The City Z Hero Association branch was a buzz of anxious energy.
Ren sat in the back row of the main briefing room, squished between a man wearing a heavily padded football uniform and a teenager nervously polishing a pair of nunchucks.
Over fifty C-Class and B-Class heroes had been summoned for a mandatory, mid-day territorial briefing.
At the front of the room, a balding Association executive in a wrinkled gray suit was tapping a laser pointer against a massive digital map of City Z.
A large section of the Ghost Town was highlighted in flashing red.
“Over the past three weeks, our satellite reconnaissance and perimeter drones have recorded a massive spike in biological decay signatures in Sector G of the Abandoned Zone,” the executive droned, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Ren shifted uncomfortably in his plastic chair, pulling the hood of his gray jacket up slightly.
Sector G was exactly where he had been hunting.
“We are finding the corpses of Wolf and Tiger-level threats brutally dismantled,” the executive continued, bringing up a blurry aerial photo of a dead, mutated rhinoceros.
Ren recognized the Horned Brute he had killed with a single punch.
“Given the sheer blunt force trauma required to kill these heavily armored mutations, the intelligence division hypothesizes that a highly territorial Demon-level monster has moved into the area and is currently wiping out the local food chain to establish dominance.”
A murmur of genuine fear rippled through the assembled heroes.
Ren kept his face entirely neutral, but internally, he let out a sigh of relief.
The Association didn’t suspect a hero was doing the killing.
They thought it was just monster-on-monster violence.
“Because of this potential Demon-level threat, all C-Class and B-Class patrols are strictly forbidden from approaching within two miles of the Ghost Town border,” the executive ordered sharply.
“To investigate the epicenter, Headquarters has dispatched a specialized team.
You will be providing perimeter support for them today.”
The side door of the briefing room swung open.
Two figures walked in, their mere presence instantly silencing the murmurs in the room.
The first was a tall, incredibly sharp-looking gentleman wearing a tailored black suit with a red tie.
He possessed an impeccably groomed, curling mustache and carried a sleek, rapier-style sword at his hip.
The second man was dressed in a casual green tracksuit.
He had messy blonde hair, a lollipop in his mouth, and twirled a highly advanced, golden slingshot around his index finger.
Spring Mustachio and Golden Ball.
A-Class, Ranks 28 and 29.
Ren leaned forward slightly, his heart picking up a steady rhythm.
This was the first time he had been in the same room as A-Class operatives since the testing center.
With his Power Level now at 61, his ocular scanner could read anything up to a combat value of 610.
Ren focused his vision on the two men at the front of the room.
The digital overlay flickered.
The system tried to calculate the density of their muscles, the terrifying reflexes hidden beneath their casual postures, and the sheer lethality of their weapon mastery.
The numbers violently flashed red, completely glitching out before throwing a sharp error code.
[Spring Mustachio – Power Level: ???]
[Golden Ball – Power Level: ???]
Ren leaned back, his breath hitching slightly.
Unreadable.
Both of them.
That meant that even the rank 29 of the A-Class possessed a combat value exceeding 610.
They were more than ten times stronger than his current peak condition.
The gap between the B-Class and the A-Class was not a step; it was an absolute, towering cliff.
“Listen up, rookies,” Golden Ball said, his voice casual but carrying a sharp edge of absolute authority.
He took the lollipop out of his mouth and pointed it at the crowd.
“Mustachio and I are going into the Abandoned Zone to track down whatever is ripping these monsters apart.
Your job is to stand on the safe-zone border and keep civilians from wandering in to take photos.
Do not follow us in.
If a Demon-level threat is throwing a tantrum in there, we won’t have time to babysit you.”
“Indeed,” Spring Mustachio added smoothly, adjusting his tie.
“Maintain the perimeter.
Leave the investigation to the professionals.
We depart in ten minutes.”
The briefing was dismissed.
An hour later, Ren was standing on a ruined overpass on the very edge of the safe zone, holding a yellow roll of police barricade tape.
He was partnered with the nervous teenager with the nunchucks.
About half a mile down the desolate, overgrown avenue, the two A-Class heroes were casually strolling directly into the heart of the Ghost Town.
“They’re insane,” the teenager muttered, tying the yellow tape to a rusted lamppost.
“Walking into a Demon-level territory with just a sword and a slingshot.”
Ren didn’t reply.
His enhanced eyesight and hearing were entirely locked onto the two A-Class heroes in the distance.
He needed to see how the elites fought.
He needed to understand what a Power Level above 610 actually looked like in application.
Down in the ruins, Spring Mustachio and Golden Ball stopped near the overturned armored bank truck.
It was the exact spot where Ren had killed the Titan-Scarab the night before.
Ren watched intently.
