Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: New Quest

The predawn air of Queens was biting, carrying the damp chill of a lingering autumn. Veer arrived at the abandoned handball court in Queens Park precisely at 4:00 AM, his heavy canvas backpack slung over his shoulder. The cracked concrete and overgrown weeds were his sanctuary, the only place where he could violently break his body down without drawing the stares of civilians.

But this morning, the sanctuary was occupied.

Sitting on top of the rusted chain-link fence, her legs dangling casually over the edge, was Gwen Stacy. She was dressed in sleek, dark athletic wear, a stark contrast to her usual high school wardrobe. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she watched him approach with a sharp, expectant glint in her blue eyes.

Veer stopped at the edge of the court. His expression remained utterly impassive. “What are you doing here?”

Gwen dropped from the fence, landing on the concrete without making a single sound. It was a terrifying display of localized gravitational control. She crossed her arms. “I checked the city zoning records,” she said smoothly. “This park doesn’t belong to your father. I can exercise wherever I want.”

Veer stared at her for a long, silent moment. He lacked the time and the energy for teenage defiance. He let out a slow, weary sigh, dropped his bag, and began his routine.

For the next three hours, Veer subjected himself to a brutalizing regimen of plyometrics, weighted sprints, and isometric holds. He chased the 100% threshold of his Fatigue meter, pushing his enhanced Vitality to its absolute limit. Beside him, Gwen decided to join in. She mirrored his movements, matching his squats and lunges with flawless precision.

But the physiological gap was absurd.

By 7:00 AM, Veer was drenched in sweat, his lungs burning as the System finally registered the completion of his cycles. He had earned exactly 10 EXP per hour. After three hours, he netted 30 EXP. It was a miserable crawl. He still needed 100 EXP to breach Level 20.

Gwen, on the other hand, wasn’t even breathing hard. She stood stretching her hamstrings, completely unaffected by a workout that would have hospitalized a normal athlete.

“Isn’t this… boring?” Gwen asked, watching Veer wipe his face with a towel. “You’re just doing the same movements over and over. With your strength, I figured you’d be lifting cars or punching through brick walls.”

“My powers are not like yours,” Veer replied, his breathing steadily returning to normal as his high Vitality kicked in. “I don’t have powers like super strength, super speed, or wind manipulation. My ability allowed me to grow like a video game character. The more I actively grind my training, the stronger I become. If I stop training, my progression halts.”

Gwen’s eyes instantly lit up, the scientific curiosity she usually hid behind her social persona bubbling to the surface. “Wait, seriously? A quantifiable progression system? That’s incredible.” She stepped closer, animated. “My powers aren’t like that. They just… happened all at once. I have this insane super strength and infinite stamina. My balance and flexibility are completely unnatural. I can stick to walls, and it doesn’t matter what angle I’m at—upside down, sideways—my inner ear just tells my brain it’s completely natural.”

Veer looked at her, his dark eyes flat. “Your boyfriend is going to be incredibly happy,” he deadpanned. “Unnatural balance and flexibility will be a massive asset to your sex life.”

He expected her to turn bright red, stammer, and storm off. Instead, Gwen just laughed, a bitter, self-deprecating sound.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said, her smile fading. “And even if I did… eventually he would find out what I am. He’d look at me lifting a car and realize he’s completely useless. He would think of me as a freak.”

Veer didn’t offer a platitude, because he knew she was fundamentally correct. It was a cold truth of human psychology. In comic books, the invincible superhero often had a completely mundane, normal partner. But in reality, the power dynamic inevitably shattered the relationship. It was the same reason A-list film stars almost exclusively married other film stars or billionaires. When one person occupied a space of massive, untouchable power, the other person inevitably developed a crushing inferiority complex.

Veer decided to shift the topic. “Sticking to walls. Disproportionate strength.” He looked at her analytically. “Your powers mimic an arachnid.”

Gwen nodded enthusiastically, relieved by the change in subject. “Yes! Exactly. I didn’t want to say anything yesterday, but it was a spider. I was in Dr. Curt Connors’ lab at Oscorp with Peter, and one of their genetically modified cross-species spiders bit the back of my neck.”

