People dressed in black groaned. Ribs shattered, bones broken, and some were clutching hard in between their crotches. Zane did a pretty good number on them, taking them by surprise as they didn’t see him coming. A single punch or kick was enough to render these goons to the ground in pain. But at least some of them had some brains.

“Who the fuck are you?!” a thug shouted. Aiming his Glock 19 at a crazed man wearing an Ultraman mask.

“I’m your friendly neighborhood Ultraman,” Zane said with his hands in the air, palms forward.

There was silence for a while as the thug was too dumbfounded over such a statement. “Fuck, you’re a loony,” said the thug. Frowning at this masked vigilante.

“Um, can’t you tone down a bit with the cuss words? Cause I’m been hearing a lot of f this, f that and f your mother and so on. So let’s work hard keeping it PG-friendly, okay?” Zane said.

“I’m fucking aiming a gun at you, and you’re asking me to keep it PG? Are you an idiot? Who the fuck are you? Who do you work for?” the thug barked.

Zane sighed. “I guess enough playing around,” Zane said. Under the mask, he mumbled, and exactly after three seconds, someone shouted in pain.

The thug screamed. And the gun dropped on the pavement with a thud. Thankfully the safety was still on and the thug didn’t even realize it while aiming at Zane. Since right now his concern was all over his broken hands, screaming at the sight of his malformed phalanges as a sudden powerful invisible force came out of nowhere, and smashed him right at the hands.

“What did you do?” the thug shouted. As fear slowly crept into his heart.

Zane drew closer. Keeping his lips tight from entertaining the scared thug. He sent a slap across the thug’s face, sending him right to the ground unconscious. Picking up the Glock in his hand, he felt so good just from having another one

“Alright, guys. On behalf of the incompetent police force, I’ll be confiscating these illegal firearms,” he searched every one of them. Taking the guns without hesitation along with a few extra clips.

“You’ll never get away with this,” said one of the thugs. A brave one, but still foolish.

“Just be glad I’m not reporting you lots for having this and . . . Man-slaughtering,” he glanced at the unmoving body of Black still clutching on the duffel bag. Even to his death, he didn’t want to part with the money.

Zane kicked the conceited thug at the nuts and came closer to Black’s dead body. The money was tempting. But he knew what it was, considering who these people were. “Blood money,” he shook his head. He opened the bag and was greeted by stacks of cash that could easily swoon the heart of the weak. But he didn’t take it. He flicked the lighter to life and threw it into the duffel bag.

Staring at the burning wealth as he uttered these words. “Just a typical day for your friendly neighborhood Ultraman.”

* * *

Zane left the alleyway. And in the nick of time sirens went past him, heading towards the alleyway he just left. The mask was gone. While he had a blazer on courtesy of one of those thugs, hiding the firearms he just earned. In time, he returned back to his hotel room. After a shower and a new set of clothes, Zane did some inventory for his new gadgets.

The man couldn’t stop smiling. Two Glock-19, two P99, and one Smith & Wesson Model 36. For the ammo, he got two extra clips of 9mm for the Glock. All of this wasn’t enough in the long run but good enough for him to call it a jackpot. He thought he would never have the chance of using one, but boy he was lucky. Lucky enough to meet a bunch of gangsters carrying guns like they were in a mafia movie.

But man that was close, Zane felt the shiver. Despite being elated over this, he did make a big error. Letting a thug had the upper hand, with a gun nuzzle aiming straight at him. If it wasn’t for the thug being nervous about pulling the trigger at a human being, Zane would have died alone in a back alley of Malaysia.

I really need to be more careful next time, Zane made a mental note.

For the rest of the afternoon, he spent some time researching how to raise his other stats. Strength was the easiest as breaking the limit just meant lifting more than what he could do. But the troublesome question was would there be enough heavy plates for him to use at the gym? Since his strength was the top two of his stats, raising it up would be quite a challenge as vitality itself had been quite difficult. Agility also posed a problem as he thought sprinting all day long would at least give him something, but unfortunately, the system wasn’t that generous.

And now comes the hard part, these two, Zane glanced at the two non-physical stats, Arcane Power and Perception. He didn’t even know where to begin regarding them as not knowing how they actually worked made it even more difficult to figure them out.

If I follow the d&d standard, perception is pretty much how keen my senses are, and how aware I am of my surroundings. It kinda felt like that sometimes, but I’m not really sure. Zane cross-referenced the stats to a few games on the internet. Should I try walking blind for a whole day or something? He pictured Daredevil in his costume, leaping over building in his costume while being blind as a bat. A superhero with the keenest sense would definitely be him besides a certain spider.

It might be possible, but wouldn’t that be a bit too boring? Zane thought. Walking around blindfolded wasn’t exactly the thing that he deem as fun. Or I could try dodging baseballs blindfolded at the batting cage. That sounds pretty fun unless I don’t get hit of course. He opened a browser and searched whether there was one in JB city. Shaking his head, baseball wasn’t the type of sports Malaysian would play, so it made sense the only batting cage was near the capital and not here. But he did find out that Singapore had a lot of them, so he guessed the perception training would begin after he gets back.

But what about Arcane Power? He thought deeply about it as this one was the most magical of them all. It didn’t exist, not until he got the system’s law influencing him. But he did have a rough idea of how to proceed with this. Zane here was an avid reader of fantasy literature and one of the sub-genres that snared him into this fantasy world was the Chinese’s idea of a fantasy world, where every plot and power progression were pretty much the same in every novel. Like they were a carbon copy of one another, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying it when he needed a dose of overpowered character that acted like he was the king of the world.

“Should I try cultivating?” he asked himself. And not like he knew how to do it in the first place. He searched through the web for how-to-cultivation and the results were pretty much rubbish. But at least he found something that might sound reasonable, and that was acupuncture. It was the closest thing he could call legit. And not surprisingly, there were a bunch of these acupuncture clinics in JB so he just picked the nearest one and booked a slot.

Before he left his room, he stashed his guns and ammo into his bag and left them in the cupboard. He also didn’t forget to put the ‘Please Do not Disturb’ sign on the doorknob to ward off housekeepers.

Then he went off to the acupuncture clinic.