The man running down the busy sidewalk of City Z’s commercial district was absolutely fighting for his life.
He was drenched in sweat, his lungs heaving like a pair of blown bellows, and he clutched a stolen designer handbag tightly against his chest.
“Out of the way!” the thief screamed, shoving a pedestrian into a fruit stand as he desperately rounded the corner into an alleyway.
Ren jogged into the alley a few seconds later.
He wasn’t sprinting.
He wasn’t even breathing heavily.
He had a plastic grocery bag dangling lazily from his left hand, and his right hand was tucked into the pocket of his standard-issue gray hero jacket.
Ren focused his vision on the fleeing criminal.
[Thief – Power Level: 4]
Ren let out a quiet sigh.
A Power Level of 4.
Three months ago, this man would have been an even match for him.
Now, chasing him felt like a professional track athlete racing a toddler.
With a Power Level of 24, Ren’s muscles possessed a density and explosive output that made normal human movement look like it was happening underwater.
He could see the exact moment the thief’s leg muscles burned out.
He could see the clumsy, uncoordinated way the man swung his arms.
“Alright, that’s far enough,” Ren muttered.
He didn’t use his full speed.
If he did, the sheer acceleration might shatter the pavement and draw unwanted attention.
Instead, he simply lengthened his stride.
In three seconds, he closed a gap that should have taken ten.
Ren reached out and casually tapped the back of the thief’s knee with the tip of his sneaker.
The thief’s leg buckled instantly.
He went flying forward, tumbling over the rough asphalt and skinning his elbows before slamming into a chain-link fence.
Before the man could even groan in pain, Ren was standing over him.
He smoothly plucked the stolen handbag from the man’s grip.
“Hero Association,” Ren said in a bored, monotonous voice.
“You have the right to remain silent, and all that.”
Ten minutes later, a pair of local police officers arrived.
They handcuffed the groaning thief and tossed him into the back of their cruiser.
The older officer, chewing on a toothpick, pulled out a digital tablet and looked Ren up and down.
“Name and rank?” the officer grunted.
“Ren.
C-Class, Rank 388,” Ren replied, handing over his black ID card.
The officer swiped the card through his tablet.
A green checkmark illuminated the screen.
“Right.
Purse snatching.
Threat level: Below Wolf.
Your weekly quota is officially met, Hero.
Try not to hurt yourself out here.”
“Thank you, officer,” Ren said politely, taking his card back.
He walked away from the scene, blending back into the crowded afternoon streets.
It was entirely unglamorous.
There was no cheering crowd, no news cameras, and certainly no adrenaline.
But as Ren checked his Association app on his newly purchased smartphone, a notification popped up.
[Weekly Quota Met.
Next Evaluation: 7 Days.
Monthly Stipend Transfer: Pending.]
It was a necessary chore.
The two hundred thousand yen hit his bank account every month like clockwork, and he immediately spent ninety percent of it on high-grade protein.
Ren walked toward the massive grocery store near the train station.
His grocery basket was a monument to the Saiyan metabolism.
Twenty pounds of premium beef, five bags of white rice, cartons of eggs, and gallons of milk.
He paid for his mountain of food and stepped out through the automatic sliding doors, fully intending to catch the train back to the Ghost Town.
Then, the siren started.
It wasn’t the localized police siren.
It was the deep, vibrating, apocalyptic wail of the Hero Association’s city-wide alert system.
“Emergency alert.
A Demon-level threat has appeared in the central airspace of City Z.
All citizens evacuate to the underground shelters immediately.”
The bustling commercial district instantly devolved into pandemonium.
People screamed, dropping their shopping bags and sprinting wildly toward the subway entrances.
Cars crashed into each other as drivers abandoned their vehicles in a blind panic.
Ren didn’t run.
He tightened his grip on his groceries and looked up at the sky.
Three miles away, hovering directly over the skyline, was a monstrous, terrifying silhouette.
It was a bird, but mutated beyond logic.
Its wingspan was easily the size of a commercial airliner, casting a massive, terrifying shadow over the city blocks.
Its feathers were sharp, metallic blades that reflected the afternoon sun, and its beak was dripping with something dark.
A Demon-level threat.
A monster capable of halting the functions of an entire city or destroying it completely.
