The reward prompt hovered in Shane's vision like a challenge from something that already knew he wouldn't like the choice.
He stood beside the rental truck at the edge of the new rural site while heat shimmered over the dirt lot and half-measured foundation lines stretched out in front of him. Ben and Amanda were arguing quietly over temporary office placement. Gary was on the tailgate sorting blueprints, muttering about who had rolled which set the wrong direction.
But Shane barely registered any of it.
The system window held his full attention.
REWARD CHOICE AVAILABLE
Option 1:
5 Levels Up + 2 New Skills Unlocked
Option 2:
Upgrade All Current Skills To Max
He stared at it for a long moment.
Five levels.
That wasn't a small jump. At the pace things had been going, five levels might mean skipping months of grind, maybe more. The system had already made it clear that leveling wouldn't stay easy forever. The higher he climbed, the more experience it would take to move again. Rewards like this were shortcuts through walls most people would spend lifetimes trying to break.
On the other hand, maxing out the skills he already trusted had obvious appeal.
Super Speed.
Super Strength.
Foresight.
Copy.
Those weren't theory anymore. Those were tools he had used in real situations where people could have died. They had carried him through deadlines, gang attacks, impossible reaction windows, and a ritual combat challenge inside a fighting cage with an AN-backed brute trying to break his head off his shoulders.
And two new skills…
That was a gamble.
They might be incredible.
They might be useless.
They might be the kind of abilities that sounded powerful and turned out to be highly situational nonsense that barely mattered in a real fight.
Shane rubbed his face and sighed.
"Of course it can't just be simple."
Gary looked up from the tailgate.
"What now?"
Shane didn't answer immediately. He just kept staring at the screen.
Gary hopped down from the truck bed and walked over, wiping dust off his hands.
"That bad?"
"Not bad," Shane said. "Annoying."
Gary snorted.
"Same thing, usually."
Shane smirked faintly, then finally looked at him.
"I got a reward prompt."
Gary nodded like that was a sentence normal people said on job sites every day now.
"Okay."
"It's either five levels straight up, plus two new skills I don't know anything about…"
Gary whistled.
"…or I max out the stuff I already have."
Gary crossed his arms.
"What stuff exactly?"
"Speed. Strength. Foresight. Copy."
Gary thought about that for a second. Then another second.
"Okay," he said slowly. "I'm gonna need you to say the obvious answer first so I can tell you if it's stupid."
Shane laughed.
"The obvious answer is max the things that already work."
Gary pointed at him.
"Exactly."
"Because?"
"Because those are already saving us."
He started counting on his fingers.
"Super Speed. You move like the world glitched."
"Super Strength. You can stop things no human should stop."
"Foresight. Creepy as hell. Still useful."
"Copy. Still the weirdest thing I've ever heard of, but obviously it matters or the system wouldn't keep feeding it."
Shane nodded.
"That's my thinking too."
Gary squinted at him.
"Then why are you still staring like you want permission to do the other thing?"
Shane let out a breath.
"Because five levels and two unknown skills could be huge."
Gary barked out a laugh.
"Yeah, no kidding."
Shane leaned back against the truck.
"It could also be garbage."
Gary pointed again.
"You don't believe that."
"No, I believe it could be garbage. The system doesn't always explain itself the way I'd like."
Gary looked him up and down.
"You know what I think?"
"This should be good."
"I think the safe answer is maxing your current skills."
Shane nodded slowly.
"That's where I was landing."
Gary held up a finger.
"But."
"Of course there's a but."
Gary grinned.
"There's always a but."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked out across the half-cleared property.
"Shane, man… your life stopped being a safe-answer kind of life a while ago."
That landed harder than Shane expected.
Gary continued.
"You're already doing things nobody else can do. You're not trying to stay normal. That ship sailed when you started moving faster than eyesight and fighting men loaded with demonic steroids."
Shane laughed.
"Fair."
"So the real question," Gary said, "is whether what you already have is enough for what's coming."
Shane's smile faded.
Because that was the real question.
Gary saw it happen and nodded.
"Yeah. Exactly."
He shrugged.
