“Ow… that hurts so much!”
Jianren felt like his head had been trampled by ten thousand alpacas at full gallop, or like someone had forced an entire bottle of industrial alcohol down his throat.
It hurt so badly that his skull felt ready to split open.
His last memory was of himself, a glorious flop of a web novel author, hammering away at his keyboard with all his passion, then everything went black, and he knew nothing after that.
“Holy crap, did I… drop dead from overwork?”
He slowly opened his eyes.
What greeted him was a shabby, moldy ceiling.
The air was thick with a strange mix of cheap cigarettes, alcohol, and…
a faint trace of blood.
“Wait, where is this?”
Fragments of unfamiliar memories flooded into his mind like a tide.
Wos Nibaba, twenty-five years old, white, an orphan, single as a dog, and also a flop of an author.
The difference was that he wrote classical literature, and his prose wasn’t even good, so there was no market for it in today’s society.
Being a complete flop was no surprise at all.
He lived in the most “free-spirited” and “simple-hearted” place in all of America, Gotham City…
or rather, New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, right next door.
Just last night, after his manuscript was thrown into the trash right in front of him by his editor again, this guy had been drowning his sorrows in alcohol when he unfortunately witnessed a gang shootout.
The moment he scrambled back to his rented room, the gangsters who wanted to silence him tracked him down, and a single bullet from a suppressed gun neatly sent him off to heaven.
And then there was Jianren, an unlucky guy who, the next morning, took over the body like a cuckoo taking over a magpie’s nest, and successfully logged into this account.
“I transmigrated? Into the Marvel world? Hell’s Kitchen, New York, in 2007? Why are there so many broken buffs over my head? Phew… at least it’s not that one, or I’d be better off killing myself right now.”
Wos Nibaba?!
What kind of demon name is that?!
Oh wait, now he should just go by Wos.
His head hurt even worse, and he instinctively touched the back of his skull.
It was sticky, with some hard lumps.
He brought his hand in front of his eyes and saw it was covered in dried, blackened blood.
“Huh? (⊙o⊙)? Why is my head pointy in the back? Let me ask you… bleh…”
His stomach churned violently.
Having only ever seen gory pictures online in his previous life, Wos had never experienced anything like this, and he immediately held onto the edge of the bed and threw up.
“Knock knock knock!”
Urgent knocking rang out, along with a gruff male voice: “Wos! Open the door! I know you’re in there! The rent! You’re two months behind!”
It was the landlord!
Wos flinched, and when he saw the vomit on the floor and the large pool of blood beside the bed, cold sweat instantly broke out on him.
If the landlord saw this, he’d probably be sent straight to the police station and locked up as a murderer.
“Just a second! Just a second! I’m… I’m changing clothes!” Wos shouted with a trembling voice, thinking fast.
“Don’t give me excuses! You broke loser! If you don’t pay the rent, I’ll throw you and all your garbage manuscripts out on the street!” The landlord’s roar cut right through the thin wooden door.
“No! Sir! Please give me a little more time, I… I just got inspired! Yes! Inspiration! A great work is about to be born! By then, forget the rent, I’ll buy the White House and give it to you!”
Wos babbled nonsense while using both hands and feet to shove the bloody pillow and sheets under the bed.
Damn, what kind of insane things am I saying?
Even I don’t believe it.
The landlord outside fell silent for a few seconds, as if judging how believable that speech was.
“Three days! I’m only giving you three days! If I still don’t see the money after three days, you get the hell out!”
With a curse and the sound of receding footsteps, Wos finally let out a breath and plopped down on the floor.
“I’m alive… holy crap.”
[Ding!]
[Summoning System activated.]
[Summoning System function introduction: Can summon characters from various anime, films, games, comics, and novels to the current world.]
[For each summoned character, the Host can copy one random ability from them.]
[Note: Summoning time, quantity, and characters are all random. The system has no other functions.]
A mechanical, emotionless voice suddenly sounded in Wos’s mind.
