Jovian looked at the worlds his mind had locked onto and broke into a brilliant grin.
This time, he'd snagged more than fifty worlds.
He immediately abandoned every low-tier one and spent 2.2 million energy points to link up with two high-tier worlds and two mid-tier worlds from his captures.
As for the low-tier worlds he could read at a glance…
He was genuinely not interested.
Stuff like Parasyte, Tokyo Ghoul, John Wick…
You fight for half a day just to blow up a city block. Compared to him, that was a joke. The blast radius of one of his farts would be bigger.
High-tier world: Warhammer 40,000Note: This world contains existences far beyond your current power level. Choose carefully.
High-tier world: Star Wars (mixed continuity: old + new canon)Note: This world contains existences far beyond your current power level. Choose carefully.
Mid-tier world: The Boys (TV series version)
Mid-tier world: One Punch Man (Murata redraw version)Note: This world contains existences beyond your current power level. Choose carefully.
Jovian nodded at the list in his head.
Good. Very good.
First, Warhammer 40K was out—too damn "loyal," in the worst possible way.
Without a strong enough mental shield, he wasn't about to walk into that setting and try to take what he wanted… even though, yeah, the Warhammer universe was basically a treasure vault.
Next was Star Wars.
That one was… interesting.
A mixed continuity world was worth dissecting. The Force blowing up planets, the Force wiping out capital ships, the Force choking someone across light-years—
Strong. Violent. Ridiculous.
Way too mystical and full of nonsense variables.
So Star Wars wasn't his target either. Not yet.
What Jovian actually cared about were the two mid-tier worlds: The Boys and One Punch Man.
From The Boys, he wanted Homelander's heat vision.
From One Punch Man, he wanted the Season 1 final boss Boros's Collapsing Star Roaring Cannon.
A flashy, cool-looking Freeborn with heat vision—that was the real deal.
And the other ability? Efficient, devastating, perfect for farming points. The Collapsing Star Roaring Cannon was basically a cheat code.
This Boys world was the TV version.
Which meant the Homelander in it was far stronger than the comic version.
His upper limit was still unknown, but mid-tier worlds usually capped out at around "planet-busting or higher."
Based on what Jovian remembered, TV Homelander hadn't shown even a hint of planet-busting potential.
At best, he could blow up an island. Maybe—if you really stretched it—he could scorch a continent or wreck the surface.
Either way, Jovian could take him down clean and consistently.
Then there was Murata's One Punch Man.
If a normal mid-tier world's strongest was "planet-busting or higher," then this one was a mid-tier world with an asterisk.
Because there was a bald guy named Saitama who didn't belong on any scale.
Still, not a big problem.
As long as Jovian didn't mess with Saitama, Saitama probably wouldn't come looking for him.
That meant Jovian could basically walk around One Punch Man however he wanted.
The only thing that might actually give him a little trouble was the upgraded final boss—Murata's boosted version of Boros—whose Collapsing Star Roaring Cannon went from "wipe the surface" to "straight-up destroy the planet."
"Hah…"
Jovian thought it through and settled on a plan.
First: kill motor-mouth Rex.
Then: go to The Boys and pin Homelander to the ground.
Then: go to One Punch Man and hit Boros with a smooth, clean combo to finish him.
After that: figure out a full gear set, come back, and have a final showdown with Battle Beast.
Once Battle Beast was dealt with, the next step was defeating Grand Regent Thragg—the universe's walking breeding program—taking over Viltrum, and unifying the whole empire.
You had to think big.
From Earth's Freeborn… to the universe's Freeborn…
And after that?
Invade the multiverse.
There was only one slogan that mattered:
"I do whatever the hell I want…"
Once Jovian saw his own path clearly, his expression hardened with resolve—like he'd locked in his mindset for good.
Every winner climbed the ladder with iron will… and a trail of bodies.
"Hah…"
When Jovian pulled out of his inner world, the huge cafeteria was already empty.
"Huh?"
He checked the time on his watch and realized it was already the first class period of the afternoon.
"Fuck."
He muttered it like it personally offended him.
But he lived by a simple rule:
If you're already late, you definitely don't go.
So he stayed in the cafeteria and messed around on his phone.
The moment he unlocked it, he saw a pile of unread messages.
First—Mark.
"Bro, my teacher made me stay behind for cleanup duty. I'm running late. Where are you?"
"Bro, I think I saw you, but you already had people with you. Me and Francis and… ate over on the other side."
"I'm done eating. I've got P.E. next, so I'm going to change. See you later…"
Then—Eve.
"We finished eating. You looked like you were thinking about something. I called your name twice, but you didn't respond, so I didn't want to bother you. We left first—don't forget we're meeting after school~"
"Hah…"
Jovian read both threads, chuckled softly, and shook his head.
Then he headed into the bathroom, changed clothes, and climbed out through the window.
