Enigma of Sin

After Kayn watched Tyler leave in his car, he smiled to himself before entering into the pawn shop. He asked to be taken to a more reputable one because he was about to make a large transaction, and he needed a shop that carried hundreds of thousands in cash as he didn't have an ID or bank account currently.

He also knew that they would probably ask for a form of ID when he was filling out the paperwork after they came to an agreement, so he was hoping that whoever he dealt with was willing to bend the rules a little for a nice bribe.

As Kayn entered into the shop, he drained what little mana the coins in his possession had, which was basically none, but he couldn't risk leaving mana tainted objects on Earth.

Kayn walked up to one of the display cases that had a slew of old and new coins that should be quite collectable to the right buyer. Shortly after, he was approached by a stocky bald man, "What can I do for you today?"

Kayn smiled as he was greeted and proceeded to pull the pouch of coins he prepared out of his hoodie pocket.

He dropped the pouch onto the table and opened it to reveal what was inside before speaking, "I'd like to sell these pure gold coins. I don't expect them to go for anything other than the value of their weight though, so I'm not worried about having them verified by some coin expert for historical value."

Each coin was a little bit larger than a US quarter, how much they each weighed, Kayn could only guess until the guy brought out a scale.

The pawn shop owner looked at the bag of coins before giving Kayn a funny look. "Mind if I test them before we continue on to weighing and negotiations?"

"Sure." Kayn shrugged his shoulders as he didn't mind them testing if it was real and pure gold. He was actually quite interested himself to see if gold was truly the same in Talgonoth as it was on Earth.

The man then proceeded to test a few coins with the cheaper methods that would expose the metal as gold or fake gold very quickly. Namely, he placed a large powerful magnet over the coins to see if any of them were attracted to it, which they weren't.

After that, he placed several of them in a glass of vinegar to look for any color change, which also didn't occur. With a surprised and excited expression, the pawn shop owner looked at Kayn.

"Mind if I take these to the back for a bit? I have a fluorescence machine which will tell me the purity of gold in these coins. I'll also get a weight for us while I'm back there. Just take a look around the shop for a bit."

"Okay." Kayn didn't refuse and quickly started wandering around the shop, looking at anything that caught his interest, which happened a lot. It had been almost 20 years since he had been on Earth, the difference in technology was quite astonishing.

He was really interested in the new music storage devices, which were mostly just newer types of phones. These phones were essentially a thin sheet of glass and metal that would display a projection in front of the user's eyes to tap around on.

He was tempted to purchase one for himself after so that he could listen to music again, only to remember one very important detail that he had forgotten for the last year.

'Fuck! I completely forgot about the function that was included in this ear clip. I could have been listening to music this whole time!' Kayn berated himself as he had completely forgotten about that aspect of the ear clip with everything else going on around him.

Deciding to take a closer look at the features and uses later on, he continued wandering around the store until the man approached him again. This time he had an even more excited expression on his face as he brought Kayn back to the original counter they were at.

"So, these coins are all at 99% purity or better, my machine isn't quite good enough to be that pin point accurate, but the readings indicate the possibility of them being 100% pure. Each coin weighs approximately 18 grams.

"Current market price is around 125 USD per gram. With 200 coins at 125 USD per gram that comes to around $450,000. However, if I'm buying it all off you, I'll need to melt them all down and resell it. So, I can give you around 390. How about it?" The man asked as he was sure that the customer before him was a rookie and also desperate to sell.

Kayn knew that he was going to be low-balled before he came in, but he was willing to go along with it as he really couldn't care less. He just needed enough money to do a few less than legal activities before searching for somewhere to place the Wanderer's Villa down and seclude himself in research.

"How about 400, and I include an extra five coins for yourself off the books to skip the identification portion of the paperwork?" Kayn gave the man a counteroffer that he was hopeful he wouldn't turn down.

The man swallowed deeply as he was basically being bribed to fudge his books. He could get in a lot of trouble if it was ever found out. He knew someone who could make everything look authentic, but he would have to pay them at least a couple thousand.

Five coins worth was about $11,250, so he was hesitant since he would probably only see about $7500 in the end.

Seeing the hesitation on the man's face, Kayn upped the bribe, "How about 10 if five isn't enough?"

