Respawned in Marvel: The Ultimate Hunter System - Chapter 17

Chapter 17 — The Unseen Board

The subway ride back to Astoria was a blurry, exhausting haze.

I sat slumped in the corner of the rattling N train, staring at the scuffed floorboards. My knuckles were bruised, and a deep, pulsing ache had settled into my shoulders. The sheer physical toll of pushing my aura into ‘Ren’ and colliding with a forty-ton monster was finally catching up with me. Around me, commuters read newspapers or listened to music, completely oblivious to the fact that their city had just survived a massacre.

When I finally unlocked the door to Apartment 3B, the quiet of the pre-war building washed over me like cold water. Chloe wasn’t home. The apartment was still and silent.

I walked into my small back bedroom, pulled off my dusty shoes, and sat heavily on the edge of the mattress. I rubbed my eyes, intending to meditate and slowly rebuild my depleted aura reserves.

‘Ping.’

The translucent blue interface of the Ultimate Hunter System materialized in the air in front of me.

[Combat Encounter Concluded]
Target: Dr. Curt Connors (Level 40) / Minor Lizard Mutations (Level 20 x4)
Outcome: Target retreated. Tactical victory achieved.
Reward Calculation: Danger (Extreme) + Effort (High) + Level Disparity Bonus.
EXP Awarded: +4000

I stared at the glowing numbers. The System was a strict, cold meritocracy. I hadn’t killed the Lizard, nor had I permanently injured him, given his absurd regeneration. But the System didn’t care about the long game. It recognized that I had forced an apex predator twenty levels above me to abandon his territory. A forced retreat was a victory.

[Level Up x9]
[Current Level: 34]
[Free Stat Points Available: 45]

A massive, warm surge of energy flooded my veins. The deep ache in my shoulders evaporated. The micro-tears in my muscles knit back together in an instant, and my fatigue dropped back to absolute zero.

I stood up, rolling my neck, my mind immediately shifting to strategy. Forty-five points was a monumental leap. It was the difference between surviving a chaotic brawl and actually dictating the terms of a fight.

I opened my status screen. My Strength was currently at 44. It allowed me to hit with enough kinetic force to shatter concrete. But today’s fight had exposed a glaring vulnerability. No matter how hard I could hit, if I didn’t have the speed to deliver the blow—or avoid one—I was just a stationary target. The Lizard had been massive, but his speed was terrifying.

I needed to balance the scale.

I mentally allocated the points. First, I dropped 20 points into AGI, bringing it from 22 to 42. Instantly, the atmospheric pressure of the room felt lighter. I felt a sudden, coil-spring tension in my legs, a readiness to move that bordered on the hyperactive.

Next, I looked at Intelligence. I was currently at 18. I needed that even number. I dropped 2 points into INT.

[Milestone Unlocked: INT 20]
[Effect: Passive AP recovery doubled to 0.2% per minute. Base AP pool increased by +1000.]

I felt a subtle shift beneath my skin as my aura nodes expanded slightly. In a war of attrition, passive recovery was everything.

That left exactly twenty-three points. I dumped all 23 points into PER, pushing my Perception to 44.

You can’t drive a car at two hundred miles an hour if you can only see ten feet in front of you. Speed without perception is just a faster way to die.

The transition hit me hard. I squeezed my eyes shut, gripping the edge of my dresser. The world suddenly rushed in. I could hear the faint, rhythmic ticking of a wristwatch in the apartment below mine. I could hear the microscopic shifting of the wood fibers in the floorboards. I could smell the faint trace of Chloe’s perfume lingering in the living room from hours ago.

I took a slow, deep breath, letting my Intelligence stat filter the overwhelming data. The noise slowly dialed back, smoothing out into a hyper-crisp, crystal-clear awareness of my surroundings.

—

Hunter: Lv34 (37/630)
Affinity: Specialisation

…

HP: 360/360 [Recovers 0.2% per minute]
AP: 36000/36000 [Recovers 0.2% per minute]
Fatigue: 0%
Storage: 7%
…

STR: 44
AGI: 42
VIT: 20
INT: 20
PER: 44

…

Skill: Ten Lv3(8%), Zetsu Lv2(16%), Ren Lv2(0%), Gyo Lv2(12%)
Hatsu: Vampire

…

[Quest]
[Library]

—

I exhaled slowly, satisfied. My physical attributes were finally harmonized. I wasn’t just a brawler anymore.

