Respawned in Marvel: The Ultimate Hunter System - Chapter 19

Chapter 19 — The Narrative Weight of Genius

The morning sun filtered through the arched windows of Apartment 3B, casting warm, golden squares across the polished hardwood floor. Outside, the city of New York was a hornet’s nest of sirens, news helicopters, and widespread panic. But inside the apartment, the quiet was absolute.

I stood in the small kitchen, methodically stirring a pot of oatmeal. My newly upgraded Perception stat allowed me to hear the faint bubbling of the water on a microscopic level, the starchy popping sounds registering with crystal clarity. I was perfectly content to spend my mandatory thirty-day holiday exactly like this: eating bland food, meditating to expand my aura reserves, and ignoring the apocalyptic reptile tearing through the Manhattan sewer system.

Then, the doorbell rang. It wasn’t a polite, singular chime. It was a rapid, frantic succession of three sharp rings, accompanied by the muffled sound of knuckles rapping urgently against the wood.

I sighed, turning off the stove burner. I walked across the living room and pulled the door open, fully expecting to see my landlord demanding some fabricated maintenance fee.

Instead, it was Gwen Stacy.

She looked entirely different from the shattered, exhausted girl who had collapsed on my floor yesterday. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat, tight ponytail. The dark circles under her eyes were gone, replaced by a manic, vibrating energy. She was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, her blue eyes wide and alight with a terrifying intensity.

“I felt it,” she blurted out, not even bothering with a greeting. She stepped right past me into the apartment, her hands gesturing wildly. “I stayed up all night, Veer. I didn’t sleep a single minute. I just sat on the floor, doing the breathing exercise exactly the way you told me to, and I felt it.”

I closed the door slowly, leaning back against the frame. I stared at her, my expression perfectly blank, though internally, my mind stumbled to a halt.

“You felt what, exactly?” I asked, keeping my voice measured. “Because if you’re experiencing a sharp pain in your chest, that’s sleep deprivation and excessive caffeine, not a mystical awakening.”

“It’s not caffeine,” she insisted, spinning around to face me. “It started around three in the morning. I was focusing on the space beneath my collarbones, just like you said. And then… it was like a drop of warm water falling into a cold pool. The warmth started spreading. I could feel this heavy, thick current moving down my arms, pooling into my wrists. It felt like I was holding a cup of hot tea, but it was coming from inside my own skin.”

I didn’t speak. I simply stared at her, the cold, analytical part of my brain trying to process the impossibility of what she was saying.

‘Six months,’ I had told her yesterday. I had given her a timeline of six months just to feel the faintest tingling of her life force, and I had considered that a generous estimate. In reality, without the brutal, forced opening of the aura nodes, a normal human could spend years meditating under waterfalls without ever sensing their own Nen. There was a fifty percent chance she would never feel it in her entire life.

She had done it in twelve hours.

“Show me,” I commanded quietly, pushing off the doorframe and walking toward the center of the living room. “Words are just words, Gwen. Biology is biology. Sit down and prove it.”

Gwen didn’t hesitate. She dropped her backpack onto the sofa and sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor. She took a deep breath, her manic energy instantly smoothing out into a state of profound, terrifying focus. She raised her hands in front of her chest, keeping her palms facing each other, separated by about three inches of empty air.

“Just watch,” she whispered, her eyes slipping shut.

I stood a few feet away, my hands shoved into the pockets of my hoodie. I concentrated my aura, directing the flow of life energy upward, pooling it densely behind my retinas.

‘Gyo.’

The world instantly shifted into hyper-saturated color. I looked down at Gwen’s hands.

My breath caught in my throat.

There, hovering in the empty space between her pale palms, was a faint, swirling mist of white energy. It was thin, incredibly fragile, and flickering like a candle in the wind, but it was undeniably there. She wasn’t just sensing her aura; she was subconsciously manipulating it, drawing the leaked life force from her nodes and condensing it into a localized area.

It was the exact same principle as the Water Divination test used to determine Nen affinities, performed by a high school student who didn’t even know what an affinity was.

