Respawned in Marvel: The Ultimate Hunter System - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Changing world.

The underground medical clinic smelled of iodine, bleach, and copper. It was a discrete, high-end facility in the bowels of Brooklyn, paid for by the arena organizers to patch up their most valuable assets.

On a steel examination table, Kastro sat in the dark.

He had refused the painkillers. He had refused the doctors. He had simply sat up, his chest wrapped in tight white bandages, and stared at the concrete wall for the last four hours.

Every breath was a jagged knife scraping against his lungs. Two of his floating ribs were fractured, the bone splintered inward from the sheer, incomprehensible force of the boy’s jab. His jaw throbbed, the side of his face swollen into a grotesque canvas of purple and black hematomas.

But the physical pain was a distant, secondary annoyance. It was the humiliation that burned him from the inside out.

‘Meruem.’

Kastro closed his eyes, and the replay of the fight played behind his eyelids. The boy hadn’t used a technique. He hadn’t used a martial arts form. He had simply stood there, taken Kastro’s ultimate technique—the Tiger Bite Fist—and countered with raw, unadulterated violence. It was a statistical anomaly. A glitch in reality. Kastro was a seven-time undisputed champion. He was supposed to be on a first-class flight to Dubai right now, preparing to ascend the floors of Heaven’s Arena.

Instead, he was sitting in a basement, defeated for the first time in his life. And worse—defeated by a child.

Kastro’s hands clenched into fists, the knuckles turning white. His aristocratic pride, the pristine, untouchable image he had cultivated, was shattered. The handsome, composed martial artist was gone. In the dim light, with his long white hair matted with dried blood and his face contorted in rage, he looked like an evil spirit.

And then, it happened.

The anger, so dense and consuming, acted as a catalyst. Kastro gasped as a sudden, violent pressure erupted from within him. It felt as though a thousand tiny valves beneath his skin had suddenly blown wide open. A heavy, suffocating energy poured out of him, visible in the dim light as a dense, terrifying white mist.

His aura nodes were opened.

The trauma of the physical beating, combined with the extreme psychological shock of his defeat, had forced his latent pseudo-Nen to fully awaken. Kastro looked down at his hands. The mist clung to his skin, swirling like a living entity. He could feel the sheer density of it. He was bleeding energy, his life force venting into the room, but the sensation of power was intoxicating.

He could feel that he was getting stronger by the second. The Tiger Bite Fist he had used in the cage was a parlor trick compared to what he was feeling now.

Kastro slowly lowered his feet to the cold tile floor. The anger of being defeated had not decreased at all; if anything, the newly awakened aura fed on it, amplifying his malice into something palpable. The room’s temperature plummeted.

His entire goal now was singular. Dubai no longer mattered. The championship money no longer mattered. His entire existence was now dedicated to one objective: hunt down Meruem, and tear him apart.

—

Hunter: Lv23 (137/300)
Affinity: Enhancement

…

HP: 250/250 [Recovers 0.2% per minute]
AP: 24000/24000 [Recovers 0.1% per minute]
Fatigue: 0%
Storage: 0%
…

STR: 34
AGI: 22
VIT: 20
INT: 18
PER: 21

…

Skill: Ten Lv2(48%), Zetsu Lv1(0%)
Ability: Vampire

…

[Quest]
[Library]

—

Veer Pratap Singh stood on the sidewalk of a bustling Queens commercial street, staring blankly at the screen of his cheap flip phone.

The calculator app displayed a single, damning number: 42.16.

He let out a slow, hollow laugh. The sound was dry, devoid of any real amusement, a pure expression of a laborer’s exhausted resignation. He had survived a battle royale against one hundred and fifty men. He had shattered a master martial artist’s ribs. He possessed the physical strength to deadlift a municipal dump truck. He was a millionaire in raw kinetic force.

And he was functionally, undeniably broke.

Twelve thousand dollars had evaporated in less than forty-eight hours. First month’s rent. Last month’s rent. A security deposit that felt like extortion. The broker’s fee, which was definitely extortion. A mattress. A bed frame. Half a sofa. A week’s worth of groceries. A MetroCard.

