3) Sense of Time (World of Darkness).
“Hm…
whatever, taking it.
The name of the source world does bother me a little, but given how packed my schedule is about to get — a weak but useful power, one I can use to test out how absorbing an ability card even works,” I snorted, instantly assimilating the skill.
Worth noting: the skill gets added instantly, with no assimilation percentage involved at all — good to know and keep in mind.
That significantly cuts down the risk of picking up a super-regeneration skill.
Actually, I’d have already used one of those, except for two things.
First, the usual worry — will it turn me into a mutant (right now I’m still human, thank god the first page of my Gacha, the status-screen-like thing, shows my race).
In the Marvel world that’s basically an indelible brand.
Second, I have no idea what type of regeneration it would be — what if it uses my current state as a baseline and keeps snapping me back to it, interfering with new assimilations, abilities, or even proper muscle development!
And that matters!
That’s exactly why I’ve been pushing so hard on the gym equipment, and why I decided to hit boxing today — sure, I got an athlete’s build out of the deal, but a basketball player and a fighter develop different muscle groups; not all of them, of course, some overlap since they’re used in nearly every sport.
Still, I definitely need to correct that imbalance, as the very first gym session showed, and today’s boxing trip would most likely confirm (and it did, I can confirm that now, jumping ahead a bit) — every muscle group a basketball player never touched was left over from my old body…
meaning, basically absent.
Though I can feel the Helltaker card fixing that, why not help it along?
Speeding up the process and correcting the flaws myself.
All right, moving on.
4) Boost Card x5.
“Oh, long time no see!” I snorted.
By the way, as I understand it, that “x-however-many” isn’t the card’s own multiplier — it’s the number of Boost Cards I’ll receive once I activate this particular gacha card.
Should I test it out by leveling up Sense of Time?
Nah, forget it.
What would leveling up such a useless dead-end power even get me?
Feeling time down to the second?
I don’t need that.
5) Demi (Subverse).
“I wonder, is there card fusion in this thing?” Glancing between the android-for-very-specific-purposes I’d just rolled and the combat android 2B’s card, I really, really wanted to fuse the two of them into one, more perfect…
yes, perfect!
6) Johnny Cage’s Vest (MK10).
“Oh sure, how could I possibly get by without you.
All that’s left is the shirt, right?” At this point I had…
already made my peace with it.
7) The Chipped-Off Nose of the Great Sphinx (Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra).
“I honestly don’t know how to react to this.
Just another useless card for the vault,” I shrugged, surprisingly calm about it.
8) Jun Lee (Sousei no Aquarion).
“Oh!
Now this is a solid investment for the future!
A great one, even!
And you’d think — just an ordinary guy,” I said, quite pleased.
Going by the information the Gacha gives me, this guy is…
well, ordinary.
A bit above average height, build to match.
He’s got some muscle, but he’s nowhere near Kagami’s level.
Eyesight bad enough that he wears glasses.
Pilots robots?
Not even close to the best at it within his own fandom.
And given Japan’s obsession with robots, you could easily roll someone way cooler in that department…
but why bother?
Marvel’s pretty thin on pilotable robots anyway.
So basically an average guy a few years older than me.
And you’d think, another candidate for permanent exile to the vault, but!
High intelligence — not a genius, but genuinely sharp.
Sure, in Marvel that’s nothing special, but still.
Next up — a programmer!
And this trait blows the last one out of the water.
Here, I’d actually call him a genius.
Given what world I’m in, that’s a hell of a useful skill…
heh, couldn’t resist.
Either way, digging up any information I’m interested in is about to get a lot easier.
For instance, confirming whether my parents’ deaths were really an accident (that alone would be worth assimilating or summoning him for) — because given what I’ve learned about my father’s connections, someone competent definitely investigated it, and once I’ve assimilated this guy, all I’ll need to do is pilfer that competent someone’s data.
Scouting out everything about those very connections of my father’s will get easier too.
Same with checking up on my relatives’ contacts — I have a feeling I’m going to learn a lot of interesting things.
Hell, I could even trade in information!
Or do something else for myself — find reliable, this-world-sourced data instead of relying on “my own” memory about various gadgets and gizmos that could make me stronger.
But that wasn’t the end of the guy’s perks!
Besides the programming side, he was also a technician and a mechanic — seriously, this Jun Lee could fix a damn mecha!
Computers, any other tech, all of it.
Sure, he was a bit awkward with everyday life stuff, and downright hopeless with girls…
but you can’t make worse what’s already nonexistent.
His flaws, set against my own gaps in those same areas, actually come off looking positive by comparison.
So I can safely assimilate him right after Ax-Man — being able to defend myself still matters more.
But one thing I have zero doubts about is the assimilation speed — our personalities are extremely close to each other.
