"Ughh, my head..."
"Where am I?"
"Who am I?"
"What am I?"
Clasping his hand in a fist, Ethan struggled to open his eyes.
Just a moment ago, his heart had stopped beating, and his vision had faded.
He was completely sure he had met his end at that moment.
However, he was not only not dead. His body felt more powerful than he had ever felt.
"No, this power isn’t normal. Is it even normal for a normal person to be this strong?"
Opening his eyes, he took a look at his body.
Lying down in a king-sized bed, shirtless, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Glistening under the sunlight from a nearby window, a set of sculpted abs that seemed to have been cut from marble.
Skin so fair and unblemished, so that even the top models he had seen online would be jealous of it.
And looking at his arms.
"How is this possible? Is this really me?" he muttered.
Unlike the skin and bones he was before dying, now, right now, although he hadn’t seen what he looked like, just from the neck down, he knew he was better than the top 1 per cent of people.
"How could this happen?"
"Am I still even me?"
Just as he was lost in thought, as if to answer his questions, a translucent blue screen suddenly popped up in front of him.
[Name: Ethan Klein/Imperion
Titles: The world’s greatest hero, humanity’s final weapon, the only man in the sky
Age: 35
Innate ability: Unlimited Plunder
Plundered abilities: Datafication, super strength, super speed, flight, laser eye beams, self-healing, invulnerability, super hearing,]
"What?!"
Reading the screen in front of him, his pupils flashed gold as they dilated in fright.
"What the hell is this? Did I die and get a system or something!"
"And what’s with this name!? Wait a minute!"
"Don’t tell me-!"
Boom!
Disregarding his newfound strengths, Ethan got up from the bed to find a nearby mirror, breaking the frame in the process.
"Black hair reminiscent of the starry sky, blue eyes comparable to the clearest sea, chiselled physique so good you’d have to wonder if he was a Greek statue."
Muttering slightly, Ethan recalled the description of Imperion he had read in the book.
If what he was seeing was true, and that translucent panel he saw wasn’t a hallucination.
Then, not only had he died, but he had died and been reborn as Imperion from the book he was reading.
"Calm down, Ethan, calm down."
"Firstly, where am I?"
Looking around, he realised he was in some bedroom.
According to the original novel, when he wasn’t Imperion saving the city, his other identity was the CEO of Nexus Corp, a major company responsible for a lot of the world’s leading industries.
"If that’s the case, this must be my mansion?"
Taking a glance, his surroundings began to appear more and more familiar as memories of Imperion began pouring into his head.
Memories from when he was a kid in the orphanage, to when he first awakened his unlimited plunder ability.
"Speaking of powers, unlike what most people knew, Imperion’s true ability was unlimited plunder."
"And the ability that allowed him to plunder and fuse the abilities of superhumans he killed."
"Unfortunately, even as powerful as it is, it still has its limitations; otherwise, he wouldn’t have lost in the final battle."
Walking towards his bedside shelf, he looked at a diary gently placed on it.
"Unlimited plunder, despite its description, can be used only once a month; after every use, a thirty-day cool-down is needed for the body to adjust."
"There’s also a limit to how many abilities his body can stack without exploding. The only way to gain more abilities would be to find a way to increase my carrying capacity."
"Fortunately, I know a way!"
Talking to himself, Ethan’s mind began to race as he thought back to the original story.
If the events were the same that happened in the book, then, using that advantage, he, as Imperion, would become so much stronger that he couldn’t even imagine how strong.
And to do that, he first needed to find out more about what timeline he was in.
Although the memories of Imperion were still coming on, it seemed a lot of it was missing.
Perhaps a side effect of transmigration?
"However, what is this? The novel never mentioned anything about Imperion having a diary?"
Filled with curiosity, he couldn’t help but turn the first page.
However, what he saw next made his head go numb with shock.
So much shock that he almost dropped the book on the spot.
"Fuck! What the hell is this!"
Cursing under his breath, he struggled to get himself together as he continued to read.
’Hello to the me who is not me.’
’If you’re reading this, then it means I probably failed the first time and could not save the world.’
’However, do not worry, but this is just one of my backup plans.’
Turning the page, Ethan continued to read.
’As you can tell from the skill Datafication, not only does it allow us to process our world in data and collect available information.’
’But at its peak, it allowed me to conceive all possible outcomes of my plan to deal with them.’
’Unfortunately, nothing worked!’
’They are coming!’
Hearing the words ’They,’ Ethan, for some reason, felt a chill run down his spine.
Suddenly, before he could even react, just as he was about to turn the page, a huge sense of pain enveloped his whole being.
"Arghhh!"
"What the hell is this!"
Falling on his knees, he clutched his hair, struggling to endure the pain.
His eyes popped, and his veins protruded, and even his fingers clenched so tightly that they broke through his bulletproof skin, leaving streaks of blood on the ground.
In a trance, he saw endless chaos, portals bigger than whole countries appearing everywhere in the sky.
Through them, beings that he had never seen before, nor could he even describe, descended.
It was chaos.
The screams of children resounded through the air, and the oh-so-noble heroes were nothing but cannon fodder to this mighty enemy.
However, right before he could understand what was happening, as quickly as everything came, it vanished.
What replaced it was a knock on his outside door.
Knockknock
"Ethan, are you awake? It’s Lilith."
"It’s almost time for Imperion’s meeting in Elysium!"
Hearing this, still on his knees, he remained silent, his hands still trembling from what he had just seen.
"Imperion, just what the hell is going on, and what are you fighting!?"
Taking a deep breath, Ethan slowly got up.
It seemed his new life was going to be anything but easy.