Now the man began to sweat as the offer was too tempting to turn down. He was a greedy man, and he already had a solution to his problem, so why not take the free money?

"Okay, we have a deal!" He extended his hand out and shook Kayn's hand.

Once their handshake finished, Kayn followed him over to a private area where they could complete their transaction and fill out the proper paperwork minus scanning and inputting Kayn's ID details into the system.

Kayn wrote down his name as Hasan Ashan, as he thought it was amusing that way. The pawn shop owner gave Kayn a case containing $400,000 in hundred-dollar bills and thanked him for his business.

Kayn left after that without much fanfare or purchasing anything else. He had things he wanted to purchase, but this wasn't the optimal spot.

According to what he remembered, and if it was still open, there should be a computer and electronics shop only a few miles away from the place. 

As Kayn began his walk in that direction, he couldn't help but think to himself, 'It sure is weird thinking in terms of miles again instead of kilometers. If I do that my height should be around 6 feet 1 inch now, I suppose. But think 1.86 meters is just easier.'

Kayn laughed at how his brain worked depending on where he was located. In the meantime, he started exploring new music that he hadn't heard before in order to occupy his time. He couldn't believe he forgot about this feature as he could have been listening to music as much as he wanted during this past year!

It was also played inside of his head, so it didn't really affect his hearing either. He decided to start with a band whose name was about unfortunate omens. Apparently, they got popular in the late 2010s and only grew from there. They had a song about kicking people off of their thrones that he particularly liked.

As he was lost in exploring his music library, he soon arrived at the electronics store which had massively expanded since the last time he saw it. He ended up asking around for the laptop section and purchased the most expensive one available.

It wasn't like he was going to be using anything that he purchased here when he got home, so he figured he would splurge and enjoy his time here. He also bought his own mobile hot spot for internet so that he wasn't connecting to public WiFi.

From the store, he took a taxi to the highest rated hotel in the city and purchased the penthouse suite for himself.

The first thing he did was take a nice relaxing shower. His room had quite the fancy set up and he took his time enjoying every minute of it.

Once he felt relaxed and refreshed, he put his usual sleeping pants on before sitting on the bed and starting up his internet and laptop. Before he did anything, he downloaded a few programs that he used to use to disable certain features in the system, such as tracking and camera access. Some of the programs he used to use weren't available, but he was able to find equivalents.

After that, he decided to browse through the news to see what was currently happening in the world and what had changed since he left.

Supposedly, World War III had begun about 10 years ago and was still on going to this day. US soil hadn't been invaded yet, but Mexico and Canada had both been, the attackers hoping to pincer the US once they took over those two places.

Bombs had been dropped all over the world inside of several different countries, and although most of the bombings were placed on military encampments, accidents happened and civilian areas had been hit.

Fortunately, the world hadn't turned to chemical or nuclear attacks yet in all this time. So, the citizens of the world were in preparatory stages in the case something like that happened or just acting as if nothing had or would change, going about their daily lives without care.

The most popular news topic that flooded every site Kayn went to had to deal with a several discoveries that were made around the world, but mostly in Europe, at least that was released to the public.

Historical sites had been hit with some of the bombs, but while the site was destroyed, massive underground temples that had been hidden for ages were uncovered. Archeologists had only just tried to enter and explore the first one on this very day.

The hidden temple they were supposed to explore had depictions of Zeus on the outside portions of it, so they assumed it was a place to worship Zeus.

However, as the first of them entered, they suddenly froze up and spasmed as if they were being electrocuted before their eye sockets eventually began to smoke, followed by the individual combusting from the inside out.

The video Kayn watched intrigued him greatly as the archeologists called it an extraordinary event that bordered on the myths about Zeus.

Kayn sat in thought for a few moments before he made a decision. He was going to visit that temple and see if this was the opportunity that he was told about.

If it turned out to be the case that he gained something from it, he would then visit every other hidden temple that had been discovered. He was guessing there were going to be far more deaths at these sites as people tried to explore them.

First things first though, he needed an identification and passport to travel. His body still didn't have enough mana to heal, so he couldn't fly himself yet. While he could ingest a stone core, he instinctively felt that was the wrong choice.

It was time to find someone to help him, and the best way to do that was to find someone on the dark web and spend a lot of money.