Once again, multiple fireworks with varying effects and sparkles burst in his vision before the roulette slowly came to a stop.

---

[Congratulations! You have obtained a common-tier reward—

●Inverter battery x75

●Basic First-aid kit ×5.]

---

"Two rewards this time, huh?" Contemplating, he glanced at the dead fish below his feet.

After a moment of hesitation, he decided not to put it in the gacha slot.

The Black Water is somehow related to spiritual energy from those cultivation novels when it’s nothing more than a curse for humanity.

Unless completely sure about its details, he decided to settle with the rewards from his gacha and avoid any contact with the Black Water.

With the inverter battery, he could power up most of the appliances in his house without worry, for he could obtain more of them later on easily, considering it was labeled as a common-tier reward.

Standing up, he was about to return to his seat when he recalled a very important function available to every system user he had ever read about.

And deciding to check it, he thought of multiple keywords in his mind one by one and as expected, one of them worked.

Status Screen.

[Ding!]

---

--× Infinite Gacha System ×--

[Name: Lucien Hayes]

[Race: Human]

[Talent: None]

[Combat Power: E+]

[Gacha Tickets: 0]

---

"How did I forget something so important?" His mouth twitched at his own actions, but thinking back to how he had rushed everything after regressing, it somewhat made sense that he had forgotten about it with everything going on.

But now he had the time.

Lucien went through each piece of information without jumping to conclusions, but the possibilities made his hand tremble.

His race was mentioned. This could also be taken as a hint that in the grand scheme of things, he might encounter other races.

Or the system simply listed it because it was basic information.

He wasn’t dumb enough to think that his own planet was the only one habitable and civilized in the ever-expanding universe whose secrets were more mysterious than a simple Human could comprehend.

And he had an inkling about what talents were, for he had heard there was someone in Aiden’s team who could use an appraisal that showed him the ranks of others’ talents.

"Wait, doesn’t that mean I can pull high-ranking talents from the gacha too?" But it was only a theory, and even if the truth, he didn’t know how to add talents to the gacha pool.

Would I need to touch myself after awakening to get those talents in the gacha pool?

"That... sounds weird for some reason." Shaking his head, he decided to fish for a few more hours.

He now had to wait for another day to pass before he could pull another spin.

Though it left him slightly dejected, his mood soon recovered as he recalled a common rule of gacha systems — after a streak of low-tier pulls, higher-tier rewards were bound to appear within a limited number of attempts.

The only thing was that he didn’t know what the number of tries was after which this function would trigger.

Shifting his attention back, he tossed the dead fish back into the water and resumed fishing in hopes of getting another awakening crystal.

Yes, he could’ve sold the fish after people started awakening. That thought did cross his mind, but a simple fish wasn’t something rare and a person could easily catch 7-8 of those in a single day due to the increase in the number of aquatic animals in the near future.

But alas, even after being at it for five straight hours and catching two more fish, none of them had an awakening crystal.

Heck, one of them wasn’t even mutated enough from the inside to bear a crystal.

When hunger struck while fishing, he conjured a cooked sealed chicken portion to ease it.

How many days has it been?

In his past life, he couldn’t even get an awakening crystal as the lower floors were strictly guarded and people rotated even at night for fishing, thereby making him unable to awaken or eat fish.

Hence all he could rely on to drag his life on were the small packets of noodles he found in another flat or leftover foods from the dustbin until even that ran out — and he ended up as food himself for a group of mutated rats that had somehow found their way in.

He closed his eyes and pulled out a single cooked chicken portion and a bottle of water from his inventory.

The aroma hit his nose instantly, making his eyes widen.

A bowl of brownish-red gravy filled with chicken pieces came into his view with steam rising from it. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Taking a deep breath, he dug in immediately and ate the food with leisure and satisfaction plastered on his face, pushing the tension to the back of his mind.

It tasted like something from a five-star restaurant — crafted by a chef who knew exactly what he was cooking.

After having his fill, he chugged down half a bottle of water.

Unable to control, he let out a burp.

"It’s time, I should go back now." As the morning rays streamed through the window, he threw the remaining fish he had no use for back into the water and stored the fishing gear in his inventory.

All this time, even when he was eating in bliss, the body of the dead man lay a couple of meters behind him which he had simply ignored till now.

He didn’t even want to touch him, for he had died after drinking the Black Water.

That reminds me... there was someone else who avoided the Black Water even after the rumors of awakening started to spread.

"Wait, that’s not right. Was she even alive till then?" Furrowing his brows, he started to head back while thinking about her.