Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Hunter System

The transition from the deep, formless void of sleep to waking consciousness was not a gentle one. It felt less like opening his eyes and more like being violently pulled to the surface of a murky lake.

Veer inhaled sharply, his chest expanding as if starved for oxygen, and immediately realized two things. First, his entire body ached with a profound, bone-deep exhaustion, the kind of heavy fatigue that usually followed intense physical exertion. Second, the air smelled wrong. It lacked the familiar, dusty warmth of his cramped bedroom in New Delhi. Instead, the room was filled with the faint, lingering scent of expensive vanilla perfume mixed with the sharp tang of sweat.

He blinked against the harsh morning sunlight filtering through a gap in the blinds. The ceiling above him was painted a pristine, matte white—not the water-stained plaster he was accustomed to staring at.

Panic, cold and sudden, spiked in his chest. His heart rate accelerated, hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He tried to sit up, to throw off the tangled sheets and assess his surroundings, but his arm brushed against something warm and soft.

Veer froze.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he turned his head to the right.

Lying next to him, half-buried under the twisted duvet, was a girl. She was fast asleep, her breathing shallow and rhythmic. Her back was turned to him, the curve of her bare spine exposed to the cool morning air. She was completely naked. Her hair was a striking, chaotic cascade across the pillows—a brilliant, almost unnatural shade of platinum blonde, heavily streaked with stark, contrasting shades of pitch black.

Veer’s throat went dry. He held his breath, terrified that the slightest sound might wake her. His mind raced, desperately trying to piece together the events of the previous night. He had been in India. He had been in his own apartment, in his own bed, living his mundane thirty-six-year-old life. He remembered the sound of the ceiling fan, the distant honking of traffic on the New Delhi streets, the sheer normalcy of falling asleep after a long day at work.

There was absolutely no logical sequence of events that could bridge the gap between that reality and this one.

Yet, as he scanned the room, a strange, dissonant sensation washed over him. The room was utterly foreign to his thirty-six-year-old mind, but beneath the panic, a secondary layer of consciousness recognized every single detail.

Without needing to open any doors or explore, he just ‘knew’ the layout. He knew that the bathroom was located exactly three steps past the bedroom door, down a short hallway to the left. He knew the kitchen was an open-plan design to the right, overlooking a small, railed balcony that offered a mediocre view of a bustling street. He even knew that the closed door opposite the kitchen belonged to his roommate, a guy who kept odd hours and rarely cleaned up after himself. This was a shared, two-bedroom apartment.

How did he know that?

The cognitive dissonance was nauseating. His logical mind screamed that this was impossible, a kidnapping, a hallucination, or some bizarre fever dream. But his instincts, his muscle memory, felt entirely at home.

He looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly. The joints felt different, the skin smoother, lacking the calluses and faint scars he had accumulated over three and a half decades of life. The deep ache in his muscles, the heavy, drained feeling in his lower back—it all pointed to a night of intense activity that his New Delhi self had absolutely no memory of participating in.

He needed to think.

Moving with painstaking care, Veer slowly slid his legs out from under the covers. The mattress shifted slightly, and the girl let out a soft, indistinct murmur, shifting her weight. Veer froze in place, holding his breath until her breathing steadied into the deep rhythm of sleep once more.

He placed his bare feet on the cold hardwood floor, shivering slightly at the sudden drop in temperature. Keeping his steps light and measured, he crept out of the bedroom, navigating the short hallway with the instinctive ease of someone who had walked it a thousand times before.

He slipped into the bathroom and gently closed the door behind him, making sure the latch didn’t click too loudly. He leaned against the closed door for a second, letting out a long, shaky breath, before turning to face the mirror above the sink.

The face staring back at him stopped him cold.

Veer gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, his knuckles turning white. He leaned closer, his breath fogging the lower edge of the glass.

The man in the mirror was not thirty-six years old. The faint lines of stress that had begun to etch themselves around his eyes and mouth were gone. The slight dullness in his skin, the subtle signs of aging that he had begrudgingly accepted over the years, had been completely erased.

Instead, he was looking at a teenager.

He was eighteen years old. His jawline was sharper, his dark hair thicker and slightly unkempt, his dark eyes wide with shock. It was his own face, undeniably his, but turned back the clock by nearly two decades.

