The night in 1987 was quiet. The chirping of cicadas, the rustling of the wind, the heavy thuds of fists sinking into flesh, all mixed with a few miserable screams.
Just as Zenith was agonizing over where to find the local detention center, some strange shouts suddenly reached his ears.
"Oh my god, he's a maniac!"
"Run away... Aaaah!!"
"It's gonna burst! It's gonna burst! If he hits me again, it's gonna burst!!"
It was only a street corner away. By the time Zenith arrived at the source of the noise, the fight had just ended.
Knives, nunchucks, and steel pipes were scattered across the ground. Several punks were lying in the dirt, wailing in pain. One punk in particular, clutching his crotch, was screaming more miserably than the rest.
Listening closely, Zenith figured this was probably the guy who just yelled about things bursting. Zenith sucked in a sharp breath and turned his gaze to the only man still standing on the battlefield.
A uniformed male student standing over 190 centimeters tall, with muscles so bulging they looked ready to burst out of his clothes. He wore a bizarre hat that seemed to seamlessly blend into his hair, paired with a cold, piercing glare.
There was no mistake. It was the man who practically had the word "invincible" written across his face.
After a brief staring contest, Jotaro pulled down the brim of his hat with one hand and looked away. "You, the weirdo peeking over there. Go call the cops!"
In reality, Zenith wasn't needed at all. With such a massive commotion, bystanders had already called the police. A patrol officer on a bicycle and an ambulance arrived from the opposite direction, showing up almost right on Zenith's heels.
"Hey, don't either of you move! Especially you, put down the weapon!"
*Fantastic, it sounds like English! I love you, Dynamic Translation Mod!*
With the language barrier no longer an issue, Zenith glanced down at the Netherite pickaxe in his hand—the one he had just used to mine his portal frame. He shoved it into his inventory and looked at the police officer with a confused expression.
"He's the one who beat them up. Why are you all pointing that at me?"
The arriving patrol officer was speechless. Sure, the 195-centimeter giant looked incredibly intimidating, but the guy decked out in a full suit of black metal armor while casually holding a pickaxe was obviously way more suspicious.
Having spent two years in the Minecraft Overworld, Zenith was completely used to wearing a full set of Netherite armor at all times. After all, the stuff had no actual weight and didn't restrict his movements in the slightest.
It was only after the officer's reaction that Zenith realized the problem. Fortunately, after a quick search through his interface, he found that his base mods included the Customizable Steve mod.
By simply toggling off the armor visibility, he could freely customize his appearance while still retaining all of his defensive stats.
Watching Zenith instantly change outfits out of thin air, the patrol officer was left dumbfounded. Even Jotaro couldn't help but take a few extra glances.
However, despite Jotaro's violent tendencies and abrasive way of speaking, he was fundamentally a kind-hearted person. The main reason he had beaten those punks so brutally was simply that he couldn't yet control his newly awakened ability.
"I'm the one who beat them up. It has nothing to do with that weird guy. Take me to the detention center."
His simple, direct, and commanding tone made the timid patrol officers subconsciously want to obey him. But how could Zenith pass up such a golden opportunity?
After being cooped up alone for two years, he had about ten thousand things he wanted to say—especially now that an anime character had literally stepped into reality right in front of him.
"I'm going too! How can you leave me out of something this fun!"
Zenith raised his hand eagerly. There was no need to question his current mental state; after two years of wilderness survival, he fully admitted that he wasn't exactly normal anymore.
The officers' gazes grew even stranger, shifting their assessment of him from 'suspect' to 'magician' and finally to 'mental patient.' One of the officers spoke up with a tone of pity, "Where is your family? It's already late, you should hurry on home."
Another officer thought for a moment and added, "The police can't just arrest people for no reason. We aren't taking you with us."
*For no reason? That's an easy fix.* Having just crossed over from another universe, Zenith was completely undocumented in this world. Getting the cops to take him away would be a piece of cake.
"Undocumented alien, illegal entry, and assaulting a police officer. That should be enough, right? Take me away, boys!"
"What?!"
Before the officer could react, Zenith's fist had already smashed into his nose. He didn't hit him very hard, but the nature of the act was incredibly egregious.
"You bastard! Cuff him!"
The officer flew into a humiliated rage, though his mind was also racing. If this weird kid really was an illegal immigrant, that was a far more serious offense than a high schooler getting into a street brawl. The detention center definitely wouldn't be his final stop.
Very quickly, Zenith's status as an illegal immigrant was confirmed. There was absolutely no record of him in the citizen registry or immigration logs.
He originally thought he could become Jotaro's cellmate, but to his surprise, he leapfrogged him entirely, getting transferred straight from the detention center to an actual prison.
Inside the interrogation room, Zenith was happily eating a bowl of katsudon. Although it couldn't compare to the Chinese cuisine from his hometown, it was an absolute delicacy compared to the eternal, unchanging diet of cooked meat, cooked fish, and mushroom stew in Minecraft.
"Another bowl, please!"
The prison guard slammed his hand furiously on the table, exuding the fierce, aggressive aura of an explosive Showa-era temper. "Do you think this is a game of house?! How exactly did you get into Japan?! Spit out the names of your accomplices right now!"
"Get me another bowl of katsudon and I'll tell you. Or something else is fine too. Oh, right, Japan should definitely have mapo tofu by this era, right?"
The guard made his move.
The guard instantly GG'd.
The moment the rubber police baton struck Zenith's body, it violently bounced off. Even though Zenith appeared to be wearing thin clothing, his full set of Netherite armor was still very much equipped.
Twenty armor points and twelve armor toughness, plus max-level Protection and Thorns enchantments. Even if he tanked a TNT explosion point-blank, he wouldn't take much damage.
Furthermore, the full-body Thorns enchantment proportionally reflected all incoming damage back at the attacker—this was literal magic, so without a doubt, the guard who had so casually resorted to vigilante justice immediately suffered the consequences.
"If you don't have it, forget it. It's not like I absolutely have to eat it. But it'll be a real headache if I miss the plot."
After mulling it over, Zenith decided to resolve this problem using a method that the vast majority of humanity simply couldn't refuse.
As the old saying goes, money makes the world go round. And as luck would have it, as long as he was in a normal human world, Zenith would always be among the wealthiest of the wealthy.
He pulled out the smallest unit of gold he had on him—a fist-sized gold nugget—and placed it on the table. Meeting the guard's look of sheer disbelief, Zenith spoke.
"It's somewhere between seven and eight kilograms. I'm not too familiar with the gold prices around here, but this should be worth around a hundred million yen, right?"
As Zenith spoke, the guard's eyes gradually filled with a fanatical fervor. It was gold! His sheer greed made him completely ignore the fact that Zenith had absolutely nowhere on his person to hide such an object. In this era, there was simply no need to hold out any hope for the moral integrity of the Japanese police.
Watching the man's hand slowly creep toward his waist, Zenith spoke up to interrupt him. "I want to be put in the same cell as Jotaro. You guys can handle the rest however you want. If you want more gold..."
Zenith spread his arms wide, his body practically radiating the brilliant glow of the power of money.
"Then show me your sincerity!"