"Five years is a long time to wait for the real 'main character' to show up, but I'll use my time well... obviously." Max whispered to the beefy reflection in the window while staring down at the streets of the shelter. "I'm going to be the apex predator of this place long before 'Ass Freak' even learns how to use a knife or a bow."
He turned from the window, the blue of his hair catching the light one last time before he stepped into the center of the tiny room, ready to begin his second jump in earnest.
Max had sensed the metallic gourd when he reached out with his powers earlier, and now his eyes lit up as he looked at it resting on the bed. A smile spread across his face at the sight of the sleek, gleaming water bottle, crafted from an unfamiliar, dense alloy blend unlike anything he had ever encountered.
Beside it sat the soon-to-be-fabled endless spice rack, and his gaze shifted eagerly to the pair of scrolls. His heart raced with anticipation, assuming they contained the two distinct skills promised by the 'Kung Fu Hustle' perk—one he had purchased not once, but twice.
A extra-large hand was held toward the spice rack and the gourd, which could refill itself. Within moments, they had turned into golden sparks, safely converted into Beast Souls and stored inside Max's sea of soul.
'Nice, now, just to learn Heavenly Go and Seven Twists... I'll practice them as soon as I have a chance, outside the shelter...'
Max reached out and seized a scroll with each hand.
Old, tattered, leathery parchment started to glow, slightly at first but then like a sun. As soon as they reached their peak brightness, they disintegrated into little golden pieces of glowing light, which rushed into the wide-open eyes of Max.
"Hmm..."
This time, the golden light only resulted in a brief, two-second-long headache before all of the info he needed was ingrained in his mind.
Just like that, he had learned two of the most powerful movement skills available in this world.
Max suddenly got a strange look on his face, turning toward the bed where all of his items had been sitting. That new, big hand of his was raised toward it, and it vanished in a sea of sparks and golden light.
He hadn't planned on coming back to the shelter for a while, wanting to jump right into the thick of it. It would indeed be nice to have a place he could lay his head at night in the wilds—that wasn't a rock or something.
"Hhhmmm... maybe the tracksuit isn't too subtle..."
Max turned toward the heavy oak door separating himself from the rest of the sanctuary.
He didn't reach for the metal bolt with his hands. Instead, he simply looked at it. With his electromagnetic powers peaked, he could feel the metallic signatures of every rivet and latch in the room.
"Let's not make a scene just yet," he muttered while looking down at the black-and-white sweats he loved so much. Max paused for a moment instead of walking right out.
He concentrated, and the world around him began to distort. It wasn't magic—just his [Electromagnetism] at work. He reached out with his mind, seizing the photons that flooded into the room from the flickering glow-stone.
He didn't absorb them; he bent them. Like a lens made of pure magnetic force, he warped the light waves so they flowed seamlessly around his massive 450-plus-pound frame, meeting perfectly on the other side.
To any observer, the space where he stood would look like nothing but empty, dusty air. With a silent thought, the iron bolt slid back with a quiet, smooth metallic sound, and the heavy door swung open.
To the people coming and going in the narrow corridor of the building, Max showed up in, the sight was a ghost story in the making: a heavy, reinforced door creaking open on its own, revealing a cramped stone room that appeared completely empty, before the door quietly shut once more.
Max stepped out, his size 22 sneakers making no sound as he slightly hovered, using the pocket of air beneath his feet to cushion the impact.
He walked past a pair of ragged scavengers who were arguing over a piece of ordinary creature meat.
They didn't even look up as the "ghost" of a seven-foot giant passed inches from them—the air only slightly shimmering like a heat haze on a summer road. In the dim light of the hall, this wasn't noticeable, however.
He was already the biggest predator in a world of prey, moving through the Steel Armor Shelter as a silent, invisible observer—his blue hair and Godly Sweats hidden behind a curtain of bent light.
As he moved toward the main balcony of the Steel Armor Shelter, the full scale of the place opened up before him.
It wasn't the medieval village some might expect; the shelter was a sprawling complex of functional, blocky architecture.
The buildings were clean-lined, made of a pale grey stone that looked almost like reinforced concrete.
Wide, paved walkways connected the various sectors, lit by the steady, cold glow of bioluminescent crystals embedded in the walls.
But it was the people who drew Max's eye.
The plaza was a sea of varying levels of power. He saw a man clad in shimmering, translucent green scale armor that pulsed with a life of its own—a Sacred Blood Beast Soul. Another woman walked by with a massive, serrated broadsword slung over her shoulder, the blade looking too large to be handled by a normal human. She could have sent it to her sea of soul, but was quite clearly showing it off.
