The moment Apocalypse activated, Shigaraki's vision blurred.
For an instant, it felt like he and Hitoshi Shinso had fused—mind and body syncing into a single "model," as if Shinso's nervous system had been laid open and mirrored inside his own.
Then—
A shadow-model appeared across his field of view.
It was shaped like Shinso's body, moving through subtle, repeated motions—changing posture, shifting breath, flicking the eyes—again and again, each cycle accompanied by the unmistakable "feel" of Brainwashing being triggered.
Shigaraki stared at it.
And the next second—
A sharp, needle-like pain stabbed into his skull.
Not physical.
Not emotional.
It was information.
A flood of it.
Shinso's understanding of Brainwashing—his instinctive timing, his phrasing patterns, the tiny pauses he used to bait responses, the way he controlled a target's "obedience"—all of it poured into Shigaraki's mind at once.
It was like swallowing a library in a single breath.
Time passed.
How long, Shigaraki didn't know.
But eventually, the stabbing pain faded.
The shadow-model on his vision began to dissolve—breaking into fragments of light, then vanishing like mist.
And when it was over, Shigaraki finally understood what the system's description truly meant:
"By Heaven's might, enlighten all beings."
From a purely "technical" perspective, Apocalypse temporarily rewrote his neural processing—encoding his thinking into a mode that resembled an astronomical-scale computation engine.
For a short period, he gained an almost divine level of learning, analysis, and comprehension.
And in that state—
Shinso's Brainwashing, and every trick Shinso used to apply it, were no longer mysteries.
They were patterns.
Inputs and outputs.
A mechanism.
Something Shigaraki could trace, decode, and reproduce.
So that was why he could copy Brainwashing in minutes.
Not only the Quirk itself—
But also the practical muscle memory behind it: the micro-tensions, the rhythm of speech, the flow of "activation" through the body.
He could even "see" how experience shaped Shinso's technique.
It was terrifying.
And addictive.
Shigaraki's eyes narrowed slightly.
If this worked on Brainwashing…
Then what about stronger Quirks?
One For All.
All For One.
As long as their principles didn't exceed what Apocalypse could "observe" and process…
Then even those could be learned, analyzed, understood, and mastered.
That was the implication.
And it made his skin prickle.
Of course, something that absurdly powerful didn't come without a price.
First: This "heavenly" mode burned through energy at an insane rate.
It consumed his body's reserves and placed extreme strain on his nervous system—meaning he couldn't sustain it for long.
Second: Even the best CPU is useless if the hardware can't handle the load.
And Shigaraki's brain—no matter how sharp his will was—was still a brain built for the rules of this world.
This wasn't a world like some esper-focused society where people trained their brains like weapons.
In the My Hero world, Quirks didn't demand advanced computation the way psychic powers might.
No one grew up "upgrading" their processing capacity.
So Shigaraki had never considered that he might one day hit a ceiling.
But now that ceiling was real.
And worse—
He was staring at a cheat code so vast that he could only use a microscopic fraction of it.
He didn't like that.
Not even a little.
If he could draw out more of Apocalypse's true potential…
What would that look like?
Just imagining it made his heartbeat speed up.
He let out a slow breath, rolling his shoulders—only to feel a wave of weakness wash through his arms and back.
His muscles were heavy.
His joints ached.
Like he'd run for hours, then fought a war, then stayed awake for three days.
So that was another "cost."
Shigaraki leaned back into the wall, pressing two fingers to his temple.
His expression stayed calm, but his thoughts moved faster than ever.
I need solutions.
He could:
Increase recovery speed (a Quirk for stamina or rapid restoration would be perfect).
Reduce strain (external support equipment, maybe).
Raise cognitive tolerance (train the brain like a muscle, even if this world doesn't).
He didn't need to solve everything overnight.
But he refused to accept "this is your limit" as an answer.
Not when the system had just proven that the ceiling was artificial.
He closed his eyes.
Breathing steady.
Waiting for strength to return.
And somewhere deep inside, a quiet certainty settled in:
Now that Apocalypse had opened this door—
He wasn't going to stop at copying Brainwashing.
He was going to rewrite the entire game.
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/StrawHatStudios