“What the hell…” he whispered, the sound of his own voice startling him. It lacked the deeper, resonant gravel of his older self.

And then, the dam broke.

It didn’t happen like a movie, with a sudden flash of light or a dramatic montage. It felt more like a violent physical blow to the center of his forehead. Veer gasped, his hands flying to his temples as a localized, splitting headache erupted behind his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, his knees buckling slightly, forcing him to lean heavily against the sink to stay upright.

Memories—vast, sprawling oceans of them—began to pour into his consciousness.

For the first ten years, the two rivers of memory were identical. The childhood in New Delhi, the primary school, the smell of street food, the sound of monsoon rain against the windowpanes. Everything matched perfectly.

But then came the divergence.

In the life he had known just hours ago, his family had remained in India. He had grown up, gone to college, found a job, and lived a painfully average existence.

In ‘this’ life, the memories showed something else entirely. When he was ten, his father had received a massive promotion, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to relocate to the United States. The memories of packing up their entire lives, the terrifying and exhilarating flight across the world, the struggle to adapt to an American middle school—it all flowed into his mind with crystal clarity.

For six years, life in the US had been decent. He had learned the language, lost the heaviest parts of his accent, and adapted to the culture. He had friends. He had a normal teenage life.

Then came the year he turned sixteen.

The headache intensified, pulsing with a deep, throbbing ache as the emotional weight of the memories crashed into him. He remembered the shouting. The shattered plates in the kitchen. The undeniable proof that his father had been carrying on a long-term affair with his secretary.

He remembered the look in his mother’s eyes—a hollow, devastating emptiness that had frightened him more than the screaming.

And then, he remembered the day he came home from high school to find the paramedics in the driveway. The flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the suburban houses. The sterile, clinical tone of the police officer explaining that his mother had taken her own life.

Veer gripped the sink tighter, a ragged breath escaping his lips. The grief was fresh, raw, and bleeding, crashing into the mature stoicism of a thirty-six-year-old man and tearing it to shreds. He felt the phantom wetness of tears he had already cried two years ago.

The aftermath was even worse. The American legal system cared about many things, but infidelity was not a crime. His mother had made her own choice, ending her own life. Legally, his father was entirely blameless. He was a free man, a wealthy executive who barely waited for the dirt to settle on his wife’s grave before moving the secretary into their home.

The new family. The immediate erasure of his mother’s presence.

Sixteen-year-old Veer had not been able to stomach it. The memory of the confrontation was bitter—the anger, the disgust, the final screaming match where Veer had packed his bags, spat venom at his father, and walked out the door. He had emancipated himself, taking whatever inheritance his mother had left in a separate account, and started living alone. He rented this apartment, splitting the cost with a roommate to make ends meet while he finished his education.

The headache began to slowly recede, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache.

Veer opened his eyes, staring at the eighteen-year-old in the mirror. He breathed slowly, letting the cold water from the tap run over his hands.

Who was he?

He searched his mind, looking for seams, looking for the dominant personality. Was he a thirty-six-year-old man from New Delhi hallucinating an entire American adolescence? Or was he an eighteen-year-old boy whose trauma had caused him to invent a mundane, safe life in India to cope with reality?

The terrifying, unassailable truth was that neither felt like a dream. Both lives were equally real to him. He remembered the taste of cheap coffee in his office breakroom in Delhi just as vividly as he remembered the smell of the sterile hospital waiting room in New York. He didn’t feel like an old man inhabiting a young body, nor did he feel like a teenager with borrowed memories.

He was simply… Veer. Both of them, seamlessly merged into a single consciousness. The maturity and weariness of his older self tempered the volatile, burning rage of his younger self. The grief of his mother’s death was sharp and agonizing, but the thirty-six-year-old within him provided a strange, stabilizing anchor, preventing him from completely breaking down on the bathroom tiles.

He rubbed his temples, massaging the lingering ache. He splashed freezing water onto his face, letting it drip from his chin.

“Alright,” he whispered to the empty room. “Breathe. You’re in America. You’re eighteen. You live alone. You hate your father.” He recited the facts like a mantra, forcing his mind to accept the new reality.

Before he could delve any deeper into the existential crisis of his own identity, a sound broke the silence.

The rustling of bedsheets from the other room.

