Boom! Crash!
And the next second there was the ugly grill of a ten-ton truck filling his sight. The next... holy crap!
Leo didn't land gracefully. He ate pavement, hard. The grit of concrete stripped his palms raw. His head revolved like a top; he felt so nauseated, by waves of sickness, he would have thrown up. The air wasn't air, it was the thing — it was a thick choking soup of smoke and burning gas; something weirdly metallic — ozone and blood.
"Run! Get down"
SKRE
EEEE-BOOM!
Sound wasn't sound. It was a physical wall slamming into him from all sides. Not just loud, but layered. His ears, somehow working overtime, picked out every single damn thing. The high-pitched shrieks of people trampling each other. The guttural roar of something that was definitely not a human engine. The wet thud of a car alarm dying mid-honk as a blue energy blast turned it into a fireball.
He squeezed his eyes shut. No use. It was all still there, burned onto the back of his eyelids. Blurs of panic. A woman in a torn business suit scrambling over a flipped sedan. The glitter of broken glass everywhere. The ground shook like a giant was stomping past.
And then he opened his eyes. Really opened them.
His vision snapped into a horrifying, hyper-clear focus. It was like going from a blurry old TV to 8K ultra-HD nightmare vision.
That's when he saw them. Not just the chaos. The cause.
Sleek, armored figures on floating sleds, gliding through the chaos like sharks. Their weapons spat sizzling blue death, cutting down anything that moved. And above it all... a hole. A giant, swirling, blue rip in the damn sky, like God had taken a can-opener to the atmosphere. From it, more of those things poured out, alongside... were those... space whales? Giant, armored eel-whale things that screeched as they scraped against skyscrapers, raining debris down below.
This wasn't an accident. This was an invasion.
A familiar red-and-gold streak shot past, repulsors blazing, unloading a full barrage into one of the whale things.
"Target the Chitauri! Don't let them pin you down!" a voice yelled from somewhere, crisp and commanding over the din.
Recognition, cold and absolute, iced through his veins.
Iron Man. Captain America's voice. The hole in the sky. New York in ruins.
The pieces crashed together in his skull, each one more insane than the last.
He wasn't just in a disaster.
He was in the friggin' Avengers movie. And he'd just spawned in the middle of the final boss fight.
Leo stayed on his knees, frozen solid, his brain completely blue-screened by the sensory overload. One thought, clear and terrified, echoed in the newly upgraded prison of his mind:
What. The. Actual. Hell.
(System: Host neural shock detected! Triggering memory stabilization... Accessing final memory log... Replaying.)
The sensory hellscape of alien war—the shrieks, the explosions, the smell of ozone and blood—suddenly flickered. For a single, vertigo-inducing second, it was all wiped away, replaced by a memory so vivid and peaceful it was its own kind of pain.
Flashback: Activated
Sunlight. Clean and golden, filtering through the leaves of the old oaks lining the street. The steady, rhythmic whirr of bicycle tires on smooth asphalt. The air was cool and carried the smell of cut grass. This was his morning ritual, the mindless, comfortable ride to clear his head before another monotonous day of high school. He was Leo, the orphan with a paid-off house and a decent bank balance. His life was… fine. Unremarkable. Safe.
A tiny, pitiful mew.
His eyes focused ahead. There, in the center of the road, sat a kitten. A ridiculously small calico ball, wide-eyed and trembling, utterly frozen.
The rumble started low, a vibration through the pavement before it became sound. A massive delivery truck, grime-streaked and belching diesel, rounded the corner. It was moving too fast. And the driver… Leo's heart stuttered. Even from a distance, he saw the man's head bob, one eye scrunched shut like he was fighting off a migraine or a brutal night shift. The guy was half-asleep at the wheel.
No time to think. No heroic speech. Just raw, stupid instinct.
He dumped his bike with a clatter and his legs pumped, sneakers slapping the pavement in a desperate sprint he never knew he had. He wasn't an athlete; he was just a kid moving faster than he ever had before. His world narrowed to the kitten, the road, and the growing shadow of the truck.
His fingers closed around soft, warm fur. A tiny heartbeat hammered against his palm. He didn't stop; he pivoted on his heel, his body twisting with all his might, and he yeeted the furry little idiot toward the safety of the grassy curb. It landed with a soft thump in a bush, probably confused but alive.
Relief lasted less than a heartbeat.
The world ended in a symphony of screaming metal.
The truck's grille wasn't just metal; it was a wall. The CRUNCH was deafening, the sound of his own body breaking, bones snapping like dry twigs. His head whipped against the pavement with a final, sickening crack that echoed inside his own skull.
Then… nothing. Not blackness. Not light. Just… an absence of everything. The void.
End of Memory Log.
The memory shattered, violently yanked away by the present-day roar of a Chitauri blast that turned a parked car into a fireball mere yards away.
The cognitive dissonance was a physical blow. The absurdity of it all crashed down on him, more crushing than the truck.
