Then, just as Ian's hand came into contact with Homelander's still-dripping blood and the completely severed spinal column,
the system's voice sounded in his ear, exactly as expected.
Only, this was not the prompt Ian had wanted.
Nor was it the kind of bad outcome he had mentally prepared himself for.
[You have come into contact with an unknown extraordinary substance. Warning: this extraordinary substance has completely fallen dormant. A new mission has been acquired. Please enter the class selection interface to view it.]
"What the hell is this supposed to mean?"
Ian was a little stunned. He hurriedly opened his class selection interface, where a new option had appeared: [Dormant Class]. The moment his thoughts touched that strange option, a line of text slowly appeared where only he could see it.
[Awakening Mission: Please ignite this class's flame of life.]
As the saying went, you never realize how bad it is until you see it.
Ian was completely baffled by the system's incredibly brief mission description. Did this mean he was supposed to resurrect Homelander, who had clearly been dead for who knew how long?
"Hm?"
Ian turned and looked again at Homelander, whose head and body were separated and whose spine had been completely broken. In that instant, he felt like the system might just be screwing with him.
"That doesn't make sense. The Hulk is just as dead, so why didn't it say his class had gone dormant too?"
Ian tried to reason with his system.
Unfortunately, his brainless system offered absolutely no response.
"This is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous!"
Having failed to get what he wanted, Ian grew a little irritated. He forcibly wrested Homelander's head out of the corpse's hand, then slid down from the Hulk's arm while hugging it to his chest.
He hesitated.
He struggled.
He weighed the pros and cons over and over.
Very obviously, Ian was wondering whether he could chew through the head in his hands.
He believed in conservation of energy, and he felt that maybe letting Homelander's matter flow into himself could count as reigniting Homelander's flame of life.
However,
even with such a unique train of thought, there was still a psychological barrier he could not quite cross. After all, eating an evil spirit and eating a human being were clearly two very different things.
"To hell with being discount Superman."
In the end, Ian still failed to overcome basic human instinct. He threw away the grimacing head in his hands and tried to kick it away like a soccer ball.
He put a lot of force into that kick.
National-team-level technique.
Homelander's head flew quite far. It missed the trash can Ian had been aiming for and instead landed on a snow-covered abandoned bus stop on the complete opposite side.
Homelander's head itself remained intact, but the metal bench at the bus stop was dented inward on impact. It was obvious the knockoff Superman still had a very real amount of superhuman density in him.
"Sigh..."
Ian stared at the mission prompt, which had not disappeared. This time, his intelligence failed to help much at all. The ridiculously bare mission description left him with no clue what he was actually supposed to do.
"There's no way it seriously expects me to resurrect Homelander, right?"
Ian looked up toward the Hulk's arm. He had meant to glance at Homelander's headless body, but the moment he raised his head, he noticed something strange in the sky above.
In the leaden sky, which had always been dull and oppressive, something was moving.
Its outline was still unclear. It did not look like a living creature. Rather, it was as if something was emerging from within the clouds.
"That's huge."
Ian could sense that the half-visible thing was as large as a small asteroid.
Wait. Maybe it actually was a small asteroid?
The boy stared in amazement.
There, in the sky,
the thing hidden within the dark clouds became clearer and clearer.
It was a vast circular object, so massive it could blot out the heavens. And just then, in this world where Ian had spent so much time surrounded only by silence,
"Hey!"
A human voice appeared.
Sharp.
Urgent.
The voice struck like a bolt of thunder. Ian instantly turned toward where it had come from, but he only had time to make out the rough shape of a person before the familiar return bell suddenly rang ahead of schedule.
Dong~~~~
The first heavy toll seemed to freeze everything.
Dong. Dong.
The second and third followed immediately after.
Ian jolted awake in bed.
[00:42]
Even though this return had happened strangely early,
the clock still pointed to that seemingly eternal time.
"There are living people in that world?!"
Ian's heart was still full of shock and confusion. He sprang up like a carp and launched himself straight toward the ceiling.
Then,
he slammed both hands against it, using the reaction force to steady himself as he dropped neatly back to the floor, landing right into the slippers beside his bed.