“Who’s there? Am I hearing things?” Wos shook his head.
The next second, on the relatively clean patch of floor at his feet, a golden magic circle made of countless intricate runes appeared out of thin air, giving off a dazzling yet not blinding glow.
Wos was completely stunned.
When the light faded, two tiny figures stood in the magic circle.
“Bam! Clang! Thud! Oho ho ho!!!”
A blue-and-white cat was swinging a frying pan, completely out of proportion with its body, and smashing it down hard on the head of a small brown mouse.
“Clang!”
The crisp sound of metal on metal echoed through the room.
The little mouse saw stars, its body flattened like a spring and then bounced back to normal.
Then it pulled out a baseball bat from who knows where, thicker than the mouse itself, and hit a home run on the blue-and-white cat’s toes.
“Squeak squeak squeak!” (Jerry taunted smugly.)
“Yeow… ooow!” (Tom hopped around on one foot in pain.)
The blue-and-white cat let out a howl, clutching its foot and tap-dancing in place.
It was Tom and Jerry, no doubt about it.
The two were fighting so happily that they didn’t notice the surroundings had completely changed.
Until Tom stepped right into the vomit Wos had just thrown up, slipped, and did a perfect flat-ground faceplant onto the floor.
Tom got up in a sorry state, wiped his face, and only then did he belatedly look up and see the dumbstruck Wos, along with this room that was even more run-down than his own cat bed.
Jerry, meanwhile, was still holding the baseball bat, persistently whacking away at Tom’s feet.
“Eighty! Eighty!…”
Tom couldn’t take it anymore.
He snatched Jerry’s baseball bat, put his strength into both hands, and snapped it in two with a crack, then threw it away.
Then, like performing a magic trick, he pulled a flyswatter out from behind his back and slapped Jerry flat with a smack, turning him into a thin “mouse pancake.”
A few seconds later, like an inflating balloon, the “mouse pancake” Jerry popped back to normal with a pop.
He shook his head, his tiny eyes burning with raging fury, clearly preparing to launch an unprecedented revenge!
Jerry was just about to pull out the dynamite pack he’d swiped from his little nephew Tuffy’s pants and light it for a mutual-destruction plan, squeaking as he charged at Tom.
Then Tom gravely reached out a paw and pressed down on Jerry’s little head, making him turn to look at the other side.
He pointed at the tall, blood-covered human, Wos, and then at the strange, run-down room beneath their feet.
That expression seemed to say: “You idiot! Look at this! Look at him! Look at this dump! Are you freaking blind? Is this the time for us to fight?! Get a grip on the situation, you jerk!”
[Summoned characters detected: Tom and Jerry]
[Beginning random ability copy]
[Copying…]
[Congratulations, Host, you have obtained the abilities: “Master of Missing the Mark” and “Walking on Air”]
[Master of Missing the Mark]: Jerry’s exclusive skill.
When an object is launched at you, it will leave its original trajectory and miss, ensuring your life is safe.
(Jerry relies on this trick to escape death many times under Tom’s attacks.)
[Walking on Air]: Tom’s exclusive skill.
When you accidentally get launched into the sky, as long as you don’t look down at the ground, you can keep flying or walking in the air.
(Every time Jerry sends Tom flying, he recklessly looks down at the ground. Otherwise, he could fly for the rest of his life.)
“Tom? Jerry?”
One is the strongest of the Tom family, the other the weakest of the Jerry family.
No matter how dumb Wos was, he could tell these were the two main characters of *Tom and Jerry*!
Funny cartoon characters generally share one trait: they’re “immortal.” No matter how they get killed, they come back to life on the spot.
But it seemed the abilities he’d gotten weren’t the most powerful “immortality,” though having [Master of Missing the Mark] and [Walking on Air] wasn’t bad either.
Although these two abilities were conceptual, in the Marvel world they still seemed a bit underwhelming.
They had no attack power, being purely defensive.
“Forget it, something is better than nothing. Let me think about how to deal with these two little guys.”