Max stopped midway through the alley he had just entered, and the soft sound of light footsteps did as well.
"I didn't think 'Theft Target' would have thrown some nonsense my way the second I interacted with the people here. Ah, whatever. I wonder how strong these guys are?"
The drawback he had chosen to take to bolster his GP count was already kicking in. Once or twice a month, he would experience some sort of robbery—or an attempt, anyway.
Max's eyelids shut for a moment, hiding the light glow they would normally produce when he actively used [Destiny]. After pausing for no more than two seconds, he opened his eyes and grinned while turning around and addressing his three tails.
"Hey, buddies. You know where I can find someone that'll bring in some soft drinks or juice powder from the Alliance for me? Oh, and no, I won't give you any money or Beast Souls, so unless you know where to find something to drink besides water, you should pull your bottom lip over your head, and swallow."
The three men in hoods, who believed it was their lucky day when this new mark had entered the alley, turned to look at each other and started laughing.
"Hahaha, you understand what's happening, and you're trying to be funny, huh? Well, here's something else funny—We are part of the Special Forces from the Alliance Military. You entered our shelter and didn't pay the fee, which just so happens to be money, or a Beast Soul! And since you entered without a single word, the cost has doubled—now it'll be $100,000 or two ordinary Beast Souls."
The man speaking pulled back his hood while doing so.
Middle-aged and bearing noticeable bags under his eyes, the man who had revealed his face appeared somewhat haggard and unkempt. The presence of grease and dirt was clear, clinging to his features and lending a darker hue to his otherwise greying, shoulder-length hair.
A mocking smile played across his angular face, and the moment he concluded his speech, his eyes flicked to his two companions. Without warning, he sprang forward toward Max, an eight-inch-long knife flashing into existence in his hand as if from thin air, gleaming menacingly in the light that accompanied its summoning.
He had intended to catch the large man, who clearly wasn't scared of their numbers or the fake claim of being Alliance Military guards that operated in this shelter, hoping to place a blade to Max's throat before he could react, then proceed to take everything they could.
Normally, these three would commit a crime like this out in the wilderness and never inside the shelter, but for some reason, they all got greedy at the same time.
Max, already knowing the man had been lying, tried not to smile while watching the scene play out—something he had seen happen a few times in different ways before he had even turned around to face them.
Using the power of [Destiny], he had seen the future in several different ways.
In the first, he had gone all out from the start—full power—to gauge how strong these guys were. He initially guessed they were really weak, maybe having gained some ordinary and primitive genes and Beast Souls at best.
Going all out was major overkill. He ended up in a situation he couldn't explain to the people of the shelter in this simulated future, and thus his plan for his stay near Steel Armor Shelter wouldn't work out. But he did confirm that these guys could be dealt with quite easily—bare-handed.
After blazing through a couple of different visions with [Destiny], firing at a speed, clarity, and efficiency that its original owner could never hope to achieve via Max's [Instinct] ability, he settled on an appropriate solution.
This chosen future was set into motion as Max brought up two fingers to meet the incoming blade. He still wasn't quite strong enough physically to completely block the strike barehanded the way he wanted to, without bleeding a little, so he activated his [Electromagnetism] and seized the incoming knife between two fingers, halting its movement immediately.
Then he brought up two knuckles to the man's chest—just an inch away from the plate of exotic steel belonging to his armor.
A look of surprise flashed across all three men's faces, especially the owner of the incoming knife, Biao Zhang.
Biao Zhang was the strongest of the three trying to shake down Max. He even had a relatively decent count of ordinary, primitive, and mutant genes—sitting at around thirty mutant genes, with his ordinary and primitive geno points full. The other two also had their ordinary and primitive geno points maxed but lacked in the mutant geno point department.
An individual's power was measured in the Alliance using a metric called 'Fitness'.
An ordinary person would have a fitness level of 1-2, with exceptional elites scoring a 3. This was the height for humans in this reality before encountering the sanctuaries.
Once a person consumed creature flesh, they would see a rise in fitness of different degrees, depending on the beast.
Maxing out the foundational one hundred ordinary Geno Points added a clean 2.0 to a warrior's fitness—more or less doubling the strength, speed, and toughness of a normal human.
Consuming tougher prey to max out the primitive tier infused the body with an additional 3.0 fitness, effectively almost tripling baseline human strength and turning them into true superhumans.
Reaching the elite level by maxing one hundred Mutant genes injected a massive 4.0 points directly into the fitness score, granting explosive power capable of shattering stone with bare fists.
The pinnacle for the strongest (or richest) warriors rested on harvesting rare apex predators, where maxing the Sacred-Blood tier yielded a staggering 6.4–7.0 fitness boost, transforming a human into a walking fortress.
Finally, though unknown to anyone here currently except Max and a few others in the Alliance—who only guessed it, since no one had managed to kill one yet—maxing out the Super Geno tier caused a divine metamorphosis that skyrocketed fitness by an astronomical 15.0 points.