They moved with the wary, calculated gait of seasoned killers—hardened warriors, almost all of them—much different from the humans Max was used to being around.
Max stealthily left the shelter by simply floating over its walls, setting himself down around a mile out and releasing his hold on the light, becoming visible again.
He summoned his image inducer, and it materialized on his wrist with a flash of light. He concentrated, and the [Techno Lock Bypass] ability he had received lit up on his interface.
The technology that should not have been usable started working right away, cloaking his tracksuit with a different appearance: the classic orange jumpsuit Toriko wore in the anime and manga he was the star of. Max just couldn't resist the urge to rock the full cosplay.
His massive frame was suddenly clad in a rugged, sleeveless vest of striking orange. Beneath it, a dark, form-fitting undershirt stretched tight across his muscular chest. Heavy-duty cargo pants of the same vibrant orange hung loosely around his thick legs, built with the deep, reinforced pockets of a seasoned survivalist.
A thick, obsidian-black utility belt cinched his waist, securing his gear if needed and breaking up the intensely bright color of the fabric. The entire practical ensemble was anchored by knee-high, midnight-blue combat boots.
"Mwahahaha! This is fucking sick!"
Watching the massive man giggle to himself in satisfaction would have been quite the scene to see, but Max had reigned in his excitement by the time he arrived back at the shelter again, this time fully visible.
Max was trying to make it look like he had just arrived at this shelter for the first time, as if he had traveled here from somewhere else.
As Max entered the front gate, his physical presence hit the fairly large-sized crowd like a shockwave. He was at least a head and a half taller than almost everyone else, his massive build cutting a path through the masses without him having to say a word.
The loosely packed crowd itself had quieted down for a few seconds before resuming its chaotic nature, with several people still giving him sideways glances and talking amongst themselves, clearly about this giant no one had seen before.
'Gossipy little bitches eh?' Max thought to himself while smirking a bit.
His 5x peak-human stats gave him a terrifyingly heavy "presence"—a density of spirit and muscle that felt like a physical weight to those nearby. He was already on the upper side of physical power here in the First God's Sanctuary, without having acquired a single geno point.
The messy blue hair and the jagged scars on his cheek only added to the image of a high-level warrior who had seen things that would make a normal hunter's blood run cold.
"Look at the size of that guy," an armored man whispered, leaning on a summoned spear tipped with what looked like a claw. "He's not wearing any armor... is he that confident?"
"He must have all his sacred geno points maxed..."
"I haven't seen this specimen around before..."
Max caught the gaze of a group of female adventurers gathered near the outside of a shop and could just barely hear them talking about him. They weren't looking at his lack of gear; they were looking at the way his chest strained against his shirt and the rugged curve of his jaw.
One woman, wearing leather armor trimmed with white fur, didn't even bother to hide her stare, biting her lip as she tracked the ripple of his muscles with every stride.
Max ignored the admiration, but he didn't ignore the new shift in the air. Thanks to his Marvel-born senses—specifically the hair-trigger intuition born of roaming a New York infested with Spider-Man's rogue gallery—he felt the shift immediately.
He didn't even need to employ [Destiny] to know what was going to happen next.
Three figures slipped out from the shadows of a nearby shop selling ordinary, primitive, and mutant meat. They were dressed in drab, nondescript cloaks and random low-level beast soul armor, meaning to blend into the grey stone of the shelter. Their faces were obscured by deep hoods.
They didn't look like people hunting for geno points; they looked like vultures looking for victims.
They fanned out, keeping a "casual" distance, their eyes locked on Max's back as he steered himself toward a quieter alleyway leading to the southern gates.
After looking at the orange jumpsuit being displayed via the image inducer, they assumed Max was a "newbie" and were hoping to quickly get a bit of money out of him.
Planning a crime inside the sanctuaries was a normal occurrence. What was happening here usually stayed here, and Max was now in their sights—his size not being a deterrent at all!
Max didn't speed up. He didn't summon a weapon. Instead, he let out a low, vibrating chuckle that stayed trapped in his throat. He could feel the metal in their freshly summoned beast soul daggers and the strange alloy in their armors singing to his magnetic sense as they closed in.
They were like kittens stalking a Tyrannosaurus rex.
As he turned the corner into the small space of an empty alleyway, Max's lips pulled back. He caught his reflection in a dark glass window while heading into the alley—a flash of vibrant blue hair, Toriko's classic look, and a wide, fang-y grin that looked far too large for a human mouth.
"I was worried I'd have to go all the way to those mountains to find something to break in these fists," Max whispered, his eyes glinting with a dangerous, hungry light.
He didn't have to look behind him—the soft scuff of a boot on stone told him they had fully taken the bait.