‘Forty-two dollars and sixteen cents.’

Veer pocketed the phone and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He didn’t know about the murderous aura awakening in a Brooklyn basement. He didn’t know he was being hunted. Right now, his most lethal adversary was the upcoming electric bill. But before he could worry about finding a new underground fight circuit to keep a roof over his head, he had a more immediate social obligation.

Today was Gwen Stacy’s birthday party.

He walked into a small, cluttered pawn and jewelry shop on the corner. The bell above the door jingled weakly. The shop smelled of old brass and dust. Behind the glass counter lay rows of second-hand watches, silver chains, and engagement rings abandoned by broken hearts.

Veer approached the glass, his eyes scanning the price tags. Everything was double digits. He needed a gift. The invitation had been sitting on his new dresser for a week. Gwen had been… strangely kind to him. In the brutal, high-stakes reality he now inhabited, her persistent, anxious checking-in on him was an anomaly he felt compelled to repay.

“Help you, kid?” the man behind the counter asked, not looking up from a newspaper.

“I need a necklace,” Veer said, his voice flat. “Or a bracelet. Twenty dollars. Not a penny more.”

The man finally looked up, eyeing Veer’s oversized grey hoodie. He let out a scoff. “Twenty bucks? Kid, this is a jewelry store, not a vending machine. I got a silver-plated pendant in the discount tray. A little tarnished. Twenty-two dollars.”

“Twenty,” Veer countered smoothly. “It’s a birthday gift. The tarnish takes two dollars off the aesthetic value.”

The man stared at him. Veer’s dark, unblinking eyes held the quiet, immovable weight of a man who had negotiated for bags of cement in a previous life. The owner sighed, reaching under the counter.

“Fine. Twenty flat. Happy birthday to whoever.”

Veer walked out of the store holding a small, slightly dented cardboard box containing a silver-plated star pendant. Even after earning so much blood money in the cage, he could only afford a twenty-dollar piece of jewelry. He looked at the box, shaking his head. ‘Maa would slap the back of my head if she saw me giving this to a girl,’ he thought wryly. But it would have to do. His new balance was twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents.

—

By the time Veer returned to Apartment 3B in Astoria, the late afternoon sun was casting long, golden rectangles across the polished hardwood floor. The apartment was quiet.

He walked into the kitchen to grab a glass of water and found Chloe leaning against the counter, nursing a mug of black coffee. She wore black leggings and an oversized t-shirt, her fiery auburn hair tied up in a messy bun. She looked utterly exhausted. The leather modeling portfolio sat on the kitchen island like a heavy anchor.

“You look like you fought a war,” Veer noted, filling a glass from the tap.

“Seven casting calls,” Chloe muttered, rubbing her eyes. “Seven. Do you know how many times a person can hear the phrase ‘your jawline is a bit too aggressive’ before they want to punch a photographer in the throat?”

“At least eight, statistically,” Veer said deadpan.

Chloe let out a breathy laugh, her green eyes cracking open to look at him. She noticed the small jewelry box in his hand. Her eyebrows raised. “Well, well. Who’s the lucky girl? Didn’t peg you for the romantic type, Veer.”

“It’s a birthday gift for a classmate,” Veer said, setting the box down. “And it cost exactly twenty dollars. The romance is heavily restricted by my current fiscal crisis.”

Chloe snorted, taking a sip of her coffee. “Twenty bucks? Ouch. I hope she’s the understanding type.” She paused, her gaze lingering on his shoulder, then down to his arm. “You’re a weird kid, you know that? You carry a two-hundred-pound IKEA box up three flights of stairs without breaking a sweat, but you’re stressing over a twenty-dollar necklace.”

Veer didn’t flinch. He kept his heart rate perfectly steady. “Good genetics,” he lied smoothly. “And poor financial planning. I’ll be out for the evening. If the landlord comes by, tell him I died.”

“Will do,” Chloe said, turning back to her coffee. “Have fun at the party, Superman.”

