Starting Out in Normandy

When Chu Hang woke up, his mind was still foggy.

He remembered clearly that he had been in the company conference room, accompanying his boss as they haggled over the proposal with the client. It had seemed to be well past midnight. He had been so sleepy his eyelids were practically stuck together, his head filled with data and charts, while his boss's voice droned on beside him. At the time, he had only one thought: Working this job was worse than dying.

Then he closed his eyes and opened them again, and the world had changed.

The pungent smell of gunpowder, mixed with the stench of mud and an indescribable rusty odor, kept forcing its way into his nose. His ears were even noisier, buzzing as though hundreds of tractors had started up at once, punctuated by deafening booms. With every blast, the ground beneath him seemed to tremble.

Where was this? Was the company renovating, blowing up a demolition site?

He struggled to open his eyes. What he saw was not the familiar ceiling and chandelier, but a gray, overcast sky. A few black dots drifted overhead, trailing long plumes of smoke.

He shifted his body and realized he seemed to be lying in a crater, covered from head to toe in wet mud that was cold and hard. Looking down, he found that he was no longer wearing the plaid shirt that had accompanied him through countless workdays, but a set of khaki military fatigues he had only ever seen in old movies—thick and cumbersome.

All around him, many people lay or crouched in every direction. They wore clothes similar to his, their faces smeared with grime like tabby cats. They were all blond, blue-eyed foreigners. Each of them clutched a long metal weapon. Some were shouting themselves hoarse, while others simply lay on the ground without moving.

Chu Hang's mind buzzed, then completely crashed.

He was an utterly ordinary office worker. Every day, he lived a routine life between the company and his rented apartment. His greatest dream had been winning five million in the lottery and retiring early. This scene was far beyond anything he could understand.

While he was still stunned, a deafening boom erupted nearby. A ball of fire shot into the sky, and the wave of dirt it kicked up came crashing down on him, leaving him completely disoriented.

Only then did he realize that this was not a dream, nor was it a movie set. This was a real battlefield! Those huge bangs were artillery shells exploding!

"Did... did I transmigrate?" Chu Hang's lips trembled, and his heart went cold.

He was a modern corporate drone who had barely even been in a fight, completely helpless. Throwing him into a place like this was no different from sentencing him to death outright.

Fear gripped his heart like an icy hand. He wanted to crawl up and run, but his legs had gone limp as noodles and refused to obey him. All he could do was lie flat in that tiny shell crater, listening to bullets shriek past his ears and feeling as though he could turn into a cold corpse at any second.

"It's over. It's over. I'm completely done for." Despair filled his heart. I just transmigrated here, and I'm already about to die. I might be the shortest-lived transmigrator in history.

Just as all hope left him, a cold, emotionless mechanical voice suddenly rang out in his mind.

[Ding! Host vital signs and mental fluctuations meet activation requirements. The Superpower Copier System has officially activated.]

[This system is dedicated to providing the host with the most powerful support. Every week, the host may select any intelligent life-form as a target and permanently copy one of its abilities.]

[The copy target must be touched in order to copy its ability.]

[After a successful copy, the system will enter a seven-day, or 168-hour, cooldown period.]

[As this copying opportunity is the first copy, a target within the host's field of vision may be selected.]

Chu Hang was startled by the sudden voice, followed immediately by overwhelming ecstasy.

A system! A cheat ability! The standard benefit package for transmigrators!

The tiny flame of hope in his heart was instantly doused with a bucket of gasoline, roaring into a blazing inferno. He was saved! Heaven had not forgotten him after all!

He could copy one superpower every week? Permanently? That sounded absurdly powerful! Given enough time, not only could he survive this battlefield, wouldn't he be able to do whatever he wanted in the future?

But the problem was that time was exactly what he lacked most.

He cautiously poked his head up for a look. Outside, bullets flew like rain, and shells fell as though they were free. Forget finding someone to copy an ability from—just relocating was harder than reaching the heavens. Besides, where was he supposed to find someone with superpowers? This was a World War II battlefield, not some movie world where superheroes filled the sky.

Did that mean his first ability should be something like "master marksman" or "combat expert"? Those would certainly be useful on the battlefield, but they did not seem enough to let him rest easy.

