After a while, they found a simple seat by the window that overlooked the bustling city street—people walking in clusters, cars humming past, neon signs flickering even in broad daylight. The interior of the café buzzed softly with ambient lo-fi music and the gentle murmur of conversation, a welcome contrast to the chaos they had just escaped.
Raven bought a simple frappuccino, the kind that looked overly sweet but sinfully good. She took a long sip through a green straw, the icy drink making a soft crack against the sides of the plastic cup.
"This is a nice break, don't you think? After all that chaos," she said, her voice laced with contentment as her gaze drifted out the window to the motion of the world outside.
Meanwhile, Aren… wasn't paying attention. Not to the people. Not to the view. Not even to Raven's surprisingly soft tone. No, his entire focus was locked on the steaming cup of black coffee cradled in his trembling hands.
His fingers twitched slightly around the warm ceramic like he was holding some ancient relic. His eyes shimmered—not metaphorically, but quite literally, twin galaxies of anticipation swirling in his irises. To him, this wasn't just caffeine.
It was a moment.
A rite of passage.
A sip that would alter the trajectory of his mortal experience forever.
Raven noticed his bizarre intensity, quirking an eyebrow above her glasses. "It isn't poisonous, just go drink it already…" she said dryly, sipping her frappuccino like this wasn't a potentially divine-level revelation.
But for Aren, this wasn't a drink—it was the first delicacy he would taste since arriving in this world. No ambrosia, no celestial wine… just this. Just a humble Earth brew. His excitement thrummed under his skin, threatening to blow past his usual apathy.
"Wish me luck!" he shouted, as if he were charging into battle.
Then, with the careful reverence of a priest sipping sacred nectar, he took a small, cautious sip.
The bitterness crashed over his tongue like a dark tide—unexpectedly sharp, yet strangely invigorating.
His eyes shimmered again, and this time his whole body visibly relaxed, as though the cosmos themselves had whispered secrets into his ear.
"It's… heaven…" he said dramatically, as if he'd just communed with the divine through taste alone.
Then he took another sip, slower, deeper. Devotional.
Raven rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at her lips as she brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. Despite her reaction, a part of her found it… endearing.
"Anyways, back to a more productive topic," she said, chuckling softly.
She leaned back into her chair, tilting her drink slightly as she studied him.
"How did you get that regeneration power of yours? It's quite powerful, since you're pretty much immortal," she added casually, as though she wasn't calling him out for being a borderline unkillable anomaly.
Aren was already prepared. He had probed the vessel's memory beforehand—well, skimmed it, really. Enough to fake it convincingly.
"I awakened with it. A normal first skill, really…" he replied, calm and collected, sipping his coffee.
Of course, what he didn't bother to probe was the comparative scale of mortal abilities. He had simply assumed that his so-called "skill" was average, because in his divine experience, only the ridiculously overpowered got screen time.
And you couldn't really blame him—he was a god who'd spent eons watching only the top 0.1% of celestial champions tear through entire galaxies for fun. From his perspective, that was normal.
Raven choked.
Literally choked on her drink.
She slammed a hand against her chest. "Ahhk—!"
"You awakened with that!?"
"And normal!? That's literally S-Rank material!"
"What rank is that skill anyways!?" she shouted, drawing the attention of a few nearby customers. Realizing it, she immediately shrunk into her seat, mask tilting as she tried to make herself less conspicuous.
She leaned forward again, lowering her voice to a whisper that buzzed with disbelief.
"Answer me…"
Aren blinked, thinking hard. The regeneration wasn't even a skill—it was more like a passive fragment of his true form. But he needed to label it somehow. Give it a name. A believable rank.
'Hmm… B-Rank sounds too underwhelming… A-Rank should work, right?'
"It's an A-Rank skill," he said confidently, raising his cup as if to toast his own deception.
Raven smirked behind her straw.
"Caught you lying," she said with a chuckle, eyes gleaming with victorious amusement as she returned to sipping her drink.
'What?' Aren thought, brows furrowing slightly.
Confused.
Very confused.