I was just starting to relax into the new equilibrium when I heard the sound.

‘Knock. Knock.’

I froze.

With a Perception stat of 44, I should have heard the person walking up the three flights of stairs. I should have heard their shoes on the hardwood hallway, or their breathing outside the door. But there had been nothing. Total silence, until the exact moment knuckles rapped against the wood.

Someone was standing outside using ‘Zetsu’. They had completely suppressed their aura and erased their presence.

I walked quietly out of the bedroom, my body tense. I didn’t bother checking the peephole. I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

Standing in the dim hallway was a tall man in a tailored black suit. His dark hair was neatly parted, and thin wire-rimmed glasses rested on his nose.

Without breaking eye contact, I pushed a small amount of aura into my eyes. ‘Gyo.’ The man in front of me flared with a massive, dense pillar of refined life energy. A glowing number materialized above his head: Level 54. I deactivated ‘Gyo’ immediately, my face remaining perfectly blank. I knew who he was from my past life’s memory—Knov, an elite Hunter Association operative. But in this reality, we were strangers.

“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” the man said. His voice was smooth, carrying a note of bone-deep exhaustion. He glanced down at a small notepad in his hand. “The name on the buzzer downstairs says Singh. I assume I’m speaking to Veer?”

“You are,” I said carefully, keeping my hands resting loosely at my sides. “Who’s asking?”

He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a simple black business card, holding it out to me. “My name is Knov. I work for an international organization that deals with… specialized incidents.”

I didn’t take the card. I just looked at him.

Knov let out a faint, tired sigh and lowered his hand. “Look, Veer, it’s been a very long day for both of us. I’m not here to arrest you, and I’m not here to start a fight. I just want to talk. May I come in?”

I studied him for a second. He was twenty levels higher than me. If he wanted to start a fight, he wouldn’t be asking for permission to enter. I stepped aside and gestured to the living room. “Come in.”

He walked inside, his dark eyes scanning the sparse apartment. He didn’t sit down. He turned to face me as I closed the door.

“The police are confused,” Knov started, cutting straight to the point. He took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “They have hundreds of terrified teenagers giving statements. Most of them are talking about the kid in the mask swinging around on webs. But a few of them mentioned someone else. A kid in a grey hoodie who stood his ground, punched a hole through the cafeteria wall, and threw a nine-foot monster into the concrete.”

I crossed my arms. “Adrenaline makes people see strange things.”

“It does,” Knov agreed mildly, putting his glasses back on. “But I was at the school, Veer. I was standing by the medical tents. I watched you drop your ‘Ten’ shroud.”

The silence in the room grew heavy. There was no point in playing dumb. He knew exactly what I was.

“Alright,” I said, my voice quiet. “What do you want to know?”

“I want the real story,” Knov said, his gaze sharpening. “What actually happened in that courtyard?”

I leaned back against the wall, dropping the defensive posture. “The big lizard and four smaller ones attacked the students. Spider-Man showed up and engaged the small ones, but he was getting overwhelmed. The big one went for a kill shot on him.”

I paused, keeping the explanation grounded and simple. “I stepped in. I hit the big one with everything I had. He went through the wall, but his injuries healed almost instantly. I realized I couldn’t beat him just by hitting him, so I threw him to buy time. Spider-Man tied up the smaller lizards. The big one realized he lost his advantage and ran into the sewers.”

Knov listened carefully, his eyes never leaving mine. “And you didn’t follow him.”

“No,” I said flatly. “Fighting a giant lizard in a flooded, dark tunnel is a terrible idea. He had the advantage down there. I wasn’t going to get myself killed trying to chase him.”

Knov stared at me for a long time. The intense, evaluating look in his eyes slowly faded, replaced by something that looked like genuine relief.

“You didn’t chase him,” Knov murmured, almost to himself. He shook his head slightly. “Most kids your age, especially ones with a natural awakening, would have let their ego drag them down into that drain. You actually thought it through.”