"If you want my honest opinion, I think the levels are the move."
Shane blinked.
"That is not how you started this conversation."
Gary spread his hands.
"I'm evolving."
Then his expression shifted into something more serious.
"Look, maxing Speed and Strength probably makes you basically a superhero."
Shane groaned.
"Please don't say superhero."
Gary ignored him.
"But if the two new skills are world-changing? And the five levels make your system scale faster? Then passing that up because it feels safer might end up being the dumb move."
Shane looked at him for a long second.
"That's annoyingly sound logic."
Gary smiled.
"I've had a lot of time lately to think clearly."
That took some of the air out of the moment.
Not in a bad way.
Just enough to remind Shane how much had changed.
Gary wasn't a wreck anymore. He wasn't stumbling from one desperate compromise to the next. He was here. Clear-eyed. Useful. Honest in ways he'd never had the stability to be before.
Shane clapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"Thanks."
Gary shrugged.
"Don't thank me yet. If the new skills turn out to be the ability to identify bird species or something, I'm never letting you forget this."
Shane laughed.
"Noted."
He still wanted one more opinion.
The one opinion that actually understood the deeper system mechanics.
He reached inward through the network.
Contacting: Johnny John
The response came almost immediately.
Not with sound exactly. More like a presence stepping into the conversation and then choosing words.
Shane.
"I've got a reward choice."
I know. I felt the shift in the alignment.
Shane leaned his shoulder against the truck.
"Five levels and two new skills, or max my current four."
VA—still wearing the tone and rhythm of Johnny John somewhere out there near the northern reservations—didn't answer immediately.
This is not a minor reward.
"That was my guess."
The system uses these moments to maintain momentum when the natural experience curve begins to punish advancement.
"Meaning?"
Meaning you are reaching the point where ordinary progression slows. Dramatically.
That fit what Shane had already suspected.
"If I take the levels?"
You gain speed. Unknowns. Possibly powers more suited to the current phase of conflict.
"And if I max the skills?"
You become far more proficient in the tools you already trust.
Shane let the wind move past him for a second before asking the question directly.
"What would you do?"
VA answered without hesitation.
Take the levels.
Shane nodded slowly.
"I thought you'd say that."
Because the battlefield is changing faster than your current skill profile.
"Yeah."
You are no longer only dealing with addicts, foremen, gang pressure, and local AN operatives. You are intersecting with awakened mythic entities, partial celestial confrontations, and structural war on a national scale.
Shane smiled grimly.
"When you say it like that, it sounds annoying."
A faint pulse of amusement came back through the connection.
I imagine it feels more annoying than it sounds.
Shane looked over at Gary, who was now pretending not to stare at him while very obviously staring at him.
"So I take the levels."
That is my advice.
"Any reason not to?"
Only fear of the unknown, VA said. And that is rarely a useful architect.
That one hit too.
Shane nodded once.
"Alright."
He let the connection settle but didn't sever it fully.
Then he looked at Gary.
"I'm doing the levels."
Gary immediately nodded like he had expected it.
"Yep."
"Why yep?"
"Because that's what you wanted permission to do."
Shane sighed.
"I hate how often people are right lately."
Gary grinned.
"Means you hired better."
Shane snorted once, then turned his attention fully to the system.
Five levels.
Two new skills.
Unknown consequences.
He focused and made the selection.
OPTION 1 ACCEPTED
The world detonated.
Not around him.
Inside him.
He dropped the tablet in his hand and it hit the dirt with a crack as pain ripped through his entire body at once.
Gary swore and lunged forward.
"Shane!"
Shane caught himself against the side of the truck, knuckles white against the metal. Every cell in his body seemed to ignite. The sensation wasn't just power flooding in. It was reconstruction. Violent, microscopic, absolute.
His bones ached with a deep, seismic pressure as if density itself were increasing. Tendons pulled. Muscles seized and re-knit. His spine felt like it was being stretched and compressed at the same time.
It was like taking every brutal day of physical growth, every hard-earned adaptation, every hidden potential in his body—and forcing all of it through at once.
His breathing turned ragged.
Sweat poured off him.
He could feel himself changing.
