The man shaped mountain who now calls himself Derrick, learned the rules of the new world by breaking them quietly.
He did not tear through crowds or challenge the costumed sentinels who patrolled the skies and streets .
That was how villains announced themselves, and villains here were studied, categorized, neutralized.
Derrick had no interest in becoming an infamous headline yet .
He wanted to become a shadow and relying on the stealth capabilities of his viral abilities he gathered info by consuming the homeless he would find at night.
The city was called Musutafu he learned from one of his victims. The name meant nothing to him beyond coordinates, population density and an anime he watched in his old world.
What mattered were the people here the were soft, abundant, genetically fractured in fascinating ways.
Quirks were not viral. They were written into the genome, stabilized by generations of normalization.
Crude.
But perfect for improvement.
Derrick wore the face of a weary Japanese office worker, shoulders slumped, eyes unfocused.
He mimicked the rhythm of the crowd, the micro-hesitations at crosswalks, the habitual glances at hero billboards. Inside, he dissected everything.
The first civilian died in an elevator accident that never made the news.
A man with a minor quirk called Heat Palm, the ability to warm surfaces slightly.
Derrick's hand brushed his shoulder as the elevator stalled between floors, lights cut off and that's when he struck . Tendrils thinner than nerves slipped beneath the skin, consuming him in total silence.
The quirk did not resist.
It unraveled like bad code, rewritten instantly by Blacklight. Heat Palm became Thermal Redistribution, the ability to absorb, store, and redirect thermal energy across Derrick's entire body. Useful. Efficient.
He cataloged it.
Others followed.
A woman who could harden her skin for seconds at a time.
Derrick turned it into Adaptive Dermal Plating, capable of responding to kinetic, thermal, and energy-based attacks simultaneously, he incorporated the ability with his existing viral hardening .
A teenage gangster he found smoking in an alley was next with very short-range teleportation with a long 5 minute cooldown, not even enough to enter a hero school .
Derrick refined it into Spatial Slip with an upgraded range of 30 meter radius , removing the cooldown completely, anchoring it to instinct rather than conscious thought.
Each consumption added not just mass, but complexity. His internal architecture evolved, quirks no longer following the rules of this world, no longer isolated abilities but modules integrated into a single predatory system.
Blacklight did not merely enhance—it harmonized.
He learned the Japanese language from memories, its laws from fear. Heroes were symbols here, not gods.
The strongest were regulated. Registered and Watched. The government organizations tolerated them because it could replace them with a new batch especially the low level heroes .
Derrick found that comforting especially with what he had in mind.
In the shadows, the Hero Public Safety Commission met in emergency session.
Anomalies had been reported, missing persons with no forensic trace, localized gravitational disturbances misidentified as quirk incidents, surveillance blind spots that followed no known villain pattern.
"This is not a Nomu," one analyst said, projecting data. "No surgical modifications. No brain death markers. No aggression signature."
"Then what is it?" a commissioner demanded.
A pause.
"Possibly a quirk thief," someone offered. "But the efficiency is… unprecedented."
Across the city, pro heroes adjusted patrol routes. Hawks scouted from above, uneasy at the way certain air currents seemed to bend.
Eraser Head reviewed footage frame by frame, eyes narrowing.
"This thing if can call it that " he muttered, "knows how we think."
At U.A. High, contingency drills were quietly updated and formally announced to the top available heroes and students as well.
Students were told only that a new classification threat was under review, an Unidentified Adaptive Entity that has unknown abilities.
Derrick tried to listen to all of it but their was some kind of interference.
He stood on a rooftop at dusk m, city lights igniting beneath him, dozens of quirks nested inside his flesh, refined beyond their owners' imaginations.
All though their was still a chance he'd be affected by erasure head, that guy's name sounds stupid when said out loud, but his ability was convenient for me if I wanted to evolve in this world.
His human face reflected in a window looking tired, forgettable, safe npc but the disguise will fail sooner or later and I need to be ready.
The heroes and their backers, "They'll respond with planning and strategies," he said to no one, voice calm.
Below, heroes moved into about seemingly attention fixed on an unknown task,civilian movement looked normal as usual.
Above, the world tightened its grip.
Derrick smiled menacingly , thinking of one his favorite moves from prototype Dive Bomb.
He was ready to see how this society handled extinction dressed as a man "he thought " as he transformed into his bio armored state with hammer fists, falling from the sky.
20 thousand tons of compressed bio mass, crashed into the center of the plaza filled with unknowing day to day civilians who were just shopping, eating and enjoying life..
All that changed with an earthquake and 15 meter tall mushroom cloud and wide shock wave.... The second shock wave came as he released the bio bomb tendrils all around him and consumed as as many civilians before the dust cloud faded and before the heroes near by could react..
End of the chapter