It was afternoon on a city street. The sunlight was mild, and traffic flowed slowly through a peaceful urban scene.
On the sidewalk, a white couple held each other tightly.
The young white man lowered his head to kiss his girlfriend tenderly in his arms, his fingers resting lightly around her waist. They laughed and murmured softly, their faces full of the sweetness and tenderness of new love.
Neither had expected utter disaster to strike the very next second.
A savage gust swept past without warning. In an instant, the woman burst apart, turning into a cloud of scarlet flesh and blood that scattered everywhere.
Their sweet intimacy came to an abrupt end. In a single instant, perfect happiness became a horrific tragedy.
The white man went rigid, his mind blank. He had no time to react at all.
Warm, sticky flesh and blood covered his cheeks, neck, and clothes. His hands still clutched his girlfriend's two severed hands. Their lingering warmth had yet to fade, but the brutal reality had already shattered his entire world.
Not far away, a figure in a skintight blue suit abruptly stopped.
The Black man in sunglasses stood tense and panicked. He hastily raised both hands, his muttering sounding particularly hoarse in the wind:
"I couldn't stop... I couldn't stop!"
Before his words had faded, he vanished from the open street in an instant, leaving only a mess strewn across the ground and a scene of utter devastation.
A deathly silence settled over the entire street.
Only after a long while did the dazed white man suddenly come to his senses. A heart-wrenching wail tore from his throat, piercing and chilling as it ripped through the city's noise:
"Robin-!"
Across the street, Solomon stood quietly where he was, witnessing the sudden, bloody tragedy firsthand.
Even though he had known the plot in advance and thoroughly prepared himself mentally, the sight of real flesh and blood flying before his eyes, and the thick smell of blood carried toward him on the wind, still made his stomach churn violently.
Unable to hold back any longer, he abruptly turned away and bent over, vomiting violently until he had thrown up every bit of his breakfast. The sour nausea lingered in his chest, refusing to fade.
His name was Solomon. In his previous life, he had been an ordinary worker toiling away in the city, swept along by life day after day, exhausting himself just to get by until he had become nothing more than a corporate workhorse.
After staying up all night binge-watching The Boys, he had suddenly died. When he opened his eyes again, he found that he had unexpectedly transmigrated into this world of superpowers, darkness, and madness.
He had transmigrated into the body of a Chinese man just as handsome as himself. The original owner's parents had died early, leaving him alone in this city with nothing but a home to live in and tens of thousands of dollars in savings.
During his first days there, Solomon had lived in constant fear.
He understood this world's cruel truth better than anyone. Superhumans wielding extraordinary powers stood above everyone else, treating ordinary people like ants or weeds. Whether people lived or died depended entirely on their whims. In their eyes, ordinary lives were too cheap to mention.
Perhaps one day, some unprovoked disaster would take his life.
Fortunately, after transmigrating, he had awakened a cheat of his own. It became his only source of confidence in this dark world.
The cheat's ability was extraordinarily powerful. As long as he defeated a superhuman, he could acquire their extraordinary abilities for his own use.
It also came with a language proficiency buff, completely removing the communication barrier of living in a foreign country.
Yet even with such an incredible opportunity in hand, Solomon remained clearheaded about his situation.
He was merely an ordinary person with no fighting ability and no backing. He had a cheat, but lacked the strength to confront superhumans, let alone the ability to handle all the trouble that would follow after hunting them down.
If he wanted to develop safely and steadily grow stronger, going it alone offered no path to survival.
After much consideration, he set his sights on the main cast.
The members of the main cast had concealed identities and unpredictable movements. Only Hughie, at the beginning, was an ordinary electronics store clerk. He had the most unremarkable identity, the most regular routine, and was the easiest to approach, making him the easiest route into the central plot.
To that end, Solomon spent a great deal of time asking around and staking out locations. He finally found the electronics store where Hughie worked and took a job there as a clerk, lying low at Hughie's side.
After just a few days together, he finally witnessed the tragedy that was destined to happen.
A-Train smashed through Hughie's beloved Robin. This was the turning point that shattered Hughie's life, and the beginning of his descent into darkness and his joining the Boys.
And with it came Solomon's opportunity.
According to the plot, before long, the main cast would help Hughie personally eliminate Translucent, a member of Vought International's Seven.
This was the first opening he had spent so many days lying low and waiting so desperately for.
He did not even need to kill Translucent. He only needed to defeat him to seize his abilities.
To be honest, Solomon was rather afraid to get involved with the main cast,
especially Billy Butcher, that obsessive, insane man who would stop at nothing.
His violent retching gradually subsided, and the sour nausea slowly faded. Solomon straightened up, wiped the mess from the corners of his mouth, and suppressed the turmoil within him.
In the middle of the street, Hughie sat slumped amid the scattered flesh and blood, utterly lost. His eyes were vacant and unfocused, his entire body rigid.
There was no screaming, no vomiting. It was as though his soul had been ripped out in an instant, leaving only an empty shell that had completely shut down.
Solomon considered for a moment, then pushed all his thoughts aside. He crossed the road, walked up to Hughie, and gently patted his trembling shoulder, his voice low and gentle:
"Hughie, I'm sorry for your loss."
With that, he reached down and slowly helped the limp Hughie to his feet, taking out his phone and calling the police at the same time.
Sirens soon pierced the air, and police cars arrived at the scene.
Solomon stayed by Hughie's side throughout, accompanying him as he gave his statement, cooperating with the investigation, and getting through every tedious procedure. Only when evening approached did he leave alone.
After returning home, Solomon had yet to fully settle his emotions when a brisk, measured knock came from outside his door.
He had expected this, but Vought International had reacted far faster than he had imagined.
When he opened the door, several sharply imposing Vought lawyers in formal suits stood outside. Their purpose was straightforward.
They offered a generous sum in compensation, intending to buy his complete silence and erase the impact this horrific incident had on public opinion.
Without the slightest hesitation, Solomon accepted the money and signed the nondisclosure agreement.
He knew perfectly well that, faced with Vought International's immense power, an ordinary person's sense of justice and backbone meant nothing.
If he insisted on refusing and pursuing the matter, he probably would not live to see tomorrow morning.
Even though he had been caught on camera alongside Hughie as an eyewitness, and the incident had already spread throughout the city and become a trending topic, he still did not dare let his guard down in the slightest.
He was not the protagonist. He had no miraculous plot armor. He could not afford to gamble, nor could he afford to lose.
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