Early autumn in New York was always accompanied by a stifling humidity.
Zack Vance stepped out of a Chinese supermarket in Queens, clutching two plastic bags filled with fresh groceries.
Traffic surged along the street, and from distant Times Square came the faint, tumultuous echoes of giant LED screen advertisements.
He raised his head, his gaze sweeping past the bustling cityscape to land on a colossal billboard covering half a building.
The woman on the billboard had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a voluptuous figure.
Dressed in a skin-tight red, white, and blue superhero suit complete with a stars-and-stripes cape, she beamed at the camera with the comforting smile of an American sweetheart.
Beneath the image was an aggressively provocative slogan: “Vought International brings you the ultimate protection—Homelander.”
Zack pulled back his gaze, expressionless.
Having lived in this world for twenty whole years, he knew better than anyone what chilling madness lurked behind that picture-perfect smile.
This was a world controlled by Vought International, where superheroes were nothing more than corporate-packaged scumbags.
And Joanne—the female Homelander worshipped like a deity by hundreds of millions worldwide—was the single most dangerous giant baby on Earth.
As a reincarnator who had retained the memories of his previous life, Zack had known since childhood that he was stuck in the hopeless universe of *The Boys*.
Facing a nightmare start in a world crawling with twisted supes, he had no illusions about playing savior.
Though he had no idea why Homelander was a woman here, her level of danger wasn’t diminished in the slightest.
His deceased parents had left behind a sizable inheritance and an apartment in a prime location, allowing him to naturally blend in as an unremarkable international student at Godolkin University.
Don’t cause trouble.
Don’t stand out.
That was the rule of survival he had set for himself.
Zack glanced down at the pork ribs inside his bag, debating whether to cook them sweet and sour or braised.
As he reached an intersection and waited for the light to change, his eyes casually swept across the glass window of an electronics shop across the street.
A young couple stood there.
A skinny, brown-curly-haired young man was gesticulating excitedly while tightly holding the hands of the blonde girl facing him.
Their eyes were brimming with dreams of the future, the girl’s smile bright as sunshine.
Zack’s gaze lingered on the young man’s face for two seconds, and his heart skipped a beat.
Hughie Campbell.
Without warning, a piercing sonic boom tore through the air of the entire street.
A violent, almost solid gust of wind whipped hard across Zack’s cheeks, flipping a roadside metal trash can into the air.
Before pedestrians around could even scream, they instinctively covered their ears and squeezed their eyes shut.
A blur of blue flashed down the asphalt at a speed invisible to the naked eye, charging forward and shattering the quiet on the other side of the street.
Like a heavy cruise missile at full speed, it slammed squarely into the smiling blonde girl.
The dull crunch of pulverizing flesh was drowned out by the deafening sonic boom.
A thick, sickening metallic stench mixed with the reek of raw organs burst into a mist of blood, engulfing the corner.
Standing fifty meters away, Zack’s pupils contracted violently.
The vibrant girl was gone.
In her place was a deluge of blood splattered across the pavement, the electronics store display window, and Hughie’s face.
Bits of flesh and bone fragments flew everywhere.
Hughie remained frozen in his previous pose, his eyes utterly hollow.
In his hands were only two severed arms, torn clean off at the wrists and dripping with blood.
The blue blur came to a halt tens of meters away.
It was a Black superhero in a blue-and-white suit, wearing his signature goggles.
“Oh, shit…
I couldn’t stop…
I couldn’t stop…”
A-Train babbled incoherently, his eyes showing a mix of hyper-arousal and neurotic panic.
Without offering even a proper apology, he transformed back into a bolt of blue lightning with another ear-splitting sonic pop, vanishing down the end of the street.
Zack felt his stomach churn violently as a wave of intense nausea surged to his head.
Even though he had rehearsed the cruelty of this world countless times in his mind, facing such extraordinary violence firsthand—watching a living human pulverized into blood mist right before his eyes—produced a physical repulsion that logic could not repress.
His legs felt heavy, his fingers gripping the plastic bags so tightly they nearly tore.
The main plot had officially begun.
Hughie’s darkening path, Butcher’s vengeance, The Seven’s suicidal infighting, Vought’s purges…
This glossy, polished world was about to turn into a giant, blood-soaked meat grinder.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
The frozen crowd around him finally snapped out of their shock, exploding into terrified screams and chaotic fleeing.
