Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Love Letter (1)

The transition from the deep, formless void of sleep to waking consciousness brought with it an immediate realization.

Veer opened his eyes, staring at the familiar cracks in the ceiling of his bedroom. The hollow, weightless sensation that had enveloped his body when he successfully activated Zetsu the night before was completely gone. In its place, the familiar, low-level thrum of his life energy buzzed steadily just beneath his skin, leaking outward into the atmosphere.

He let out a slow sigh, sitting up and running a hand through his hair.

“Sleep is a surrender of control,” he muttered to the empty room.

It made perfect sense, logically. Zetsu wasn’t a passive toggle switch that could be flipped and forgotten. It required absolute, conscious concentration to forcibly hold the body’s natural aura nodes shut. The moment his conscious mind slipped into the restorative depths of sleep, his grip on those nodes had relaxed, allowing them to snap back open.

His brilliant plan to passively grind proficiency points and level up his stealth skill while unconscious was a complete failure. If he wanted to master these Nen techniques, he was going to have to do it the hard way—while wide awake and fully focused.

Veer pushed the blankets aside and got dressed in his workout clothes. He walked out of his bedroom and into the small living room.

Mark was still there, exactly where he had passed out. He was lying face-down on the worn fabric of the sofa, one arm dangling over the edge, his fingers resting inches away from an empty beer bottle lying on the carpet. His breathing was heavy and ragged, and a faint smell of stale alcohol hovered in the air around him.

Veer paused, looking at his roommate. He knew exactly what kind of agonizing, skull-splitting hangover was waiting for Mark the moment he regained consciousness. Given Mark’s total lack of alcohol tolerance, it was going to be a brutal morning.

Deciding that letting him sleep was the most merciful option, Veer quietly grabbed his keys and slipped out of the apartment, locking the door behind him.

The early morning air in Queens was brisk, carrying the faint, metallic scent of the distant subway lines. Veer jogged to his usual spot at the abandoned handball court in the park, his newly enhanced muscles carrying him with effortless grace.

He didn’t waste time. He had a schedule to keep and a billionaire to eventually rescue.

He dropped to the concrete and began his pushups.

His Vitality was sitting at a perfectly even ten points. The system math dictated that it now took ten maximum-effort actions to drain a single percent of his fatigue. To reach Level 5, he needed fifteen Experience Points. That meant fifteen hundred perfectly executed, physically exhausting movements.

He settled into the rhythm, his mind locking away the discomfort. ‘One hundred. Two hundred. Five hundred.’ The rising sun slowly cast long, pale shadows across the court. Sweat soaked through his t-shirt, stinging his eyes. ‘One thousand. Fourteen hundred.’

When his arms finally gave out and he collapsed onto the pavement, the blue screen flared to life, announcing his ascension to Level 5. The magical, restorative wave washed away his fatigue in an instant.

He didn’t stop. He immediately stood up and transitioned to squats.

The requirement for Level 6 had jumped to twenty-one EXP. Two thousand, one hundred actions.

Veer pushed his body like a machine. He moved through squats, burpees, and thousands of aggressive, air-splitting punches. By the time his lungs were burning and his vision began to blur at the edges, the park had started to fill with the usual morning crowd of dog walkers and elderly locals.

He threw one final, desperate right hook, completely draining his stamina reserves. He fell to one knee, gasping for air, as the system chimed again.

[Level Up!]
[Total EXP Requirement Met.]
[Current Level: 6]

Veer breathed a heavy sigh of relief as his muscles instantly repaired themselves. He stood up, wiping the fresh sweat from his brow, and pulled up his system interface.

He had accumulated five free stat points from reaching Level 5, and another five from Level 6. Ten points total.

He stared at the glowing blue numbers. His physical foundation was solid. His Vitality ensured he could endure grueling punishment, and his Strength and Dexterity made him capable in a fight. But physical prowess wasn’t his only concern anymore.

He had just acquired a suite of complex, supernatural skills. Learning Zetsu had taken him over an hour and a half just to grasp the absolute basics. If he wanted to master Ren, Gyo, and Ten, he couldn’t afford to spend days sitting in the dark trying to figure out how to flex invisible spiritual muscles. He needed a shortcut.

