Respawned in Marvel: The Ultimate Hunter System - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: The Loot Goblin and the Tiger Bite Fist

The Battle Royale was less of a martial arts exhibition and more of a synchronized meat grinder.

To the billionaires, mob bosses, and socialites screaming from the safety of the VIP balconies, the cage was a blurry, beautiful mess of primal violence. But for Veer, standing right in the epicenter of the slaughter, the entire event was unfolding at a completely manageable, almost leisurely pace.

His Agility sitting comfortably at 12 and his Perception dialed up to 11 meant he wasn’t just reacting to the fight; he was reading it. He could see the exact moment a man decided to throw a punch by the microscopic shift in their shoulder muscles. He could hear the sharp intake of breath before a grappler dove for his legs.

He moved through the chaos like a man navigating a crowded grocery store, occasionally tossing a “lucky” elbow or pretending to trip, all while expertly stripping the bright yellow tags from the chests of falling men. To keep up his carefully constructed facade of a desperate, terrified teenager fighting for his life, he let a few stray jabs glance off his shoulders or back. His Level 2 ‘Ten’ absorbed the kinetic energy so perfectly that the blows felt like someone lightly tapping him with a rolled-up newspaper.

He took the stolen tags and casually tied them to the belt loops of his faded jeans, creating a makeshift, brightly colored skirt of victory.

“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty,” Veer muttered under his breath, tying the latest tag to his hip after effortlessly sidestepping a massive brawler who subsequently crashed into the chain-link fence. “This is almost depressing. I feel like I’m stealing lunch money from kindergartners, except the kindergartners have neck tattoos and outstanding warrants.”

He let out a theatrical, exhausted pant for the benefit of the watching bookies, wiping non-existent sweat from his forehead.

With thirty tags secured, he mathematically had a guaranteed spot in the top ten. There were over a hundred and fifty fighters to start, but the attrition rate was staggering. The floor of the cage was already littered with groaning, unconscious men.

Veer casually scanned the remaining fighters, deciding he should probably just jog around the perimeter and look terrified until the clock ran out. But as his dark eyes swept across the blood-stained concrete, he paused.

There, near the center of the arena, stood a glaring anomaly.

In a cage filled with sweaty, grimy, heavily tattooed brawlers wearing blood-soaked tank tops, there was a man who looked like he had just stepped out of a high-end fashion magazine. He was tall, lithe, and possessed a shockingly elegant posture. But it was his hair that caught the harsh halogen lights—long, pristine white hair that flowed down his back.

He wasn’t throwing wild haymakers or grappling in the dirt. He was moving with a terrifying, fluid grace, his hands darting out in precise, snapping motions. Every time he struck, a man fell. And tied to his waist, fluttering like a bright yellow cape, was a massive cluster of tags. He had to have at least forty of them.

Veer’s dark humor immediately flared to life.

“Well, look at that,” Veer whispered to himself, a genuine smile touching his lips. “A loot goblin. He’s done all the hard work of gathering the shiny things, and now he’s just parading them around. It would be rude of me not to relieve him of that burden.”

Veer dropped his posture, hunching his shoulders to look like a desperate, exhausted scavenger, and began to weave his way through the remaining brawlers toward the white-haired man.

The man was currently dismantling a heavyweight boxer. The boxer threw a massive, textbook left hook. The white-haired man simply pivoted on his heel, letting the fist sail past his nose by a millimeter, and brought his right hand down in a strange, claw-like posture. He struck the boxer’s bicep.

The boxer screamed, his arm instantly going limp, and the white-haired man casually plucked the tag from his chest before letting him hit the floor.

Veer approached from the man’s blind spot. He wasn’t going to throw a real punch; he just wanted to snatch a handful of tags and dance away. It was a simple snatch-and-grab.

As Veer reached out his hand, closing the distance to less than three feet, the man’s head snapped around.

‘Fast,’ Veer’s brain registered instantly.

The man didn’t just turn; his entire body coiled and uncoiled like a viper. He abandoned his previous stance, pivoting his hips, and brought his hand up. His fingers were curled into that same rigid, claw-like posture.

He thrust his hand directly toward Veer’s chest.

Veer didn’t bother dodging. It was just a hand strike. No brass knuckles, no hidden blade. He had Level 2 ‘Ten’ tightly wrapped around his body. He had literally dragged a razor-sharp chef’s knife across his skin this morning and it hadn’t left a mark. A bare-handed claw strike from a skinny martial artist was going to bounce right off.

