Sitting on the slanted, sun-baked clay tiles of our roof was the absolute only way I could get any peace and quiet in this household.
Down below in the dusty street, Eren was currently engaged in a highly aggressive, deeply personal screaming match with a stray neighborhood cat that had boldly stolen his piece of bread.
Mikasa was standing quietly behind him, her dark eyes tracking the feline, clearly evaluating whether she needed to assassinate the animal to restore Eren’s honor.
I sighed heavily, pulling my flat cap down over my eyes to block the harsh afternoon sun.
I was ten years old, my knees constantly ached from an annoying growth spurt, and I was deeply, profoundly bored.
It was the first day of the month.
In my exhausting, gacha-driven life, that meant only one thing.
The system owed me my monthly allowance.
‘Alright, you cheapskate algorithm,’ I thought, mentally opening the glowing blue interface in my mind.
‘Give me my free ticket.
Let’s see what absolute garbage we’re adding to the inventory today.
I’m really hoping for a spatula, or maybe another damp sock to match the one I threw in the river.’
I tapped the glowing digital ticket.
The massive slot machine materialized in my vision and began to spin.
I didn’t even bother sitting up.
I just laid back on the warm roof tiles, fully expecting the familiar, depressing bronze light and a coupon for a restaurant that didn’t exist in this universe.
But the machine didn’t flash bronze.
It didn’t flash silver.
It didn’t even flash the blinding, incandescent gold of my Peter Parker pity-pull.
Instead, the digital slots erupted into a mesmerizing, violently bright prismatic rainbow of colors.
The light was so intense it actually bled into my physical vision, forcing me to squeeze my eyes tightly shut.
A heavy, incredibly dramatic sound effect echoed directly into my brain, sounding exactly like a choir of digital angels aggressively singing hallelujah.
I sat bolt upright, my boots slipping on the clay tiles, nearly sending me sliding off the roof.
Rainbow?
What did rainbow mean?
I had never seen rainbow before!
‘[Congratulations!
Host has achieved a mathematical anomaly (0.001% probability) on a standard Basic Ticket!]’
‘[You have successfully pulled an [UR] Ultra Rare Tier Reward!]’
My jaw literally dropped open.
I stared at the floating blue text, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Ultra Rare.
The absolute highest tier.
The holy grail of all gacha mechanics.
The one-in-a-million drop that changes the entire game.
‘This is it,’ my inner voice screamed in triumph.
‘This is the god-tier cheat code.
Superman.
Saitama.
Goku.
Give me the reality-warping magic!
Make me an immortal, indestructible god so I can finally take a nap in peace without worrying about Titans!’
The blinding rainbow light shattered into a million dazzling digital shards, coalescing into a sleek, black tactical file folder that stamped itself directly into my prefrontal cortex.
‘[Template Acquired: Leon S.
Kennedy (Survival & Combat Tactical Variant).]’
I blinked.
I stared at the blue text.
I read it again, left to right, just to make absolutely sure my Parker-infused brain wasn’t miscalculating the words.
‘Leon S.
Kennedy?’ I thought, my soaring excitement immediately crashing headfirst into a solid brick wall of confusion.
‘From Resident Evil?
The guy with the jacket?’
My Parker intellect instantly pulled up everything I knew about the character from my past life.
He was a very capable guy, sure.
A guy who could roundhouse kick a zombie’s head off, survive terrifying biological outbreaks, and somehow maintain a perfectly feathered haircut through an entire apocalypse.
But he wasn’t Superman.
He couldn’t fly.
He couldn’t shoot lasers out of his eyes.
He couldn’t punch a hole in space-time.
‘[Note: The UR classification for this template does not denote superhuman strength, invulnerability, or immortality.
The Host remains entirely mortal, biologically squishy, and fully capable of dying from blunt force trauma.]’
‘Then why the hell is it Ultra Rare?!’ I screamed internally, gripping the edge of the roof so hard my knuckles turned white.
‘[The UR classification stems from the template’s unparalleled survival instinct, absolute mastery of Close Quarters Combat (CQC), peak tactical adaptability, firearm proficiency, and a borderline supernatural ability to parry lethal attacks with basic combat knives.]’
‘[Template provides the Host with the unyielding, indomitable willpower to survive insurmountable odds.
Also includes Passive Skill: Impeccable Hair.]’
I buried my face in my hands and let out a long, exhausted, deeply depressed groan.
‘So I’m not a god.
I’m just an incredibly stressed-out, highly lethal government agent trapped in a ten-year-old’s body,’ I summarized bitterly to myself.
‘If a sixty-meter Titan steps on me, I am still going to turn into a bloody pancake.