—

The Stacy residence was a beautiful, two-story colonial in a quiet, affluent neighborhood. By the time Veer arrived, the backyard was already string-lit and bustling with teenagers. The smell of grilled burgers and charcoal smoke hung thick in the warm June air.

Veer stood at the edge of the patio, feeling entirely alien. He was a middle-aged laborer occupying a peak-human weapon, surrounded by high school students discussing AP History and varsity football. He kept his hands in his pockets, his ‘Ten’ active at Level 2, the invisible shroud of aura humming just beneath his skin, constantly filtering the sensory overload of the crowd.

“You actually came.”

Veer turned. Gwen Stacy stood there, wearing a simple blue sundress, her blonde hair pulled back. She looked surprised, and beneath the surprise, genuinely pleased. She held a red plastic cup.

“I said I would,” Veer replied, his tone even. “I try not to break promises. It’s bad for the karma.”

Gwen smiled, a small, genuine expression. “Well, I’m glad. Though you look like you’re plotting a bank heist standing over here in the shadows.”

“Just observing,” Veer said. He pulled the small cardboard box from his pocket and handed it to her. “Happy birthday. Full disclosure: it is cheap. If it turns your neck green, you have my permission to throw it in the ocean.”

Gwen took the box, her brow furrowing in amusement. She opened it, looking at the tarnished silver star pendant. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t look disappointed. Instead, she looked up at Veer, her blue eyes studying his face with an intense, analytical curiosity.

“It’s lovely, Veer. Thank you.” She closed the box carefully. “I mean it.”

Before Veer could respond with a deflective joke, a frantic voice interrupted them.

“Veer! Hey, man. You want a soda? A burger? I can go grab you a plate.”

Flash Thompson materialized out of the crowd. He was sweating slightly, holding two plates of food, looking at Veer with the wide, terrified eyes of a hostage offering tribute to his captor. Flash’s entire demeanor was a jarring contrast to the arrogant bully he had been a month ago. Ever since witnessing Veer casually snap a giant’s knee in the Brooklyn arena, Flash had appointed himself as Veer’s unofficial, terrified butler.

Veer stared at Flash. “I am fine, Eugene. Relax. Your heart rate is at roughly one hundred and ten beats per minute. You’re going to drop the potato salad.”

Flash swallowed hard, nodding vigorously. “Right. Right. Just… let me know.” He backed away slowly, disappearing into the crowd.

Gwen watched the exchange, her jaw slightly slack. She turned back to Veer. “Okay. What is going on there? Flash Thompson has been acting like you hold the mortgage to his soul for weeks. What did you do to him?”

“We had a polite disagreement about kinetic energy,” Veer said smoothly. “He reconsidered his stance. Where is Peter? I figured he would be here.”

Gwen’s smile faded slightly, replaced by a shadow of worry. She looked out toward the front of the house. “He texted that he was running late. He’s been… distant lately. Ever since his uncle passed. I don’t know what he do, Veer. I’m worried about him.”

Veer remained silent. He knew exactly where Peter was, and he knew exactly what he was wearing. The red-and-blue ski-mask vigilante was busy. But Veer couldn’t say that. Instead, he just nodded. “Grief takes strange shapes. He’ll find his center.”

“I hope so,” Gwen murmured.

Suddenly, the ambient chatter of the party was cut through by the sharp, panicked voice of Captain George Stacy. He was standing by the patio doors, holding his phone to his ear, his face draining of color.

“Say that again, dispatch,” Captain Stacy barked, silencing the teenagers around him. “A what? A biological incident on the bridge?”

Veer hear the dispatcher’s voice through the phone’s tiny speaker from thirty feet away.

‘…units requesting heavy backup. Multiple vehicles overturned on the Williamsburg Bridge. Suspect is… Captain, suspect is described as a giant reptile. A lizard, sir. It’s tearing cars apart.’

Veer’s eyes narrowed. The timeline was moving faster than he anticipated.

—

On the other side of the city, hours before the sun had set, a different kind of awakening had taken place.

