Toby's Past, Cousin Peter Parker...

Unfortunately, Toby didn't know...

By then, Toby had already returned to his home at 104 37th Avenue in Flushing, Queens.

Standing at the door, Toby rubbed his face, which had gone a little stiff from all the killing he'd done that day. Only after forcing a smile did he push open the door bearing the Parker family name and call out, "Dad, Mom, Peter, I'm home."

The first thing Toby smelled upon entering was the rich aroma of freshly baked cookies.

Then he saw two middle-aged adults, a man and a woman, along with a young man a little younger than Toby, coming over to greet him.

The two middle-aged adults were Benjamin Parker and May Reilly Parker—his parents in this life.

As for the young man, he had a name even more familiar to everyone: Peter Parker!

The future friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!

Of course, Peter was still just an ordinary person now, not Spider-Man.

And Uncle Ben and Aunt May had also gained a son who should never have existed: him.

And perhaps it was because of that mysterious spider that had bitten him at the end of his previous life.

Although Toby had never been bitten by any radioactive spider in this life, he had been different from ordinary people since childhood.

He was stronger than ordinary people, more agile than ordinary people, and even far more intelligent than ordinary people!

As he grew older, Toby discovered that not only had his basic physical attributes been superior to everyone else's from the start, but he had also developed superpowers that normal humans should not possess!

For example, the ability to cling to walls at any angle like a spider, or the ability to shoot incredibly resilient spiderwebs from his wrists!

And there was also his almost precognitive spider-sense!

All of this confirmed for Toby that he had awakened Spider-Man's powers!

And they were the powers of the first-generation Spider-Man played by the actor who shared his name—the Bully Maguire Toby Maguire!

Because his strength was clearly greater than what ordinary Spider-Men displayed. He could easily lift a cargo truck weighing dozens of tons with one hand!

Ordinary Spider-Man's strength, under normal conditions, maxed out at lifting objects weighing several dozen tons. Yet Toby possessed an ordinary Spider-Man's maximum strength in a single hand!

And he didn't need some technological web-shooter to fire webs. He could "produce and use them himself," shooting webbing directly from his body!

Other than Bully Spider-Man, that stat monster capable of tearing Venom apart with his bare hands, how many Spider-Men could do that?

So, although Toby was a transmigrator without the standard-issue system, he could still live a vibrant life with Spider-Man's powers.

However, even with Toby as an unexpected variable in this world, when he was ten years old, Peter Parker, two years his junior, still could not escape the protagonist's fate of losing both parents.

Not long after Peter's parents sent him to stay temporarily at Toby's home, word came that they had died in a plane crash.

At the time, Toby could have used his foreknowledge of the plot to save Peter's parents in advance.

But his powers had not yet fully developed then, and most importantly, neither his webbing nor his spider-sense had awakened...

So, in order to avoid drawing the attention of Osborn Enterprises, which was researching the Super Spider Project at the time, Toby—who had not yet become particularly close with his cousin Peter—ultimately chose to watch coldly as Peter's parents left, never to return.

Naturally, because of Peter's parents' deaths, Peter went from temporarily staying in their home to living there permanently, while Toby's parents, Ben and May, became Peter's guardians.

This year, Toby was twenty and Peter was eighteen. After eight years together, there was no longer any distinction between cousins; their bond was as strong as that of real brothers.

And just as most Spider-Men concealed their abilities, Toby had never explicitly told his parents or Peter about his powers.

But neither did he deliberately hide his extraordinary strength, nor did he pretend to be some frail, easily bullied bookworm in everyday life.

If you can't find it by searching the book title, try searching for the author instead. It may have simply been renamed!

Besides, at two meters tall and 140 kilograms, Toby simply could not pull off Peter's frail bookworm image...

Yet the Parkers and Peter had never suspected anything.

After all, Toby had not suddenly become so muscular. He had always been this strong, ever since he was little.

They all merely thought that Toby had been born with extraordinary strength and loved working out.

After awakening all of Spider-Man's abilities and adapting perfectly to them, the first thing Toby did was not put on a costume and fight for justice as New York's friendly neighborhood hero.

Instead, he pulled a Counter-Strike terrorist balaclava over his head and headed to the land of outstanding people and spiritual beauty—Hell's Kitchen—to rob criminals!

With his absolute stats comparable to the first-generation Spider-Man's, along with his spider-sense that could foresee danger in advance, Toby made a fortune every time. Before long, he had accumulated over a million dollars in dirty money by robbing criminals.

But if you walked by the river often enough, how could you avoid getting your shoes wet?

His criminal-on-criminal robberies soon caught the attention of Kingpin, Hell's Kitchen's underground emperor.

Kingpin set a huge American herb deal as bait, deliberately leaking the considerable sum involved and the location of the transaction to lure Toby into robbing it.

Naturally, Toby went. After all, making money wasn't shameful!

But Toby did not fall into the trap.

He was greedy for money, not an idiot. Did they think he would stupidly jump straight into a trap that was so obviously a trap?

Spiders were cautious and dangerous creatures!

So while Kingpin's men were still pretending to conduct the transaction and waiting for Toby to take the bait, Toby had already silently snapped the necks of every gunman lying in ambush nearby!

Only then did he appear and effortlessly deal with the bait, who still had no idea what was happening.

He also took the case stuffed with cash and set fire to the American herbs they had used to stage the deal, letting the neighbors around Hell's Kitchen get a good high!

After all, enjoying it alone was nothing compared to enjoying it together!

But just as Toby picked up the case and prepared to leave, a phone began ringing from inside the cash-filled case.

Toby hesitated briefly. Only after sensing no danger from within the case did he open it, take out the phone that had been placed there beforehand, and answer it.

The call was from Kingpin.

But Kingpin had not called to threaten Toby or talk tough.

Instead, he said he admired Toby's abilities and wanted to arrange a time to have a proper talk with him.

He also said he could launder all the money Toby had previously made by robbing other criminals and arrange him a "legitimate" job, so he would no longer need to do this kind of beneath-him, low-paying criminal work.

After hearing him out, Toby did not answer Kingpin. He simply crushed the phone in his hand.

Yet the very next day, he silently appeared in Kingpin's office at Fisk Tower.

When Kingpin returned to the tower and pushed open the door, he saw Toby sitting in his chair with his legs propped up on his desk, as though he were the true owner of Fisk Tower.

Kingpin's personality was somewhat like Cao Cao's. Though ruthless, he also valued talent.

Not only did he not take offense at Toby's rude behavior, he also kept his word and helped Toby launder all the dirty money he had earned before. He even registered an underground mercenary assassin identity for Toby under the codename "Poison Spider."

From then on, Toby had a "legitimate" identity in Hell's Kitchen.

And since one lacked money while the other lacked people, the two naturally entered into a long-term partnership.

Toby would eliminate targets from rival gangs for Kingpin, while Kingpin would pay Toby a considerable reward.

For example, for the recent bloodbath of the Neon Gang, Kingpin had paid him a full ten million dollars in commission. Adding the one million paid as an apology to Bullseye, that came to a total of eleven million.

In his previous life, even if Toby drove trucks and hauled cargo for his entire life, he would never earn that much—he would not even earn the extra change from the one million Kingpin had paid Bullseye as an apology!