Zack drew a deep breath of the blood-tainted air, forcing down the stomach acid rising in his throat.
He turned and blended into the panicked crowd, hurrying back toward his apartment building.
The New York evening breeze blew past him, but he felt no refreshing cool—only a chill that cut straight to the bone.
Suddenly, a flicker of eerie blue light materialized right before his retinas.
Zack’s steps faltered almost imperceptibly, his breath catching in his throat.
[Companion Nurturing System bound.]
A simple line of text hung quietly in the center of his vision.
Zack swallowed hard, forcing his facial expression to stay neutral while keeping his walking pace steady.
The text panel began to shift silently, streams of cold data cascading down.
[Core Function 1: When the host causes a companion to feel pleasure (positive emotional shifts), a random amount of legal funds will be awarded.]
[Core Function 2: When the host engages in deep physical intimacy with a companion, there is a chance to extract a skill from the companion.]
Reading those lines, Zack’s eye twitched uncontrollably.
Companion nurturing?
And make companions feel pleasure?
In a mad world where a living person was just obliterated on the street and covered up by PR teams, he had awakened a dating sim system?
Was he supposed to date those blood-soaked superheroes who viewed mortals as ants?
To pamper them and make them happy?
One wrong move, and he’d end up as a censorship blur on the pavement.
Yet behind the absurdity, Zack keenly picked up on two critical words in Core Function 1: *legal funds*.
No matter how all-powerful Vought International seemed, at its core it was still a publicly traded corporation controlled by capitalists.
In a country where capital reigned supreme, having enough money—enough to buy up all of Manhattan—meant he could pave himself a way to survive.
The text on the system panel continued scrolling down.
[Starter Pack delivered.]
[Acquired Innate Passive: Body of Steel (Restricted Version).]
[Body of Steel (Restricted Version): Active when the host is in bed with a companion or engaged in deep physical contact/embrace.
While active, the host is immune to all physical damage caused by the companion due to emotional excitement, power loss of control, or other factors.]
[Acquired Auxiliary Ability: Perfect Empathy Radar.]
[Perfect Empathy Radar: The host can precisely sense real-time emotional fluctuations and the state of mental defenses of targets (high-potential companions), rendered in color and numerical values along the edge of the retina.]
[Acquired Passive: Master Chef]
[Starter rewards fully distributed.]
The blue translucent panel slowly faded away, restoring his field of vision to the normal streets of New York.
Zack mulled over these starter rewards in his mind, his tense nerves loosening slightly.
That domineering-sounding “Body of Steel” came with an absurdly specific restriction.
Obviously, it wasn’t meant for him to go out and save the world as a superhero; it was purely an anti-squish safety mechanism.
With this passive, at least he could ensure that during required physical contact, some superpowered woman wouldn’t accidentally snap his spine in excitement.
As for the “Perfect Empathy Radar”…
Zack had just arrived at the traffic light one block away from his apartment.
In the top right corner of his vision, where there had been nothing before, a crimson dot flared up abruptly.
The dot burned like the highest-level alarm on a radar screen, agonizingly bright red.
Even without an audio prompt, Zack could clearly feel from that single red marker a violent, rampant surge of negative emotion—as if it were ready to set the entire city ablaze at any moment.
A small line of pale blue text appeared beside the red dot.
[Target Locked: Joanne.]
[Emotional Fluctuation Value: Extreme Volatility / Extreme Loneliness.]
[Mental Defenses: On the Brink of Collapse, Extremely Dangerous.]
Zack froze dead in his tracks, his pupils shrinking instantly.
The surrounding air seemed to thicken, a heavy, indescribable pressure plummeting from the sky to weigh down heavily on his shoulders.
The pedestrians around didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, continuing to look down at their phones or whisper about the tragedy that had just occurred down the street.
But every hair on Zack’s body stood on end.
It felt as though a raging ancient beast were hovering overhead, looking down at the ants below with cold, ruthless eyes.
The location indicated by the dot wasn’t far away—it was directly above the apartment building where he lived.
Zack squeezed his plastic bags tightly.
The sharp pressure of the plastic biting into his fingers kept him acutely sharp.
The being broadcasting sheer destruction from the sky was none other than the sweet-smiling American sweetheart he had seen on the big screen twenty minutes ago.
The female Homelander.