Excluding the supernatural multipliers of advanced Hyper Geno Arts—the special martial arts of this world—this strict genetic ladder was the definitive path to rewriting human destiny, one drop of blood at a time.
With his ordinary and primitive genes maxed, and thirty mutant ones added to the equation, Biao Zhang sat at a fairly impressive fitness level of 8.2, with the others hovering around 7.
This was unbeatable compared to a regular man, but Max, who already had an inherent fitness of 15 before any body strengthening or enhancing via [Electromagnetism], thanks to his 5x base human stats, found this level laughable.
Max had chosen to use just enough force to break their Beast Souls and turn them black and blue.
This would be a good chance for him to get a feel for his extra-long limbs, and he didn't mind that stuff like this would be a regular occurrence for him due to the drawback. He still wasn't keen on killing, but he wouldn't mind sending these idiots back to the Alliance for a long hospital stay.
And so, with a deft twist of his fingers and a surge of energy, the offending knife shattered into brilliant fragments of light before vanishing entirely. Max then tapped his knuckles against the armor before him, channeling his electromagnetic power into a light yet potent strike that repelled the metal barrier and sent his armored foe hurtling backward, crashing into his accomplices in a dazzling display of force.
Bang!
"Arrgh!"
Before either of the other two could dodge, they were both smashed into by their leader, Biao Zhang, causing them all to cry out in pain.
"Sorry about the knife. It looked like it was around the level of a mutant Beast Soul, right? You're gonna need to come up with something better than that, my guy..."
Max walked forward, tilting his neck side to side and cracking his huge knuckles as he took big steps toward the panicked men on the ground, who had just realized they'd made a massive mistake.
"What Hyper Geno Art was that?!"
By now, two of them had managed to rise to their feet, looking back and forth between the big man walking toward them and Biao Zhang, who was also shakily getting up while holding his chest.
Biao Zhang was not quite sure what to think. He had certainly been tossed violently, and his precious Saber Cat mutant Beast Soul had been shattered by the guy he wanted to rob. But the actual punch that had hit him hadn't hurt his body that much physically—as if no real force had been thrown into the blow.
He still believed that, together, he and his friends could win with numbers.
"Get him!"
As soon as the command was snarled, the three men summoned more weapons and pounced toward the incoming Max.
Sadly for them, against three attackers hovering at a fitness level of seven and eight, a warrior with a fitness level of fifteen operated in an entirely different realm.
Even though the god-tier footwork techniques—Heavenly Go and the Seven Steps—had only just been integrated into Max's muscle memory, the sheer disparity in raw physical stats turned what should have been a frantic ambush into a display of casual, terrifying dominance.
To the attackers, Max's movements defied the known laws of acceleration. There was no visible strain, no tensing of the calves before a leap, and no wind-up. When the first blade cut through the air toward Max, he simply wasn't there anymore.
He could already utilize the foundational weight-shifting of Heavenly Go, slipping past the strike with an erratic, drifting motion that made him look less like a dodging human and more like a ghost caught in a sudden updraft.
A green alloy Beast Soul weapon sliced through an empty afterimage—the momentum pulling the thug forward into a clumsy stumble.
The remaining two closed the distance simultaneously, attempting to box Max in with a synchronized pincer attack. At a fitness level of seven and eight, their top speeds were impressive by Max's old Earth standards, but to someone with a fitness score of fifteen, their incoming strikes looked as though they were dragging through water. Not to mention, Max already knew how this was going to play out.
With the first couple of movements of the new skills, Max was a bit clumsy. But thanks to the vast disparity in fitness and Max's [Instinct] ability kicking in, what should have been the frantic panic of a novice relying on a brand-new muscle memory was instead a real-time, five-second mastery of the two movement-based Qi Gongs Max had absorbed from the scrolls earlier.
The execution was initially unrefined and lacked the rhythmic grace of a master, but the raw power and speed behind it were explosive, hiding the flaws while Max quickly mastered the techniques.
The next step he took cracked the stone beneath Max's 'boot,' launching him laterally at an impossible angle.
The second and third steps were erratic blurs—a jagged zig-zag that shattered his attackers' spatial awareness. To the three unfortunate fools, it appeared as though Max had teleported; their bodies flickered instantly from the left flank to the right in the tight alley.
Before they could even regain their bearings, Max materialized behind each of them with lightning speed, unleashing a relentless barrage of powerful kicks and punches.
Each strike shattered their armor and obliterated their weapons—the sheer force propelling them through the air and sending them hurtling away in all directions, bouncing off nearby walls in the alley.
Light, pained groaning could be heard from the bodies laying on the ground, but that was all—they kept silent, terrified out of their minds at the beast of a man looming over them, eyeballing them with a strange smile on his face.
"Huh, I got a weird feeling of déjà vu there... AH! I guess I did beat up three idiots relatively soon at the start of the Marvel Jump too—outside McGinty's Pub... haha, yeah, that's it."
Max squatted down beside Biao Zhang and asked again, "You know where to find some water flavoring or what?"