Ren’s heart rate spiked, a surge of hot adrenaline rushing into his veins.
His Saiyan blood instantly reacted to the presence of a powerful predator.
He focused his vision, trying to pull a Power Level from the distant creature.
The numbers flickered violently and flashed a deep, bloody red.
[Iron-Winged Terror – Power Level: ???]
It was far beyond his capacity to read.
If a C-Class hero like him went anywhere near that thing, he would be reduced to a bloody smear on the pavement before he even realized he was dead.
Suddenly, a massive, unnatural pressure descended over the entire district.
It felt like gravity itself had suddenly doubled.
Ren’s knees buckled slightly, and he had to clench his jaw to keep himself standing upright.
The air grew freezing cold, and the clouds above the city began to swirl into a massive, unnatural vortex.
A tiny, blinding point of neon green light shot up from the distant skyscrapers, ascending toward the giant bird at a speed that defied the laws of physics.
Ren squinted, his eyes watering from the sheer intensity of the light.
He tried to focus his scanner on the tiny green dot.
The digital overlay didn’t just glitch; it completely crashed.
A sharp, piercing headache spiked directly behind Ren’s eyes, and a massive red [ERROR: INCALCULABLE] flashed so brightly in his vision that he had to physically cover his face with his free hand.
When he looked back up, the battle was already over.
The tiny silhouette—a woman in a dark dress—floated calmly in the sky, her body radiating an aura of absolute, terrifying psychic power.
She simply raised her hand and twisted her wrist.
The Demon-level monster, a creature that could have butchered every single A-Class hero in the city, froze in mid-air.
Its metallic feathers bent backward.
Then, with a sickening, echoing crunch that could be heard for miles, the monster was violently compressed into a ball of flesh and metal no larger than a compact car.
Tatsumaki.
The Tornado of Terror.
S-Class Rank 2.
She flicked her wrist, and the crushed remains of the monster were hurled out into the distant ocean like a piece of discarded trash.
She didn’t look down.
She didn’t acknowledge the cheering civilians emerging from the shelters.
She simply turned and flew away, disappearing over the horizon in a streak of green light.
Ren stood frozen on the sidewalk.
The sheer, overwhelming disparity in power was staggering.
In the manga, Tatsumaki’s feats were incredible drawings.
In reality, feeling the psychic pressure of her mere presence was like standing beneath a falling mountain.
She was an untouchable god, and to her, Ren was absolutely nothing.
He was just another face in the panicked crowd of mortals she had to babysit.
Ren let out a slow, shaking breath.
He looked down at his free hand, watching his fingers tremble slightly.
It wasn’t out of fear.
It was out of an absolute, burning desire to reach that height.
“I have a long way to go,” Ren whispered, his lips curling into a fierce, determined smile.
“A very long way.”
He turned away from the spectacle and walked toward the trains.
The daylight charade was over.
It was time to go to work.
Four hours later, night had completely enveloped the Ghost Town.
Ren stood in the ruined courtyard of an abandoned high school.
He had cooked and eaten nearly ten pounds of the beef he bought, his stomach a raging furnace digesting the fuel.
He had left his C-Class jacket at his apartment, opting for a tight black undershirt and his durable combat pants.
His tail was unbound, swaying heavily behind him in the cool night air.
When he hunted, he didn’t hide his biology.
He needed every single ounce of balance and torque his true form provided.
The courtyard was littered with rusted jungle gyms and shattered glass.
Ren stood dead center, projecting his presence, inviting the predators of the dark to come and claim him.
He didn’t have to wait long.
A heavy, wet thud echoed from the roof of the school building.
Then another.
Ren looked up.
Clinging to the brick wall was a creature that looked like it had crawled out of a nightmare.
It was a massive, bipedal toad, easily nine feet tall, covered in thick, warty armor.
But its forearms were disproportionately large, ending in massive, concrete-like fists.
[Crusher Toad]
[Power Level: 33]
Ren grinned, his Saiyan blood singing as the adrenaline dumped into his system.
Thirty-three.
Nearly ten points higher than his own strength.
It was exactly what he needed.
“Come on down, ugly,” Ren taunted, dropping into a loose fighting stance.
The monster croaked—a deep, vibrating sound that rattled Ren’s ribcage—and leaped from the roof.
It landed with the force of an artillery shell.
