The afternoon sun beat down heavily on the paved walkways of City Z’s financial district.
Ren leaned against a concrete planter, sipping a cheap iced coffee.
He wore his standard-issue gray Hero Association jacket, the zipper pulled halfway up, and his black ID card clipped visibly to his chest.
His tail was bound tightly beneath his clothes.
It was day three of the week, and he needed to fulfill his quota.
“Come on,” Ren muttered to himself, scanning the bustling crowds of businessmen and shoppers.
“Somebody steal a purse.
Jaywalk aggressively.
Do something.”
The duality of his life was exhausting.
By night, he was a feral predator in the Ghost Town, fighting for his life against horrifying mutations to trigger his Zenkai boosts.
By day, he was forced to play the role of an over-glorified mall cop to keep the Association’s administrative algorithms off his back.
A Power Level of 29 made his daytime patrols agonizingly slow.
The world moved at a sluggish pace.
He could hear the heavy, labored breathing of joggers a block away.
He could see the microscopic beads of sweat on the forehead of a nervous teenager contemplating shoplifting at a nearby convenience store.
Suddenly, a sharp scream pierced the hum of the city traffic.
“Thief!
He took my briefcase!”
Ren tossed his iced coffee into a nearby trash can and broke into a jog.
He kept his speed deliberately slow, matching the pace of a reasonably athletic human, forcing his heavy, dense muscles to underperform.
He rounded the corner and saw the culprit.
A massive, heavily tattooed man in a tank top was sprinting down the sidewalk, clutching a silver briefcase.
Ren focused his vision.
[Street Thug – Power Level: 7]
Ren sighed.
It was insulting.
But a quota was a quota.
Before Ren could close the distance and trip the man, the sharp ringing of a bicycle bell echoed over the street.
“Stand down, evildoer!” a voice shouted from the adjacent road.
A figure pedaled furiously into view, cutting across the traffic lane and launching his bicycle directly onto the sidewalk, blocking the thief’s escape route.
The man wore heavily armored khaki protective gear, a green bicycle helmet, and a pair of thick riding goggles.
“Justice Crash!”
The hero slammed his brakes, skidding the rear tire of his bicycle directly into the thug’s shins.
The heavily tattooed man let out a yelp of pain and tumbled face-first onto the pavement, the briefcase skittering out of his hands.
Ren stopped jogging, his eyes widening slightly.
He knew exactly who that was.
The hero hopped off his bicycle, offering a stern but completely earnest glare to the groaning criminal on the ground.
“I am the C-Class Rank 1 Hero, Mumen Rider!” he declared, puffing his chest out.
“Crime does not pay in my city!”
Ren immediately focused his vision on the armored cyclist.
He had always wondered how strong the top of the C-Class truly was without a gag character around to skew the scale.
The numbers flickered in his eyes, stabilizing into a solid, imposing figure.
[Mumen Rider – Power Level: 50]
Ren took a sharp breath, his respect for the man instantly skyrocketing.
Fifty.
Mumen Rider was entirely baseline human.
He possessed no psychic powers, no cyborg enhancements, and certainly no alien biology.
Yet, through sheer, unadulterated willpower and relentless physical conditioning, he had pushed his body to a fifty.
He was nearly twice as strong as Ren currently was.
If they fought right now, Mumen Rider would easily overpower him in raw strength.
“Hey, are you alright?” Mumen Rider called out, waving to Ren.
He had noticed the gray Association jacket.
“You’re a hero too, right?”
Ren quickly composed himself, pasting a polite, slightly nervous smile on his face.
He jogged over.
“Yeah.
Ren, C-Class Rank 388,” Ren introduced himself, picking up the silver briefcase and handing it back to the breathless businessman who had just caught up to them.
“A rookie!” Mumen Rider beamed, extending a heavily gloved hand.
“It’s great to meet you, Ren.
I’m glad you were here to back me up.
The streets are safer with more of us on patrol.”
Ren shook his hand.
Mumen’s grip was like an iron vise.
“I didn’t do much,” Ren replied humbly.
“You had it completely under control.”
Before Mumen Rider could offer another word of encouragement, the ground beneath their feet trembled.
A loud, screeching tear of metal echoed from the middle of the intersection behind them.
Ren whipped his head around.
A massive manhole cover was violently launched into the air, spinning like a coin before crashing into the hood of a parked taxi.
A foul, sulfuric stench flooded the street.
Pulling itself out of the sewer system was a creature made entirely of hardening gray sludge and chunks of jagged concrete.
It had two massive, asymmetrical arms and a face completely devoid of features save for a gaping, toothless maw.
[Concrete Sludge – Power Level: 21]
A Wolf-level threat.
Right in the middle of a populated financial district.
The pedestrians screamed and scattered, dropping their belongings in a desperate bid to escape the creature’s path.
“A monster!” Mumen Rider shouted, instantly dropping his friendly demeanor.
He didn’t hesitate for a single fraction of a second.
He gripped the handlebars of his bicycle.
“Ren, evacuate the civilians!
I’ll hold it off!”
“Wait!” Ren shouted, but Mumen Rider was already pedaling furiously toward the beast.
