The heavy iron door of the apartment slammed shut, the deadbolt sliding into place with a sharp, metallic clack.
Ren dropped the canvas duffel bag.
It hit the floor with a heavy thud, the cans inside clinking loudly.
He leaned his back against the cold metal of the door and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the floor.
The adrenaline that had kept him moving through the desolate streets of the Ghost Town was finally beginning to evaporate.
In its place came the pain.
It was a vicious, throbbing heat radiating from his left forearm.
He looked down.
The denim of his jacket was completely soaked in dark crimson.
The Acid Hound’s claws had torn deep, carving three jagged trenches through his skin and muscle.
If the beast had hit an artery, he would have bled out in that dark basement.
“Stupid,” Ren hissed through gritted teeth, gripping his right hand over the wound to apply pressure.
“Reckless and stupid.”
He forced himself up and stumbled into his cramped bathroom.
He threw open the mirrored cabinet and pulled out his meager first-aid supplies: a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, some cotton pads, and a roll of gauze he had bought a week ago.
Ren peeled off his ruined jacket and tossed it into the bathtub.
He bit down hard on a rolled-up washcloth and poured the rubbing alcohol directly over the open gashes.
The pain was blinding.
Ren let out a muffled scream into the washcloth, his knees buckling as white-hot agony flared up to his shoulder.
He collapsed against the sink, panting heavily, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.
Once the burning subsided to a dull, vicious ache, he tightly wrapped his arm in the white gauze.
It wasn’t professional medical care, but it would have to do.
Before he could even process the trauma of his first kill, a different kind of pain assaulted him.
His stomach violently cramped.
It was a hollow, desperate roaring, demanding sustenance.
His body had been pushed past its limits, sustained critical damage, and the Saiyan biology inside him was frantically trying to initiate the repair sequence.
It needed building materials.
Ren practically dragged himself back to the living room and tore open the duffel bag.
He didn’t bother with plates or utensils.
He popped the metal tab on a can of cold baked beans and dumped it directly into his mouth, swallowing without chewing.
He opened a can of peaches in syrup and drank the sugary liquid like a man dying of thirst in the desert, before devouring the fruit.
Next came a tin of heavily processed mystery meat, rich in sodium and fat.
He ate until his stomach was visibly bloated, consuming roughly six thousand calories in a single sitting.
The sheer intake of food made him incredibly lethargic.
His body was diverting all of its energy to digestion and cellular repair.
Ren barely managed to crawl onto his futon before the exhaustion completely claimed him.
He passed out, slipping into a deep, dreamless coma.
When he finally opened his eyes, the afternoon sun was filtering through the cracks in his window blinds.
He had slept for nearly fourteen hours.
Ren groaned, trying to sit up.
His entire body felt incredibly stiff, as if he had been beaten with baseball bats.
But as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he noticed something bizarre.
The crippling pain in his left arm was completely gone.
He looked down at his forearm.
The gauze was stained brown with dried blood, and it was loose.
Ren carefully unwound the bandage, bracing himself to see the ugly, infected gashes from the day before.
The bandage fell away, and Ren stared in sheer disbelief.
The deep trenches carved by the monster’s claws were completely closed.
Thick, pink scar tissue had formed over the wounds.
There was no swelling, no infection, and no active bleeding.
An injury that would have put a normal man in a cast for a month had aggressively healed in a single night of sleep.
“Incredible,” Ren whispered, running his fingers over the scars.
He stood up, rolling his shoulders and stretching his legs.
The stiffness began to fade, replaced by a sensation of profound lightness.
His muscles felt tighter, denser, and practically humming with latent energy.
His heart began to race.
He focused his vision on his own reflection in the bedroom window, calling upon his system to read his combat value.
The numbers shimmered, calculating the newly formed muscle fibers, the increased bone density, and the expanded neural pathways.
[Ren]
[Power Level: 9]
Ren’s breath hitched.
Nine.
He stared at the number, a massive grin breaking across his face.
He had gained three points!
It didn’t sound like much, but mathematically, it was a fifty percent increase in his total strength.
In a single day, he had bridged the gap from a slightly athletic human to someone pushing the absolute upper limits of normal human biology.
The Zenkai boost was real.
The near-death experience, the extreme stress, and the massive calorie dump had forced his alien DNA to adapt and evolve to ensure he wouldn’t be bested by the same level of threat again.
Ren threw a quick jab at the empty air.
The punch snapped with a crisp, audible swish.
His body moved faster, his coordination significantly sharper.
“Okay,” Ren said aloud, pacing around his tiny living room.
“Okay, this works.
The formula works.”
He walked over to the stack of canned goods in the corner of the room.
He had enough food to sustain this aggressive metabolism for a little while, but he needed a long-term plan.
Scavenging was too unreliable, and eventually, he was going to run into a Tiger-level threat like the Carnage Mantis while looking for beans.
That would be a guaranteed death sentence.
He needed a steady income, access to high-quality meat, and a proper training facility.
He needed the Hero Association.
Ren sat on his sofa, his mind calculating the requirements.
A hero aspirant, the baseline physical requirement just to take the entrance exam, usually possessed a Power Level between 10 and 15.
The lowest tier of professional heroes, the C-Class, ranged from 20 to 80.
If Ren walked into the exam room with a Power Level of 9, he might barely pass the physical portion, but he would be dead last in the rankings, and he would likely fail the sparring assessment entirely.
He needed a safety margin.
He needed to be strong enough to securely lock in a hero license without drawing too much suspicion about his rapid growth.
“Thirty,” Ren muttered, setting his sights on the number.
A Power Level of 30 would put him solidly in the lower-middle ranks of C-Class.
It would guarantee his entry into the Association, grant him a monthly stipend, and give him the legal right to hunt monsters for bounties.
But to get from 9 to 30, push-ups and running were no longer going to cut it.
Calisthenics had broken his initial human limiter, but his body was adapting too fast.
To trigger further Zenkai boosts, he needed to put his life on the line.
He looked down at his scarred arm, his brown tail instinctively swishing behind him in anticipation.
He was going to turn the Ghost Town into his personal hunting ground.
There were dozens of low-level monsters lurking in the abandoned subways, collapsed buildings, and overgrown parks of City Z.
Wolf-level threats.
Creatures that the Hero Association deemed too insignificant for a coordinated strike, but deadly enough to kill ordinary people.
They were exactly what he needed.
Ren walked into his kitchen and grabbed two heavy cans of meat.
He needed to fuel up.
Today, the workout routine continued.
But tomorrow, the hunt would begin.
The climb to thirty was going to be bathed in monster blood.