This was his isekai trigger? This?! He hadn't been chosen by a mysterious artifact. He hadn't been summoned by a beautiful Angel. He hadn't even fallen into a magical portal. He'd been roadkill. Obliterated by some overworked, sleep-deprived truck driver named Bob who was probably three days from retirement!
His grand transmigration… was a cliché! The but of every web novel joke! Truck-kun! And he hadn't even been hit by a fancy isekai bus or a magical carriage—a dirty, grimy, probably behind-schedule delivery truck!
And for what? A cat! A random, unnamed cat that didn't even have the decency to be a magical spirit beast! It was just a stupid cat!
A sound escaped his lips, a half-choked sob, half-hysterical laugh. He was dead. Officially, pants-pissingly, splattered-all-over-the-asphalt DEAD. And his reward? His glorious new world?
He was reborn smack-dab in the middle of a Level 100 Raid Zone on the first damn day!
"WHAT THE HELL?!" he shrieked to the uncaring, alien-infested sky, his voice raw. "Is this for real?! I get the Truck-kun special and my spawn point is what the AVENGERS BOSS FIGHT?! What kind of rotten, cosmic joke is this?! Did I kick a sacred puppy in a past life?!"
(System: Critical energy impact imminent! Host consciousness stabilized. Forcing system notification override!)
He barely registered the constant, faint ringing in the back of his skull, dismissing it as a side effect of concussive doom. It was just background static to the apocalypse.
Then, a specific, sizzling crackle cut through the chaos. His head, moving faster than it ever had before, snapped up. A bolt of raw, blue Chitauri energy was spiraling directly toward his face. Wild fire. Bad luck. The universe finishing the job.
"You've got to be kidding m—"
The voice that had been a faint ring suddenly boomed inside his cranium, cold, synthetic, and utterly undeniable. It cut his curse off at the root.
[Lifeform status: Deceased. Soul matrix compatible.]
The energy bolt was inches away. He could feel the heat scorching his skin.
[Spatial coordinates locked: Earth-199999. Temporal anchor: Battle of New York.]
"Wait, what? Deceased? I know that! And what the hell is a 199999?!" he mentally shrieked back, even as the lethal light filled his vision.
[Detected host in peril. Granting foundational boon for assimilation and survival.] [Bestowing: Immortal Superman Template - Beginner Level. Integration commencing.]
The world went white.
The energy bolt didn't vaporize him. It slammed into his chest and… dissolved. It was absorbed in a torrent of agonizing, glorious power. It felt like every cell in his body was being disintegrated and reforged from solid sunlight. Bones cracked and remade themselves denser. Muscles writhed like living steel cables under his skin. His senses, already overwhelmed, exploded into a supernova of input.
A shimmering, blue holographic screen seared itself into his vision, overlaying the burning street.
[IMMORTAL SUPERMAN TEMPLATE - LVL 1 - ACTIVATED!]
—CORE PROWESS UNLOCKED—
1. Divine Strength (Lvl 1): Foundation established! Lift a tank? Crush a truck? No problem! Your fists now hold the power of 10 tons! [Current Proficiency: 0.1%]
2. Unbreakable Vessel (Lvl 1): Skin like iron, bones like steel! Bullets will feel like mosquito bites! Fall from a building? You'll crack the pavement, not your skull! [Minor cuts and bruises heal in seconds!]
3. Lightning Reflexes (Lvl 1): The world is moving in slow motion! See bullets in flight! Run faster than a sports car! (Note: Control not included. Crash hazard: high).
4. Heaven's Senses (Lvl 1): Hear a heartbeat across the street! See the pores on a Chitauri's face from a hundred meters! …Also hear every scream, every explosion, every cockroach scuttling in the rubble. Good luck filtering that out, newbie! [Sensory Overload Debuff: Active. Advanced visual modes (X-Ray, Heat Vision): LOCKED.]
5. Sun-Drenched Immortality (Passive): You don't 'heal'. You renew! As long as the sun shines, your body is eternal! Damage is a temporary concept! (Energy consumption may apply).
6. Sky-Soaring Ascension (Lvl 1): Defy gravity! …Clumsily. Hover, wobble, and crash-land at high speed! Aerial elegance requires practice! [Stratospheric Flight: LOCKED.]
—BONUS: SYSTEM OVERRIDE—
The system's voice rang out one final time, laced with absolute authority.
[Host Note: Standard Kryptonian weaknesses have been purged from the template. The energy of this system negates all anomalies.] [Magic? Psionics? Mental Attacks? Nullified! Your spirit is guarded by the system!] [Kryptonite? This universe has none, and even if it did, it would be a useless rock to you!]
[ASSIMILATION: 15%...]
The pain receded, replaced by a humming, terrifying power. Leo stared at his hands. They looked the same, but he could feel the potential coiled within them, a sleeping dragon of strength. He wasn't just Leo, the truck-kun victim anymore.
A superman template.
A slow, manic grin spread across Leo's face.He muttered, his voice steadier than he felt. "Let's see what this 'Beginner Level' can really do."