Ren watched with narrowed eyes.
A Power Level of 50 against a 21 should have been a complete massacre.
But the One Punch Man universe rarely operated purely on raw numbers.
Biology and matchups mattered immensely.
“Justice Tackle!” Mumen Rider roared, leaping off his bicycle and driving his shoulder directly into the monster’s chest.
The impact was tremendous.
The shockwave rattled the nearby windows.
But instead of flying backward, the monster’s semi-liquid sludge body simply absorbed the blow.
Mumen Rider’s shoulder sank deep into the concrete-like mud, completely trapping him.
The monster gurgled a hollow, echoing laugh and raised its massive, solid-concrete right fist to crush the hero’s skull.
“Damn it,” Ren hissed under his breath.
Mumen had the strength, but blunt force trauma was completely useless against a liquid-based anatomy.
Ren couldn’t just stand there and let the pride of the C-Class get his head caved in.
But he also couldn’t reveal his explosive speed or his lethal, predatory combat style.
He had to play the clumsy rookie.
Ren sprinted forward, intentionally throwing his balance slightly off to look unrefined.
“Hey, ugly!
Let him go!”
Ren leaped into the air, aiming a flying kick directly at the monster’s raised arm.
He severely throttled his own power output, making sure the strike carried the force of a standard Power Level 15 human.
His foot connected with the monster’s solid-concrete wrist.
The beast stumbled, its strike thrown completely off course.
The concrete fist smashed into the asphalt inches away from Mumen Rider’s head.
“Ren!
Don’t engage!” Mumen Rider grunted, struggling to pull his trapped arm out of the sludge.
“It absorbs physical impacts!”
“Just pull!” Ren shouted, ignoring the warning.
Ren landed clumsily on the pavement, grabbed the heavy iron manhole cover that had been discarded near the taxi, and hoisted it up.
He didn’t throw a punch.
Instead, he wedged the sharp, heavy iron edge of the cover directly into the seam where Mumen Rider’s arm was trapped in the sludge, and violently twisted it using his raw, 29-point torque.
The leverage pried the hardening sludge apart just enough.
Mumen Rider yanked his arm free, stumbling backward.
The monster roared in annoyance, turning its attention to Ren.
It swung its massive arm in a wide, sweeping arc.
Ren easily saw it coming.
He could have ducked beneath it and shattered the monster’s core with a precise strike.
But there were traffic cameras everywhere.
Instead, Ren raised his arms and deliberately took the hit.
The concrete arm slammed into Ren’s guard.
He allowed the kinetic force to carry him, throwing himself backward so he crashed into a pile of cardboard boxes outside a nearby store.
He groaned loudly, pretending the wind had been completely knocked out of him.
“Ren!” Mumen Rider yelled, his voice laced with genuine panic.
The distraction was perfect.
With its arm extended and Ren seemingly incapacitated, the monster left its solid, central core completely exposed.
Mumen Rider didn’t waste the opening.
He grabbed his fallen bicycle by the frame, spun like an Olympic hammer thrower, and hurled the heavy metal frame directly into the creature’s chest.
“Justice Crash…
Throw!”
The heavy steel handlebars pierced the sludge, violently striking the dense core hidden within.
The monster let out a horrific shriek as its structural integrity collapsed.
The sludge instantly lost its form, turning into a puddle of harmless, foul-smelling gray water, leaving behind nothing but broken chunks of concrete and the bicycle.
The street fell silent, save for the distant wailing of police sirens.
Mumen Rider rushed over to the cardboard boxes, extending a hand to Ren.
“Are you alright?
That was a direct hit!”
Ren took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled up, dusting off his gray jacket.
He forced a grimace onto his face, rubbing his ribs.
“I’ll live,” Ren said, panting softly for effect.
“Good hit, Rider.”
“No, it was your distraction that gave me the opening,” Mumen Rider said earnestly, giving Ren a firm pat on the shoulder.
“You have guts, rookie.
You didn’t hesitate to jump in against a monster that outmatched you.
You have the heart of a true hero.”
Ren felt a sharp, entirely unexpected pang of guilt.
Mumen Rider was praising his courage, completely unaware that Ren was entirely uninjured, manipulating the entire fight just to protect his own cover.
“Just doing my job,” Ren deflected, looking away.
“Keep that spirit,” Mumen Rider smiled, walking over to retrieve his sludge-covered bicycle.
“I’ll handle the Association report.
You go get those ribs checked out.”
As Mumen Rider pedaled away, waving to the cheering civilians who were emerging from the shops, Ren stood alone on the sidewalk.
He had secured his quota.
He had aided a high-ranking hero.
His daylight facade was flawless.
But as Ren watched Mumen disappear into the traffic, he clenched his fists, feeling the dense, coiled power hiding beneath his skin.
The daytime charade was a necessary survival tactic, but it was suffocating his Saiyan instincts.
“Tonight,” Ren whispered, his eyes narrowing as he turned his gaze toward the distant skyline of the Ghost Town.
“Tonight, I don’t hold back.
Tonight, I hit thirty.”