Golden Ball whistled, looking at the massive, purple carapace of the dead beetle.
“Look at the size of this thing.
Definitely a high Tiger.
And look at the chest wound.”
Spring Mustachio crouched down, elegantly drawing his rapier.
He tapped the tip of his blade against the jagged edges of the perfectly circular hole Ren had punched through the armor.
“Fascinating,” Mustachio murmured, his voice carrying on the wind just enough for Ren’s enhanced ears to catch.
“The carapace wasn’t slashed or bitten.
It was completely pulverized by localized blunt force.
The sheer kinetic energy required to punch through a Titan-Scarab’s shell…
this resembles the destructive output of Master Tanktop, or perhaps even Superalloy Darkshine.”
“You think an S-Class is down here slumming it without reporting it?” Golden Ball asked, chewing on his lollipop.
“Unlikely,” Mustachio replied, standing up and sheathing his sword.
“Which means the intelligence division is correct.
We have a highly dangerous, brawler-type mutation marking its territory.”
Before they could continue their deduction, the ground beneath the ruined street violently buckled.
Ren’s eyes widened.
He hadn’t sensed it.
Bursting from the asphalt mere yards away from the A-Class heroes was a massive, subterranean worm.
Its body was completely covered in thick, interlocking stone plates, and its mouth was a spinning vortex of jagged, diamond-hard teeth.
[Rock-Borer Leviathan]
[Power Level: 145]
A peak Tiger-level threat, pushing the very boundaries of Demon.
It was significantly stronger than the Scarab Ren had killed.
The worm lunged, its massive maw opening wide to swallow Golden Ball whole.
Ren tensed, his hand instinctively gripping the concrete railing of the overpass.
He fully expected a brutal, drawn-out fight.
He expected the heroes to dodge, trade blows, and rely on raw physical stats to survive.
He was completely wrong.
Golden Ball didn’t retreat.
He didn’t even drop his casual posture.
He simply reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, golden marble, and loaded it into his slingshot in a fraction of a millisecond.
“Golden Breakout,” he said lazily, releasing the band.
The golden sphere didn’t just fly; it violently broke the sound barrier.
A sonic boom shattered the remaining glass in the nearby buildings.
The marble struck the worm’s impenetrable stone armor and instantly deformed, its shape-memory alloy spreading out into a razor-sharp, golden disk that completely cleanly decapitated the massive creature in a single, fluid motion.
The massive, severed head of the worm crashed onto the pavement.
Before the rest of the body could even collapse, a second creature—a massive, winged gargoyle—swooped down from the roof of a nearby skyscraper, aiming its razor-sharp talons directly at Spring Mustachio’s back.
Mustachio didn’t turn around.
“Tomboy Thrust,” he stated gracefully.
He drew his rapier and thrust it backward over his own shoulder without looking.
The blade was not a normal sword.
Under the immense, refined technique and raw physical power of the A-Class hero, the steel violently compressed and then elongated like a compressed spring.
The rapier instantly extended thirty feet into the air, piercing perfectly through the center of the gargoyle’s chest and completely vaporizing its heart.
The blade retracted instantly with a sharp snap, returning to its normal length as Mustachio calmly sheathed it.
The dead gargoyle plummeted to the street, crashing into dust.
Two monsters that would have pushed Ren to the absolute brink of death were annihilated in less than three seconds.
Up on the overpass, Ren stood completely frozen, his grip on the concrete railing so tight it was beginning to crack.
It was a revelation.
Golden Ball and Spring Mustachio were overwhelmingly strong, yes.
But their true lethality didn’t come from raw, brawling power.
It came from hyper-specialized technique.
Golden Ball utilized advanced technology and perfect marksmanship.
Mustachio possessed a refined martial art that turned a simple sword thrust into a localized sniper round.
Ren looked down at his own calloused hands.
He had been relying entirely on his Saiyan biology to act as a sledgehammer.
He was a brawler.
He punched hard, and he healed fast.
But brawling would only take him so far.
Against opponents who could manipulate the physics of their weapons and their bodies, a sledgehammer was a liability.
He had unlocked his Ki, but using it like a clumsy shotgun blast wasn’t enough.
“I need a teacher,” Ren whispered to himself, watching the two A-Class heroes casually document their kills in the distance.
“I need technique.”
But martial arts masters of true caliber were incredibly rare in City Z.
The famous dojos, like the ones run by Bang or Bomb, were located in entirely different cities, and they didn’t exactly advertise to poor C-Class heroes.
Ren turned away from the Ghost Town, his mind racing with a new objective.
The grind for raw Power Levels was no longer his only priority.
If he wanted to survive the transition into the hundreds and eventually face the true monsters of this world, he had to learn how to fight like a warrior, not a beast.
He needed to find a dojo.