Chapter 2

Looking at the job listing on the electronic screen, Lin Jie sighed helplessly. "I really don't want to work after all! Never mind. I'll buy the latest game and head home."

Lin Jie had recently started getting into video games. The reason was simple: monsters in games were harder to take down than monsters in real life.

"Right, when I get back, I'll tell my little sister I got lost on the road of life and missed the job fair." As he spoke, Lin Jie headed toward the shopping district, where a group of handsome men were performing.

"Oh? It's the latest popular superhero group, the Ten Gods Clan!" Lin Jie said, looking at the band in front of him. "The lead singer, guitarist, keyboardist, drummer, and bassist... There are only five of them altogether, so why are they called the Ten Gods Clan? The Five Gods Clan would make way more sense."

"Lord Ten Gods! Lord Ten Gods! Lord Ten Gods!" The girls' cheers rose higher and higher over the band's performance.

"Thank you all for supporting our band," the lead singer said to the girls below the stage.

"Lord Ten Gods, you're the god in our hearts!" one girl shouted.

"We're not gods. We're just a group of people who want to rid the world of evil," Ten Gods said to the girls below the stage. Their screams immediately rang out again.

"Thank you, everyone! By the way, we've gone from D-Class heroes to C-Class heroes in just one month. We hope you'll keep supporting us. That'll give us the motivation to reach B-Class even faster..."

"So the lead singer's name is Ten Gods." After watching the performance, Lin Jie couldn't help commenting, "I mean, I said that line in front of hundreds of thousands of people back then. So why didn't any girls scream for me? Forget girls—even a single guy screaming would've been nice."

Lin Jie couldn't help remembering how he'd stood with his back to the hundreds of thousands of people kneeling before him and said, "I'm not a god." He'd thought it would look cool and that people would gasp in admiration or something. Instead, the place had been so quiet he could hear insects chirping. It had been dead silent. That had become one of the stains on Lin Jie's life. After all, he'd delivered what he thought was a really cool line in front of hundreds of thousands of people, only for it to fall flat...

The embarrassment had made Lin Jie flee the scene as quickly as possible, let alone try anything with the Saintess, who'd passed out.

"So it really is all about your face?" Lin Jie looked at the impossibly handsome Ten Gods onstage. "Should I have shown my face back then? Never mind. If things had still gone quiet after I showed it, hundreds of thousands of people would know what the idiot who said all that nonsense looked like."

Just as the performance onstage was nearing its end, Lin Jie finally carved a path through the crowd and squeezed into the shop he frequented.

"I mean, they're so popular. Why not find a bigger venue for a concert instead of blocking traffic on Central Street? What's wrong with them?" Lin Jie said as he browsed the products he wanted.

"That's not necessarily true," the game store owner said from behind the counter. He pointed toward the front row, which was filled almost entirely with frenzied female fans. "Just squeeze your way through there once, and you'll understand. Heh heh heh!"

Seeing the shopkeeper's lecherous grin and the crowd, mostly made up of female fans, Lin Jie couldn't help swallowing.

"How about it? There's still a while left in the event. Want to go give it a try?" the shopkeeper asked.

Lin Jie was torn. Should he stay true to his dream of living in the world of anime, or go out and be a pervert?

"I'm not that kind of person! I'm a man immersed in the world of anime. Real women hold no appeal for me," Lin Jie declared righteously to the shopkeeper. "Then again, I guess people who are immersed in the world of anime really are all perverts..."

Lin Jie sighed, then resolutely pushed his way into the crowd under the shopkeeper's approving gaze. Games could wait until later, but chances like this didn't come around often.

And so, shouting, "I love you, Ten Gods!" Lin Jie pushed toward the spot packed with the most girls.

Feeling the bodies pressing against him, Lin Jie thought, This really is heaven.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" A string of gunshots rang out through the crowd. The girls beside Lin Jie scattered in an instant. As the crowd fled, several men in black combat uniforms appeared among them, each carrying a gun.

"It's the Black Hand!" someone in the crowd shouted.

The Black Hand organization was quite infamous in H City. Its members were terrorists who often made the news.

Recognizing who the men were, the crowd began scattering in every direction.

"Ten Gods Clan, you defeated our men! Today, I'll make you pay!" shouted the Black Hand Boss.

At that, several of his underlings aimed their guns at the handsome men.

A flash of electricity passed through the keyboardist of the Ten Gods Family, and the Black Hand members' guns were pulled toward him. The drummer took out a long staff, flipped sideways through the air in a flashy move, landed beside one of the underlings, and struck him in the stomach, sending him flying.

The guitarist and keyboardist also made stylish flips off the stage, then sent two more underlings flying, one on either side.

