“Hey! Peter!”
Ethan raised a hand and called out to Peter Parker outside the pizza shop.
Hearing someone call his name, Peter looked around before finally spotting Ethan.
They’d only been apart for one afternoon, so Peter’s impression of Ethan was still extremely fresh.
“Mr. Wells.”
Peter stared at Ethan blankly.
At the end of the day, they were still basically strangers who had only met once.
He still wasn’t used to Ethan greeting him with such easy familiarity.
Peter, before becoming Spider-Man, was actually fairly shy and not all that talkative.
“You work part-time here? I came for dinner. Just got off work and made a big score!”
After parking the bike, Ethan walked right up to Peter with a black trash bag in hand.
“Ah? Oh! Yeah! I work part-time here!”
Ethan’s words snapped Peter out of it, and he quickly said apologetically, “Sorry, Mr. Wells, I need to go deliver some pizzas first. Can we talk later?”
“Sure! Stay safe out there!”
Ethan gave him a friendly wave and watched Peter load several pizza boxes into the insulated carrier before pedaling away on his bike.
Watching Peter disappear around the corner ahead, Ethan let out a somewhat helpless sigh.
“What am I supposed to do? I really want him to kill me… but that’s seriously going to be difficult.”
As Marvel’s resident conscience, Spidey was genuinely a hard person to die by.
Especially since this was The Amazing Spider-Man, where both the plot and characterization were relatively orthodox.
He’d probably only have a shot if he ran into one of those derailed timelines and faced a fully corrupted Spider-Man.
Fortunately, Ethan was fairly easygoing.
This wasn’t his only chance. If it didn’t work out, then whatever—he’d just keep trying next time.
No to internalized stress! Starts with me!
Ethan bared his teeth in a grin.
Then he looked at the black plastic bag in his hand and seemed to think of something.
“Maybe getting Peter bonded with Venom would be a pretty good opportunity…”
Not far away, Peter, still riding his bike, suddenly shivered.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that his back was turning cold.
That sense of being thought about—being targeted—just wouldn’t go away.
For some reason, a mental image suddenly popped into his head: a man in a secondhand suit awkwardly dancing in the street.
Peter shook his head hard and pedaled faster, trying to throw off the ominous feeling.
…
Meanwhile, Ethan had already entered the pizza shop with his plastic bag.
First, with consummate professionalism, he collected all the empty plastic bottles left on the tables.
Only then, under the employees’ rather strange gazes, did he walk up to the counter and order a five-dollar pizza.
“Please wait…”
The clerk took his money and went to bake the pizza for him.
The place also sold one-dollar pizza slices.
A true poverty meal—just the crust, with nothing on top but cheese.
While waiting for his pizza, Ethan also asked the clerk whether the shop was open twenty-four hours a day.
If it was, he planned to stay here overnight.
Some twenty-four-hour restaurants were one of the places homeless people chose to sleep.
Aside from those, there were also bank ATM vestibules, certain medical facilities, subway stations, docks, parks, or charity shelters.
Those were all places homeless people could stay.
But if you were going to be homeless long-term, you generally still needed your own tent and a patch of ground to “settle down” on.
Most of the places mentioned above were only good for short-term overnight stays.
They weren’t somewhere you could live for long.
Unfortunately, the answer was disappointing. Although the pizza shop was open twenty-four hours, they didn’t allow homeless people to stay.
So Ethan would have to find somewhere else to sleep.
…
Peter was pretty fast at delivering pizzas.
Or rather, the delivery location this time just wasn’t very far away.
By the time Ethan had finished eating and was about to leave, Peter happened to be biking back.
“Hi! Peter!”
Standing at the entrance of the pizza shop, Ethan greeted Peter again.
Then, seeing the nearly finished bottle of purified water in Peter’s hand, he added, “You still want that water bottle?”
“Huh?”
Peter froze for a second.
Still, he instinctively handed the bottle over to Ethan.
Ethan thanked him, unscrewed the cap, poured out the remaining water, then crushed the bottle flat to squeeze out the air before screwing the cap back on.