Veer reached for the tags, ignoring the incoming strike.

‘Shhhhrrrrck!’

The sound was sickening—like a thick canvas sail tearing perfectly in half during a hurricane.

Veer’s eyes went wide. The invisible, bulletproof Kevlar of his ‘Ten’ didn’t just absorb the blow; it violently buckled and shredded under the man’s fingertips. The claw tore straight through the aura, ripped entirely through the thick fabric of his oversized grey hoodie, and scraped across his chest.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded Veer’s nervous system.

He violently threw himself backward, his Agility 12 firing on all cylinders. He skidded across the concrete floor, putting few feet of distance between himself and the white-haired man in a fraction of a second.

Veer landed in a defensive crouch, his hand instantly flying to his chest. He looked down through the massive, ragged tears in his hoodie.

There was no blood. The strike had lost just enough momentum tearing through the ‘Ten’ and the fabric that it had only left four angry, red welts across his skin. His Vitality was already soothing the sting.

But the sheer, absolute shock of the moment paralyzed Veer’s mind.

“What the hell was that?” Veer breathed out, his dark eyes snapping back up to the man.

For the first time since entering the cage, Veer truly, carefully observed his opponent.

The man stood completely still, his hands lowered, looking at Veer with an expression of profound, unadulterated surprise. He was incredibly handsome, possessing sharp, aristocratic features that belonged on a movie poster, not in an underground deathmatch. He wore a traditional, loose-fitting martial arts uniform that remained miraculously unstained by the grime of the arena.

The white hair. The impossible good looks. The claw technique that could tear through solid defense.

A name slammed into the forefront of Veer’s mind, dredged up from the encyclopedic anime knowledge of his teenage memories.

‘Kastro.’

“No. Absolutely not,” Veer muttered out loud, his brain aggressively rejecting the data. “This is New York. Tony Stark just got kidnapped in Afghanistan. Peter Parker is swinging around in a ski mask. This is the Marvel Universe. What in the name of God is a prominent floor master from Heaven’s Arena doing in a Brooklyn warehouse?”

It didn’t make any logical sense. Did the Ultimate Hunter System not just grant him powers, but actively drag elements of the ‘Hunter x Hunter’ universe across dimensions with him? Was this a composite multiverse?

Across the blood-stained floor, Kastro was staring at his own hand, flexing his fingers slowly, before raising his eyes to meet Veer’s.

“You survived that,” Kastro said. His voice was smooth, cultured, and carried an undeniable undertone of arrogance. “That is… highly unusual. I applied enough torque and pressure to snap a man’s sternum in half and crush his heart. And yet, you moved backward faster than my kinetic transfer. You are not a normal street thug, are you?”

Veer slowly stood up from his crouch, letting his hands fall to his sides. The shock was beginning to recede, replaced by his standard, cynical coping mechanism.

“Well, first of all, rude,” Veer said, his voice carrying easily over the roar of the crowd and the fighting still happening around them. “I just bought this hoodie at a thrift store for six dollars, and you ruined the aesthetic. Secondly, are we really doing the majestic martial arts dialogue right now? We’re in a cage that smells like cheap beer and hepatitis. Read the room, man.”

Kastro’s eyes narrowed slightly, zeroing in on the thick cluster of yellow tags tied to Veer’s belt loops. The aristocrat’s calm demeanor shifted into something sharper, more predatory.

“A lots of tags,” Kastro noted, a small, dangerous smile curving his lips. “You have been busy while playing the fool. I find people who hide their strength to be incredibly distasteful. It is an insult to the art of combat. I think I will take those tags from you, boy, and then I will find out exactly how durable your ribcage truly is.”

“I have to warn you,” Veer deadpanned, shaking his head. “My ribcage is legally protected under international copyright law. If you break it, my lawyers will be absolutely furious. Also, has anyone ever told you that you look like a shampoo commercial that got lost in a bad neighborhood?”

Kastro didn’t laugh. He didn’t even blink.

The air around him suddenly felt heavy. He dropped into a much lower, wider stance, bringing both hands up in front of his chest, his fingers curling into those rigid, terrifying claws.

‘Tiger Bite Fist.’

“Let’s see if you can dodge twice,” Kastro whispered.

He vanished.

He didn’t literally teleport, but the explosive kinetic force generated by his legs was so intense that the concrete floor beneath his feet cracked as he launched himself forward. To the normal fighters in the cage, Kastro was a white blur.

But to Veer, with his Agility and Perception, Kastro was just moving fast. Very, very fast.

