on the chair next to the desk where the PC was on, Gabriel slid himself across the room on top of his wheel-chair just for fun before returning to the desk.

Examining everything first before he turned it on, he was amazed by the peripherals that he had with him.

His keyboard was a top-of-the-line Razer Huntsman v2 Analog, a fully RGB keyboard with a completely customizable software and key actuation, plus a very confortable wrist rest! The mouse was a Razer Deathadder v2, which was naturally one of the best in the market. It was also the same mouse as Gabriel's one on Earth. He really liked it because his palm was a perfect fit for the mouse. There was, of course, a mouse pad that came along with everything else, the Corsair MM350 Pro. A 92x40cm big, stain-resistant mouse pad that was below his keyboard and mouse, and even then, it still had a lot of space left on the mouse pad.

Turning the PC on, he saw that it turned on in mere moments. Creating an account on the computer, he logged in to check the specs of this monstrosity.

CPU: Intel Core i9-10980XE 4.6GHz (overclocked) | GPU: 2x ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 24GB | RAM: 128GB | Storage: Dual ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 2TB SSD + 14TB HDD. [A/N: I drooled writing this.]

"Jesus Christ! This is even better than my PC back on Earth!" He exclaimed.

Excited to try some games on his new beasty computer, Gabriel quickly downloaded everything necessary such as softwares for his peripherals, drivers for his graphic cards, and some more progams.

Done with the necessities, he went ahead and downloaded Steam. Creating a new account because he forgot his old one's email and password, Gabriel went to the 'Top-Sellers' tab.

Looking at the first few, he became interested in a certain viking-styled game...

"Hmm... Valheim, huh. Seems pretty good. Might as well give it a try!" Unfortunately, he forgot the only essential thing he needed to buy a game, money! He completely forgot about money since all of his thoughts were about Tokens now...

*aaaaahhhhh* an orchestra-like choir came from the PC's sound-system.

Imagining that the only one stupid and capable enough to do this dramatic entrance was God Lucas, he started to search his screen for some lines of text, which he found after minimizing Steam and going to his desktop. On the notepad open at the desktop was a message written to Gabriel,

"Nice work getting your new house, Ding-dong! You seem to be getting used to your new life pretty quickly. Very good! I see that you're trying to buy some juicy games, huh? Well, let me, Lucas the Coolest, help you! If you look to the top-left corner of your Steam application, you will see that your balance is now $100.000, so you're very welcome. Also, the internet that's on your PC and TVs are the same as your Earth's one, meaning that you CAN interact with people from there. I'd advise against you revealing your current situation to anyone, and also I don't recommend messaging Anna and Mathew telling them you're alive. You do you though, so you can just disregard my kind advice. Just to let you know, tomorrow at 2:00pm, your first mission will arrive! You will have until 3pm sharp to get your things ready before you're transported to the mission's world, so prepare yourself diligently. Bye-bye!"

[A/N: I changed something. On the first message that Lucas sent Gabriel, he said that he had all the time in the world to prepare himself when a mission was issued before he went to the mission's world. Thinking a little about this, I thought that it was a bit dumb, so I placed a 1 hour preparation time. I think I'll also place some limit on the way that he can use his pocket universe while mid-mission, like having a fixed number of times that he can go there, or a time limit. Let me know what you think. If you don't like the changes, I'll keep it as it was.]

Exaling some air of his nose with a silent chuckle, Gabriel thanked Lucas in his head before continuing what he was doing before, buying Valheim!

~12 hours later~

A white-haired young man could be seen on his room. Besides the lumonisity coming from his computer screen, the room was in complete darkness.

"THIS FUCKING TROLL! HOW DID I NOT KILL YOU?! THESE DAMN GREYDARVES KEEP THROWING THEIR LITTLE FUCKING STONES AT ME TOO! SHOVE THEM UP YOUR DISGUSTING ASSES YOU UGLY DICKS! I'LL COME BACK FOR YOU AND KILL YOU ALL WITH MY OWN FISTS YOU DISGRACEFUL BITCHES!" Gabriel screamed out of his lungs as he died on Valheim for the 2nd time since his playthrough started.