Veer froze, a droplet of water hanging from his nose.

“You hiding in there?”

The voice was distinctly feminine, slightly raspy with sleep, but laced with an undeniable, effortless confidence. It wasn’t the voice of someone embarrassed by waking up naked in a strange apartment.

Veer reached for a towel, drying his face as his newly integrated memories helpfully supplied the identity of the girl in his bed.

Felicia Hardy.

She was a classmate at his current high school. She was stunningly beautiful, undeniably popular, and carried herself with an aura of untouchable grace. According to his memories, they were absolutely, definitively ‘not’ dating. Felicia had a boyfriend—or at least, she was publicly involved with someone else, a guy with money and status.

Veer was just a distraction. A secret, casual fling. She used him for timepass, for the thrill of doing something she wasn’t supposed to, and maybe because she enjoyed the fact that he lived alone, away from the prying eyes of parents.

He took a deep breath, tossing the towel onto the rack, and unlocked the bathroom door.

When he stepped out into the hallway, Felicia was already up. She wasn’t scrambling to cover herself, nor did she exhibit even a fraction of the awkwardness one might expect. She stood near the edge of the bed, bathed in the morning light, completely unashamed of her nudity. She was stretching her arms above her head, her lithe, athletic body moving with the languid, mesmerizing grace of a predatory cat.

She noticed him standing in the hallway and let out a soft, amused chuckle. She walked toward him, her bare feet making no sound on the floorboards.

Veer’s brain short-circuited entirely. The thirty-six-year-old part of him was internally screaming at the sheer absurdity of the situation, while the eighteen-year-old part was entirely distracted by her proximity. He couldn’t formulate a single coherent sentence.

Felicia didn’t seem to mind his silence. She stepped right into his personal space, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck. She tilted her head up and pulled him down into a kiss.

It wasn’t a chaste morning peck. It was a deep, aggressive French kiss, hungry and unapologetic. Veer stiffened in shock before his body instinctively reacted, his hands tentatively finding her waist.

After a few long seconds, she pulled back, a satisfied, mischievous smirk playing on her lips.

“I enjoyed that,” she purred, her voice a low, velvety whisper. She dragged a perfectly manicured fingernail down his chest, her eyes glinting with amusement. “But I really need to go. Places to be, people to see.”

Before Veer could even attempt to find his voice, she stepped away. She moved around the room with practiced efficiency, picking up her discarded clothes. A black lace bra, a sleek top, a pair of designer jeans. She dressed in under a minute, not once asking for his help or looking for conversation. She grabbed her leather jacket from the back of a chair and swung it over her shoulder.

“See you around in class, Veer,” she threw over her shoulder, offering him a final, dazzling wink.

The front door opened, closed, and she was gone.

Veer stood perfectly still in the middle of the hallway, listening to the silence settle back over the apartment. He brought a hand to his lips, his fingers brushing against his own mouth. He could still taste the lingering flavor of her saliva—something distinctly sweet, like mint and expensive lip gloss.

He didn’t know what to say. There was nobody left to say it to anyway.

Moving like a man in a trance, Veer walked back into his bedroom. The bed was a mess, the sheets tangled and carrying her scent. He sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, staring at the blank wall opposite him.

He was eighteen. He was in America. His mother was dead. His father was a traitor. And Felicia Hardy had just treated him like a convenient piece of morning entertainment.

He ran a hand through his hair, letting out a long, slow breath. “Okay,” he muttered to the empty room. “Okay. One thing at a time.”

As if the universe had been waiting for him to finally sit down and process his reality, a sudden, sharp chime echoed in his ears. It didn’t come from outside; it sounded as though it had rung directly inside his skull.

Veer flinched, looking around the room. “Who’s there?”

In response, the space approximately two feet in front of his face rippled. A faint, ethereal blue light materialized out of thin air, coalescing rapidly into a glowing, semi-transparent holographic panel. It hovered at eye level, completely defying every law of physics his thirty-six years of life had taught him to trust.

A mechanical, genderless voice resonated in his mind.

[Hunter System Activated.]

Veer stared at the glowing blue text scrolling across the panel. He didn’t move. He barely breathed. He just read the words as they organized themselves into a neat, structured list.