He looked back up at me. “You did a good thing today, Veer. You stepped in when you didn’t have to, and you had the wisdom to walk away when the fight turned against you. You handled that better than a lot of professionals would have.”

“I just didn’t want to see my friends get hurt,” I said quietly.

Knov nodded. He placed the black business card on the kitchen counter.

“The world is getting complicated, Veer,” Knov said, his tone turning serious. “You have a rare talent. But walking around with that kind of power, without guidance, is dangerous. Eventually, you’ll run into something you can’t just punch your way out of.”

He tapped the card on the counter. “My organization is called the Hunter Association. We train people like you. We give them resources, legal protection, and a purpose. I’m officially inviting you to take the Hunter Exam.”

I looked at the card. The Hunter Exam. It was a massive step out of the shadows and into the fire.

“I’ll think about it,” I told him honestly.

“Take your time,” Knov said, walking toward the door. “If you make a decision, or if you just need advice, call that number. I’ll answer.”

He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. “Get some rest, Veer.”

The door clicked shut. I stood alone in the living room, staring at the small black card on the counter. The game had officially changed.

—

Two houses down the street, the evening sun was casting long shadows over the tar-paper roof of an adjacent apartment building.

Sitting cross-legged behind a rusted air conditioning unit, completely out of sight from the street below, was Chloe Vance.

She wasn’t wearing the trendy, exhausted clothes of an aspiring model. She was wearing a sleek, dark tactical jacket. A highly sensitive parabolic microphone was resting on her lap, the dish pointed perfectly at the open window of Apartment 3B.

Chloe pulled the earpiece out of her ear, her green eyes wide with shock.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a heavily encrypted satellite phone, dialing a secure sequence. The line clicked over almost immediately.

“Control, this is Agent Vance,” Chloe said, her voice dropping its usual New York accent for a crisp, clipped professional tone.

“Report, Vance,” a deep voice answered. It was the director of INDRA, the covert intelligence agency that operated in the shadows to counter the growing influence of American and V5 organizations.

“I just intercepted a conversation between the target and Knov from the Hunter Association,” Chloe said, her mind racing. “Sir, the target is not a plant. Veer is not working for them.”

“Are you certain?”

“Positive,” Chloe confirmed. “Knov didn’t even know who he was until today. He just offered him an invitation to the Hunter Exam. Veer is a natural.”

There was a long silence on the line.

When Chloe had first seen Veer casually dismantle a heavy-hitter like Kastro at the underground arena, INDRA had flagged him. They assumed he was a highly trained Hunter Association asset inserted into New York.

To monitor him, INDRA had orchestrated everything. They paid off his old landlord to evict him. They manipulated the real estate market to push him toward this specific apartment in Astoria, and they placed Chloe—their best field agent—right inside his living room as a “struggling model.”

But the truth was far more dangerous. He wasn’t a trained spy. He was a sixteen-year-old kid who had naturally awakened to Nen, possessing raw power that defied logic, and he was completely unaffiliated.

“A natural awakening of that magnitude is incredibly rare,” the INDRA director finally said. “He is a blank slate, Vance. If SHIELD figures out what he can do, they will try to weaponize him. If he takes Knov’s offer, the Hunter Association gains a massive asset.”

“He hasn’t accepted yet,” Chloe said quickly. “He told Knov he would think about it.”

“Then we have a window,” the director ordered. “Maintain your cover. He still thinks you’re just his roommate. Get closer to him. Gain his trust. INDRA needs an asset of his caliber on our side, not theirs. Do whatever it takes to keep him away from that exam.”

“Understood, Control. Vance out.”

Chloe disconnected the call and carefully packed the parabolic microphone into a duffel bag. She looked back toward the brick wall of Veer’s apartment building.

For the last few weeks, she had played the role of the annoyed, tired roommate. She had thought she was living with a hardened, deceptive spy. But realizing he was just a kid carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, completely oblivious to the shadow agencies circling him, changed everything.

She slung the bag over her shoulder and headed for the roof access door. It was time to go home, order a pizza, and ask her roommate how his day was.