Veer had already deduced the Oscorp connection, but a specific mechanical question came to mind. He looked at her with genuine, academic seriousness.

“Do you also shoot webs like a spider?” Veer asked. “Does the webbing shoot out of your butt?”

This time, Gwen’s face flushed a violent, furious red. “Shut up!” she snapped, throwing a rapid, frustrated punch aimed directly at his shoulder.

Veer’s reflexes flared. He sidestepped the strike with millimeter precision, letting her fist sail harmlessly past him.

Gwen stumbled slightly, recovering her balance. She looked at her fist, then at Veer, a sudden, brilliant idea sparking in her blue eyes.

“Wait,” Gwen said, her voice rising with excitement. “You said your powers work like a video game, right? You earn experience points by exerting yourself. So instead of wasting time doing these boring, repetitive exercises… why don’t we spar?”

Veer raised an eyebrow.

Gwen continued, pacing slightly. “I will purposefully lose so you can get the maximum output of effort against a superior opponent. If it works like a game, fighting a higher-level boss should skyrocket your experience, right?”

Veer’s eyes widened slightly. The sheer logistical brilliance of the idea struck him. He had been so focused on grinding his training quest that he hadn’t fully explored the System’s Quest generation regarding PvP combat.

He focused his mind, mentally structuring the parameters of a combat engagement against Gwen Stacy, and submitted the request to the System.

A translucent blue interface materialized instantly.

—

[System Notification: New Quest Generated]

Objective: Engage in a sparring match with the Anomaly (Gwen Stacy).

Time Limit: 1 Hour.

Reward: EXP will be dynamically calculated based on combat effort, physical strain, and Aura expenditure.

Bonus: Successfully defeating the target will yield a massive EXP multiplier.

—

The rigid numbers of the reward were hidden, replaced by a dynamic scale. But the potential was undeniable.

“Follow me,” Veer said, grabbing his bag.

They left the park, navigating through the quiet morning streets until they reached an industrial zone deep in Queens. Veer led her through a rusted chain-link fence into the sprawling, empty lot of an abandoned paper mill. It was an isolated graveyard of cracked concrete, decaying brick pillars, and rusting machinery. It was the private track where he practiced ‘Silent Gait’.

Gwen looked around the desolate arena, stretching her arms. “So, if you’re a game character, what level are you actually at?”

“Nineteen,” Veer answered, dropping his bag near a rusted forklift.

“And what about me?” she asked playfully. “Did your game system scan me?”

“You are Level 32,” Veer said flatly.

Gwen let out a low whistle, a smug, competitive grin spreading across her face. “Level 32 versus Level 19. I’m going to destroy you.”

“Levels do not dictate absolute victory,” Veer countered, walking toward the center of the concrete lot. “If a normal human, who registers at Level 0, shoots you in the head with a high-caliber sniper rifle from a mile away, you will die. If the military drops a nuclear warhead on this paper mill, we both die. Higher stats provide a statistical advantage, but they are not a substitute for tactical reality.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, taking her place twenty feet across from him. “You know, for an eighteen-year-old guy, you talk exactly like a cynical, middle-aged man.”

Veer ignored the observation. He settled into a loose, grounded stance. “Are you ready? Because I am not going to hold back.”

Gwen didn’t possess any formal martial arts training. She simply raised her fists in a standard, slightly awkward boxing stance, relying entirely on her superhuman reflexes. “Bring it on, old man.”

Veer moved.

He didn’t activate ‘Ren’. He needed to test the waters, to incrementally scale his output against a superior stat block. Instead, he funneled 8 AP per second into ‘Silent Gait’.

He crossed the twenty-foot gap in a terrifying, soundless blur. He aimed a calculated, heavy right cross squarely at her jaw.

It was incredibly fast, but Gwen didn’t even blink. Her body reacted on pure instinct. Her head snapped back a fraction of a second before his knuckles arrived, the air pressure ruffling her blonde hair. Veer instantly pivoted, converting his momentum into a sweeping low kick aimed at her knee, but Gwen hopped lightly over it, completely unfazed.

Her Spider-Sense was an absolute cheat code. It was a localized, biological precognition—nearly identical to Observation Haki. She didn’t need to track his movements visually; her body simply knew where danger was going to be and vacated the space.

