Ross Vance stood frozen at the mouth of that foul-smelling alley for a full five minutes before he finally snapped out of the shock of the recent surreal events.
He looked down at his tattered overcoat, its original color completely obscured by dirt.
Beneath it was a T-shirt so stiff with grime it could practically stand up on its own.
His pants had two gaping holes at the knees, and his sneakers—their soles flapping loose—clacked noisily with every step.
His entire wealth.
That was it.
“That Old Goldie is absurdly unreliable…”
Ross searched every single pocket on his person, but couldn’t turn up even a dime—let alone greenbacks or a MetroCard.
“Just dumped me into the Marvel Universe like this?
Where’s my starting capital?
Where’s my ID?
You could’ve at least given me a Social Security card or a driver’s license!”
He flipped off the sky once more, but this time he couldn’t even muster the energy to curse aloud.
After all, cursing Old Goldie wasn’t going to put food in his stomach.
Ross walked a bit farther down the street.
The road sign was coated in rust, the lettering barely legible.
“Hell’s Kitchen, Tenth Avenue.”
He paused.
“Hell’s Kitchen?”
He knew those words all too well.
The absolute worst neighborhood in Marvel’s New York—infested with gangs, wretched public security, Kingpin’s turf, and Daredevil’s hunting grounds.
By day, low-level thugs collected protection money; by night, all manner of monsters and freaks roamed the streets.
An outsider stumbling into this place would be lucky to survive a week.
The Emperor dropping him here was the equivalent of throwing a Level 1 fresh character into a max-level boss zone.
“Fine, Old Goldie, you really know how to pick a spot,” Ross muttered through gritted teeth.
He pulled his ragged coat tighter around himself.
Though the thin garment did nothing to block the chilling November wind, it was better than nothing.
He began walking, organizing his thoughts as he moved.
The psionic seed was indeed inside him.
He could feel a faint warmth in the center of his chest, pulsing sporadically.
But that was all.
No golden rays, no surge of power, no flashy effects of a psionic awakening.
He had tried focusing his attention to sense it, but apart from turning himself red in the face, nothing had happened.
“Looks like I have to purge my first heretic to officially activate it.”
Recalling what the Emperor had told him, Ross quickly arrived at this conclusion.
Which brought him into a classic catch-22.
To activate the psionic seed, he needed to kill a heretic.
To kill a heretic, he needed power.
To have power, he needed to activate the psionic seed.
Ross stood outside a shuttered laundromat, staring at his reflection in the glass window.
A pale youth clad in rags, smelling strongly of a dumpster.
In this state, forget judging heretics—any random punk on the street could end up judging him.
“Calm down.
Stay calm.”
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus.
“In Stellaris, you often start with nothing but a backwater planet and a single corvette, without even Tier II tech unlocked.
The point isn’t to whine about a bad start; it’s to devise a short-term strategy.”
Rule number one of the short-term strategy was not judging heretics.
It was staying alive.
Rule number two: fill his stomach.
From the moment he was sucked into his computer that morning until now, Ross hadn’t eaten a single bite.
His stomach had begun growling in protest—so loudly that a passing homeless man turned to stare at him.
“What are you looking at?
Never seen a starving guy before?” Ross snapped defensively.
Then his stomach rumbled again, leaving him feeling genuinely embarrassed.
He continued down Tenth Avenue, his eyes scanning the surroundings.
In a hellhole like Hell’s Kitchen, legitimate shops were scarce, but pawnshops, bars, and strip clubs were everywhere.
Now and then, street vendors sold hot dogs or second-hand phones, but Ross didn’t have a single cent to his name.
He harbored serious suspicions that Old Goldie had done this on purpose, considering how much blasphemy against the great Emperor he had harbored in his heart.
“No, I need food first.”
Ross stopped near a hot dog stand.
As the savory scent of grilled sausages and onions hit his nose, his stomach went into full revolt, rumbling like an air-raid siren.
The vendor was a burly bald man who flipped sausages while eyeing Ross’s beggar-like attire with intense suspicion.
His look clearly said: *Step within ten feet of me, and I’m calling my crew to beat you up.*
Tactfully stepping back two paces, Ross sat down on a nearby stoop and began reassessing his options.
Odd jobs?
There was no shortage of under-the-table labor in Hell’s Kitchen, but without ID or physical strength, who would hire him?
Mugging someone?
Moral code aside, with his current physique, it was debatable whether he could win a fight against an elementary schooler.
Begging?
That actually had the highest chance of success, but as the heir personally appointed by Old Goldie, begging on his first day on the job would probably prompt the Emperor to reclaim the psionic seed immediately out of sheer humiliation.
“What’s more important, dignity or life?”
Ross pondered for a full 0.3 seconds.
“Life.”