I’ll just be a very tactically aware pancake with great hair.’
‘[Current Template Integration: 5%.]’
Before I could complain to the non-sentient system anymore, the integration hit me.
It wasn’t a slow, calculating, cerebral itch like the Peter Parker template.
This was a violently sudden, physical jolt of pure adrenaline that shot straight down my spine like a lightning bolt.
My breath hitched.
My posture instantly, involuntarily straightened, every muscle in my body pulling taut like a coiled spring.
I looked down at the street below.
I wasn’t just looking at a dusty road anymore.
My eyes were suddenly darting rapidly between the shadows.
I was analyzing the alleyways for ambush points.
I was evaluating the structural integrity of the merchant carts for use as tactical cover.
I was mathematically calculating exactly how long it would take to draw a weapon I didn’t even own and neutralize three hypothetical hostiles.
A pigeon suddenly squawked and flew out of a nearby stone chimney.
Before my lazy, normal-guy brain could even register the harmless sound, my body reacted entirely on its own.
I violently twisted my torso, dropping my center of gravity, my right hand snapping up in a blindingly fast, precise parry motion, fully prepared to deflect a lethal biological attack.
I sat there on the roof, my arm raised defensively in a perfect CQC block against a terrified pigeon, breathing heavily.
‘Oh no,’ I realized with absolute, dawning horror.
‘I’m paranoid.
The template gave me the baseline survival instincts of a guy who fought literal bio-weapons in a Spanish village.’
The following week was, without exaggeration, the most exhausting seven days of my entire life.
Having twenty-eight percent of Peter Parker’s brain and five percent of Leon Kennedy’s combat reflexes was an absolute psychological nightmare for a guy who just wanted a peaceful, lazy life.
The two templates were constantly competing for dominance in my head.
If I looked at a wooden chair, my Parker brain wanted to analyze the tensile strength of the wood and the friction of the joints.
My Leon brain immediately wanted to shatter the chair and use the splintered leg as an improvised tactical weapon against home invaders.
I couldn’t sleep.
Every time Grisha shifted in his bed in the other room, or the floorboards creaked, my eyes would snap open in the pitch black.
My hand would instinctively reach for a combat knife that wasn’t strapped to my thigh.
“Kai, are you feeling alright?” Carla asked one evening during dinner, setting a bowl of potato stew in front of me.
“You look…
very tense.
And your hair is sitting unusually perfectly.”
“I’m fine, mom,” I lied smoothly, while simultaneously tracking the exact, erratic flight trajectory of a housefly buzzing near the ceiling.
Without even thinking, I casually flicked my wooden spoon into the air.
It spun three times, perfectly end-over-end, before I snatched it out of mid-air by the handle, using a tight reverse grip perfectly suited for stabbing an infected villager in the brain.
I froze, realizing what my body had just done at a family dinner.
Eren dropped his piece of bread into his stew, staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes.
“How did you do that?
You didn’t even look!”
“Muscle spasms,” I muttered, quickly putting the spoon down and rubbing my tired eyes.
“I just need to take a nap.
A very long, heavily fortified nap behind a barricaded door.”
I had spent the entire week accidentally doing flawless tactical combat rolls out of bed, and aggressively reinforcing my Duck Tales tape with actual strips of leather to make makeshift combat grips for my boots.
I even caught myself looking at Eren during one of his tantrums and mentally calculating exactly how to suplex him into the floorboards if he became a hostile threat.
‘[Leon Template Integration increased to 8%.
Tactical paranoia is highly effective for continued survival.]’
‘Shut up,’ I told the system miserably.
‘I just want to relax.’
Exactly one week after I pulled the UR template, the universe decided I had relaxed quite enough.
It was a perfectly clear, painfully normal Tuesday afternoon in the year 845.
I was sitting on the grassy, sun-drenched riverbank with Eren, Armin, and Mikasa.
The water was gently flowing, the birds were singing, and the sheer normality of the scene was making my Leon instincts twitch with suspicion.
Armin had brought out a stolen, highly illegal book about the outside world.
Eren was currently vibrating with intense excitement, rambling about vast bodies of salt water, fields of sand, and flaming water.
I was lying flat on my back, my hat pulled over my eyes, actively trying to use my [Nap Anywhere] passive skill to drown out their treasonous conversation.
“We have to see it, Armin!
The ocean!” Eren declared loudly, throwing his hands in the air.
“It’s strictly illegal to even talk about it, Eren,” I mumbled from under my hat, crossing my arms.
“Keep your voice down before the Military Police hear you, and I am forced to tactically dismantle them to prevent our execution.”
Mikasa looked at me strangely, but before she could ask what ‘tactically dismantle’ meant, the world shifted.