Not just stronger.
Refined.
The thick, practical construction strength he'd carried for years became something more exact. More symmetrical. More efficient. He still felt like himself—but like the best possible version of the same raw material.
As if somebody had taken the rough blueprint and redrawn it with perfect lines.
The notifications burst through the pain.
LEVEL UP INITIATED
+5 LEVELS GRANTED
Then the first skill appeared.
NEW SKILL GAINED: TELEPORTATION
The user can teleport to anywhere they can see or that they know intimately (personal spaces or someplace they are very familiar with).
Level 1 — Limit of 3 uses per day.
Shane barely had time to process that before the second one hit.
NEW SKILL GAINED: TIME TRAVEL
The user can manipulate time.
Level 1 — 1 minute forward or backward.
One use per 24 hours with a cooldown of 3 days.
Then the pain stopped.
Not gradually.
Just stopped.
He stayed braced against the truck for several long seconds, breathing hard, trying to catch up to the fact that he was still standing.
Gary stared at him.
For once, Gary had absolutely nothing useful to say.
That lasted about three seconds.
"Well," Gary said slowly, "that looked terrible."
Shane laughed weakly.
"It was."
Gary squinted at him.
"You also look… different."
Shane straightened carefully.
"How different?"
Gary gestured up and down.
"Like if somebody took 'construction worker' and reran it through a machine that only makes Olympic athletes and movie stars."
Shane barked out a real laugh at that.
"Thanks, man."
"I'm serious. You were already built like a guy who carries trusses for fun. Now you look like somebody carved you."
Shane opened the skill menu.
Teleportation.
Time Travel.
He stared at the words again, just to confirm they were real.
"These are insane."
Gary nodded.
"Correct."
Shane reached back through the system and contacted VA again.
"I took the levels."
I know, VA said. I felt the surge.
"You really felt it?"
There was a brief pause.
Yes.
Something in that answer made Shane narrow his eyes.
"What did it feel like?"
An expenditure, VA said carefully. A meaningful one.
Shane understood enough not to push too far.
That mattered.
It meant the power wasn't free.
It was being routed somehow. Supported somehow. Paid for somehow.
VA continued.
What did you gain?
"Teleportation and Time Travel."
That finally got a stronger reaction.
Not panic.
Not even alarm.
But something very close to surprise.
Those are not minor tools, Shane.
"No kidding."
Teleportation changes tactical mobility entirely. Time manipulation is far more dangerous than it first appears.
"Dangerous for me or dangerous for other people?"
Both.
VA's tone sharpened.
Do not become casual with either. Teleportation can make you careless. Time Travel can make you arrogant. Both can get you killed if you start thinking they erase consequence.
Shane nodded slowly.
"Understood."
Do you?
Shane smiled grimly.
"I understand enough to be afraid of them."
Good, VA said. Fear, used correctly, is respect.
They moved quickly into practical discussion.
Olaf was still meditating.
Still defining the exact conditions of his renewed power structure.
When those conditions settled, Shane's business—and the environments he was building through it—would become part of the mechanism that fed those conditions.
It wasn't enough for Shane to just grow richer or stronger.
He had to create the right kinds of places.
The right conditions.
Places where people were getting sober, getting trained, learning to budget, getting jobs, building credit, starting over, helping one another, stepping outside the binary rage-machine AN had spent centuries perfecting.
Shane's company wasn't just a company anymore.
It was becoming an engine for the exact kinds of outcomes the old gods needed and AN hated.
That realization settled over him more heavily now than the new power itself.
After the call ended, he stood quietly for a moment.
Gary finally broke the silence.
"So what do they do?"
Shane looked at him.
"The new skills?"
Gary nodded eagerly.
"Yes. Please explain the teleportation and time travel thing like you are not talking to a wizard."
Shane laughed again.
"Teleportation means if I can see somewhere, or know it well enough, I can jump there."
Gary blinked.
"No."
"Yes."
"How many times?"
"Three a day right now."
Gary stared at him for a second.
"Okay. I hate that you said 'right now' like it gets better."
Shane smirked.
"It probably does."