—

Name: Veer Pratap Singh

Level: 0 (0/1)

Affinity: Specialisation

…

HP: 10/10

AP: 1000/1000

Fatigue: 0%

…

STR: 0

DEX: 0

VIT: 1

INT: 1

PER: 0

…

Skill: None

…

[Quest]

[Inventory]

—

Veer’s brows furrowed, deep lines creasing his forehead. He leaned closer to the floating screen, half-expecting it to vanish if he breathed too hard. It didn’t. It remained perfectly stable, casting a faint blue glow onto his skin.

“Hunter System?” he read aloud, his voice barely a whisper.

The moment he spoke the words, another influx of information surged into his brain. This time, it wasn’t a painful migraine of repressed memories. It felt clean, organized, like a file being seamlessly downloaded directly into his consciousness.

He closed his eyes, navigating the new information with an instinctual ease.

According to the data unspooling in his mind, the system wasn’t some complex, incomprehensible alien technology. It was actually surprisingly straightforward, and for someone who possessed the memories of his thirty-six-year-old self, it was incredibly familiar.

The system was directly modeled on the power mechanics of a fictional world he had read about in his past life: the world of ‘Hunter x Hunter’. Specifically, it was based entirely on the concept of ‘Nen’—the manipulation of life energy, or aura.

According to the stat screen, Veer’s affinity was ‘Specialisation’.

In the rules of Nen, Specialists were the outliers, the rule-breakers who didn’t fit into the standard categories of Enhancement, Emission, Transmutation, Manipulation, or Conjuration. And this system, it seemed, was his unique Specialist ability.

He opened his eyes, scanning the information detailing how he was supposed to grow stronger.

The leveling mechanic was brutally simple. He didn’t earn Experience Points (EXP) by killing monsters or exploring dungeons. He earned EXP through training.

‘Whenever you train, system will convert that effort into EXP.’

Earning EXP would allow him to level up. Each time he leveled up, his Health Points (HP) and Aura Points (AP)—which dictated how much Nen he could use—would increase. Furthermore, every level gained would grant him five Free Stat points, which he could manually allocate into Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, or Perception however he saw fit.

But the true power of his Specialisation lay hidden behind a level cap.

The information clearly stated that every time he crossed a threshold of twenty levels (Level 20, Level 40, etc.), he would be granted the ability to create his own personal Hatsu—a unique, signature Nen ability. The created ability would start at Level 1, requiring its own training to master. Because his affinity was Specialisation, the system removed all standard restrictions. He could theorize, design, and create a Hatsu drawing from ‘any’ of the other five Nen categories at 100% efficiency. He wasn’t bound by the standard hexagonal chart of Nen affinities.

He was entirely a blank slate, with infinite potential.

Veer shifted his gaze to the bottom of the panel, focusing on the [Quest] tab.

The system elaborated further. Training wasn’t the only way to level up. He could earn EXP by completing Quests. However, unlike traditional game systems that forced arbitrary missions upon the user, this system was self-directed.

Veer had to create the Quests himself. They functioned essentially as personal goals or vows. He would define the parameters of the Quest, and the System, acting as an impartial judge, would evaluate the difficulty, danger, and effort required to achieve that goal. The System would then assign a reward—EXP, items, or perhaps something else—commensurate with what it believed the Host deserved.

He controlled the objective; the System controlled the payout.

Finally, he looked at the [Skill] section, which currently displayed ‘None’.

He learned that he could acquire new skills simply by asking the System for them. Any conceivable skill present within the System’s vast database—be it martial arts, stealth, cooking, or marksmanship—could be unlocked at no cost. However, unlocking a skill merely gave him the fundamental knowledge of how it worked. It started at Level 0. If he wanted the skill to actually be useful, he had to physically practice it himself to level it up. The System offered no shortcuts to mastery, only the blueprint.

Veer sat back on the bed, staring at the glowing blue interface.

His mind, previously spinning out of control from the trauma of his merged lives, suddenly found a sharp, stabilizing point of focus.

He lived in America. This is no Hunter x Hunter world, where danger is everywhere. He was just a teenager with a tragic backstory, living in a normal world, who had somehow been gifted a supernatural power system.

Right now, he was just Veer Pratap Singh. And he had a System.

He reached out, his finger passing through the intangible blue light of the interface, and finished checking his system.