Kastro closed the ten-foot gap in half a second, his right hand snapping forward in a vicious, sweeping arc aimed directly at Veer’s throat.

Veer didn’t try to block it. He had learned his lesson about the integrity of his ‘Ten’. He leaned sharply backward, letting the claw slice through the empty air an inch above his Adam’s apple. The displaced air literally whistled past his skin.

Before Veer could recover his balance, Kastro’s left hand was already in motion, tearing upward in a devastating uppercut claw aimed at Veer’s stomach.

Veer twisted his torso violently to the right, engaging his core strength. Kastro’s fingers grazed the fabric of Veer’s shirt, ripping another hole, but missing the flesh.

“You are quick,” Kastro grunted, immediately flowing into a relentless, high-speed barrage of strikes. Left, right, sweeping arcs, direct thrusts. The Tiger Bite Fist was a beautiful, lethal dance, designed to overwhelm the opponent’s defenses and tear them apart piece by piece.

Veer was forced into a desperate retreat, backpedaling across the concrete, slipping, dodging, and weaving. He looked like a man dancing in a rainstorm without getting wet.

But as he dodged, Veer’s Perception was actively analyzing Kastro’s technique.

He focused his senses on Kastro’s hands.

‘There it is,’ Veer realized, his eyes widening slightly.

He couldn’t see the aura visually, because Kastro wasn’t actively projecting it like a Nen user. But Veer could ‘feel’ it.

Every time Kastro’s fingers curled into the claw posture, the ambient, natural life energy within his body subconsciously rushed into his hands. It was clustering there, densifying, wrapping around his fingers to give them the tensile strength and cutting power of forged steel.

‘It’s pseudo-Nen,’ Veer’s brain processed rapidly as he ducked under a decapitating swipe. ‘He hasn’t had his aura nodes open. He doesn’t know what Ten, Zetsu, or Ren are. He is just such a peerless, once-in-a-generation martial arts prodigy that his body is instinctively applying the principles of Shu and Ko without him even realizing it. That’s why he could tear through my Level 2 Ten. All of his raw aura is hyper-focused on the tips of his fingers during the strike.’

The realization was a massive relief.

If this were the Kastro from the Heaven’s Arena arc—the one who had mastered his Nen and created an aura clone—Veer would be dead right now. That Kastro would have decapitated him before he could blink.

But this Kastro was pre-awakening. He was just a martial artist utilizing raw, unconscious life energy.

“Which means,” Veer muttered, a dark grin spreading across his face as he ducked under another strike, “you’re completely beatable.”

“Stop muttering and fight!” Kastro barked, visibly frustrated that his flawless, inescapable barrage was hitting nothing but air.

Kastro shifted his footwork, planting his lead foot heavily and throwing a double-handed Tiger Bite strike, aiming to crush Veer’s ribs from both sides simultaneously in a pincer maneuver.

It was a wide attack, leaving Kastro’s center completely exposed for a fraction of a second.

Veer didn’t retreat this time. He stepped inside the guard.

He couldn’t use his ‘Ten’ to block the claws, but he didn’t need to. He brought his arms up from the inside, slamming his forearms violently against the inside of Kastro’s wrists to deflect the strike outward.

The moment their flesh collided, the shockwave echoed through Veer’s bones.

‘CRACK.’

It wasn’t a bone breaking; it was the sound of immense, raw physical force colliding.

Veer’s eyes widened as the deflection successfully pushed Kastro’s hands away, but the sheer momentum of the impact sent a jarring, numbing pain shooting up Veer’s arms into his shoulders.

Veer quickly threw a heavy, straight right punch aimed squarely at Kastro’s exposed chest, putting all 4.5 Tons of Strength into the blow.

Kastro, recovering from the deflection with terrifying speed, didn’t try to dodge. He simply crossed his arms in front of his chest, absorbing the blow.

‘THUD.’

Veer’s fist slammed into Kastro’s forearms.

Veer felt like he had just punched a solid block of reinforced concrete wrapped in leather. Kastro was pushed backward by the force, sliding a few inches across the dirty floor, but he didn’t stumble. He didn’t even wince.

Kastro lowered his arms, looking at Veer with a mixture of annoyance and dark amusement.

“You hit like a freight train, boy,” Kastro said smoothly, shaking his arms out slightly. “But you have absolutely zero technique. You throw your weight around like a brawler. It is terribly unrefined.”

Veer slowly pulled his fist back, his knuckles throbbing violently. He flexed his fingers, trying to work the numbness out of his arms.