Gary pinched the bridge of his nose.
"And time travel?"
Shane's smile faded a little.
"That one's worse."
"How much worse?"
"One minute forward or backward. One use every twenty-four hours. Then a three-day cooldown."
Gary went silent.
Then laughed once, stunned and nervous.
"So you can just… leave time?"
"Manipulate it," Shane corrected.
"Don't correct me when you're talking about time travel."
That got another laugh out of Shane.
Then the system hit again.
This time it was not subtle.
A fresh, urgent notification burst across his vision with enough force that he physically flinched.
NEW QUEST RECEIVED
He focused instantly.
Then read it.
FIND THE CELESTIAL FRIGG
REWARD: MAX OUT 2 SKILLS FULLY
Shane blinked.
Read it again.
Then looked around at absolutely nothing different in the world around him.
"What am I now?" he muttered aloud. "A celestial detective?"
Gary looked up from the blueprints.
"What now?"
Shane let out a long breath.
"New quest."
"Good quest or bad quest?"
"Depends how you feel about hunting down hidden goddesses."
Gary stared.
"…You're joking."
"I'm not."
"What's the reward?"
Shane almost didn't want to say it.
"Max out two skills."
Gary's expression shifted immediately.
"Okay. That's not a side quest."
"Nope."
Shane paced a few steps, thinking aloud now.
"How am I supposed to find Frigg? I found Olaf by accident. Pure luck. Weird mythological luck, but luck."
Gary crossed his arms.
"You also found him because you noticed something nobody else would have."
"Still not a method."
Gary shrugged.
"Neither was fantasy football until it was."
That made Shane look at him.
Gary pointed at him.
"I'm serious. Half the stuff that got you here started as something you thought was random."
That wasn't wrong either.
Shane rubbed the back of his neck.
"I'll need to ask VA if he has any idea where to start."
⸻
Elsewhere, Olaf sat alone within a room prepared specifically for isolation and thought.
He had layered the space with traditions from two worlds—not because he confused them, but because he respected both. Sage smoke curled upward in long gray strands. The smell of ancient Norse protective herbs mixed with the earthier tones of the local spiritual practices he had encountered and honored.
The room was still.
Quiet enough for memory.
Quiet enough for structure.
He focused inward.
The old conditions no longer fit the age.
Once, power had flowed easily through domains like Wisdom, War, Death, and Magic. But this world did not run openly on those things anymore—not in the same way. The struggle had become more structural, more social, more woven into systems of habit and dependence.
Apex Negativa had adapted.
So Olaf would have to adapt too.
He began sorting through possibilities.
Not abstractly.
Practically.
He needed conditions that could function in the modern world while still remaining true to the older underlying architecture of meaning.
The first condition came to him clearly.
Socialization and Nature.
Power gained whenever people actively spent social time outdoors in fresh air instead of isolating themselves indoors through screens and electronics. Sporting events qualified. Public gatherings qualified. Even protests could qualify—particularly if they disrupted AN's cultivated stagnation instead of feeding it.
Not all crowds were chaos.
Some were awakening.
The second settled immediately after.
Sanctification of Life.
Power whenever anyone actively saved another person's life.
Overdoses.
Car accidents.
Suicide interventions.
Any conscious act where one human being chose preservation over indifference.
Extra potency when self-sacrifice was involved.
The third came with sharper edges.
Clarity of Sight.
Power derived from anyone who saw through the false binary political structure AN had built—red versus blue, rage versus rage, sides designed to keep people fighting each other instead of seeing the manipulator behind both.
Anyone who recognized that falsehood fed Olaf's opposition to AN.
The fourth was straightforward.
Active Altruism.
Power whenever someone actively took up a cause to help those unable to help themselves.
Children.
The elderly.
Addicts.
The poor.
The abandoned.
Not performance charity.
Real help.
The fifth ran deeper.
Adherence to Old Ways.
Power generated whenever anyone put genuine belief into the ancestral spiritual tenets that predated AN's modern systems of dependence and fragmentation.
Not nostalgia.
Not costume.
Belief.
The sixth was almost amusing in how naturally it fit the modern world.