Just as he was about to get up and scout a good spot to beg, a commotion broke out across the street.
A few thugs in leather jackets were surrounding an old man pushing a fruit cart.
The red-haired leader smirked, picked up an apple, took a bite, and casually tossed the core back into the cart’s basket.
“Protection fee.
Same old rule: five hundred a week.”
The red-haired thug patted the old man’s shoulder, his tone flippant.
The old man hunched over, his voice trembling.
“Wasn’t it three hundred last week?
I really don’t have that much this month…”
“Inflation, old man,” the red-haired punk grinned, exposing tobacco-stained yellow teeth.
His lackeys burst into laughter behind him.
Sitting on the stoop, Ross narrowed his eyes at the scene.
The psionic seed suddenly gave a violent pulse.
It was a strange sensation, like a hound catching the scent of prey, causing his muscles to tense instinctively for a moment.
“Heretics?”
Ross whispered, his brow furrowing.
These thugs were street bullies, sure, but did they qualify as “heretics” under Imperial law?
That term was defined way too broadly—ranging from mutant gene modifications down to disrespecting the Emperor’s authority on the streets.
It seemed like anything could fit into it.
Before he could figure it out, the psionic seed pulsed again.
This time it was even clearer, carrying a distinct sense of urgency.
Ross glanced down at his thin arms and legs, then looked up at the burly thugs across the street.
“Look, man, it’s not that I don’t want to judge them, but with my build, if I rush over, am I judging heretics or serving myself up as their lunch?”
The psionic seed fell silent for a moment before pulsing a third time.
This time, Ross actually sensed a hint of disappointment and frustration in the vibration.
“…”
Ross decided to ignore the psionic seed’s nagging for now and stayed on the stoop to observe.
When you were spawn-camped at the start of a Stellaris match, the right move wasn’t to charge blindly, but to lay low and build up strength.
What he needed right now was intelligence, resources, and timing—not hot-headed rashness.
The old man had been shoved to the ground.
The fruit cart was overturned, scattering apples and oranges all across the pavement.
The red-haired thug fished a worn wallet out of the old man’s pocket, counted the cash inside, spat in disgust, and strutted off with his cronies.
Watching their departing figures, Ross silently memorized the red-haired punk’s face.
“You’d better pray you don’t count as heretics,” he muttered under his breath, unsure whether he was speaking to them or making excuses for holding back.
His stomach growled once more.
Ross sighed, stood up, and walked toward the scattered fruit.
He decided to help the old man pick up the produce and see if he could trade his help for a couple of apples to quiet his hunger.
It was probably the most realistic plan available right now.
An chosen successor handpicked by the Emperor, burdened with the sacred mission to cleanse and judge the entire Marvel Universe…
On day one of his tenure, picking up apples in Hell’s Kitchen to survive.
Ross thought to himself that if this start were written into a novel, readers would surely blast the author for torturing the main character.
Ross bent down and picked up an apple that had rolled to his feet.
It was bright red and glistening with drops of water, gleaming temptingly under the streetlights.
His stomach immediately let out a low rumble, and his mouth began to water uncontrollably.
He stared at the apple for three seconds before holding back.
No.
He was an educated man, after all; he hadn’t sunk below his moral baseline just yet.
He placed the apple back into the old man’s basket, squatted down, and began gathering the fruit scattered across the ground.
“Who were those guys?”
The old man was frantically scooping fruit into his basket, his back stained with water from where he had been shoved down.
Hearing someone speak beside him, he flinched hard, instinctively clutching his empty wallet to his chest and yelling, “I don’t have any money left!”
Then he saw who was speaking.
A ragged coat, hair like a bird’s nest, smudges of soot across his face, and an odor even worse than his own.
This was clearly a homeless kid far worse off than he was.
The old man’s shoulders visibly relaxed, an unspoken bond of trust between the impoverished taking hold instantly.
He took the orange Ross handed him and sighed.
“Thanks for helping me clean up, son.
Are you asking about those extortionists?”
“Yeah.” Ross neatly stacked the last apple into the basket and dusted off his hands.
“I wanted to ask where they come from.”
The old man righted his fallen fruit cart, rearranging the produce as he lowered his voice.
“They’re with the Three-Face Gang.
They run this area.
Every small vendor on this street has to pay them protection money.
If you don’t pay, they smash your stall.
If you pay too little, it’s the same deal.”
“The Three-Face Gang?”
Ross paused, his lips twitching uncontrollably.
“Why are they called the Three-Face Gang?
Who came up with such a ridiculous name?”
The name was way too bizarre.
In his mind, he quickly ran through the various factions of Hell’s Kitchen in the Marvel Universe:
Kingpin’s gangland empire, the ninja of The Hand, Hammerhead’s Russian Mob, even Owl’s drug ring.