He looked at his Intelligence stat. It was sitting at a mere three points.

“Let’s see how smart you really make me,” Veer whispered.

Without hesitation, he dumped all ten free stat points directly into INT.

The moment the stat crossed into double digits, the system chimed with the sharp, distinctive sound of a threshold being breached.

[Threshold Reached: INT 10]
[Passive Ability Unlocked: Aura Font. Host gains +1000 permanent AP and recovers 0.1% of maximum AP per minute.]

Veer closed his eyes, bracing himself for the physical change.

It wasn’t like the intense, radiating heat of a Vitality upgrade, nor was it the sharp, almost painful sensory overload of a Perception boost. Instead, a wave of profound, icy coolness washed over his brain. It felt as though someone had taken a mental squeegee and wiped away a layer of fog he hadn’t even realized was there.

He opened his eyes. The world didn’t look any different, but the way he ‘processed’ it had fundamentally shifted.

His thoughts raced with incredible, frictionless speed. He didn’t magically possess the contents of a library—he didn’t suddenly know how to speak Mandarin or build a nuclear reactor—but his cognitive architecture had been radically upgraded. He found he could recall the exact phrasing of a textbook he had read years ago. He could observe the rustling leaves of a nearby oak tree and effortlessly deduce the wind speed and direction. Complex problems that would normally require a pen and paper now resolved themselves in his mind in fractions of a second.

The system mechanics clicked into place with perfect clarity. Vitality controlled his biological shell—his Health Points and physical Stamina. Intelligence controlled his metaphysical engine—his Aura Points and their regeneration.

He pulled up his updated status panel to confirm his new reality.

—

Name: Veer Pratap Singh

Level: 6 (0/28)

Affinity: Specialisation

…

HP: 80/80 [Recover 0.1% per minute]

AP: 8000/8000 [Recover 0.1% per minute]

Fatigue: 0%

…

STR: 3

DEX: 3

VIT: 10

INT: 13

PER: 3

…

Skill: Ten Lv0(0%), Zetsu Lv1(6%), Ren Lv0(0%), Gyo Lv0(0%), Silent Gait Lv0(0%)

…

[Quest]

[Inventory]

—

Satisfied with the massive boost to his AP pool, Veer immediately moved to test his primary hypothesis. He sat down cross-legged on the concrete, closed his eyes, and reached inward.

With his newly enhanced Intelligence, locating his aura nodes and forcefully shutting them down was significantly easier than the previous night. He slipped into the lifeless, corpse-like state of Zetsu in a matter of seconds.

He held the state, keeping his mind perfectly still, and watched the internal clock ticking away in his enhanced perception.

‘One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes.’

He waited for the proficiency notification. With his INT sitting at 13, he expected a massive multiplier. He expected the skill to skyrocket in proficiency.

‘Four minutes. Five minutes.’

‘[Zetsu Proficiency: 7%]’

Veer’s eyes snapped open, his aura rushing back into the atmosphere. A heavy wave of disappointment washed over him, completely souring his mood.

Increasing his Intelligence had done absolutely nothing to increase his skill leveling speed. The system was entirely rigid. One percent proficiency still required exactly five minutes of active, continuous use. There were no shortcuts. No matter how fast his brain processed information, he still had to put in the raw, unadulterated time to grind the skills to mastery.

He let out a frustrated sigh, looking around the park. He wanted to switch tactics. If mental skills wouldn’t level faster, maybe physical ones would. He brought up the description for ‘Silent Gait’ in his mind. It required running at high speeds while employing specific foot placement to muffle the sound of impact.

He looked toward the main path. The morning rush had arrived. Joggers, cyclists, and people walking their dogs populated the concrete walkways.

Veer shook his head, his shoulders slumping slightly. It was impossible. If he started sprinting at the superhuman speeds his Level 6 body was capable of, while making absolutely zero noise, someone would inevitably notice. In a city where everyone had a camera in their pocket, drawing that kind of attention was a catastrophic mistake. He couldn’t train his physical skills here.

Thoroughly depressed by his lack of a shortcut, Veer left the park and walked back to his apartment building.

