Within an arena vast enough to hold thousands, one could see a young man clad in armor. The metal was dull and scratched, bearing the marks of countless battles fought before this one. In the crowds seated high above, looking down upon the blood-soaked ground below, sat many beings—gods, to be precise—enjoying the spectacle of mortals fighting for the chance to be granted a wish. You thought being hit by a car would instantly give you a wish?
Haha, you're stupid. Why would gods care for such trivial matters? They had no interest in handing out miracles to random souls struck down by accidents. No, the path to a wish was far crueler than that.
This young man, currently locked in battle, had been here for countless years, dying countless times over, his body broken and rebuilt more often than he could remember. But he refused to give up. No matter how many times he fell, no matter how many times he tasted his own blood pooling at the back of his throat, he kept fighting for the chance to gain those 3 wishes.
He cried out, swinging his sword in a wide arc, clashing nonstop with his opponent in a relentless exchange of steel against steel. Sparks flew with every collision, the sound of metal ringing across the arena floor.
He raised his shield, catching the kick aimed toward him square against its battered surface, and used the force of the impact to build space between himself and his opponent, forcing the distance he desperately needed to reassess and breathe.
His opponent suddenly rushed forward, closing the gap with alarming speed, and seeing this, he gritted his teeth. Rather than retreating, he made a decision that no sane fighter would make—he hurled his shield at the man with great force, sending it spinning through the air.
It caught his opponent completely off guard. The man hadn't expected such a reckless, almost suicidal move—willingly throwing away one's own defense in the middle of a life-or-death battle was unheard of.
As his opponent reacted on instinct, raising his own shield to block the incoming projectile, the young man shot forward, closing the distance in that narrow window of opportunity.
'This is my chance.' He roared internally, exploiting the blind spot he had created with his thrown shield. But everyone who had stayed long in the arena had built an overwhelming instinct for combat, an awareness honed through death and pain that went beyond mere sight or sound. Even unable to sense the young man's approach, even with his vision obstructed, his opponent moved on reflex alone, bringing his sword up in a sharp defensive motion to block the incoming strike.
But as he blocked the sword, the effort demanded his full upper body, and he neglected everything below. A kick landed square against his midsection with such brutal force that he was knocked completely off balance, his footing destroyed in an instant.
Stunned by the sudden shift, his body tilting backward with no way to recover, he could only watch as a sword pierced clean through his heart, the blade sliding through flesh and bone with a sickening ease.
He fell. He had acted quickly in those final moments, hoping to catch the blade with his shield before it reached him, but he had been a step too slow. Just one step—and that was the difference between life and death in this arena.
"Damn, again." The man threw up blood, a dark stream spilling past his lips as the reality of his defeat settled in. He dropped to his knees, the strength draining from his body as life left him.
And with that, the young man breathed heavily, his chest heaving beneath his battered armor as he claimed his one-thousandth victory in the arena. It had taken hundreds of attempts for each milestone, if not more—failure after failure stacked so high that the number lost all meaning.
He had lost count of how many times he'd died. He had lost track of the years entirely, the passage of time becoming nothing more than a blur of blood and steel. Through all of it, he had kept his focus solely on one thing: training to improve his skills, sharpening himself battle after battle.
He had a weaker physique than most of the combatants who stepped onto this arena. Where others relied on raw power and physical superiority to overwhelm their enemies, he'd had to take a different path.
He focused on mastering combat technique and relying on tricks, misdirection, and cunning to close the gap between himself and those who were simply born stronger.
Over time, through sheer repetition and the memory of every defeat branded into his mind, he had developed a keen ability to read his opponents—their habits, their tells, the subtle shifts in weight and posture that betrayed their next move.
It was a skill he normally used to catch them off guard at critical moments, turning their own confidence against them.
The gods watching from their elevated seats clapped their hands together, their applause echoing across the arena. They were entertained—genuinely entertained—by the sight of him finally claiming his hard-fought victory.
After all, this young man had been here the longest of any combatant to ever set foot in this place, breaking the world record for the most deaths accumulated without giving up. It was a record no one envied, and yet, the sheer absurdity of his persistence had earned him something that raw talent never could: their attention.
The young man looked up at the crowd, scanning the rows of divine faces staring down at him, before his gaze shifted, searching for one figure in particular among the high gods. A red-haired young woman smiled at him from her seat, her expression warm with approval.
That was Veronica, the goddess of fire. She was his sponsor, and getting a god to sponsor you in this place was a massive advantage—one that most fighters would kill for, and many had.
