Hidesuke exhaled slowly and turned his attention to the translucent red screen hovering steadily above his wrist.
As he'd come to realize, the interface belonged to the Hero Zenith UI, a system universally integrated into every classified gifted being the moment their abilities first manifested.
It didn't discriminate.
Civilians. Heroes. Villains. Whether you were praised, hunted, or simply trying to exist, the UI claimed you.
It marked your place in the world and sealed your status into a database woven through the bones of Arc Zenith's society.
It was the spine of the power hierarchy. The proof of purpose. The chain around the neck.
At the center of his display rotated a full-body hologram—his current form, stripped down and unfiltered.
Pale skin, bare chest, scattered scars, lean muscle faintly outlined under the soft glow.
The figure spun slowly, suspended in digital gravity, like a doll turning on a display pedestal in some omniscient showroom.
Encircling it were neatly organized labels, clean and clinical:
| Full Name: Shinohara Hidesuke
| ID Number: AZ-947231
| Age: 20
| Marital Status: Single
| Hero Name: Black Thorn
| Hero Tier: F
| Height: 1.78 m
| Weight: 68 kg
| Faction: Guardian Division
| Power Type: Organic
His brow twitched upward, the beginnings of a frown forming without his permission.
There was something surreal—something mildly horrifying, honestly—about seeing the sum of your identity laid bare in pristine red pixels.
Facts you weren't even familiar with, truths you hadn't earned, all presented with clinical certainty.
The unease was not unfamiliar.
He had already discovered, days ago, that the memories inside his head weren't entirely his own.
Some of them didn't belong to Nathan at all.
They were fragments of someone else—threads of knowledge and instinct that must have belonged to the real Hidesuke, stitched together like a borrowed patchwork of personality.
"Bio-memory sync."
That mechanical voice still echoed in the corners of his consciousness, its words too precise to ignore, too artificial to forget.
He hadn't known such a thing was possible. He still didn't. But the facts spoke for themselves.
He knew things—about this world, about powers and protocols and organizations—that he had never learned.
Information surfaced easily, as though drawn from a hidden reference library:
Guardian Division. A frontline faction specializing in close-range defense and crowd shielding. Barrier summoners. Kinetic sponges. The tanks of the battlefield.
Organic Power Type. Abilities rooted in biology. Physical mutation. Internal weaponry. Regenerative blood. Bio-toxins. Even cellular mimicry.
None of this was learned by him. It was inherited. Downloaded like data.
His gaze drifted to a slim row of icons floating beneath the hologram, each glowing softly in sequence.
Finances.
Health.
Education.
Skills & Weaponry.
Tasks.
He tapped the coin crest.
Finances.
The screen shifted with a soft flicker. The background deepened to a muted crimson while structured panels unfolded like digital pages:
| Banking Institution: Zenith Unified Core Account
| Account Number: *** *** 9871
| Primary Insurance Provider: UmbraCare Alliance
| Insurance Tier: C-Class | Partial Emergency Coverage
| Recent Transactions:
- Medical Processing Fee — -280 ZC
- U.A. Admission Review — -150 ZC
- Account Reinitialization Protocol — 0 ZC
At the very bottom, in clean white numerals, his current balance glowed faintly:
| 5,000 ZC
ZC. Zenith Coins.
He blinked slowly.
'So is this considered rich or poor?'
For some odd reason, there were no memories attached to that value. Nothing instinctive whispered to him about what it could buy.
It might have been enough to live off for a month… or barely enough for a decent energy bar.
He'd have to figure that out later.
Still, something about seeing that number pulled at his chest.
There had always been a kind of hunger tucked deep inside him—one that went beyond food or comfort.
It had been forged in childhood, in cheap apartments that smelled like damp concrete and leftover rice.
In the quiet shame of watching his mother choose between rent and medication.
In the rattling pockets that never had enough coins for both.
Money had always meant control.
And here, in a game world built on design and balance, it probably meant survival.
He swiped back to the main menu and slid through Health. Green vitals, no infections detected, injuries listed as recently healed.
Under Education, a scroll of uncompleted modules appeared:
> Hero Ethics Tier 2 — Unfulfilled
> Combat Sync Basics — Failed
> Fieldwork Protocol: Urban-Class Zones — Incomplete
He skimmed past it. Disinterested.