“Too slow!” Gwen teased.

She retaliated with a straight punch to his chest. Veer tried to sidestep, but the sheer velocity of her strike was blinding.

‘Smash.’

The impact felt like being hit by a speeding freight train. Veer was launched off his feet, flying backward through the air. He slammed violently into a decaying brick pillar, shattering the masonry into a cloud of red dust.

Gwen gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “Veer! Oh my god, I hit too hard—”

The dust cleared. Veer stepped out of the rubble, completely unharmed, casually rolling his shoulders. A dense, humming shroud of aura clung tightly to his skin.

He had successfully triggered ‘Ken’, flooding his torso with aura right before the impact.

“Do not apologize,” Veer said, his analytical mind rapidly processing the data. Her Strength stat was astronomical—easily 60+. Her Dexterity and Perception were several times higher than his own. However, thanks to the mechanical advantage of ‘Silent Gait’, his raw movement speed across the ground was slightly faster. The problem was her precognition.

To bypass her Spider-Sense, he couldn’t just be fast. He had to overload her sensory processing.

Veer closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He opened his nodes and violently expelled his aura.

‘Ren.’

The air around Veer exploded. The localized hurricane Gwen had witnessed in his bedroom erupted in the paper mill. A massive, roaring shroud of aura flared around his body, instantly doubling his Strength, Dexterity, and Perception. His Vitality and Intelligence—tied directly to his HP and AP pools—remained fixed, but his kinetic potential skyrocketed.

He shot forward, the concrete cracking beneath his boots.

The fight instantly escalated from a playful spar into a brutal, high-speed brawl. Veer unleashed a relentless, suffocating barrage of strikes, utilizing his fifteen years of police tactical training. He didn’t hold back just because she was a girl; he fought like a man trying to survive a monster.

Gwen’s eyes widened as she was forced on the defensive. But as the seconds ticked by, she began to adapt. She stopped relying purely on dodging and started intercepting his strikes, using her terrifying strength to parry.

They tore through the paper mill. A stray kick from Veer shattered a wooden pallet into splinters. Gwen shoved Veer backward, sending him crashing through the rusted shell of an industrial generator. Veer rebounded, using the metal frame as a springboard, and landed a glancing blow across Gwen’s cheek.

“Son of a bitch!” Gwen cursed, stumbling back and rubbing her face, a fierce, competitive fire burning in her eyes.

They were both taking damage. Veer’s ‘Ken’ was absorbing the worst of her blows, but the sheer kinetic force still bruised his muscles and rattled his bones. Gwen was sporting a bleeding lip and a rapidly swelling cheekbone, her lack of formal defense leaving her open to his feints and combinations.

But despite the pain, despite the blood and the destruction, they were both smiling. The isolation of their respective secrets vanished in the chaos of the fight. They were pushed to their absolute limits, reveling in the intoxicating freedom of utilizing their power without restraint.

But Veer’s internal clock was flashing red.

The exponential drain of maintaining Ren, Ken, and Silent Gait simultaneously was violently depleting his 22,000 AP pool. He had less than a minute of fuel left. Once his aura emptied, his stats would halve, his armor would drop, and Gwen’s Level 32 strength would snap him like a twig.

He prepared to disengage.

Suddenly, Gwen threw her hands up, stepping back and dropping her boxing stance entirely. She was panting heavily, sweat plastering her blonde hair to her forehead.

“Okay! Okay, I’m done!” she gasped, laughing through the pain of her bruised face. “I yield! You win, old man.”

Veer halted, his Ren instantly retracting back into his body. He stood amidst the pulverized concrete and twisted metal, his chest heaving, his muscles screaming in agony.

He stared at her, genuinely surprised. He had been seconds away from a catastrophic loss. But then, the realization settled over him. It wasn’t a life-and-death struggle against a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. It was a spar between two teenagers finding their footing in a superhuman world. Gwen had tapped out because the exercise was over, not because her life was in danger.

Before Veer could speak, his vision flashed blue.

—

[Quest Completed]

[Calculating Effort…]

[Reward: 1,682 EXP]

[Target Surrendered. Bonus Condition Met.]

[Bonus Reward: 3,200 EXP]

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