Andy leafed through the thick stack of finished pages in his hands, and his tone came out somewhere between doubt and disbelief.
“So this is the new comic.” He turned another page, slower.
“A subject with absolutely nothing to do with superheroes.
And this *bloody* on top of it.
You’re sure people will read this?” Because the graveyard was real.
Nobody could count the artists who had died on the hill of other genres, and every professional in the building knew the same catechism: superheroes were the easiest to draw and the most profitable to sell, and everything else was charity work with extra steps.
“I’m sure.” Trist knew exactly what was circling behind his uncle’s eyes, and answered the real question instead of the spoken one.
“These two books are going to seize eyeballs like nothing on the market, Uncle Andy.
And you know better than anyone that the superhero shelf is saturated.
One-Punch Man catching fire doesn’t mean the genre has anything left to give.” “Fine.
You’re the boss, whatever you say goes.” Andy raised the pages in mild surrender.
“My worry is the other thing.
People are going to say the new genius has already run dry.” “Impossible.” Trist snorted a laugh and tapped his own temple.
“As it happens, there’s one more superhero title sitting right up here.
It just isn’t the right time to publish it yet.” “Good.” And the relief in Andy’s chest was genuine, because a boss with a card still face-down was a boss you could follow.
“Then I’ll take these to print now.
They’ll be on sale by tomorrow morning.” He paused at the door, and his voice changed registers, dropping into something older and warier.
“One more thing.
Manhattan hasn’t been peaceful lately.
A few days back, some gangsters turned up dead, and the word going around is that a *mutant* did it.
Reduced them to residue, is what people are saying.
And the gang behind those men is a major drug operation.
Stay indoors these next few days, you hear me?” “Thanks for the concern, Uncle Andy.” Trist saw him out with a perfectly filial smile, and behind the smile, a point of light flickered through his eyes.
Four days had passed since the alley.
*So that’s the shape the rumor took.
A mutant.
Well, they’re not entirely wrong about the residue.* Shonen Jump ran weekly, and tomorrow was the new issue’s release day, and that made tonight the deadline for a decision he’d been sitting on all week.
He called up the interface.
The fan value had crossed one million, just barely, and every point of it was still there, untouched, because he had spent four days accumulating and not daring to draw, haunted by the specific nightmare of burning a hundred thousand points and receiving Saitama’s jumpsuit.
But the clock had run out, and the logic was simple.
Strictly speaking, waiting until tomorrow meant more points and more draws.
Tomorrow, however, the prize pool expanded to cover all three published books, ten-plus chapters of material, and of those three books, only One-Punch Man’s contents did him any real good; the other two were full of things he had no use for.
A bigger pool meant thinner odds on the useful pulls.
Which meant the correct move was to empty the chamber *now*, while the pool was still pure.
“System.
Adjust the format.
Five draws at one hundred thousand, and one at five hundred thousand.” The wheel spun.
*[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.
OBTAINED: SAITAMA’S WHITE CAPE.]* *Of course.
Fortune’s chosen yesterday, fortune’s outcast today.* The white cape drifted down into his hands, and he shook his head once and dropped it straight into the wastebasket without a second word, because Saitama’s uniform had no special properties, no story, and precisely zero damage reduction.
It was a bedsheet with a career.
*[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.
OBTAINED: ONE TELEVISION SET.]* *You can pull a TELEVISION out of this?!* *[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.
OBTAINED: ONE SOCCER BALL.]* *…Is this the butt-chin kid’s ball?* Trist carried the soccer ball out and tossed it onto the living room sofa, and Gali, professional layabout, went from horizontal to airborne in one motion, eyes shining, and started kicking it around the room on the spot.
*So she is a child after all.
In some respects.* He went back to the interface.
“Continue.” *[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.
OBTAINED: VACCINE MAN’S SKILL, LIGHT BALL FRAGMENT x1.]* *There it is.* This was the category that actually mattered to him; skill fragments were pure, stackable, practical power.
Level 1 had already been enough to put a hole through a grown man.
Level 2 would be more so.
He equipped it, and on the skill module, the notation beside the white-blue sphere ticked over from Lv1 to Lv2.
*[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.
OBTAINED: SUBTERRANEAN KING FRAGMENT x1.]* *The Subterranean King.
