Superhuman (Please Bookmark and Recommend)

Boom--boom--boom--

A series of violent impacts rang out, and the entire old apartment building seemed to tremble.

"Which brainless bastard with a mother but no father is making all this racket in the middle of the night? What the fuck are you doing, shoving a Building Shaker up your ass?"

The resident upstairs was a hot-tempered woman. Cursing under her breath, she yanked open her door, walked out onto the stairs, leaned over the railing, and looked down.

"Huh!?"

The Youth, whose body had swollen with muscles, looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was flushed red with rage, making him look like a Bull on the grasslands gathering momentum before a charge.

Their eyes met for an instant, and time itself seemed to freeze.

"Oh my, why have I gone deaf? I can't hear anything, can't hear anything..."

The woman immediately turned around and stomped upstairs with a bang bang bang. Then, with a boom--, she slammed her door shut and turned the security lock three times.

Seeing her leave, the Youth turned his gaze back to He Ao and resumed ramming the door.

The reason he had initially been unwilling to do this was that he feared drawing the neighbors' attention and prompting them to call the police. But now that He Ao had already called the police anyway, he had nothing left to fear.

He had to make this brat taste the price of arrogance!

Once anger began to burn, it could not be extinguished.

It could only wait until it burned itself out.

Boom--

He increased the frequency of his charges. More and more cracks appeared at the welded points of the sturdy security chain.

Cracks were sometimes not a sign that destruction had begun, but that it was already halfway complete. Once the first crack appeared, the emergence of more cracks and the collapse of the whole object became only natural.

At the Youth's speed, it would take no more than ten seconds for him to break through the security chain.

He Ao retreated a few steps and looked from afar at the Youth, whose face twisted into a savage grin as the door was gradually forced open.

Then he looked at the three reward options before him. He had originally wanted to think them over carefully, but it seemed he had no time for that now.

With a thought, he made his choice.

You have selected Vermillion Fruit. The item has been distributed. Please collect it.

Mission complete. You have unlocked eligibility for the full game.

Life Resume function unlocked.

Character Panel unlocked.

Time remaining until the next game begins: 23:56:36

He Ao had no time to examine the system text closely. He only felt a slight weight appear in his hand.

He raised the object before his eyes. It appeared to be a red fruit, roughly two fingers wide and three fingers long. Its entire body was fiery red and cylindrical, with dense little pits covering its surface, reflecting a bright gleam under the lights.

He Ao was actually not unfamiliar with this sort of fruit. He just usually called it... a red date!

Vermillion meant red, fruit meant fruit. A Vermillion Fruit was a red fruit, and a red date was also a red fruit, so a red date was a Vermillion Fruit. Reasoning complete. Perfectly reasonable.

For a moment, He Ao did not even know where to begin criticizing it.

But on closer inspection, this fruit was still different from an ordinary red date. Red dates were usually very light, while this fruit was somewhat heavier.

As for the taste...

He Ao brought the fruit to his mouth and bit into it.

...It tasted exactly like a red date.

Boom--bang--

The old security door was violently rammed open, its iron gate slamming into the wall with a thunderous crash.

He Ao could no longer afford to hesitate. He quickly swallowed the fruit in his hand.

Then he spat out a small object.

...Mm, it had a date pit. Ahem... a fruit pit.

The date pit did not look edible, so He Ao simply stuffed it into his pocket and ran deeper into the apartment.

He Ao's home had three bedrooms and a living room. The master bedroom had belonged to his parents and had gathered dust from being unoccupied for so long. The secondary bedroom was his own, while the final small room was his study. That was where he was running now.

"Brat, don't you fucking run!"

The Youth crashed into the apartment, then immediately charged toward He Ao with a savage grin.

In truth, He Ao had not had much choice. Of the three items, he already had a Talent Sequence, and there was no guarantee he could roll one suited for combat. As for Mechanical Modification, he did not want to become a robot. So Vermillion Fruit was his only option.

Besides, he had a theory. Talent Sequences represented superpowers gained out of thin air, while Mechanical Modification represented a powerful body obtained through outside technology. Did Vermillion Fruit represent strengthening one's own body? Or improving one's physical abilities?

He soon learned the answer.

As he ran, a warm current spread from his lower abdomen into his chest, then flowed into his hands and feet, seeping through his limbs and bones along a special circuit.

He Ao felt something like barriers within his body being broken through one after another, like stagnant mud that had clogged a channel for ages suddenly being blasted away by a powerful stream, or someone constipated for two weeks suddenly unleashing a torrential flood.

The feeling was strange. It hurt a little, but also felt pretty good.

Describing it any further would probably become impossible to describe. In short, He Ao felt that he was moving much faster than before, and his whole body seemed to grow light.

Yet even so, he was still a step too slow.

The Youth charged straight at him like a raging bull.

Some people thought bulls were big and therefore slow, but that was not entirely true. Over long distances, bulls indeed could not run very fast, but when charging over short distances, they could erupt with tremendous speed in an instant.

Why use a bull as an example?

Because He Ao felt that the Youth before him no longer seemed human. Though he still had a human shape, he faintly resembled an enraged wild Bull.

The Youth was hardly "running" at all. He stomped the ground, lunging forward one leap at a time as he rushed toward He Ao.

In an extremely short time, the Youth had closed in on He Ao and swung a fist at his chest.

If that punch landed, He Ao felt his ribs would be shattered outright, and the broken bones would stab straight into his lungs.

He had underestimated him. He Ao's heart tightened.

The Youth's strength had exceeded his expectations somewhat. It had already far surpassed the limits a human could reach.

The Youth seemed to notice He Ao's slight frown, and his smile grew wider. "Pay the price for your arrogance, brat!"

Watching the fist come at him, He Ao knew some jujutsu techniques that could twist his body aside and evade it. But after dodging, he would expose an opening, and if the Youth seized the chance, he would still be injured.

But he had no time to think further. If this strike landed, even if it did not kill him, it would take half his life.

Yet just as he was about to dodge, a flash of inspiration suddenly passed through his mind.

It was an image he had memorized with Hyperthymesia.

That yellowed little book contained not only dense writing he could not recognize, but also several simple illustrations of human figures performing moves.

At first, he could not understand those drawings. But now, as the Vermillion Fruit entered his stomach and that warm energy flowed through his body along certain pathways, he gradually understood what the lines drawn over the human bodies in those illustrations meant.

There was still some of the Vermillion Fruit's power left. He tried controlling it with his thoughts, to see whether he could guide its power along the pathways shown in those remembered illustrations.

He could!

All of this happened in an instant!

The enraged Youth's fist struck He Ao squarely in the chest, only to pass through an illusory afterimage.