Under Skills & Weaponry, a faint pulse expanded into a tree of information:
> Skill: Thorncraft [ Level 1 ]
> Status: Active
> Subtype: External/Reactive
> Description: Control and manifestation of organic thorn structures. Current range: 1.2 meters. Structural density: brittle.
No upgrades. No techniques learned. Just the beginner's stub of something potentially powerful, if only he knew how to wield it.
He stared at it for a long moment. Not with guilt. Not even disappointment.
Just a strange emptiness, the kind you feel when reading a name etched into a stone you were never meant to touch.
Then, like reflex, he went back to Finances.
There it was again. 5,000 ZC.
Static. Waiting. Unmoving.
And for some reason, that number felt more real than any label, any stat, or any heroic tier attached to his name.
'I guess growing up with poverty does that to a person.'
He was still trying to guess what exactly five thousand Zenith Coins could buy when something flickered near the bottom right of the interface:
A tiny gavel icon rendered in muted gold. Its design was almost ceremonial, and distinctly out of place amid the cleaner system visuals.
Curiosity bloomed instinctively, and with barely a second thought, he tapped it.
The main interface slid effortlessly to the left, clearing space for a deep-black pane that emerged like the opening of a vault.
In its center hovered a file icon stamped with bold letters: FVS.
Beneath it, a progress bar read:
> DOWNLOADING… 95 / 100%
He stared at the label, unease stirring under his skin. FVS. What was that? A fresh system update?
Whatever it was, it didn't register as anything familiar. Not from Arc Zenith's gameplay mechanics, and certainly not from Hidesuke's blended memory archive.
Was it simply a system update? A dormant plugin? Had he triggered something by mistake?
He tapped the icon.
Nothing.
He tapped again, more forcefully.
Still nothing.
A soft flicker answered him, but the panel remained sealed, unresponsive, like a locked door waiting for a password only fate could whisper.
With a quiet sigh, he swiped away from it, filing it into the back of his thoughts to revisit once the download reached completion.
The moment he returned to the main screen, one of the robo-nurses entered the room and approached.
"Patient stimulation protocol: TV interval commencing."
Her voice lacked inflection as always. It was sound without spirit.
The mechanical murmur triggered a wave of movement across the room. Beds adjusted. Hydraulic arms hissed softly.
Patients slowly turned their heads or bodies toward the enormous wall-mounted screen at the far end, which blinked awake in gentle pink and soft blue hues.
The nurse tapped the control panel embedded in her wrist.
A familiar melody began to drift through the air — soft, whimsical, faintly nostalgic.
Rex and the Moon.
The show with the animated pangolin who kept trying to build contraptions to reach the moon, no matter how many times he failed.
Each setback was met with charm and a catchy musical reprise.
Hidesuke had grown strangely fond of it. There was something both childlike and tragic about the pangolin's endless climb. It was something painfully sincere in a world that rarely was.
He hadn't watched many cartoons growing up. Maybe that was why he found such comfort in the resilience of a creature drawn in pastel pixels.
Hidesuke's bed was closer than most, but it hardly mattered because his new eyes were falcon-sharp.
He saw saturation in waves he hadn't known as Nathan. Colors glowed. Edges cut like lasers.
But before the episode even began, the screen blinked and the room's lights dimmed.
The animation vanished, swallowed by static and replaced by a new header glowing across the display:
[ LIVE: Channel 8 Hero Feature Segment – The Gentle Fist Speaks ]
Onscreen, a man stood at the center of a sleek studio.
Strade Paleon.
"The Gentle Fist."
He was dressed in an elegant black-and-gold uniform. His platinum hair was slicked back to immaculate perfection.
A chrome-plated mic nestled at his collarbone, and a glass podium curved beneath his resting palms.
The scrolling headline read:
"Project Reborn Youth: New Hope for Tomorrow's Gifted"
Strade's voice drifted through the speakers. Measured, warm, calculated.
"The future of our world lies not in power alone, but in guidance.
Every gifted child deserves a chance. Not just to be strong, but to be seen, to be shaped.
Project Reborn Youth is not about control; it's about restoration. We're building bridges where there were walls, planting hope where there was fear. Because heroes aren't born ready. They're made with compassion, with discipline, with vision.
And together, we can raise the next generation not just to survive, but to lead."
He was talking about reform. About compassion. About reaching troubled children before the system gave up on them.
He used fancy words like "hope" and "restoration" with eyes that looked handcrafted to shine on camera.
But Hidesuke couldn't hear the words anymore.
Because something inside him was cracking.