Kellan Klein is an ordinary college student with an average, if traumatic and painful past. Everyone grows up grappling with depression and anxiety that seem to be genetic in a house with parents that, while loving, fight all the time and have weird ideas about what kids should and shouldn't do, right? Everyone deals with bullying, racism, judgement on their romantic inclinations and their family's economic status and just general shittiness, right? All of Kellan's friends sure did, and for all of them, entertaiment media were a welcome escape from their painful, dreary lives. After all, who wouldn't want to sail the seas with Monkey D. Luffy and the Strawhats, or help Meng Hao con increasingly powerful and influential people, or join Cecil Harvey and his friends on their weird journey to save the world, or make friends with Peter Parker while pretending to not know he was everyone's favorite wall-crawling superhero?

Kellan certainly wanted to, and while he pursued college to seek out a career he saw himself enjoying, something felt inexplicably empty about his life. So when a decidely sinister force kidnaps him and the prettiest man he's ever seen saves his life and offers him his wildest dreams, Kellan becomes the shopkeeper of a mysterious, dimension hopping shop, complete with a system that helps him acquire items. abilities, materials, and other cool shit to stock it with, as well as some other neat perks.

Will Kellan become a boring overpowered MC, like the kind from web fiction that he reads to sate his boredom? Will he keep his generally kind, sweet nature despite the shit he's gone through and will go through, or will he inexplicably become a scary, violent, irrational arrogant douchebag? Will he use his newfound abilities to explore the multiverse and improve the lives of himself and others, or will he become his own antithesis, a purely mercantile jerk obsessed with money and profit, with no concern for anything that doesn't help or hurt his business?

Find out in The Curio Shoppe!

Author's note: Please suggest possible setting he could visit in the comments. I'll gather ones i'm familiar with, and at the end of every arc, a poll will be held to decide the next location he visits. There will be polls for other purposes, and I might not always go with the poll winner if I feel one of the other options is more fun to read/write about. I will not use the settings of other RRL writers without their permission.Do not ask for that, unless the author in question gives permission. Most settings he visits will be slightly AU in some way or another, but please remind me if I drift too far from canon unintentionally or characterize a character wrongly. This work will eventually fit all tags I selected once he visits universes suited to those tags, so don't ask when or where a given tag is coming.

I do not own the cover art, it belongs to Nicholas Belanger Thiel, and I will stop using it if he asks me to. Kellan doesn't look like the old man on the cover, though once he acquires a disguise-type ability he may occasionally use that appearance. The tapir, however, will be a thing, as despite looking like a failed attempt at an elephant, tapirs are cool and this dragon finds them to be kinda cute. The art, along with more of Nicholas's pieces, can be found at https://www.artstation.com/artwork/51bXz