There was only one word for their moves: cool. They also drew another round of shrieks from the girls watching.

After the Black Hand's three underlings got back up, they scrambled away in a panic.

"Yeah, why didn't I think of making my jumps look that cool?" Lin Jie said as he watched the Ten Gods Family's performance. "Come to think of it, I always just jumped straight up and down for convenience. No wonder everyone who saw me jump from somewhere high looked stunned, but nobody screamed. It was probably because my moves weren't cool enough. Now that I think about it, jumping straight up and down really does look like jumping off a building! Good thing I wore a mask back then."

"Today, I'll take you down!" Ten Gods charged at the Black Hand Boss, while the rest of his team struck poses behind him, watching him fight the enemy with impossibly cool expressions.

"I mean, aren't his teammates going to help him? Do they trust that their boss won't lose?" Lin Jie couldn't help wondering as he watched the handsome men standing off to the side for photos. "Even if they do, they could at least catch those underlings who ran off! Why let them get away? Is that how superheroes operate now—fight and then let the criminals go? How noble! They're trying to reform evil! Like the Seven Captures of Meng Huo during the Three Kingdoms period?"

While Lin Jie's imagination ran wild, Ten Gods was clearly losing the hand-to-hand fight. Just as even his fans began to worry for him, Ten Gods suddenly powered up.

"I have to defeat you and use you to prove that I have B-Class strength!" Ten Gods said, then knocked down the Black Hand leader with a karate flying kick. The move flowed seamlessly and was incredibly cool.

After taking down the Black Hand leader, Ten Gods struck another cool pose and let his fans take photos with him, while delivering a stream of righteous speeches to the fallen Black Hand Boss.

The Black Hand Boss staggered to his feet, yelled a threat, then ran into the crowd. But after only two steps, he fell flat on the ground.

Somehow, a handcuff had been fastened around his foot, with the other end locked to the guardrail along the road.

"Right, I can't let a criminal like you escape," Lin Jie muttered to himself as he pulled out another handcuff. "Let's lock the other foot too, then wait for the Special Operations Department."

Just then, the Black Hand leader's body began to grow.

"Bastard! You tricked me!" The Black Hand Boss roared at the Ten Gods Family as his body kept growing. He easily snapped the three-centimeter-thick alloy chain. At that moment, a squad of armed police officers carrying riot shields appeared around him.

"Today, I'll kill you all!" the giant, now over five meters tall, shouted at the Ten Gods Family when he saw the armed officers arriving. "You dared to trick me! I'll wipe out every one of you!"

With several bullets in him, the Black Hand Boss charged at the Ten Gods Family.

Hello, I'm the Black Hand Boss. I'm a supervillain, and I'm a C-Class Wanted Criminal.

What I mainly do is go out and cause trouble, then get beaten up by heroes.

Of course, I don't do it for free. People who want fame and a higher ranking in the hero standings pay me to cause trouble. Then we stage a fight, and I lose. That way, I get money, and they get fame.

That's why, despite having B-Class strength, I'm still only a C-Class Wanted Criminal.

Naturally, the Hero Agency doesn't pay much attention to me. The heroes we make deals with also have to give us a chance to escape, so the fights are usually over before the authorities arrive, ending with me being defeated by those heroes.

This time, the deal was with an idol group called the Ten Gods. They had no fighting ability and were always trying to drum up publicity. To make sure the scene of us being defeated looked convincing, they were going to hold an outdoor concert on Central Street, where it would be easy for us to make our move. Places like theaters had much better security, after all.

Everything had gone according to plan.

I'd been defeated, and I was getting ready to run. But someone had cuffed my foot.

The person who'd cuffed me was an ordinary-looking young man. I'd been about to crush him, but then I immediately realized what was going on.

How could an ordinary kid have advanced handcuffs used by the police?

This had to be a trap. They'd already teamed up with the police to catch me. It had to be.

I was furious. But fortunately, I wasn't taken seriously. The Hero Agency had heard I was only C-Class and had been defeated, so they'd only sent a squad of armed police to take custody of me.

To avoid getting arrested, I decided to show off my B-Class strength and take out the brats who'd tricked me.

Those police couldn't stop me. I had plenty of time to kill them and escape before reinforcements arrived.

"Didn't expect him to transform, too. Good thing I decided to drag him along with the handcuffs! He's so huge. It'd be a real problem if he went berserk somewhere else." Lin Jie watched the man charging at the Ten Gods Family. "Come to think of it, I never thought I'd get to use these handcuffs I kept as a memento from my days as a hero."

Lin Jie had no idea he was causing trouble for someone else.

At the same time, the legs of the Ten Gods Family members, who'd been posing just moments ago, began to tremble as they watched the man charge toward them.