…Emmm.* In the dream, that thing had been a god, trading blows with Saitama as an equal.
In reality, it rated as a Demon-level disaster, an entire sky and earth apart from Vaccine Man.
Which reminded him of a gap in his knowledge.
“System.
You never explained character fragments.
How do they work?” *[COLLECT TEN IDENTICAL CHARACTER FRAGMENTS TO SUMMON THAT CHARACTER.
THE SUMMONED CHARACTER’S DISPOSITION TOWARD THE HOST IS FRIENDLY AND TRUSTING.]* *[ITEM FRAGMENTS REQUIRE ONLY THREE TO SUMMON THE ITEM.]* *Summoning characters.
Now that is a different weight class entirely.* Manga characters, loose in the Marvel universe, brawling through its streets.
Trist felt his fingers itch just imagining the footage.
He genuinely, sincerely wanted to see that day arrive.
Which left the finale: the five-hundred-thousand-point draw, with rare-item odds running five times the standard rate.
He forced the excitement down into something resembling calm and locked his eyes on the interface, heart sitting all the way up in his throat.
*[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.
OBTAINED: GIANT SKILL SET.
TOUGHNESS FRAGMENT x2, MONSTER STRENGTH FRAGMENT x1, NEGATIVE INTELLIGENCE FRAGMENT x1.]* Trist sucked in a breath.
A *set*.
The draw could produce entire sets, and, wait.
“System.
Get out here.
*Negative intelligence?* What is that supposed to mean?
Intelligence can go NEGATIVE?” *[AFTER MARUGORI DRANK THE SERUM, IT WAS THE REDUCTION IN HIS INTELLIGENCE THAT LED HIM TO SWAT HIS OWN BROTHER TO DEATH.
PRIOR TO CONSUMPTION, HIS INTELLIGENCE WAS NORMAL.]* The mechanical voice paused, then added, with what Trist chose to interpret as delicacy: *[THE HOST MAY CHOOSE NOT TO EQUIP IT.]* *Obviously!
Who on this Earth equips THAT!* And thank every god going that he’d never drunk the serum himself.
His eyes drifted, with a small chill, to Gali, still happily punting the soccer ball off the furniture.
*Did she get…?* No.
No, the serum had certainly been digested to nothing.
And besides, he thought, with the particular affection of a guardian, it wasn’t as if she’d had far to fall.
The takeaway was worth writing down, though: the draw covered anything *manifested* in the published pages.
Actively used, passively carried, implied by events, it all counted, and it all counted as skills.
Even the drawbacks.
He equipped Toughness and Monster Strength, and two streams of white light poured into his body, warm energy running the full circuit of him, and inside a minute he could feel every cell waking up, strength galloping through his limbs looking for a door.
He gave it one.
A single punch, thrown at empty air.
The force cracked in the middle of the room like close thunder, and a shockwave peeled off the impact point and crossed to the wall, and the wall gave, a respectable crater blooming in the plaster with spiderweb fissures running out from it in every direction.
Out in the living room, Gali glanced toward the study, registered nothing worth stopping for, set the soccer ball down, and returned to her snacks.
“Well.” Trist scratched his head at the crater, entirely without distress, because money had stopped being a problem some time ago.
“Time to renovate, I suppose.” And underneath, the glee ran warm.
*Worthy of a Demon-level giant.
Monster Strength at Level 1 already hits like this.* The phone rang.
“Hey, is this Trist?
The New York carnival parade is today.
You coming?” Peter’s voice came down the line bright and eager, and Trist heard the brightness for what it was.
The kid had been climbing out of a deep, dark valley ever since Uncle Ben was shot, and what he needed right now, more than anything on this earth, was laughter to fill the hollow places back in.
“Sure.” He hung up, turned around, and found Gali already stationed in front of him, eyes enormous and brimming with professional-grade tears.
“…Fine.
Fine, I’ll bring you.” “Heheheh.” The tears evaporated on contact with victory.
Gali snatched up her little purple backpack, the one packed entirely with snacks, and ran to the door, waving at him to hurry.
*Maybe the negative intelligence didn’t get digested after all.* Trist felt a very specific tiredness roll over him.
He’d taken in one small stray kid, and somehow acquired every last worry of raising a daughter.