I deactivated ‘Gyo’, the glowing mist vanishing from my mundane sight. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, a profound sense of unfairness washing over me. I had to rely on a digitized system forcibly hijacking my nervous system to achieve my awakening. I had endured agonizing node-stretching to reach my current level.

But Gwen? Gwen was different.

‘It’s the narrative weight,’ I realized, the theory suddenly locking into place in my mind. This was a composite universe. The laws of physics were heavily influenced by the gravitational pull of destiny. Characters who held significant roles in this world—the heroes, the villains, the core pillars of the mythos—were inherently blessed by the universe. Gwen Stacy wasn’t just a smart teenager; she was a primary focal point of the Spider-Man timeline. Her latent potential was monstrous simply because the universe demanded she be extraordinary.

“Well?” Gwen asked, opening one eye to peer up at me. “Did I do it right? I can feel the pressure pushing against my palms. It feels like two magnets repelling each other.”

I let out a slow, heavy sigh. “You did it right, Gwen. You’re actually condensing the ambient leakage of your life force.”

She jumped to her feet, a triumphant, brilliant smile breaking across her face. “I knew it! I knew I wasn’t crazy. Okay, what’s next? Do we learn how to shoot it? Do I get to throw energy blasts? How do I make myself strong enough to punch through a wall like you did?”

“You don’t,” I said flatly, instantly pouring ice water on her excitement. “Sit back down.”

Her smile faltered, her brow furrowing in confusion. “What do you mean, I don’t? You said if I could feel it, I had the talent. I proved I have the talent. Why won’t you teach me how to fight?”

“Because if I teach you how to fight right now, you will be dead before the sun goes down,” I replied, my voice hard and uncompromising. I pulled up a wooden dining chair and sat backward on it, resting my arms on the backrest, looking down at her. “Listen to me very carefully, Gwen. Having raw talent is not the same thing as having power. If I forcefully open your aura nodes today, flooding your body with the full spectrum of your power, you will feel like a god. And because you feel like a god, you will do something incredibly stupid.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“You would,” I interrupted sharply. “You would put on a ski mask, march down into the sewers, and try to catch Curt Connors to save Peter. You would be so intoxicated by the sheer volume of your own strength that you would completely forget your own fragility. And Connors would tear you in half, because opening aura nodes only make you little bit stronger than normal person… and Dr. Lizard will kill you.”

Gwen stared at me, her cheeks flushing slightly, likely because my assessment of her immediate plans was entirely accurate.

“I know a story about a kid,” I continued, my voice softening just a fraction, pulling on the memory of Gon Freecss and his mentor, Wing. “He was a genius, just like you. One in a million. He unlocked his aura, felt the rush of the power, and immediately decided to pick a fight with a master in a combat arena who was vastly out of his league. He thought his raw talent would bridge the gap.”

“What happened to him?” Gwen asked quietly.

“He got his arm shattered and nearly died on the floor,” I said, holding her gaze. “His teacher was so furious at his arrogance that he forbade the kid from practicing his aura at all for four entire months until his bones healed. He made him sit in the dark and think about the difference between capability and wisdom.”

I leaned forward, tapping my finger against the wooden backrest of the chair. “I am not going to let you make that mistake, Gwen. I am not going to open your nodes. We are going to do this the agonizingly slow, natural way. You are going to earn every single inch of your power, so that when you finally have it, you actually respect it.”

Gwen chewed on her lower lip, the manic excitement fading into a solemn, heavy determination. She nodded slowly. “Okay. No shortcuts. I do it your way. What is the first step?”

“The first step is called ‘Ten’,” I said, standing up and moving the chair back to the table. “Currently, your aura nodes are closed. But biology is imperfect. Even with closed nodes, your life force naturally leaks out of your body, bleeding into the atmosphere. It is a constant, microscopic drain. It’s the reason human beings get tired. It’s the fundamental reason we age and eventually die.”