Just as his thoughts ran wild, another violent explosion went off nearby. This time, he was not so lucky. A piece of shrapnel blasted loose by the explosion, still scorching hot, stabbed viciously into his lower abdomen like a red-hot knife.

An indescribable agony instantly spread through his body. Chu Hang screamed and curled up like a cooked shrimp. He could clearly feel his strength and body heat rapidly draining away along with the blood pouring from the wound in his abdomen.

His vision began to blur, and the sounds of artillery fire in his ears grew more distant.

"No... no way..." He used the last of his strength to look down. The hideous wound and the blood continuously spilling from it instantly extinguished the hope that had just flared to life.

His cheat ability had just arrived, and before he had even gotten a chance to use it, he was going to bleed to death? What was this, some kind of trial pass?

Just as his consciousness was about to fade, he caught sight of a burly man lying beside him from the corner of his eye.

That man was also dressed in military fatigues. He had a full beard and a nearly extinguished cigar clenched between his teeth, looking even more battered than Chu Hang. During the last explosion, Chu Hang had clearly seen a bullet strike the man in the chest, tearing a bloody hole through his uniform.

Yet the man acted as though nothing had happened. He merely cursed under his breath, spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, and continued glaring fiercely ahead.

At that moment, it was as if lightning struck Chu Hang's mind.

He had been shot, yet acted as though nothing had happened?

That was not normal! That was absolutely not normal!

Could it be... this guy had a "superpower"?

Chu Hang had no time to think any further. This was his last chance. He used all his strength to scream frantically in his heart.

"System! System! Him! Copy his ability!"

He felt like his consciousness was a candle flame in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.

[Ding! Target locked... Scanning target abilities...]

The system's voice rang out again. At this moment, it sounded like heavenly music to Chu Hang.

[Copyable ability detected: Healing Factor.]

[Confirm copy?]

"Copy it! Copy it now!" Chu Hang roared in his heart.

[Copy successful. Congratulations, host. You have permanently acquired the ability: Healing Factor.]

[The system has entered cooldown. Remaining cooldown time: 167 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.]

As the system prompt ended, an indescribable warm current suddenly surged from his heart and instantly flowed through all four of his limbs.

Immediately afterward, the wound in his lower abdomen, which had been agonizingly painful, began to itch with a piercing intensity. It felt as though countless ants were crawling over it and desperately burrowing into his flesh.

He could not help lowering his head to look, and then he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.

The bone-deep wound was wriggling and growing at a visible rate. Ruptured blood vessels reconnected, torn muscles healed, and even the sliced-open skin rapidly sprouted fresh tissue before swiftly scabbing over.

In just over a minute, the potentially fatal wound had become nothing more than a scar stained with dried blood. Aside from the hole in his clothes and the bloodstains, no one would have guessed that he had just walked through death's door.

Chu Hang blankly touched his stomach, feeling its smooth, firm surface. His entire body went numb.

He had survived.

He had truly survived!

The overwhelming joy of escaping death made his entire body tremble with excitement. Healing Factor! So this was the ability he had copied! It was practically a god-tier skill on the battlefield!

Before he could recover from that immense surprise, a sharp whistle suddenly rang across the entire position. The soldiers lying and crouching around him sprang into action as though injected with adrenaline, leaping out of the trenches with guns in hand and shouting incomprehensibly.

The charge had begun.

Chu Hang was still stunned when the bearded brute beside him sprang to his feet as well. He tossed his dead cigar onto the ground, irritably rolled his neck, and produced a series of cracking sounds.

Then Chu Hang heard a very strange sound.

"Shing!"

It was crisp, like metal scraping against metal.

He instinctively looked toward the source of the sound and saw the brute raise his right hand. Three long bone claws, gleaming with a chilling white light, suddenly sprang out from between his knuckles.

Chu Hang's eyes widened until they were round, and his mouth fell open wide enough to fit an egg.

He looked at those three sharp bone claws, then instinctively thought of the "Healing Factor" ability he had just copied.

A name—one he knew all too well—suddenly leaped from the depths of his mind.

Logan. Wolverine.

Chu Hang stared blankly at the figure charging toward the German position with a feral howl. Only one thought remained in his head.

Holy crap... what the hell did I just copy?