I Received an Ability from God

I am an atheist.

I have never believed in any religion in my life, and I have always doubted whether gods even existed. Maybe if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a real one showed up in front of me I would reconsider — but I have never seen one, so how am I supposed to believe? More than anything, if a god actually existed, there is no way they would have let my life turn out this miserable.

"You have pancreatic cancer. It's already quite advanced."

That was what they told me at the hospital I had gone to because I had been feeling off lately. I never landed a proper job. I even took up day labor just to keep food on the table, living as hard as I possibly could. And what I got in return was late-stage cancer and a mountain of medical bills.

No parents, either, so nobody to cover the treatment for me. Even if I somehow scraped together a loan, the odds of a full recovery were vanishingly small. And even if the treatment worked, all I would have left was a pile of debt. Could I even pay it off, dragging around a body that might relapse at any moment?

"Haah…"

In a corner of my studio apartment, thick with that particular stale musk unique to a man living alone, I sat in front of my computer and stuck a vape between my lips.

What? Smoking when you have cancer? Are you insane?

I am dying soon anyway. A cigarette at this point is the least of my problems. I gave up on treatment a long time ago. I could never pay off the debt, and the odds of getting better even if I did treat it were slim to none.

The world was in an uproar over Awakenings and Hunters, overflowing with people born with superhuman abilities — and yet diseases like cancer were still an unsolvable problem. Baldness, too, for that matter.

When monsters started pouring out of Gates and that black tower they call Babel rose from the earth, people were screaming that God had abandoned us, that it was the end of the world. Now the mana stones harvested from monsters have replaced coal and electricity as a vital energy source, and Hunters have become humanity's most prestigious profession — the ones who rake in wealth and fame.

"Haah. If only I'd Awakened…"

There were rare cases of people whose bodies transformed the moment they Awakened, curing their diseases. Someone who had been blind suddenly being able to see. A frail constitution turning rock-solid. Maybe if I Awakened, this miserable cancer of mine would heal too?

I held onto that sliver of hope, but…

"No way that's happening."

Awakenings typically happen between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Late Awakenings do occur occasionally, but most don't stray far from that age range. And I am already twenty-five. The oldest late Awakener on record was twenty-three. I have long since missed the boat.

"Might as well play some games."

I clicked the mouse and logged into the game I always played. Knowing I did not have long to live had not really changed my life all that much. I could go on a last trip before I died, or check things off a bucket list. But I do not have much money to spend anyway. And I do not feel like working, either.

"Ah, generated cards again."

A card game people mock as a luck-based piece of shit, though it used to be pretty popular. The player base has dwindled now that the hype has died down, but I still have fun with it.

"You've gotta be kidding me. Two 8/8s on turn four?"

Classic dumpster-fire game. It has been out so long the power creep is completely out of control.

"Ugh. Tch."

Guess even games aren't fun when you're about to die.

"Well. Time to find some dopamine."

When I feel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like this, it is always the boards. A gathering place for every flavor of human being imaginable. The moment I opened the homepage, a string of hot posts unfurled down the page.

"Mm. The afters never miss."

First, a look at the spicy posts the legends have so generously provided.

Click.

The next post was a Hunter showing off their earnings.

That last comment looked strangely familiar, like I had seen it somewhere before. Not that I haven't run into aggro bait like that a hundred times already. It was probably another troll post anyway.

Still.

"Fifty mil a month…"

Earnings like that would cover cancer treatment with plenty to spare. Judging by the bit about grinding at a shit company, this person had been living a life not all that different from mine. And then they Awakened once, and the gap became this wide.

I had come looking for dopamine and left with nothing but a bitter taste in my mouth.

I shut off the computer, got up, and collapsed onto the bed. Lying there doing nothing, the feelings I had been so carefully ignoring came bursting through like a broken dam.

I was afraid. I was terrified. I did not want to die.

Why was this happening to me? Why couldn't I just live a happy life? I had lived as hard as I could, in my own way. I didn't even need to Awaken. I just wanted to be healthy.

A sniffle. Water welled along my eyelids, and fat, ugly tears rolled down my face.

