Chapter 1: Awakening in Another World
POV: Nova Asahi
The taste of copper filled his mouth—blood from where his teeth had torn through his tongue. The screech of tires still echoed in his ears, phantom pain lancing through his chest where the truck's bumper had connected. Why can I still feel it?
Nova's eyes snapped open to blinding fluorescent light. Wrong light. His dorm room had warm LED strips, not this harsh clinical glare. The ceiling above him was cracked plaster painted an industrial white, not the familiar water stain shaped like a rabbit that he'd memorized during countless sleepless nights.
His hand shot to his chest, expecting to find the crater where metal had caved in bone and flesh. Instead, his fingers pressed against smooth skin through thin cotton. A child's hand. Small, soft, unmarked by the guitar calluses and ink stains that had defined his original existence.
No. No, this isn't real.
The memories crashed over him in waves—the little girl with pigtails stepping into the crosswalk, texting on her phone. The delivery truck barreling through the red light. His body moving before his mind could catch up, shoving her aside as twenty tons of steel claimed the space where she'd stood. The impact. The darkness.
I died. I know I died.
Nova sat up too quickly, and the world tilted sideways. The room spun in dizzy circles around him—a cramped studio apartment with tatami mats, a low table, and walls so thin he could hear his neighbor's television bleeding through the plasterboard. Everything felt simultaneously foreign and achingly familiar, like déjà vu wearing a mask.
Papers scattered across the table drew his attention with magnetic force. His hands—these strange, small hands—trembled as he reached for them. A birth certificate bearing the name "Nova Asahi," dated fourteen years ago. School enrollment forms for Musutafu Middle School. A bank account statement showing a modest balance and monthly deposits from "Guardian Services—Overseas Parent Support Program."
Musutafu.
The name hit him like a physical blow. He'd read it countless times in manga panels and watched it animated in high definition. It was the city where heroes and villains clashed in the streets, where teenagers with impossible powers trained to save the world. It was fiction. It was supposed to be fiction.
Nova stumbled to his feet and immediately regretted the decision. His legs felt wrong—too short, proportions all askew. Every movement required conscious thought, like wearing an ill-fitting costume. The mirror mounted on the closet door reflected a stranger's face: sharp Japanese features, dark hair falling across eyes the color of amethysts, skin that had never seen a college's fluorescent pallor.
This face... I've seen this face.
The boy in the mirror looked like background character #3 from a crowd scene—generic enough to blend in, distinctive enough to remember if you tried. Someone had crafted him to exist in this world without drawing attention. Someone or something.
[Welcome, User!]
The translucent blue screen materialized inches from his nose, causing him to jerk backward and nearly trip over his own feet. The interface pulsed with cheerful energy, completely at odds with the existential terror clawing at his throat.
[Quirk Gacha System Successfully Activated!]
[Beginning Initial Scan...]
[Scan Complete! User Status Confirmed: QUIRKLESS]
Nova's mouth went dry. In this world, being Quirkless was like being born without limbs in a society that worshipped athleticism. The statistics from the anime flashed through his memory—twenty percent of the population, relegated to second-class citizenship, objects of pity or scorn.
[Fear not! The Quirk Gacha System will provide you with the tools necessary to thrive in this Quirk-dominated society!]
The screen shifted, displaying what looked like a character sheet from a role-playing game. His name sat at the top in bold letters, followed by a grid of statistics that made his heart sink:
[NOVA ASAHI - LEVEL 1] [STR: 10 | AGI: 10 | END: 10 | INT: 10 | WIS: 10 | LUK: 10] [HP: 200/200 | MP: 150/150 | Stamina: 150/150] [Hero Points: 0] [Active Quirks: None] [Quirk Inventory: Empty]
It's treating this like a game. The realization should have been comforting—he'd logged thousands of hours in RPGs, understood progression systems and character builds better than most people understood their own jobs. Instead, it felt like being handed a toy sword to fight a dragon.
[Hero Points are earned through heroic actions! Help civilians, stop crimes, and defeat villains to accumulate currency for the Quirk Gacha System!]
[Standard Roll: 2000 Hero Points] [Premium Roll: 20,000 Hero Points]
[Note: Hero Point values scale with action significance. Saving one civilian yields 5 HP, while defeating a major villain could yield 500+ HP!]
Nova sank onto the edge of his narrow bed, processing the implications. Two thousand points for a single roll. That's four hundred saved civilians, assuming I can find four hundred people who need saving. The math was brutal and honest—he was starting from absolute zero in a world where his classmates could shoot lasers from their eyes or turn their skin to steel.
Ten months. The entrance exam is in ten months.
[Tutorial Quest Available: Beginner's Path] [Objective: Complete basic physical training regimen] [Requirements: 100 Push-ups, 100 Sit-ups, 10km Run] [Reward: 5 Hero Points, 50 EXP, +1 to all physical stats] [Accept? Y/N]
Nova stared at the quest description and felt hysteria bubble up from somewhere deep in his chest. One Punch Man training. Someone programmed this system with a sense of humor.
"Yes," he whispered, and immediately regretted speaking aloud. The walls were thin, and he couldn't afford to seem crazy on his first day in this impossible life.
The screen updated with a cheerful ding:
[Quest Accepted! Good luck, future hero!]