When he unlocked the door and stepped inside, the apartment smelled distinctly of regret. Mark was no longer on the sofa. He was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, leaning his back against the lower cabinets, holding a glass of tap water with trembling hands. He looked as though he had aged ten years overnight.

“Get up, Mark,” Veer said, dropping his keys on the table. “You need to get dressed. We have first period in forty minutes.”

Mark slowly raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, and he flinched at the normal volume of Veer’s voice.

“I’m not going,” Mark croaked, his voice raw. “I am never going to school again. I am going to live in this kitchen until I die.”

Veer didn’t push it. He had seen seasoned detectives look better after a three-day bender. Mark was entirely out of commission.

“Drink the water,” Veer advised simply. “I’ll take notes for you in Physics.”

Veer showered, changed into a fresh set of clothes, grabbed his backpack, and made the walk to Midtown High alone.

The school was the exact same chaotic environment it had been the day before. The same cliques stood in the same spots, having the same dramatic conversations. Veer navigated the crowded hallways with his newly enhanced cognitive processing, finding the sheer predictability of teenage behavior slightly amusing.

He walked into his first-period history class, taking his usual seat near the back.

As the teacher, Mr. Dell, began to drone on about the socio-economic impacts of the Industrial Revolution, Veer decided he wasn’t going to waste the next forty-five minutes simply listening. If he had to grind proficiency through pure time investment, a boring classroom was the perfect place to do it.

He closed his eyes slightly, leaning his chin on his hand, and activated Zetsu.

The transition was instant. He pulled his aura back, slamming the nodes shut. The subtle, background noise of his existence simply vanished from the room.

He focused entirely on maintaining the seal, counting the seconds in his head.

“Veer?”

The voice cut through his concentration. Veer didn’t react immediately, keeping his nodes shut.

“Veer, are you alright?”

Mr. Dell had completely stopped his lecture. The teacher was standing halfway down the aisle, staring directly at Veer’s desk. A look of genuine, rising panic was etched across the man’s face. He took a hesitant step closer.

“Singh? Can you hear me? Are you breathing?” Mr. Dell asked, his voice rising in pitch. Several students in the front rows turned around, their faces reflecting the teacher’s alarm.

Veer snapped his aura nodes open. His life force flooded back into the space around him.

He sat up straight, blinking as if he had just been startled awake. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dell. I’m fine.”

The teacher let out a massive, shuddering breath, pressing a hand to his chest. “Good Lord, boy. You looked… you looked like a corpse. Your face was entirely completely gray. Don’t scare me like that.”

“Just didn’t sleep well,” Veer lied smoothly, offering a sheepish, apologetic smile. “My mind was wandering off somewhere.”

“Well, keep it in the classroom, please,” Mr. Dell muttered, walking back to the chalkboard, clearly rattled by the experience.

Veer picked up his pen, tapping it lightly against his notebook. He had learned a valuable lesson. Zetsu was entirely too effective. Stripping away one’s life force in a room full of living people triggered a primal, instinctual alarm in the human brain. People might not know exactly ‘what’ was wrong, but their subconscious immediately registered the presence of death. Training Zetsu in a public setting was completely impossible.

He needed a skill he could train without looking like he had suffered a sudden, silent heart attack.

He pulled up his system interface and looked at the next skill on the list.

‘Ten.’

The ability to keep the aura from leaking out and instead contain it in a shroud around the body. Because aura was entirely invisible to anyone who hadn’t opened the nodes in their own eyes, ‘Ten’ was the perfect candidate for covert classroom training.

Veer closed his eyes for a brief second, shifting his focus. Instead of forcing the nodes shut, he allowed the aura to flow naturally. Then, he mentally visualized the leaking energy. He imagined it not as a gas dispersing into the air, but as a thick, viscous fluid.

He tried to pull it back, to wrap it around his skin like a tight blanket.

Because the skill was currently at Level 0, it was agonizingly difficult. The aura fought him, slipping through his mental grasp like water through a sieve. Every time he managed to condense a small patch over his forearm, the energy over his shoulder would dissipate.

He kept at it. He didn’t let his frustration break his focus. While outwardly appearing to take diligent notes on the Industrial Revolution, internally, Veer was fighting a grueling battle of spiritual willpower.

The class ended. The bell rang. Veer moved to his next period, his mind entirely locked onto the task of molding his aura.