Gwen’s scientific curiosity immediately overrode her disappointment. “Wait. You’re saying aging is just the progressive loss of cellular life energy? If you stop the leakage, you stop cellular degradation?”

“You slow it down significantly, yes,” I confirmed. “The principle of ‘Ten’ is containment. Instead of letting that ambient energy drift away, you are going to visualize wrapping it around yourself. You are going to weave it into a shroud, keeping the energy circulating just beneath the surface of your skin. This acts as a defensive armor, increasing your physical durability, and it forces the life energy to nourish your cells rather than abandoning them.”

“And this will open my nodes?”

“Eventually,” I nodded. “By constantly demanding your aura to circulate rather than escape, your nodes will naturally stretch and loosen over time. It’s like exercising a muscle. It is safe, it builds the foundation of your defense, and it teaches you absolute control.”

I pointed to the center of the room. “Stand up. Close your eyes. I want you to feel the warmth you gathered in your hands, and I want you to try and stretch it over your shoulders like a heavy blanket.”

—

Two blocks away from the quiet tree-lined street of Astoria, hidden inside a cramped, windowless room of a dilapidated commercial building, Chloe Vance sat in the dark.

She wore her black tactical bodysuit, a pair of high-fidelity, noise-canceling headphones clamped tightly over her ears. The small folding table in front of her was covered in encrypted transmitters, digital audio recorders, and a heavily modified laptop. She had tapped into the acoustic vibrations of the glass windows of Apartment 3B using a military-grade laser microphone mounted on the adjacent roof.

She could hear every word being spoken in the living room.

Chloe pulled a black pen from her pocket and furiously scribbled notes onto a legal pad. ‘Ten. Aura nodes. Containment. Shroud.’ The terminology was bizarre, but the results she had seen at the underground fighting arena were undeniable. This wasn’t some mystical cult nonsense; this was a reproducible, biological martial art that elevated human combat capability to god-like tiers.

And Veer was teaching it to a civilian high school girl.

Chloe stopped writing. She stared at the pad of paper, her jaw tightening. Last night, after intercepting the conversation between Veer and Gwen, she had returned to the apartment and locked herself in her bedroom. She had sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and followed the exact same meditation instructions Veer had given Gwen earlier that afternoon.

She was a highly trained operative of INDRA. She had endured psychological torture resistance training, advanced hand-to-hand combat conditioning, and sensory deprivation exercises. Her focus was absolute.

But when she had tried to feel the “warmth” of her life force… she had felt absolutely nothing. Nothing but the cold air of the apartment and the dull ache in her knees.

Yet, listening to the audio feed right now, she had to face the infuriating reality: Gwen Stacy, a pampered high school student with zero combat training, had sensed her aura in a single night.

A sharp, bitter sting of pride twisted in Chloe’s chest. It was insulting. She was a professional spy, tasked with monitoring an anomaly that could shift the global balance of power, and she was being biologically outclassed by a teenager who still had to ask for permission to use the bathroom during algebra.

“If she can do it, I can do it,” Chloe whispered to the empty room, her competitive nature flaring hot and bright.

She pulled off the headset, leaving the audio recorders running, and stood up in the cramped space. She closed her eyes, forcing her breathing into the rigid, four-second cadence Veer had described.

‘Inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for four.’ She focused her highly trained mind entirely on her collarbones, visualizing the electrical impulses, desperately searching for the warm, heavy liquid of her own life force. She stood perfectly still in the dark, her pride demanding a breakthrough.

—

Back in Apartment 3B, five grueling hours had passed.

The afternoon sun was beginning to dip lower in the sky, casting long, stretched shadows across the living room floor. The air in the apartment felt dense, heavy with the sheer amount of concentration being exerted.

Gwen stood in the center of the room, exactly where I had placed her. She was drenched in sweat. Her t-shirt clung to her back, and her hands were trembling violently at her sides. Her breathing was ragged, caught between the rhythmic four-second cadence and the desperate gasps of profound physical exertion.