[Current Objective: 100 Push-ups (0/100)]
Nova dropped to the floor and assumed the position. His arms shook on the first rep, muscles screaming in protest by the tenth. This body was soft, untrained, exactly what you'd expect from a fourteen-year-old who'd never needed physical strength to survive.
By rep twenty, sweat dripped onto the tatami mat. By forty, his form had devolved into something that barely qualified as a push-up. By sixty, he was gasping between each repetition, spots dancing in his vision.
"I'm going to die here. I'm going to die doing push-ups in a studio apartment in a fictional world because I couldn't save some girl and now I'm trapped in the most elaborate afterlife punishment imaginable."
[Push-ups: 74/100! Keep going! Small steps lead to great heights!]
The notification's perky encouragement made him want to punch something. Instead, he forced himself through another rep. And another. Each movement felt like lifting a mountain, but the slowly climbing numbers on his quest log provided a twisted form of motivation.
When he finally collapsed after push-up one hundred, the relief flooding through his system was almost narcotic. The quest counter updated instantly:
[Push-ups: 100/100! Excellent work!]
[Current Objective: 100 Sit-ups (0/100)]
"This is insane. This is actually insane."
But he did the sit-ups anyway, because the alternative was accepting defeat before he'd even begun. His core burned like molten metal by rep fifty, and he could feel something warm trickling down his forehead—either sweat or blood, he couldn't tell which.
The sit-ups took another eternity. When they were done, his abdominal muscles felt like they'd been replaced with broken glass. The system cheerfully updated his progress:
[Sit-ups: 100/100! You're on a roll!]
[Current Objective: 10km Run (0.0/10.0km)]
Nova looked at the door to his apartment, then at his shaking legs, then back at the door. Ten kilometers. That's six miles. I used to drive that distance to buy coffee.
But this body had never driven anywhere. This body belonged to Nova Asahi, a fourteen-year-old with fabricated parents and no Quirk in a world where those things defined your entire future. This body was his now, whether he wanted it or not.
He changed into the only athletic wear he could find—a worn tracksuit that had seen better decades—and stepped into the hallway. The apartment complex was exactly what he'd expected from the anime: narrow corridors, flickering lights, the sound of families living their lives behind thin doors. Normal people living normal lives in a world where teenagers could level city blocks.
The streets of Musutafu stretched out before him like a living museum. Every storefront, every street sign, every architectural detail matched his memories of watching the show. But the smells were different—exhaust fumes mixed with yakitori grease and the salt tang of ocean air. The sounds were richer, more layered. The weight of actual air in his lungs instead of animated atmosphere.
"It's real. This is all actually real."
Nova started running.
His pace was pathetic—barely faster than a brisk walk, lungs burning within the first kilometer. His legs felt like lead weights attached to his torso. Every step sent shockwaves through muscles that hadn't been used for anything more strenuous than walking to class.
But he kept moving. Past convenience stores where normal people bought normal things. Past construction sites where workers with minor enhancement Quirks moved materials that would require machinery in his old world. Past a park where children played games that would be considered supernatural phenomena anywhere else.
The quest tracker in his peripheral vision ticked upward with agonizing slowness:
[Distance: 2.3km/10.0km]
[Distance: 4.7km/10.0km]
[Distance: 7.1km/10.0km]
By kilometer eight, he was walking more than running. By kilometer nine, he was seriously considering lying down in the nearest alley and waiting for death. But the finish line grew closer with each shuffling step, and the part of his mind that had spent countless hours grinding experience points in video games refused to accept failure.
When the counter finally hit 10.0km, Nova collapsed onto a park bench and waited for his heart to stop exploding. The quest completion notification appeared like a gift from whatever gods governed fictional worlds:
[Quest Complete: Beginner's Path]
[Reward: 5 Hero Points, 50 EXP, +1 to all physical stats]
[Congratulations! You've taken your first step toward becoming a hero!]
The stat increases hit him like a warm wave washing through his muscles. The bone-deep exhaustion didn't disappear, but it lessened to merely unbearable instead of literally deadly.
[NOVA ASAHI - LEVEL 1] [STR: 11 | AGI: 11 | END: 11 | INT: 10 | WIS: 10 | LUK: 10] [Hero Points: 5] [EXP: 50/1000]
Five points. Five points out of two thousand needed for a single roll.
The math was daunting, but it was math he could work with. Four hundred more training sessions. Or eighty civilians saved. Or twenty minor villains defeated. Or...
The possibilities stretched out before him like a skill tree in a game he'd never learned to play. Nova Asahi, the fictional fourteen-year-old boy, would become a hero. He had no choice. The alternative was remaining Quirkless in a world that had no place for people like him.
[Days Until UA Entrance Exam: 304]
[Good luck, future hero! The world needs you!]
Nova stared at the countdown timer, feeling the weight of ten months pressing down on his shoulders like a physical thing. 304 days to transform from a soft college student trapped in a child's body into someone capable of competing with teenagers who could punch through buildings or freeze entire city blocks.
"I'm going to need a lot more than luck."
But as the sun set over Musutafu and the first stars appeared in a sky he'd only seen in animation, Nova Asahi began planning how to survive in a world of heroes.
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