The morning sun filtered through the cracked blinds, casting harsh lines of light across the kitchen floor.
Ren stood perfectly still in the center of the room.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and focused entirely on his stomach.
He tried to mentally reach for that burning, pressurized knot of heat that had saved his life against the Lycan the night before.
He clenched his fists, gritting his teeth, demanding the energy to manifest once more.
Nothing happened.
There was no heat.
There was no spark.
Just the normal, rhythmic beating of his own heart.
Ren let out a frustrated sigh, dropping his arms.
The energy—whatever it was—had been violently forced out of his cells by the sheer terror of imminent death.
It wasn’t a muscle he could just flex at will.
Without a master to teach him the fundamentals of Ki control, he was fumbling in the dark.
His stomach let out a hollow, agonizing rumble, snapping him out of his thoughts.
He opened his refrigerator.
It was completely barren.
The massive Zenkai boost had cannibalized every single calorie he had stored in the apartment.
His bank account was equally empty, his monthly stipend completely exhausted on his last grocery run.
“I need cash,” Ren muttered, grabbing his gray Hero Association jacket.
“Right now.”
An hour later, Ren pushed through the heavy glass doors of the City Z Hero Association Branch Office.
Unlike the pristine, corporate headquarters in City A, the local branch was essentially a glorified mercenary guild.
The lobby smelled of stale coffee, sweat, and ozone.
Heroes of varying ranks lounged in plastic chairs, reading comic books or aggressively negotiating over bounty splits.
Ren walked over to the massive digital bulletin board dominating the far wall.
It displayed localized threat reports, citizen requests, and active bounties.
“Listen up, you C-Class bottom feeders!” a sharp, arrogant voice echoed through the lobby.
Ren turned.
Standing on a plastic chair was a tall, lean man dressed in a stylized, traditional archer’s outfit.
He carried a highly customized composite bow over his shoulder, and a quiver of advanced, mechanical arrows rested on his hip.
Shooter.
B-Class, Rank 99.
“I have a subjugation mandate for the western forest ridge,” Shooter announced, adjusting his sunglasses.
“Local loggers reported a pack of Mutated Macaques stalling their operations.
Threat level is Wolf.
I need five C-Class grunts to act as beaters and flush them out of the brush.
Flat rate of ten thousand yen for the afternoon, plus a five percent cut of the bounty.
First five to step forward get the job.”
Ten thousand yen was more than enough to buy a week’s worth of bulk rice and chicken.
Ren didn’t hesitate.
He immediately raised his hand and stepped out of the crowd, joining four other eager C-Class heroes.
As he stood in front of the archer, Ren smoothly activated his ocular system.
With his own Power Level sitting at 38, his scanner could now successfully read anyone up to a Power Level of 380.
The digital overlay flickered over Shooter, locking in almost instantly.
[Shooter]
[Power Level: 112]
Ren kept his expression entirely blank, but internally, his mind was racing.
One hundred and twelve.
The gap was monumental.
Mumen Rider, the absolute pinnacle of C-Class, was a 50.
Stepping over the threshold into B-Class meant jumping from peak human conditioning into the realm of true, undeniable superhuman capability.
Shooter could likely draw a bow with a draw weight of a thousand pounds and fire arrows that hit like sniper rifle rounds.
“Alright, we have our five,” Shooter said, hopping down from the chair.
He looked at Ren and the others with blatant disdain.
“Do exactly as I say.
Do not engage the monsters directly unless cornered.
Your job is to make noise and drive them into my firing lines.
If you get yourselves killed, I am not doing the paperwork.”
The journey to the western forest ridge was tense and quiet.
The other four C-Class heroes—a man carrying a heavy riot shield, two martial artists, and a teenager with a slingshot—were visibly nervous.
Ren simply walked in the back of the formation, his hands in his pockets, perfectly calm.
The logging camp was deserted, the heavy machinery sitting silent beneath the towering, ancient pines.
“Form a line,” Shooter commanded, knocking a sleek, silver arrow onto his bowstring.
“Fifty feet apart.
Walk into the tree line and bang your weapons against the trunks.
Flush them out.”
Ren took his position on the far left flank.
He picked up a thick, heavy tree branch from the forest floor, using it as a makeshift club, and began walking into the dense underbrush.
His enhanced senses picked them up almost immediately.
The smell of wet, dirty fur and the incredibly faint rustling of leaves in the canopy above.
Ren looked up, his eyes darting through the shadows of the branches.
[Razor-Macaque – Power Level: 18]
[Razor-Macaque – Power Level: 19]
There were at least a dozen of them waiting in the trees.
They were massive, heavily muscled primates with jagged, bony protrusions acting as natural armor along their forearms and backs.
A sharp, piercing screech shattered the quiet of the forest.
The ambush began.
Three Macaques dropped from the canopy directly onto the riot-shield hero in the center of the formation.
The man screamed as the sheer weight of the monsters drove him into the dirt, their bony forearms hammering against his shield.
“Hold your ground!” Shooter yelled from the rear.
The B-Class hero moved with blinding speed.
He drew his bowstring back in a fraction of a second, firing three arrows in rapid succession.
The projectiles tore through the air with a supersonic crack, striking the three monkeys perfectly in their throats.
The monsters dropped dead instantly.
But there were too many.