The whole sequence was smooth and practiced—expert-level, really.
“What are you doing?”
Peter Parker asked in confusion as he watched Ethan skillfully toss the flattened bottle into the black trash bag.
“Scavenging. I’m a scavenger. Couldn’t you tell?”
Ethan shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t want to be doing this either. But I’ve got a gambling-addict father, a bedridden mother who needs long-term medication, and I still have to put my younger brother through college. I need to earn more money.”
The moment Peter heard Ethan’s tragic backstory, his eyes filled with sympathy.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”
“It’s fine. I just hope you won’t tell anyone I do this.”
Ethan waved it off.
Peter hurriedly agreed.
Still, the whole exchange felt a little strange somehow.
Even if scavenging wasn’t exactly a glamorous profession, the way Ethan talked about it made it sound like some other kind of skilled trade.
“All right, I won’t keep talking. I still need to find somewhere to stay tonight.”
Ethan turned to leave.
Peter quickly stopped him. “I might be able to help you find a job. I have a friend whose family is really rich.”
The friend he meant was naturally Harry Osborn.
But Ethan still refused.
Looking at Peter with complete seriousness, he said, “Scavenging is actually a very promising career. I don’t need any other job.”
Hearing that, Peter didn’t say anything more.
He assumed Ethan was the kind of person with a strong sense of pride who didn’t want to accept help from others.
In truth, Ethan was simply talking nonsense off the top of his head.
Whatever came to mind, he would blurt it out.
“Wait here a second. I’m getting off work too, and I know somewhere you can stay for the night.”
Remembering that Ethan was still looking for a place to sleep, Peter hurried back inside, put away his work uniform, and came back out to meet up with him.
But when he climbed onto the back of Ethan’s Harley, Peter’s expression still looked a little odd.
He figured Ethan must have bought the bike before his family fell on hard times.
That sort of thing was common. Plenty of newly homeless people still had cars.
Once Ethan started the motorcycle, though, he said with some pride, “Nice bike, right? I scavenged it. Told you scavenging’s a solid line of work.”
Peter’s expression instantly stiffened. This new friend of his was always finding ways to exceed expectations.
What the hell kind of scavenging let you pick up a Harley?
Peter had lived more than ten years and had never once heard of anything like that.
At a loss for words, all he could do was force out a smile.
With Peter giving directions, Ethan quickly found a nearby charity home with fairly decent conditions.
Peter had done volunteer work here before, so he was familiar with the place.
It was a warehouse-like single-story building with a large floor area.
Inside were rows upon rows of single beds.
Because Ethan and Peter had arrived rather late, there were no beds left for Ethan.
But that was fine, because people could sleep on the floor beside them as well.
Quite a few already were.
Whatever else, it was inside a building, sheltered from the wind and rain.
That was far better than sleeping outside in the open.
“Sorry. This is the best place I could find…”
Peter Parker knew the conditions here weren’t especially good, so he felt a little ashamed.
He was just a poor student, after all. Helping Ethan this much was already about the limit of what he could do.
“I’m pretty satisfied with it. Thanks. I’ll treat you to a meal next time.”
Ethan patted the kid on the shoulder, privately thinking that Spider-Man really was Marvel’s conscience.
After that, Peter Parker headed home on his skateboard.
Ethan, meanwhile, found a corner by the wall and sat down.
Since arriving in this world, he could finally rest a little.
Truth be told, he was pretty tired.
Using the backpack as a cushion, Ethan leaned against the wall, raised his left wrist, and tapped open his Pip-Boy for a detailed look.
This Pip-Boy—made by Vault-Tec—seemed to have changed a little after accompanying him through transmigration.
Originally, it had monitored life-sign data like body fat and blood pressure.
Now it had turned into something more like game-style attribute stats.
After the death rewards from the past few times,
Ethan’s physical attributes had changed as well.
This was what the [Personal Attributes] panel displayed…
T/N: AND THATS IT!!!!!!!!! ITS VOTING TIME GUYS~!
This is a fan translation of 死后变强：我在诸天世界作死不止 by 帅牛大人 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!
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