The concrete courtyard shattered under its weight, sending chunks of debris flying like shrapnel.
Before the dust could even settle, the beast lunged, throwing a devastating, boulder-sized fist directly at Ren’s head.
Ren didn’t try to block.
A Power Level of 33 hitting a 24 would shatter the defender’s arms instantly.
He ducked, the wind from the punch tearing past his ear.
He stepped inside the monster’s guard, pivoting sharply on his heel.
His tail whipped in the opposite direction, acting as a perfect counterbalance, allowing him to throw his entire body weight into a devastating uppercut.
His fist slammed into the creature’s soft underbelly.
It was like punching a giant tire.
The impact sent a shockwave up Ren’s arm, bruising his knuckles, but the monster barely flinched.
The Crusher Toad brought its other massive fist down in a brutal hammer blow.
Ren tried to twist away, but he was a fraction of a second too slow.
The blow clipped his left shoulder.
The sheer kinetic force was agonizing.
Ren heard a sickening crack as his collarbone fractured.
He was launched violently across the courtyard, crashing through a rusted chain-link fence and rolling to a halt in the overgrown grass.
Pain flared white-hot through his chest, paralyzing his left arm.
“Damn it,” Ren gasped, spitting a mouthful of blood into the dirt.
The monster croaked again, a sound of mocking triumph, and charged across the ruined courtyard for the killing blow.
Panic tried to claw its way into Ren’s mind, but the Saiyan biology ruthlessly suppressed it.
In its place rose a cold, calculated fury.
He couldn’t win a battle of attrition.
He needed a single, lethal strike.
Ren forced himself to his feet, ignoring the blinding pain in his shoulder.
He let his left arm hang limp at his side, focusing every ounce of strength into his legs and his right arm.
As the monster leaped into the air, bringing both of its massive fists down for a crushing double-axe handle, Ren didn’t retreat.
He waited until the absolute last possible millisecond.
Using his tail, he pushed violently off the ground, launching himself diagonally forward, slipping entirely under the monster’s massive, falling bulk.
The creature’s fists slammed into the earth exactly where Ren had been standing, creating a massive crater and sending a shockwave of dirt into the air.
But Ren was already behind it.
Before the monster could turn, Ren coiled his body like a spring.
He targeted the thick, pulsing vein located at the base of the creature’s massive neck—the only part of its body not covered in warty armor.
With a roar that tore at his throat, Ren delivered a perfectly executed, spinning heel kick, his tail guiding his momentum for maximum torque.
His heel struck the artery with the force of a speeding truck.
The impact ruptured the blood vessel instantly.
The Crusher Toad froze, its massive eyes bulging out of its head.
It let out a weak, gurgling croak, took two staggering steps backward, and collapsed onto its side, completely dead.
Ren stumbled, falling hard onto his knees.
He gripped his shattered collarbone, his entire body trembling violently from the exertion.
He was covered in sweat, dirt, and blood.
He had won.
But he was deeply, severely injured.
Ren didn’t have the strength to drag the corpse.
He slowly forced himself up, heavily favoring his right side, and began the agonizingly slow walk back to his apartment block.
Every step was torture.
The adrenaline was fading, leaving nothing but the raw, brutal reality of torn muscle and broken bone.
When he finally collapsed onto his futon an hour later, he didn’t even bother to take off his boots.
He reached for his stash of remaining meat, eating it raw, his body too desperate for calories to care about cooking.
He passed out, slipping into a feverish, restorative coma.
When the morning sun finally broke through his blinds, Ren opened his eyes.
The fever had broken.
He reached up with his right hand and touched his left collarbone.
There was no pain.
The bone had knitted itself back together overnight, vastly thicker and denser than it had been before.
Ren sat up, a triumphant smirk breaking across his face.
He focused his eyes on the empty air in front of him, pulling up his biological ledger.
[Ren]
[Power Level: 29]
Twenty-nine.
He clenched his newly healed left fist, feeling the terrifying, raw power surging through his muscles.
He was officially at the very top of his current bracket.
He was just one point away from his initial goal, one point away from stepping out of the absolute bottom tier of humanity.
“Tatsumaki,” Ren whispered to the empty room, the memory of her crushing green light burning in his mind.
“Just you wait.
I’m coming up.”