He’s practically an improved version of me, with a certain amount of extra baggage of knowledge.
9) AKM-74/2 (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.).
“Right…
now I definitely feel a lot safer,” I said with a hand to my face, dripping irony.
“All right, let’s see what’s left and then it’s back to work!
The ads won’t run themselves!” I snorted.
And froze, staring at the last card…
looks like I’d rolled something of the absolute highest rarity!
10) Knull (Marvel-616).
“Ahem…
well, the Gacha just showed me the level I need to work towards.
I’d bet he’d count as maximum rarity by any gacha’s standards…
seriously?
The Abyss made flesh, the Black King, the Cosmic Satan, the Avatar of Primordial Darkness, an elder god of darkness and the creator of the symbiotes.
And on top of that, a being capable of both killing and ‘corrupting’ Celestials.
Yeah, I’ve just been shown the peak of power, or something close to it, even in this universe.
This guy is genuinely worth being afraid of…” I shuddered a little by the end, as more and more information kept pouring in from the Gacha.
Normally it just skims the surface, but an ancient cosmic entity has accumulated way too much “surface” to skim.
Yeah, now I definitely understand what level of power I should aim for if I want to stop fearing most of Marvel’s beings (though even something like that would have counter-arguments out there).
And while Diluc, Batman, and even Zarathos might one day be things I actually assimilate, I’m not touching this one with a hundred-meter pole.
He’d corrupt the pole too…
This is literally a last-resort card, one I could only use when doom and certain death are threatening not just me but the entire universe — that’s when I could deploy THIS.
And even then, I’d most likely dissolve afterward and become Knull myself, taking over the old threat’s position.
So really, this isn’t even a weapon of last resort so much as revenge for a destroyed universe — I won’t even entertain any other use for it.
A threat to my life?
Pfft…
I’d rather die than unleash this on the world.
Seriously, nothing, ever, not even a Thanos snap, should push me to so much as consider this card.
That’s it, off to the vault with you, and we’ll pretend I never got you at all.
Yeah, this pull only gave me nine cards — must be a Gacha glitch!
There simply wasn’t a tenth one.
After that, still a bit shell-shocked by the (non-)creature the Gacha had rolled, I threw myself back into ordinary tasks capable of occupying my brain and distracting me from that too.
Exhausting workouts, studying, boxing, work, studying again — this time devoted to cooking — burned through my time relentlessly.
Though I still carved out a bit of it: calling my grandparents was genuine soul-soothing, and I couldn’t even understand anymore what I’d been so afraid of before.
I kept up with the news, though it was quiet on that front for now, everyone still waiting for the Stark situation to resolve.
Poor guy — having had a knife at my own back once now, I’m starting to understand and sympathize with situations like that a lot better.
I also found time to visit my parents’ grave, and although a bitter lump rose in my throat again as I approached it, this time I forced myself through it, managing both to walk up and to say goodbye to them properly…
admitting how much they’d really meant to me…
as well as admitting that they’d spoiled me rotten, leaving me completely unprepared for this life.
I also got in touch with the school, where I swore up and down to make up all my missed work and asked, citing family circumstances, to be temporarily switched to remote learning…
surprisingly, they met me halfway, offering condolences for my loss.
And extracting a promise out of me to compete in the academic olympiads.
On one hand, it’s convenient being the nerd — that clearly helped in negotiating the switch to a different learning format — but on the other, it worked slightly against me.
Still, the nearest olympiad is in March, with a whole string of other competitions right behind it.
Hm, October to March is enough time for my changes to pass as natural.
So I agreed with a clear conscience, even promising to return to full-time schooling sometime closer to summer.
Though personally I still had questions.
My reputation as a nerd is a plus, sure, but agreeing this easily, and the school just leaving me alone up until now…
what exactly did my dearest relatives tell them, or promise them, to get that?
Heh, well, sooner or later I’ll find out — after assimilating the hacker, for sure.
And six days after the assimilation began, Helltaker fully became part of my “Self.” “That was…
twice as long as it took with Kagami, and you’d think, given how many assimilation-accelerating things I did, and how our conditions aren’t all that different anymore, and how I haven’t changed all that much physically…
but still, that long?
Unexpected!” I snorted, summoning Axel Manning’s card and beginning its assimilation.
The hacker and everything else are all well and good, but first I need to instill in myself at least some ability to defend myself.
Preferably a good one, right off the bat.
And meanwhile…
now I can get started on setting up the basement, since the Ax-Man card gives me a clear sense of what I need to install down there for training.
And also, what’s this strange feeling I’ve got that I’m not going back to school by the deadline I’m planning on?
Strange, irrational, but refusing to let go.
Must just be a bout of paranoia acting up.