Two of the beasts charged Ren.
Ren could have easily killed them both.
With a Power Level of 38, their movements looked pitifully slow.
But he had to maintain his camouflage.
He couldn’t afford Shooter realizing a C-Class rank 388 had B-Class reflexes.
Ren let out a feigned yell of panic.
He swung his heavy tree branch wildly, making his form look as clumsy and unrefined as possible.
He intentionally tripped backward over an exposed tree root, falling onto his back just as the first Macaque lunged.
As the monster sailed through the air over him, Ren raised his heavy boots and perfectly caught the beast in the stomach.
Using the momentum, he kicked upward, launching the Macaque straight into a thick oak tree with a sickening crunch of bone.
The second Macaque paused, confused by the strange trajectory of its packmate.
That pause was all Shooter needed.
An arrow pierced the monster’s skull, pinning it to the dirt.
“Stop rolling around in the dirt, rookie!” Shooter yelled at Ren, lowering his bow slightly.
“Get up!”
Ren scrambled to his feet, dusting off his jacket and nodding apologetically.
“Sorry!
Thanks for the save!”
Before Shooter could offer another insult, the ground beneath their feet trembled violently.
A deep, resonating roar echoed from the deeper woods, shaking the pine needles loose from the trees.
The remaining Macaques instantly stopped their assault and fled, retreating frantically into the canopy.
Shooter’s arrogant smirk vanished.
He tightened his grip on his bow, his eyes locked on the treeline.
“That’s not a Wolf-level.
Defensive formation, now!”
The brush was violently ripped apart as a massive figure stepped into the clearing.
It was a Silverback.
It stood twelve feet tall, its fur stark white and matted with dried blood.
The bony plates on its arms had fused into thick, impenetrable shields, and its eyes burned with a chaotic, feral intelligence.
[Silverback Alpha]
[Power Level: 55]
A Tiger-level threat.
Ren narrowed his eyes.
The Alpha was incredibly strong, but it lacked the blinding speed and lethality of the Lycan he had fought the night before.
Still, for a B-Class rank 99 whose primary strength was ranged combat, this was a nightmare scenario.
The Silverback didn’t hesitate.
It locked eyes with the biggest threat—Shooter—and charged.
Shooter cursed, drawing back an explosive-tipped arrow.
He fired.
The arrow struck the Silverback directly in the chest and detonated with a deafening boom, kicking up a massive cloud of smoke and debris.
The C-Class heroes cheered.
But out of the smoke, a massive, bony fist emerged.
The monster hadn’t even flinched.
The explosive had merely singed its thick, white fur.
The Silverback closed the distance in a single, terrifying leap, swatting its massive arm forward.
Shooter tried to dodge, but the backhand clipped his shoulder.
The B-Class hero was launched through the air like a ragdoll, his expensive bow snapping in half as he crashed heavily into the dirt.
“Shooter is down!” the teenager with the slingshot screamed, entirely paralyzed by fear.
The Silverback roared, pounding its massive chest, and slowly walked toward the groaning, defenseless B-Class hero to finish the job.
Ren knew he had to intervene.
If Shooter died, the bounty was gone, and the Association would investigate the entire squad.
But he couldn’t just walk up and punch a Tiger-level threat to death in front of four witnesses.
Ren looked down at the ground near his boots.
Scattered among the pine needles were jagged, heavy rocks, each roughly the size of a baseball.
Ren casually knelt, picking one up in his right hand.
He didn’t take a throwing stance.
He simply kept his hand near his hip, obscuring the rock from the view of the terrified C-Class heroes behind him.
He channeled a fraction of his 38-point Power Level into his forearm, the dense, Saiyan muscle fibers pulling tight like the string of a ballista.
The Silverback raised its massive fists over the fallen Shooter.
Ren flicked his wrist.
He didn’t throw it.
He whipped it.
The rock tore through the air with the speed of a bullet.
There was no visible arc; it was just a gray blur.
The jagged stone struck the Silverback directly in the center of its right kneecap.
The sheer, concentrated kinetic force completely shattered the monster’s joint.
The beast let out a deafening, agonizing shriek.
Its right leg buckled completely, the bones snapping backward.
The sudden, catastrophic loss of balance caused the massive creature to topple face-first into the dirt, missing Shooter entirely.
Shooter, acting on pure, desperate adrenaline, didn’t question the monster’s sudden collapse.
He rolled onto his back, drew a standard arrow, and drove it directly into the fallen monster’s right eye, sinking the shaft all the way into its primitive brain.
The Silverback thrashed violently for five seconds before going completely limp.
Silence descended upon the logging camp.
Shooter lay in the dirt, panting heavily, clutching his bruised shoulder.
The C-Class heroes stared in absolute shock at the massive corpse.
“I…
I got it,” Shooter wheezed, his ego instantly rushing back to replace his fear.
“Did you see that?
It tripped, and I took the shot.
Perfect execution.”
Ren stood in the back, quietly dusting off his hands.
He forced a wide, incredibly convincing smile of awe onto his face.
“Incredible shot, sir!” Ren called out, clapping his hands together.
“You saved us all!”
Shooter scoffed, slowly standing up and brushing the dirt off his traditional uniform.
“Of course I did.
That’s why I’m B-Class, and you lot are just bait.
Now help me document this kill so we can get paid.”