"With a cheat this overpowered, can I even handle it?"
Ren Isana — clean-featured, casually dressed, undeniably handsome — stood frozen in the middle of a small rented room, panic written plainly across his face.
Half an hour ago, he'd been yanked from his own home and dumped here. It hadn't taken him long to figure out what kind of world he'd landed in.
One sentence summed it up: this was a cesspool crammed full of every bizarre thing imaginable, and apparently all of it had shown up in the last ten years.
Spiritual energy had awakened. Monsters ran rampant. Aliens, otherworldly creatures, goblins, slimes — they poured endlessly out of spatial rifts that tore open across the globe without warning.
The whole world had been thrown into complete and utter chaos.
That said, it wasn't all bad news. Along with the rifts had come advanced technology and special powers that humanity had gradually absorbed and made its own.
What had once been an ordinary, tech-driven civilization was now treading a wildly different path. Martial arts and magic — things that had only ever existed in fantasy — were now as real as breathing.
From what Ren had pieced together, there were a few ways for people to get stronger, but the mainstream method was the structured education system the government provided. Those with strong innate talent awakened specific abilities — superpowers — naturally. Those without them had to grind it out through sheer effort.
There was also the option of pulling power directly from the rifts themselves, essentially snagging gifts left behind by other worlds.
Ren turned all of this over in his mind. Whatever had just happened to him, it had definitely come from one of those rifts.
"The Eyes of Jianjigu — the ultimate eyes capable of seeing through all of creation. See a technique once to learn it, see it twice to master it," he muttered, almost against his will.
He thought back to the moment he'd first arrived in this world and come face to face with his alternate self. Before Ren had even gotten over his shock, the guy had simply walked over and merged with him — whole and complete, no negotiation.
Through that fusion, the other Ren had passed over every memory, every piece of his identity, and everything he owned.
It was as if he'd finally set himself free… After sorting through the inherited memories, Ren had a pretty good idea of why.
This world was brutal. And the power his counterpart had awakened was a one-time ability: to summon his parallel-universe self and hand everything over.
"What the hell! So you just dragged me here to suffer on your behalf?" Ren muttered, pulling out an ID card and staring at it.
This was his identity now: an eighteen-year-old high school student about to sit the class-sorting exams.
His predecessor had been deep in depression, long past the point of wanting to live. When he'd discovered what his talent actually was, he'd used it the same day without a second thought.
A talent you could only ever use once — one that effectively ended your own existence — and he'd pulled the trigger on it.
"You're free now, but I'm the one stuck with the bill. And thank god you were a total loner with no friends, or this would've been a nightmare to sort out," Ren said to the empty air.
Still, when he looked at it objectively, it wasn't a terrible situation. He was still in his original body. No mecha cockpit. No undocumented status. With the memories he'd inherited, slipping into this life shouldn't be too difficult — especially since the original owner had been an orphan with almost zero social presence.
All Ren needed to do was take things one step at a time and slowly slot himself into the role.
After packing up the ID, wallet, and a few other essentials, he finally got a proper look at the place. It was small — a few dozen square meters of cramped living space with only the bare necessities. Even knowing another version of himself had used all of this, Ren found himself frowning.
It's all getting replaced. Every bit of it.
He glanced at the window. The sun was already up. Shopping first, then everything else.
Wallet and keys in hand, he headed downstairs and navigated by memory to the nearest convenience store.
Aside from the occasional monster incident, a lot of this world felt surprisingly familiar. One stroll through a regular convenience store told him more than any textbook could.
After picking up what he needed, he went back up to wash and change, then grabbed the old school bag and headed back out.
His counterpart had still been a high school student — one who'd been about to report his awakened talent for class sorting. That was today's business.
The class system here was simple: the school assessed your talent and placed you accordingly. It was precisely because the original Ren's talent was so bizarre that he'd given up entirely.
To be fair, a talent whose entire function was "sacrifice yourself to summon your parallel-universe counterpart" was pretty hard to work with. It basically reduced your entire existence to the role of a disposable stepping stone.
Combined with the depression he'd already been living with, it made a grim kind of sense.
My other self really did have it rough. Ren didn't linger on it. What was done was done. The only thing left was to live well in his stead.
He grabbed breakfast from a street stall and set off toward the school.
The morning streets were dotted with elderly people doing their exercises, same as back home. The difference was that what these old men were practicing was nothing like the flowery demonstration routines Ren remembered. Every movement was sharp, lethal, and real.
One glance, and the entire fist technique — every form, every transition, every underlying principle — surfaced fully formed in Ren's mind.
He stopped walking.
His talent had kicked in.
And it hadn't just copied the moves. He could feel a change spreading through his body — his physique strengthening in real time, the technique embedding itself in his muscles as if he'd been drilling it for decades. It took only a few seconds.
He stared at the old man throwing punches with the force of a charging bull. This cheat of mine is absolutely terrifying.
Testing his current strength, Ren was confident that he could take down the version of himself from two minutes ago without breaking a sweat.
He turned to the rest of the park with fresh eyes.
There were old men and women wielding swords and spears. Most of them moved like people who'd had real careers in dangerous places. Everything they knew was combat-practical.
Perfect.
Over the next few minutes, Ren used his Insightful Learning to run through every technique on display — and felt his physical attributes jump several tiers in the process.