His analytical brain rapidly processed the data from that brief collision.

‘He is physically stronger than me,’ Veer realized, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck.

Veer had 9 points in Strength. But Kastro was an adult man who had spent his entire life pushing the absolute boundaries of human martial arts, combining it with the subconscious flow of aura. Without the explosive amplification of ‘Ren’, Veer was fighting at a sheer physical disadvantage. His 19 Vitality meant he could take a beating, and his 12 Agility meant he could dodge, but in a contest of raw, crushing force, Kastro held the higher ground.

“Technique is just a fancy word for people who don’t want to admit they enjoy hitting people in the face,” Veer retorted, keeping his tone light and sarcastic to mask his internal panic. “And honestly, I’d rather be a brawler than a guy who clearly spends three hours a day flat-ironing his hair.”

Kastro’s elegant facade finally cracked. A flash of pure, insulted rage crossed his handsome features. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees as the killing intent spiked sharply.

“I am going to tear your tongue out,” Kastro promised, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. He raised his hands, the imaginary tiger roaring to life as the unseen aura flooded into his fingers, denser and sharper than before.

Veer bent his knees, preparing to abandon the facade entirely. He was going to have to use everything he had—his speed, his environmental awareness, and every dirty, underhanded street-fighting tactic he could think of—just to survive this guy.

He braced himself as Kastro’s muscles coiled for the final, lethal charge.

‘BZZZZZZZZZT!’

The massive, ear-splitting sound of the arena buzzer violently shattered the tension in the cage, echoing off the high warehouse ceiling and rattling the chain-link fences.

“Time! Time is up!” the announcer’s voice boomed over the PA system, nearly blowing out the speakers. “The Battle Royale is over! Everyone drop your hands and step back, or my boys in the rafters will put a bullet in your knee!”

Veer froze.

Kastro froze mid-lunge.

The entire arena, previously a swirling vortex of violence, slowly ground to a halt. Men who were in the middle of choking each other out reluctantly let go, rolling off and panting heavily on the blood-stained concrete.

Veer let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension leaving his muscles so fast he almost stumbled forward. He looked up at the rafters, noticing for the first time that there were indeed several men perched in the shadows with high-powered rifles aimed directly into the cage.

Kastro slowly lowered his hands. The dense, dangerous aura dissipating from his fingers back into the ambient flow of his body. He stood up straight, smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles in his pristine uniform, completely unbothered by the fact that he was standing in a literal puddle of someone else’s blood.

He looked at Veer, his anger immediately replaced by that arrogant, aristocratic calm.

“It seems you have been saved by the bell,” Kastro said softly, reaching down to adjust the massive bundle of tags tied to his own waist. “A temporary reprieve.”

“Saved by the bell? Are we in a high school sitcom from the nineties?” Veer replied, refusing to let the man have the last word. “I was just about to show you my signature move. It’s called ‘running away very fast while screaming for the police.’ You missed out on a cultural experience.”

Kastro offered a small, terrifyingly polite smile.

“We both have enough tags to qualify for the main bracket,” Kastro said, turning his back on Veer and beginning to walk toward the exit tunnel. He paused, looking over his shoulder, his white hair catching the light. “I sincerely hope you do not get eliminated in the early rounds, Meruem. I want to be the one who dismantles you in the cage. It will be an absolute pleasure.”

“I’ll be sure to pencil you in,” Veer called back cheerfully. “Right between my existential dread and my crippling financial anxiety!”

Kastro didn’t reply, simply disappearing into the crowd of groaning, defeated men being ushered out of the cage by the armed guards.

Veer stood alone for a moment, the adrenaline slowly ebbing away, leaving a dull ache in his forearms and a sharp sting on his chest where the claws had scraped him.

He looked down at the thirty tags tied to his belt. He had survived the free-for-all. He was in the tournament. He was one step closer to ten thousand dollars.

But the reality of the situation was a heavy weight settling on his shoulders. He was in a universe where the rules were apparently fluid. If Kastro was here, who else was hiding in the shadows of New York? The Phantom Troupe? The Zoldycks?

More importantly, he had to fight Kastro in the main bracket. And without ‘Ren’, his chances of actually winning in a confined, one-on-one deathmatch against a physical monster of that caliber were dangerously close to zero.

“I really need to figure out how to stop exploding my aura nodes,” Veer sighed deeply, untying the tags from his waist as the guards approached to collect them. “This night is going to be incredibly long.”