He had to prepare early for Rex's grand funeral.
"Report: Jovian didn't go to class. He changed in the bathroom and looks like he's heading out to do something."
Inside the restroom, the hallway that had seemed completely empty suddenly filled with a voice—like someone was standing there with their body hidden from sight.
"Keep watching."
A voice replied in the invisible operative's ear.
"Yes, sir."
The invisible operative nodded lightly and walked up to the bathroom window Jovian had opened.
"Surprise!"
The instant the operative leaned his head out—
Jovian, who had been flying away, abruptly reappeared right in front of him.
"Fuck!"
The invisible operative took one look at Jovian suddenly appearing in front of him and broke into a cold sweat.
"Thud."
Before the operative could say a single word, Jovian's right hand shot up and clamped around his throat with sheer brute force.
"Shh…"
Jovian lightly blew across the tip of his left index finger, then calmly reached up to the operative's ear, peeled off a tiny micro-earpiece, and slipped it into his own ear.
"What happened?"
"B12, respond!"
"What the hell happened?"
A slightly aged voice crackled through the earpiece—one Jovian recognized instantly.
Cecil.
"Crunch~"
Jovian pulled the earpiece out and casually crushed it to dust between his fingers.
"Kid, you shouldn't be spying on me."
"Why can't you people understand this?"
"I hate being watched more than anything."
To Jovian, there was no "invisible man" here.
There was only a heavily armed soldier wearing what looked like a lightweight kinetic suit—Earth's most advanced tech, the kind of gear people bragged was the pinnacle of the planet's science.
Just the materials alone probably cost a billion dollars.
Too bad.
In Jovian's eyes, it was pathetically fragile. Completely worthless.
"You…"
The soldier tried to say something.
"Hm?"
Jovian figured the guy was about to offer some important intel in exchange for his life, so he loosened his grip and let go of his throat.
"Hah… hah…"
The soldier sucked in air in huge, desperate gulps, staring at Jovian with confusion.
"Y-you… why can you see me?"
Jovian sighed.
"You just wasted your last chance to stay alive."
"I only give one chance. There isn't a second one."
Jovian wasn't the kind of person who killed for fun.
He didn't want to waste time on anyone who couldn't give him a useful ability or even worth many energy points.
But this pathetic soldier had to drag things out and waste his time—two and a half minutes.
Two and a half minutes.
Do you know how many things he could do in two and a half minutes?
The soldier had personally chosen to give up on living.
"Smack!"
Jovian shook his head and delivered a gentle, open-handed slap.
"Wh—!"
After absorbing the one-eyed alien's power, Jovian's control had become… precise in a terrifying way.
The soldier's head spun on his neck—fast—turning a full 1080 degrees.
Then it jerked, went slack, and his eyes slowly closed.
After that, Jovian tossed the soldier out the window, staging it to look like the guy had simply slipped and fallen.
"Bang!"
With a dull, violent impact, the corpse dropped from the fifth floor and landed in the thick patch of trees outside the first-floor restroom.
"Fuck!"
In broad daylight, a pair of American teenagers who'd been hiding in the woods outside the restroom looking for a little "fun" nearly jumped out of their skin at the sound, scrambling to pull their underwear back on.
"Jason, what was that?!"
The girl asked in a sharp, panicked whisper.
"No idea," the boy—Jason—said, craning his neck and scanning around. "Something fell, I guess? But I didn't see anything."
"…So do we keep going?" the girl asked, still breathless.
"Of course," Jason said with a grin, nodding. "Nothing stops spring from showing up."
"Heh."
High above them, Jovian hovered in a white suit with a huge letter F stamped across his chest, watching the couple below with a cold smile.
From his angle, right beside them—
A twisted, misshapen body lay on the ground.
Now it was time to answer the soldier's question.
Why could Jovian see an "invisible" soldier?
The answer was simple.
Because the soldier wasn't invisible at all.
Yeah—he wasn't invisible. The reason people in this country couldn't see him was because the powered armor's material refracted a special range of the light spectrum…
And here was the fun part:
The Global Defense Agency had been adding a special chemical agent to every American citizen's drinking water—something that made their eyes unable to distinguish and perceive several specific bands of the spectrum.
Which meant that, to ordinary Americans, that soldier looked invisible.
So the real question was: why wasn't Jovian affected?
It wasn't because of his superior Viltrumite genetics.
And it wasn't because of the one-eyed alien's genetics either.
It was because of a habit from his previous life—he never drank unboiled water.
Jovian had always stuck to drinking only water that had been boiled and filtered.
So from beginning to end, he had never lost his ability to perceive those special spectral bands.
Which meant that ever since he was a kid…
He'd always been able to see the government secrets other people couldn't.
It's just that his acting was too good.
And nobody was going to bully a kid over something like that.
So no one ever realized it.