She had mainly sponsored him thanks to his willpower, and his willpower alone. After all, he was nothing more than a mortal. He had died thousands of times, his body destroyed and remade over and over, and through all of it, he hadn't gone mad from the endless cycle of defeat.
He hadn't broken down, hadn't surrendered, hadn't let the despair consume him. He just kept pushing forward, one battle at a time. For that reason alone, she had invested in him, seeing something worth nurturing in that stubborn refusal to quit. And now that he had finally won, now that her gamble had paid off, she was naturally pleased with the result.
With a flash of fire that erupted around his body, engulfing him in an instant, he was taken away from the arena floor, vanishing from sight. This disappointed the crowd greatly, as they had wanted to know his wishes.
What would the weakest combatant to have ever won wish for? What could a man with no natural talent, no gifted physique, and no extraordinary ability possibly desire? Naturally, they were curious—intensely so.
In fact, many seated in this crowd had once stood on that very arena floor themselves, bleeding and gasping for breath just as he had. They had used their own wishes to help them rise, climbing from mortality all the way to the position of a god.
So, many of them were here now for a different purpose—to scout for people with the potential to become a future god, individuals they could identify early and recruit to their side before anyone else claimed them. But the wishes one made played a key role in shaping their future. A single poorly chosen wish could cripple a promising fighter's trajectory, while a well-considered one could set them on the path to divinity.
"You did it, now instead of your 3 wishes, you have 6 wishes. Speak, and go on to save my world." She said with a warm smile, her eyes reflecting the firelight that always seemed to dance around her.
This was what it meant to be sponsored—a god would invest in you, believing in your potential enough to grant you three extra wishes on top of the standard ones, and in return, send you to a world under their domain to play the role of a hero. It was a contract built on mutual benefit: the mortal gained power, and the god gained a champion.
Veronica only had one world under her management, but it was massive in scale, stretching far beyond what most divine territories encompassed. It was overflowing with beings of terrifying magnitude—entities capable of reshaping reality itself and bending the very laws of the multiverse with nothing more than a careless thought. It was an extraordinarily dangerous world, and one she wanted to entrust to someone who possessed a powerful, unyielding will.
After all, she had sent heroes there before, and every single one of them had failed. In the past, she had chosen her champions based on their strength in the arena, selecting the most physically dominant, the most skilled, the most naturally gifted fighters she could find.
And still, they fell. This time, she decided to take a different approach entirely—to give someone with sheer, unbreakable willpower a try instead, and see if determination could succeed where raw talent had not.
"I hate being weak… I want to be the ultimate lifeform. I want to adapt and evolve, I want to be born as a genius without equal. I want to be like Satoru Gojo, and just upon my birth, the world is forever altered. I want to be like Yujiro Hanma, I want my birth alone to cause all life forms to start developing, just to hope to handle my existence." He said softly.
"That's a tall order, but you know that's not how wishes work," Veronica said calmly. There were strict rules governing wishes, boundaries that even the gods themselves could not bend. For example, one couldn't simply wish to be so overwhelmingly talented that they could do anything with ease, mastering every discipline without effort. If the gods couldn't achieve such a thing for themselves—if even divine beings had limits to what they could grant—then how could they possibly do it for a mortal?
But there was a way around this restriction, a loophole that the clever ones always found. Mortals were empty pages, blank slates with no predetermined ceiling written into their existence.
Because of this, one could wish for something relatively weak at its foundation, something modest enough to fall within the rules, and from there, the person could go on to train and grow on their own. Over time, through effort and struggle, that small seed of power could blossom, allowing them to eventually become overpowered through nothing but their own relentless effort.
"I know… so, for my 6 wishes. I simply want 6 things. Heracles' God Hand, but without the limit of 11 lives. I want mine to start off without extra lives, but in return, they can evolve. The same for the conceptual defense. I want it to have no limits." He said calmly, to which she nodded, as that was simple enough to arrange within the rules.
A powerful wish, deliberately weakened at its base to allow for limitless growth—a brilliant approach. Starting from nothing, but with no ceiling to hold him back. This single wish alone was overpowered in its potential, as God Hand came bundled with an entire suite of abilities: immortality, regeneration, extra lives, a conceptual defense, the ability to adapt to anything that had previously injured them, and complete immunity to anything that had killed them once. Even stripped down to its weakest possible starting point, the foundation it provided was staggering.
"My second wish is to have Mahoraga's adaptation ability. But I don't want the wheel. You can nerf this by having it so that the weaker I am, the slower the adaptation. But the more powerful I become, the more capable." He said calmly, to which she nodded once more.