It went completely, utterly silent.
It wasn’t a normal silence.
It was a vacuum.
It felt like the air itself had just been violently sucked out of the atmosphere, leaving a heavy, suffocating pressure in its wake.
My eyes snapped open beneath my hat.
My Leon S.
Kennedy survival instincts didn’t just itch—they screamed.
It felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped directly into my nervous system.
‘Threat!’ my brain roared, overriding every single lazy impulse I possessed.
‘Catastrophic threat detected!
Move!
Move now!’
I violently kicked myself off the ground, springing to my feet with a fluid, terrifying speed that shocked even me.
“Kai?
What’s wrong?” Armin asked, shrinking back from my sudden, panicked movement, clutching his book to his chest.
Before I could even open my mouth to answer, the sky above us exploded.
A massive, deafening crack of thunder shattered the peaceful afternoon.
A blinding, apocalyptic bolt of golden lightning struck the ground just outside the massive stone structure of Wall Maria.
The shockwave hit us a fraction of a second later.
The physical force of the wind was like a punch to the chest.
It knocked Armin and Eren flat onto their backs in the grass.
Mikasa stumbled hard, barely catching herself before falling.
I dug my heavily modified boots deep into the dirt, leaning my center of gravity into the shockwave, my arms crossed tightly over my face.
My Parker brain was frantically calculating wind speed, atmospheric displacement, and blast radius, while my Leon reflexes were rapidly scanning the rising dust cloud for hostile targets.
Then, the wind died down.
The dust began to clear.
The people walking in the town square nearby had all stopped moving.
Everyone was frozen in place, their heads tilted back, staring up at the fifty-meter stone wall that had protected humanity for a hundred uninterrupted years.
A massive, skinless red hand suddenly clamped over the top of the stone wall.
The solid concrete cracked and crumbled under the immense, god-like pressure, sending massive boulders tumbling down toward the district below.
I felt my heart drop entirely into my stomach.
Slowly, agonizingly, a colossal, muscle-bound head rose above the wall.
Thick, boiling steam hissed from its exposed musculature, pouring over the town like a suffocating fog.
It had no skin.
It had no lips.
Just exposed, massive teeth and dead, unfeeling eyes staring down at us like we were insignificant insects.
Eren was frozen in pure, unadulterated terror on the grass next to me.
“It’s…
a Titan,” Armin whispered, his voice trembling so violently it barely registered over the hiss of the steam.
‘No, it’s the apocalypse,’ I thought, my lazy, average-guy persona completely evaporating under the sheer, suffocating terror of reality.
My Peter Parker intellect did the catastrophic math instantly.
A sixty-meter biological anomaly.
A solid stone gate.
The trajectory of a leg pulling back for a massive kinetic strike.
‘The gate is going to breach in exactly three seconds,’ my brain concluded with cold, terrifying precision.
‘The resulting high-velocity stone debris will instantly kill anyone within a three-hundred-meter radius of the impact zone.’
The Colossal Titan pulled its massive, skinless foot back.
My UR template didn’t hesitate.
Leon’s CQC and survival instincts completely overrode my mortal terror.
I didn’t freeze.
I didn’t scream.
I moved.
I grabbed Eren by the thick collar of his jacket with my left hand, and Armin by his shirt with my right, utilizing the perfect physical leverage and grip strength my template afforded me.
“Move!” I roared, violently hauling them both to their feet and physically shoving them toward the inner alleys.
“Run!
Now!”
BOOM.
The Colossal Titan’s foot shattered the front gate of Shiganshina.
The sound was indescribable.
It wasn’t just an explosion; it was the sound of the world ending.
A massive chunk of the gate, easily the size of a two-story house, ripped through the air and slammed into the town square, instantly crushing dozens of people in a horrifying shower of blood and stone.
The sheer kinetic shockwave threw me completely off my feet.
I hit the dirt hard, my shoulder screaming in pain, but Leon’s instincts took over.
I rolled through the momentum perfectly, coming up on one knee without breaking stride.
Screams erupted across the entire district.
A chaotic, deafening symphony of absolute, primal panic.
I looked up through the thick, choking cloud of dust and debris.
The gate was gone.
In its place was a massive, gaping hole leading straight into the Titan-infested wilderness.
And the monsters were already walking through.
I spat a mouthful of dirt onto the cobblestones, my chest heaving, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I was ten years old.
I was mortal.
I was highly squishy.
And the worst day in human history had just officially begun.
‘Well, system,’ I thought grimly, pulling a roll of Duck Tales duct tape from my digital inventory w
ith trembling, dirt-stained hands.
‘I really, really hope this Ultra Rare template is as good as you said it was.’