A god, a devil, I didn't care which. If someone — anyone — could just let me keep living, couldn't they help me?

With that thought, I fell asleep.

A deep, majestic voice drove itself into my skull. My eyes snapped open at the sheer authority packed into that sound.

What is this?

A god stood before me — an enormous figure of brilliant, radiant flesh that dominated the space. The reason I was so certain it was a god, with no evidence whatsoever, was simple: looking at that form, I could not dare imagine it being anything else.

A dream?

It was too vivid for a dream. The scene laid out in front of me was painfully, impossibly real. A vast white void, with no one in it but myself and the god, standing there alone.

I stood frozen, and the god spoke again.

Something precious?

I didn't have anything like that. No family, no friends, and certainly no lover. The closest thing I had to precious was my own life, but offering up my life would make the reward meaningless. What good is a reward if you're dead?

More than that, I had no idea what I could even offer right now, being a man who owned nothing.

Money? My hair?

Those were precious enough, but the most precious? I wasn't sure. I barely had any money to begin with.

After a moment of thought, I answered the god.

"If you're talking about something precious, it's right here."

As I said it, I dropped my gaze. Specifically, to my dick.

It was a god, after all. Saying out loud that the most precious thing in front of me was my penis felt a little much, so I put it as indirectly as I could. Of everything I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠owned, it was the thing I considered most precious. I would be a eunuch the moment I offered it up, but nothing else came to mind.

I didn't want to be dickless, obviously. But I had nothing else to give, and I hadn't even put the thing to proper use in twenty-five years. Wouldn't offering it to a god and getting a reward out of it be a much better deal? If I received something incredible, maybe it wouldn't even feel like a loss.

And I was on borrowed time anyway. I was going to die soon — what was the point of walking around with something dangling there that I couldn't even use? Who knows. A god might be able to cure cancer. Maybe that would be the price. Crude as it was, I would gladly give up my dick if it meant I could live.

The god lowered its gaze for a moment, then nodded.

A blue aura surged from the god like a rolling wave and flooded into my body. At the same time, the god's shining form blurred, then vanished like smoke.

Is that it?

A hollow feeling was just beginning to settle in when an irresistible drowsiness crashed over me.

"Wh…?"

My eyelids slammed shut, and I lost consciousness as if I had been dropped.

When I opened my eyes again, a familiar scene filled my vision. A single monitor on the desk. Sagging wallpaper. A wall-mounted air conditioner that had come with the place.

Just a dream, then?

The sensations had felt so vivid, but looking at my surroundings now, maybe it really had been nothing more than a dream. I thought that as I climbed down from the bed.

And then my pants slid off me without a shred of resistance.

"…?"

Come to think of it, there had been a wrongness I had been feeling since I woke up. That heavy presence that used to stand at attention every morning, only settling down after a trip to the bathroom, was gone. In its place, an unfamiliar weight pressed from above.

I reached up on instinct and felt my chest.

Soft.

"Eh?"

A texture that had no business existing on a man's body — on my body. And even my voice was clear and bright, unmistakably a woman's. I tugged up the now-baggy T-shirt and looked underneath. Small, but distinctly rounded, a pair of breasts asserted their presence.

"No way…"

I bolted to the bathroom and checked the mirror.

A girl gazed back at me — long silver hair, blue eyes, a face so beautiful the old phrase about toppling a nation would not have been wasted on her.

"This is… me?"

Her frame was slender and small overall, like a girl who had not quite finished growing. And her eyes were strange. The irises, specifically. They were not a normal person's irises. They looked like gears turning inside the pupils — the kind of eyes you would only ever see in a manga.

"What the hell is this?"

Was the reward for what I offered the god a sex change? I mean, I did offer that up, but I thought it would just physically disappear. I didn't think I would become a woman. And look at this. If it was going to make me a woman anyway, it could have at least made me look like an adult.

I was extremely, profoundly rattled. And then, on the other hand—

Wait. Did the cancer heal too?

My body had changed, so maybe the cancer was gone as well. I would need a proper hospital exam to know for sure, but I had a feeling — maybe just wishful thinking — that it had already healed. My body had felt strangely light since I woke up. Not because I had gotten smaller. My condition was genuinely, unbelievably good. The best I had ever felt in my entire life, a state I had never even come close to before.