The first one was necessary for him to be Valheim-baptized, but it still sucked. A tree that he had cut fell on top of him and he was immediately squashed like a bug.

He had already killed the first boss, Eikthyr, so he was making some good progress. He had already buit a nice little home for himself in the Meadows, with some nice little walls protecting it from harm. But, while traversing through the Black Forest in order to find copper, he was assaulted by a wild troll and died!

A little tired from playing and from his morning activities, Gabriel decided to call it a night. Going to the bathroom and taking his first shower ever since his death, he enjoyed the hot water for a good 40 minutes before leaving.

Going downstairs and eating some pizza from SCP-458, Gabriel once again went upstairs and brushed his teeth. Thankfully, the master bedroom's closet was filled with all types of clothes that matched the size he usually wore, so he put on some pijamas and went to dreamland.

~10 hours later~

*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH*

Gabriel woke up with a loud sound coming from downstairs. Quickly getting up from bed, he unfortunately tripped as he made his way out of his room and fell on his face.

Getting up while completely ignoring his nose-pain, Gabriel ran to the sound's source which was the living room's TV.

Reaching it, Gabriel saw something that left him a little desperate. The usual white screen with information was now replaced by a blinking red one.

[NEW MISSION]

[Mission objective: Stop the Shiganshina Attack!]

[Reward: 70 Tokens]

[Preparation time: 09:15]

Almost panicking from the sudden mission arrival, Gabriel quickly checked the time on the TV.

-2:51pm-

"I OVERSLEPT! FUCK!" Gabriel quickly shouted as he started to madly run all over the place to get the things necessary for his first mission.

First, he went to the garage to get a shovel. He had already formulated a small plan on his head for what he would grab yesterday night, so he already had a few objects in mind.

Bringing the shovel to the living room's floor and dropping it there, he ran upstairs and went inside the room with the 4 Fabricators. Collecting them all as fast as he could, he made his way back to his room.

Tapping the 'One 24 Hour Ability' on the Ability Machine, Gabriel impatiently waited for the 15 seconds to be over.

*zzzzzhhhhh*

The machine made the same robotic sound as last time with a small screen rising from the top.

[Attention Change]

[Description: Ability to momentarily shift a target's attention away from yourself at will]

'This will be very useful.' Gabriel thought and grabbed the pill while also not forgeting to grab the one on his nightstand.

Now with his 2 ability pills on his pocket, he went to the closet to grab a backpack that he had found last night. It was one of those casual backpacks that people would take to school, so it didn't have that much space, but it had enough.

With the backpack in his hands, he ran downstairs and went to the kitchen. He grabbed 3 knifes of differentes sizes, one was a Chef's knife, another was a steak knife, and the last one was a casual utility knife. He also grabbed a pair of big scissors on the kitchen's many drawers and put everything inside the bag in a hurry.

'Knives, check. Scissors, check. Ability pills, check. Shovel, check. Information about the mission, none!' He thought as he dropped the bag in the living room and once again checked the clock.

-2:54pm-

Desperatly running upstairs, he turned on his PC and quickly searched on google 'Shiganshina'. He needed to at least know a little bit of the background of the world he was going to.

Reading the wiki article for 4 minutes, he gained some basic knowledge of who, and what caused the attack. Also, due to some names being referred continously troughout the page that he read, he already gained some knowledge about who the main characters were. He also learned some interesting things about this creatures called 'Titans' and one special piece of information remained in his head. He thought that it'd be good for later...

Undressing himself out of his PJs and removing the pills from his pocket, he put on a normal black jeans pants, and that was it. He didn't put on any shirt or sneakers because that was part of his plan.

Quickly running down to the living room once again, he saw that he made it in time with only a minute left on the clock.

Grabbing his backpack from the ground, placing the pills on his right pocket, and grabbing the shovel in his hands, he waited for the minute to be over.

[MISSION COMMENCING!] Instead of a text display, the TV said this message out loud in a very robotic and artificial voice.

'Oh God, help me. Here I go...' Was the last thought that passed through Gabriel's mind before he disappeared with a *POP*.