Spectacle and Competition.
Sporting events.
Athletes and spectators alike.
A direct claim on one of the largest emotional engines in the current age.
AN dulled people with entertainment.
Olaf would take strength from the same arena and redirect it toward structure, struggle, and earned victory.
The seventh was more dangerous.
Uptick of Fortune.
A significant gain whenever someone won large amounts of money through gambling, lotteries, contests, or other sudden reversals of chance.
This was not because greed was holy.
It was because chance had become one of AN's preferred tools for false hope. Olaf would siphon that energy the moment fortune turned into meaningful structure.
Shane winning the contest had already proven the principle.
The eighth was the clearest opposition of all.
Conversion.
Power whenever anyone actively left the influence of Apex Negativa—on either side of his manufactured systems—and chose to reject his worldview.
Not passive drift.
Deliberate turning.
That one would matter immensely.
Olaf opened his eyes slowly.
The framework held.
These conditions would draw power in the modern age.
Not just from kings and warriors.
From workers.
Athletes.
Caretakers.
Sober addicts.
People choosing better structures in ordinary places.
He exhaled.
And then the deeper ache rose again.
His thoughts moved not to strategy, but to absence.
His wife.
Frigg.
In old Norse memory, she remained what she had always been—wise, protective, home-centered, dangerous in ways the impatient often underestimated.
But in the fragmented spiritual echoes of other cultures, her essence had been mistaken for many maternal archetypes.
Earth Mother.
Weaver.
Spider Grandmother.
White Bead Woman.
Sky Woman.
Corn Mother.
Different names.
Different traditions.
A familiar shape beneath them all.
The realization came to him not as a thought, but as a command resonating through the deepest part of his restored awareness.
Find her.
That certainty settled into him with terrible and beautiful weight.
Then another thought came with it.
Freya.
Frigg was essential.
But Freya was different.
Freya was not merely beauty, fertility, or romance the way later storytellers had flattened her into convenience. She was a warrior. A chooser of the slain. A master of seiðr—the old Norse magic of foresight, destiny weaving, and subtle influence. It was Freya who had taught Odin the deeper workings of seiðr long ago, the bending of probability, the reading of currents others mistook for chance.
In a modern world saturated by desire, conflict, longing, manipulation, ambition, and wounded pride… Freya would be staggeringly powerful.
If she was not trapped in the reincarnation cycle.
If she was free, then finding her might give them an advantage so large it would change the shape of the war entirely.
But if she was in the cycle…
Then awakening her would be difficult.
And convincing her to help might be even harder.
Frigg had to come first.
Not because Freya mattered less.
But because Frigg was center.
Frigg was home.
And if Frigg could be found, then perhaps the path toward the others would stop feeling like blind luck and start feeling like design.
⸻
Back at the site, Shane was still staring at the quest prompt while Gary waited with that patient expression of a man who knew better than to interrupt too soon.
Finally Gary said, "So?"
"So," Shane said, still looking at the words, "apparently we need to find Frigg."
Gary scratched his beard.
"Any clue where to start?"
Shane laughed once.
"None."
"Great."
"Very helpful, Gary."
Gary grinned.
"I'm morale support. Saul's structure. Ben's hustle. Amanda's competence. I'm morale."
Shane smirked despite himself and looked back over the property.
The new rural site.
The company expansion.
The reservation boundary.
The people they were trying to hire, stabilize, train, and build up.
It all looked different now.
Not smaller.
Connected.
Each thing feeding the next.
His crew.
His company.
Olaf's conditions.
VA's guidance.
The old gods.
The war against AN.
None of it was separate anymore.
He opened the skill menu one more time.
Super Speed.
Super Strength.
Foresight.
Copy.
Synthesis Acuity.
Teleportation.
Time Travel.
He wasn't just leveling.
He was becoming something.
And somewhere out there, Frigg was now tied to that becoming.
Shane looked out across the land and smiled grimly.
"Alright," he said.
Gary raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
Shane turned toward him.
"Let's go find a goddess."
********************
"If you enjoyed Shane's journey, please drop a Power Stone! It helps the Common Sense Party grow!"