“Don’t lose it,” I said, my voice sharp, pacing a slow circle around her. “You have the blanket over your shoulders, Gwen, but you are letting it slip off your knees. Pull it tight. Imagine the energy is a physical thread. Weave it shut. Do not let it bleed into the air.”

“It’s… it’s heavy,” Gwen grunted, her eyes squeezed shut in absolute agony. “It feels like… like trying to hold water in my hands. It keeps slipping.”

“Then squeeze tighter,” I demanded, showing no mercy. “The Lizard is not going to wait for you to catch your breath. Connect the flow from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. Make it a perfect loop.”

Gwen let out a frustrated, guttural cry. Her fists clenched so hard her knuckles turned stark white. She took a massive, shuddering breath, her entire body locking into a rigid, terrifying state of tension.

And then, the atmosphere in the room simply… snapped.

The heavy, suffocating pressure evaporated, replaced instantly by a smooth, terrifyingly calm current of air.

I stopped pacing. I didn’t even need to use ‘Gyo’ to see it.

A visible, millimeter-thin shroud of pure, white mist erupted from Gwen’s skin. It didn’t leak. It didn’t waver. It clung to the contours of her body with absolute, flawless precision, circulating from her head to her feet in a continuous, unbroken loop. The ambient dust in the air was gently pushed away by the sheer density of the aura now protecting her.

She had done it.

Level 1 ‘Ten’.

Gwen’s eyes fluttered open. She looked down at her own hands, her mouth falling open in awe. She raised her arms, watching the faint, ghostly white light move with her skin. The exhaustion that had been crushing her a moment ago seemed to vanish, replaced by the profound, sustaining nourishment of her own contained life force.

“Veer,” she whispered, her voice filled with a reverence she usually reserved for complex equations. “I feel… I feel incredible. It’s like I’m wearing a suit of armor made of pure energy. Nothing hurts.”

I stared at her, my hands shoved deep into my pockets. I was a thirty-something laborer trapped in a sixteen-year-old body, leaning heavily on a digitized System to survive the apocalypse. I looked at the brilliant, smiling girl wrapped in her perfectly executed ‘Ten’ shroud, and I felt a sudden, profound wave of absolute, unadulterated jealousy.

“You are a freak of nature, Gwen Stacy,” I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief. “It should take a genius weeks to form a stable shroud. You did it in five hours. I am experiencing a level of professional envy that I didn’t know I was capable of.”

Gwen looked up, catching the genuine irritation in my voice. A wide, smug smirk spread across her face. She dropped her rigid posture, the aura shroud shifting perfectly to accommodate her relaxed stance. She strutted over to me, her previous exhaustion entirely forgotten.

“Aw, is the big, scary martial arts master feeling a little threatened?” Gwen teased, reaching out and actually patting me patronizingly on the shoulder. Her hand felt incredibly dense, the aura reinforcing her physical touch. “Don’t worry, Veer. When I’m saving the city, I’ll make sure to mention you were my very first sensei. I might even give you an autograph.”

“If you let this go to your head, I will spar with you and throw you through that television,” I threatened dryly, though I couldn’t entirely suppress the small, amused smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

“You couldn’t catch me,” she shot back, her blue eyes dancing with confidence. “I feel like I could run a marathon and not even break a sweat.”

“That is exactly the illusion of ‘Ten’ that gets amateurs killed,” I said, my tone instantly returning to a strict, commanding baseline. I swatted her hand off my shoulder. “Listen to me. Remember this exact feeling. Remember the tension required to hold the shroud. I want you to keep this active whenever possible. When you are walking down the street, when you are sitting in class, when you are eating dinner. The longer you maintain it, the more natural it becomes. It needs to be as automatic as breathing.”

Gwen nodded, the teasing fading as she absorbed the instruction. “And once it’s automatic? What then?”

“Then,” I said, looking out the window toward the skyline of Manhattan, where the real monsters were waiting. “Your aura nodes will be permanently, naturally opened. And when that happens, I will teach you how to turn that armor into a weapon.”