"So all the superheroes are dead... then who the hell could still be alive?"
Ian could not make sense of what he had just experienced. At the same time, he also could not understand why he had suddenly returned early.
That had never happened before.
Now that it had happened, was it because of the voice he heard at the end, or because of the mysterious circular object in the sky?
"Intelligence, do something."
Ian smacked his forehead a couple times.
Oddly enough,
it actually helped a little.
Just not in the direction he had intended.
A certain image suddenly flashed through his mind. Then he thought of his awakening mission and of the Hulk.
Pat pat pat pat.
His slippers squeaked like a clown's toy as he ran all the way to Jordan's room and started pounding on the door. A groggy Jordan rubbed his eyes and opened it, looking down at his little brother in confusion.
"What is it?"
Jordan looked completely baffled.
He yawned, as though mentally exhausted.
"Where are your comic books?"
Ian did not care in the slightest whether the air smelled suspiciously floral. He charged straight into Jordan's room and looked around. Sure enough, he found the box where Jordan kept his comics.
Under his brother's baffled stare, Ian rummaged around inside, tossing aside the hidden discs until his eyes locked onto a yellowed comic magazine.
The Incredible Hulk.
There on the cover was the familiar green figure, savage and massive.
"Wait, you barged in here in the middle of the night just because you wanted to look at this obscure superhero comic that only ran for three issues before getting axed?"
Jordan was furious at having his late-night momentum interrupted, but because his little brother had gone through something bad tonight, he clenched his teeth and somehow held back from exploding.
"Can I borrow it?"
Ian looked up at his older brother.
Though clearly annoyed, Jordan still sighed and nodded, then shoved Ian, who had already gone back to staring at the comic, back out of the room.
"Damn it, now I have to get back into the zone."
Jordan adjusted his mood slightly, selected a new challenge target from among the discs Ian had tossed onto the floor, and once again resumed his nightly campaign.
Outside the bedroom door,
Ian stared at the comic in his hands. A powerful intuition was telling him that this might be connected to why Homelander could not activate his class while the Hulk could.
There was no story about Homelander in the real world he lived in.
But there was a story about the Hulk.
"Being able to connect all this really just proves how smart I am."
Ian felt he had finally found the line of thought needed to crack the mission. But just as he was about to head back to his room,
flushhh.
The sound of a toilet flushing came from nearby.
Clark stepped out of the second-floor bathroom.
The two of them met each other's eyes.
"Hm?"
Ian's gaze moved past Clark and toward the space behind him. His expression changed instantly. Shocked, he raised a finger and pointed behind his father.
"Dad! You've got some nerve! Cheating in your own house?!"
Yes, Ian could clearly see that behind Clark, as he stepped out of the bathroom, there was an unfamiliar woman.
"What are you talking about?"
Clark instinctively tugged at his sleeve to cover his arm. But when he heard Ian's accusation, his face went blank. He turned around to look, only to see absolutely nothing.
"So you're pretending? No... wait."
Ian caught something strange in the way Clark frowned.
His old man looked genuinely confident, with none of the guilty panic of someone caught red-handed. And thinking about it calmly, even if Clark were cheating, there was no way he would pick his own house to do it.
Unless Lois had somehow agreed to it?
Sure, people in the West could be more open-minded, but this household was actually pretty traditional. Because of that, Ian did not believe his mother had any taste for something so exotic.
Still,
then why was there a woman there?
"Maybe she's not alive at all. Because I ate a ghost, maybe my eyes can see ghosts now?"
Ian's first thought was of a web series from before his transmigration, one he had never even seen the ending of.
Then,
as if realizing something else, he lowered his head and looked at the back of his own hand.
The brand was flickering.
As though only he could see it.
"So is this because of that big shot's mark?"
Ian raised his head again.
Sure enough, reflected in his pupils was the woman no one else could see.
She wore black, something like a uniform. Her short hair was neatly styled, and her pale skin was so flawless it made people envious.
"Hm?"
Perhaps sensing Ian's prolonged stare,
the woman tilted her head slightly.
"A human? That's a very... interesting talent."
Even she seemed slightly surprised.
(End of Chapter)
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