Dr. Curt Connors stood in the pristine, cold laboratory of Oscorp Industries. The monitors around him glowed with complex genetic sequences. He had done it. Dr. Curt Connors used the equation (decay rate algorithm) provided by Peter Parker, and created Lizard serum, which allowed humans to get Lizard like regeneration ability.

He had stared at the glass enclosure where a small, three-legged mouse sat. He had administered the serum. And even the first experiment on mouse is successful. The missing limb had grown back, the tissue weaving itself together in a miraculous display of cellular replication. It was a triumph of science, the culmination of his life’s work to cure weakness.

Its a happy moment, but Connors’ superior, Rajit Ratha, demands that Connors begin human trials with his formula to regrow limbs using lizard DNA.

Ratha had stood in the lab, his expensive suit a sharp contrast to Connors’ lab coat, demanding immediate results for the board. But Connors was a scientist, not a butcher. Connors refuses to rush into testing, as it could put innocent people at risk. The cross-species genetics were too volatile. The psychological side effects were entirely unknown.

The refusal cost him everything. Ratha fires Connors and decides to test the serum at a Veterans Administration hospital. The cruelty of it—taking a volatile, untested formula to a facility full of desperate, wounded soldiers under the guise of flu shots—pushed Connors over the edge.

He couldn’t let Ratha do it. He had to prove the serum was safe, or die trying, to stop the hospital trials.

Desperate, Connors tries the formula on himself, passes out, and awakens to find that his missing arm has regenerated.

The joy of feeling his fingers again was intoxicating. He had touched his new skin, marveled at the scales forming, but the joy was fleeting. The lizard DNA didn’t just rebuild flesh; it rebuilt the mind, overriding the mammalian brain with cold, reptilian predatory instinct. The serum began to aggressively alter his skeletal structure, his mass expanding exponentially.

He had to stop Ratha. Ratha was in traffic.

While trying to intercept Ratha on the Williamsburg Bridge, Connors turns into a humanoid reptilian monster and begins a violent rampage.

The bridge was a scene of apocalyptic chaos. Cars were flipped like children’s toys. Commuters screamed, abandoning their vehicles and running into the night as the massive, green-scaled beast roared, its claws tearing through steel reinforced doors to get to Ratha’s limousine. The Lizard was a force of pure, primal destruction.

But he was not alone on the bridge.

A figure in a makeshift red-and-blue suit swung down from the suspension cables. Peter arrives and saves people from Connors’ attacks. Using webbing and frantic agility, the young vigilante began pulling citizens from dangling cars, putting himself between the civilians and the roaring monster.

—

Back in Queens, someone had turned on the large flat-screen TV in the Stacy living room. The music outside had stopped. The teenagers were crowding around the glass patio doors, staring at the breaking news broadcast.

Veer stood at the back of the crowd, his hands still in his pockets.

On the screen, grainy helicopter footage showed the Williamsburg Bridge engulfed in flames and police lights. The camera zoomed in, capturing a blurry but unmistakable image: a nine-foot-tall reptilian monstrosity hurling a taxi cab across three lanes of traffic. A second later, a blur of red and blue swung across the frame, catching a falling civilian.

“Oh my god,” Gwen whispered, her hand covering her mouth.

Captain Stacy was already running through the house, strapping on his service weapon and shouting into his radio. “I want a perimeter! Do not engage the target without heavy ordnance! I’m on my way!”

The party had instantly dissolved into a state of shock and terror. Flash was pale, staring at the screen. “What is that thing?” he muttered. “Is it a alien?”

Veer watched the screen in silence.

The Amazing Spider-Man timeline had formally begun. A giant lizard was tearing up a bridge. A teenager with spider powers was fighting it.

The composite universe was escalating.

Veer looked down at his own hands.

‘I really need to find a new fight club,’ he thought. ‘Before this city gets too expensive to survive.’

Quietly, without saying goodbye, Veer turned away from the television, slipped out the front door, and walked into the cool Queens night. The sirens were already wailing in the distance, a choir of chaos welcoming the new era.