He had never heard of any Three-Face Gang.
Was this some obscure, D-list villain squeezed into a dark corner of Hell’s Kitchen by Marvel?
Hearing his remark, the old man reflexively glanced around.
Once he confirmed the leather-jacket thugs were out of sight, he leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper.
“Don’t go telling anyone I told you this.
Their boss—the guy called Three-Face—he isn’t human.”
“How so?”
Ross’s interest was piqued.
He stayed squatted on the ground.
The old man swallowed hard, a flash of genuine, unfeigned terror in his milky eyes.
“That Three-Face guy…
he has three faces growing on his head.”
Ross’s eyebrow twitched.
“Three faces?”
The old man gestured at his own face with trembling fingers.
“One on the left, one in the middle, one on the right—stacked together like three heads forcibly crushed into a single skull.
Each face has a different expression.
The left one looks like it’s crying, the right one looks like it’s laughing, and the middle one…
the middle one has no expression at all.
It just stares straight at you.”
The old man spoke haltingly, but his words painted a vivid, chilling picture.
Ross couldn’t help but picture the creature in his mind, feeling a cold prickle at the back of his neck.
“Rumor has it,” the old man’s fingers trembled even more violently, “that Three-Face isn’t human.
He’s a demon crawled straight out of hell.
If anyone crosses him, he stares at them with those three faces and then…
then he devours them.”
“Devours them?” Ross frowned.
“Literally eats them, or…”
“Their soul,” the old man interrupted.
“He eats their souls with those three faces.
Someone saw it with their own eyes—a guy who defaulted on a loan to Three-Face was stared at by those three faces for an entire night.
The next morning, the man was still alive.
He could walk and eat, but his eyes were completely hollow, like an empty shell.
He couldn’t even remember his own name.
A few days later, he died, and when he died, he had a smile on his face—the exact same smile as the face on Three-Face’s right side.”
Ross fell silent.
Before transmigrating, he would have dismissed this as just another urban legend or street myth.
But he had seen the Emperor’s Golden Throne with his own eyes.
He had watched the psionic seed enter his chest.
The supernatural was real in this world.
And he himself was part of it.
The Marvel Universe.
Hell’s Kitchen, New York.
A creature with three faces that devoured human souls.
This wasn’t some petty street thug boss; this was an entity from some dark dimension.
Mutation?
Demon?
Or some unrecorded supervillain?
Whatever it was, Ross had already categorized it in his mind.
Non-human form.
Devours human souls.
Presents itself as a demon.
A heretic—an open-and-shut case of heresy.
The psionic seed in his chest pulsed violently—far harder than before, as if his heart were being squeezed tight by a fist.
A searing current spread from his chest into every limb.
A hair-thin arc of visible golden lightning crackled across his fingertips, producing a faint sizzle in the air.
The old man flinched at the sound, looking around in confusion to find its source, but saw nothing.
Ross clenched his fist, forcing the thread of psionic lightning back under his skin, though his heart continued to race.
He was now absolutely certain: purging a heretic would activate the psionic seed, and his first target was officially locked in.
“Where do they usually hang out?” Ross asked, keeping his tone as calm as possible.
The old man gave him a cautious glance.
“Young man, what are you planning?
Don’t go doing something foolish and getting yourself killed.”
“You misunderstand, sir.” Ross stood up, handing the final apple back to the old man with a harmless, innocent smile.
“I just want to know so I can steer clear of them.”
The old man took the apple skeptically.
After a moment’s hesitation, he pointed into the distance and whispered, “Three blocks east, there’s an abandoned auto repair shop.
The place with three red circles painted on the entrance is their turf.
Remember, don’t ever go near there at night.”
“Got it.
Thank you, sir.” Ross brushed the dust off his knees, turning to leave.
“Wait, young man.”
The old man called him back, grabbing two apples from his cart and shoving them into Ross’s hands.
A tight but genuine smile broke across his weathered face.
“Thanks for helping me clean up.
Take these and eat—sorry it isn’t much.”
Ross looked down at the two bright red apples in his hands, his throat bobbing.
Hell’s Kitchen was a place crawling with gangs and ruthless tyrants, where innocent people were victimized every single day.
Yet a man who had been pushed around his entire life was still willing to share what little he had with a stranger worse off than himself.
He took a bite of the apple.
The sweet juice burst in his mouth, so rich and satisfying he almost broke into tears right then and there.
“Sir, what’s your name?”
“Just call me John.”
“Alright, John.” Ross stuffed the second apple into his ragged coat pocket and waved goodbye.
“Give it a little time, and no one will ever collect protection money on this street again.
Mark my words.”
Old John froze, baffled by the remark.
Before he could make sense of it, the young man—clad in rags even worse than his own—had already turned and disappeared into the night.