And that made something else occur to me.

What about the reward?

The god had clearly said there would be a reward in exchange for offering up something precious. No way the reward was just a sex change, right?

"…"

A nameless dread crept over me, but one thing came to mind that would actually be worth receiving.

Awakening.

Had the god actually made me Awaken?

The question answered itself almost immediately.

"Status Window!"

I actually Awakened?

And I had three skills, no less. I was pretty sure most people only got one or two when they Awakened. Was it because of the EX rank?

I had never seen an EX rank before. Ranks usually ran from D to S, and even S-ranks were vanishingly rare.

Is it higher than S?

This was a rank given by a god, after all. Maybe it was something beyond what humans could even classify. And Observer, huh. Between the class name and a skill called Divine Eye, it seemed like I had some kind of observational ability.

I checked the skills next.

That's insane. I can see the future?

The long-distance vision, the X-ray sight — and it was all eye-related, which immediately brought to mind those broken-as-hell eyeballs from that rogue ninja village in the manga.

I checked the skills below it as well.

"Well, there go my English exam worries."

I tried it out, putting a sentence that had popped into my head into English.

"So, does it really come out in English just because I want it to?"

Did it actually come out in English just because I wanted it to?

"Oh."

I had spoken the way I always spoke Korean, and fluent English had come out of my mouth. There was no way someone with my paper-thin education could produce a sentence like that.

I checked the last skill.

"……"

I stared at the skill's effect and could not find words for a long time. Because if that effect was real, it meant the cancer that had been eating me alive was completely gone.

Yesterday I had been crying because I did not want to die. Now I had not only Awakened — the cancer was fully cured. I had been a little worried it might still be there, but I didn't even need to go to the hospital anymore.

"It's really gone. The cancer is all gone…"

My sex had changed, but being a woman did not even register. I had gotten the Awakening I had wanted so desperately, and the cancer was cured on top of it. And Awakeners could enter the Tower and make money. I wouldn't have to scrape by anymore!

And then—

Now that I think about it… I don't have a single combat skill?

Most people, when they Awakened, got at least one combat skill — breathing fire, a reinforced body, commanding summons, that sort of thing. I had three skills, and astonishingly, not one of them had anything to do with fighting.

"I don't think I could kill a single slime like this."

I lowered my head and looked at my hands. White, slender fingers. A delicate wrist continuing up from the back of the hand. I wasn't sure I could even throw a proper punch.

"Hmm… so even though I Awakened, I can't climb the Tower?"

I didn't despair, though. Abilities like these could land me a place anywhere I went.

The problem was…

"What do I do about my identity?"

I would need ID to work, and I looked nothing like I used to. Completely, utterly different.

"This is a problem."

Had the god automatically changed my identification too? I checked the ID in my wallet, hoping.

Unfortunately, it was still the face of a twenty-five-year-old man.

"If I just tell the Association the truth, would they believe me?"

Bodies sometimes changed after Awakening, so they might. "But I've never heard of anyone's sex changing." And with eyes this strange, there was no telling what kind of interrogation I might be in for. The Korean Association probably wouldn't go that far, but I had heard that on the distant continent they quietly ran inhumane experiments. Being careful couldn't hurt.

"I'll put that off for later. Might as well test the abilities first."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I had already confirmed the English came out fluently, so next up was the eyes.

"Let's try the future first."

I knew how to use the abilities as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Just think about when and what to use, and it activated on the spot. I fired up the future sight.

"What? Nothing's changed?"

Now that I thought about it, staring at objects sitting still wasn't going to show me anything different. They weren't moving, so five seconds from now they would still be sitting there exactly the same.

"I need to look outside."

I picked up the pants I had dumped on the floor, pulled them on, and opened the window.

And then—

"Ulp… uurp…!"

People passing on the street. Birds in flight. Motes of dust adrift in the air. Everything that entered my vision split and overlaid itself, present and future occupying the same space, stacking afterimage upon afterimage. The moment those layered ghosts tangled together, my head swam and bile surged up my throat.

"Bleeaaargh—!"