He sat through English literature. He sat through calculus.

He kept pulling, smoothing, and compressing the invisible energy.

Exactly one hundred minutes after he had first begun the exercise in history class, a sharp chime resonated in his skull.

[Skill Level Up: Ten has reached Level 1!]

Veer let out a slow, controlled breath, allowing a small smile to touch his lips.

The realization solidified in his incredibly sharp mind. The system’s leveling mechanic for skills was entirely detached from talent, emotion, or high-stakes pressure. It was a pure, unadulterated time sink.

It was a double-edged sword.

The good news was the predictability. He could mathematically chart his exact path to mastery. He knew precisely how many hours he needed to invest to reach the next level.

The bad news was the absolute lack of miracles. In his past life, he had watched anime protagonists suddenly unlock massive, world-shattering power-ups mid-battle because they got angry or wanted to protect their friends. That wasn’t going to happen here.

If Veer found himself outmatched in a fight and desperately needed a Level 5 Ten defense to survive a blow, he wouldn’t magically achieve it through the power of friendship. If he hadn’t put in the required hours beforehand, he was simply going to die.

But for now, Level 1 was a start.

With the system’s formal recognition of the skill, the intense difficulty vanished. Veer flexed his will, and a thin, feeble shroud of aura immediately wrapped itself tightly around his body, humming just a millimeter above his skin. It felt like standing in a beam of warm sunlight on a cold day. It was weak, and it likely wouldn’t stop a bullet, but he knew it provided a baseline layer of supernatural defense.

He maintained the ‘Ten’ shroud as the morning classes concluded, grinding the passive proficiency while he walked through the crowded hallways.

When the lunch bell rang, Veer made his way to the cafeteria.

Without Mark there to provide a running commentary on video game physics, the Nerd table felt surprisingly large and empty. Veer sat down at the far end, placing his tray of standard-issue cafeteria food on the plastic surface.

He kept ‘Ten’ active, eating methodically while his enhanced mind calculated the exact number of days he would need to keep the skill running to reach Level 10.

The loud, chaotic roar of the cafeteria was a comforting background noise.

Until a shadow fell over his table, blocking out the harsh fluorescent light.

Veer didn’t look up immediately. He assumed it was a freshman looking for a seat, or perhaps a janitor clearing trays.

“I heard you loved me.”

The voice was loud, clear, and projected with the kind of theatrical confidence that belonged on a Broadway stage. It cut through the ambient noise of the cafeteria like a knife.

Veer stopped chewing. He slowly raised his head.

Standing on the opposite side of the small, circular table was Mary Jane Watson.

She looked immaculate, her vibrant red hair cascading over her shoulders. She was holding a smartphone in her hand, the screen glowing brightly. Her expression was a complicated mix of amusement, disbelief, and a touch of genuine intrigue.

She didn’t lower her voice. If anything, she made sure the surrounding tables could hear her next sentence perfectly.

“And I completely agree,” MJ announced, her voice ringing out in the suddenly quiet space. “I ‘do’ deserve better than Flash.”

The cafeteria, usually a deafening ocean of teenage chatter, ground to an absolute, horrifying halt.

The silence rippled outward from the Nerd table, infecting the entire room in a matter of seconds. Conversations died mid-sentence. Forks stopped halfway to mouths. Every single eye in the vicinity snapped toward Veer and the most popular girl in school.

Veer sat perfectly still, his highly intelligent, cognitively enhanced brain coming to a screeching, grinding halt.

He looked at MJ. He looked at the phone in her hand.

Across the room, at the table reserved strictly for the varsity athletes, a chair screeched violently against the linoleum floor.

Flash Thompson, a boy built like a brick wall and currently wearing a look of absolute, homicidal fury, stood up. He didn’t say a word. He just cracked his knuckles, pushed past his teammates, and began a slow, menacing walk directly toward Veer’s table.

Veer stared at the approaching quarterback, then looked back up at Mary Jane’s expectant face.

His mind raced through a thousand different scenarios, trying to find the missing variable. He hadn’t spoken to her. He hadn’t looked at her. He had been sitting alone, entirely minding his own business, maintaining a supernatural aura shroud.