Career Psychic 2 (One Punch Man / Esper SI)

Just one more round…!

The flow of information on my physiology being fed into my head by my power encouraged me to move on. I was doing better, just a tiny bit more and I could surpass my targets for the day!

I pushed myself further to complete my improvised weighted pulling exercise, after that, I just needed to finish off with one more round of weighted carrying. Thankfully, my current location afforded me lots of training materials!

"Haaaa!" Reaching further with my senses, I double-checked the destinations of the objects I was simultaneously carrying with my telekinesis (or psychokinesis depending on who's asking) before releasing my hold, "Done… One last run, one last stretch…!

Taking a deep breath, I gagged briefly as the pungent stink of my training area irritated my nose slightly, then mapped out my trek back to the previous area in my mind.

I ran back to the start, easily maneuvering over random junk and getting out of the way of heavy vehicles, all of which was done without the use of my eyes.

Extrasensory Perception, or ESP, is one of my most useful and easily trainable abilities.

Not having much time till the Hero Association's examinations, I made plans to maximize both my physical and mental ability conditioning by multi-tasking intelligently!

This time around I kept my ESP, telekinesis and body parameter enhancements active at the same time as I carried a huge piece of trash over to the dumping area.

"Hey Kazanari, day's over!" The sanitary landfill operator called out to me, "You want to join me and the boys over for drinks?"

"Yaaaa!" I tossed the last batch of stuff over once my time was finally up, "Heard you loud and clear boss! Afraid I can't do that, still got some jump rope and running to do for the day!"

"Meh, suit yourself."

I collected my daily pay for the part-time job and went straight to performing aerobic exercises. Once I was done with that, I returned home to take a long shower before I began to eat my mega-sized protein-rich, high starch and calorie dinner.

Thank you supermarket sales for allowing me to afford this!

Saitama shall have my thanks in the future for reminding me of the art of penny pinching.

By the time I finished my meal a substantial amount of my mental fatigue had subsided, I immediately set off to accelerate my body's metabolism then attempted to feed the energy into fueling my growth based on today's progress.

Honestly, I had no fucking idea how it was all working. I wasn't running 5 billion calculations in my head to manually control my body processes or anything.

I lucked out by having psychic powers that worked on intent, imagination, skill and effort.

Once I set a certain amount of focus to the task, I went ahead and planned out tomorrow's schedule, making sure to fit in some mobility training in exchange for aerobic exercises.

My part-time job as a landfill worker should work for the physical conditioning portion of my training. I dare say it was a smart idea for me to take up their part-time job, sell my bosses on the idea that I could save them fuel costs by using my psychic power to move the junk around instead of operating heavy equipment, then using the opportunity to train my body and mind up.

And I also earn some spending money to support my training and slow down the bankruptcy process by a bit.

I see this as an absolute win.

"Alright, there's only three days left. I have to get a good placement on the first round or it'll take forever to rank up… now how can I optimize my test results?"

I could only familiarize myself with this super continent's laws (some laws differ from city to city) and terminology in order to prepare for the written test. I'm not too worried about that part since most of the questions are meant to test one's "sense of justice".

In other words, it's as bad as attending "Moral Classes" at an Asian primary school, where the best way to score marks is to lie and select the most moral answers that most people wouldn't bother living up to.

That leaves the physical tests, which I am doing all I can do score exceedingly well in. Passing it shouldn't be an issue with how my power helped me cram months of physical conditioning into weeks, now I have to come up with strategies to optimize my results.

And for that, I will need to train a few psychic techniques even harder.

I feel a little disappointed in myself for focusing on techniques that will help me get better test results over actual usability, but oh well, at least they will be combat ready at some point or another so it's not like it will be a huge waste of effort.

"Candidates, please form two lines for registration!"

The staff surrounding the Hero Test location helped to herd the crowd of prospective heroes, or just overzealous cosplayers, into the supremely advanced looking facility.

Is Metal Knight already working for them? That's the only thing I can imagine considering that he's the only one with the capability to build an entire city within a week.

Considering that the S-Class Hero system hasn't been introduced yet, that means Metal Knight would be assigned as an A-Class Hero for now… hmm, since this is the beginning of the Hero's Association, it's likely that the power requirements are quite different from canon.

I registered at the entrance and was given the number "124". I looked behind and saw that the line extended a lot further than when I first joined it.

Hmm, since the numbers in canon were around 500, and that there was some rumors about how they were limiting the number of heroes to 200 for a start and there were 26 cities (A-Z) altogether… there should be on average, around 7 successful candidates per city.

Taking into account the quota limits with the number of people gathered here today, I think it's safe to say that at least 98% of the people lined up will be going home disappointed.

Now I just have to make sure that I'm not one of them.

"Next, side to side jumps for 30 seconds!"

This is it! It's almost my turn.

Time to not fuck this up.

After checking with the proctors, it is expected of candidates to use any ability and talent they might have to do their best in the tests, so long as it is within the spirit of the examination.

Perhaps they are applying their secret "sense of justice" tests here? No matter, I had no intentions to cheat or sabotage my competitors anyways.

I stepped into the area when my number was called and set up my rudimentary psychic field, a barely usable version of Airspace Control Babylon, a technique of Amamiya Yuuhi's that increases my speed tenfold and slows down anyone else within it.

While I have the main effects down to pat, it's hardly usable in combat as I can't seem to anchor the field of thin psychic energies around my body, making it a technique that can only be deployed in a small stationary area.

Not suitable for high-speed combat at all, but for tests like these, it will have to do.

"Ready…"

With the Domain Control derived technique speeding up my movements from outside my body, I used my psychic energies to enhance my physical parameters.

"Go!"

"Haaaaaaa!" I unleashed my Z-Fighter scream and began side-stepping like my life depended on it. The speed and strength of my furious side-steps began to make cracks in the reinforced ground!

By the time the first test was over I finally calmed down and noticed the stares from the other candidates near me.

… They must think I'm some sort of weird Otaku for screaming like that. Admittedly, I may have been too "intense" back there.

"Next, 1500-meter run. Go!"

"NIGERUNDAYO!"

This time I combined my body enhancement technique with small pockets of psychic power beneath my feet to amplify the directional energy of my steps to cover greater distances per stride!

The second bit was an idea I came up with at the last moment since I spent most of my time developing Airspace Control Babylon, hopefully, this will let me break my training records by leaps and bounds!

I managed to finish the course under 13 seconds.

My face fell at the result.

Damnit! At this rate I'll end up as a C-Class Hero!

I was aiming to at least start off at B-Class but there's no way they would accept me into B-Class if I can't even run at supersonic speeds.

I was hoping that I could cut my time down to just under 6 seconds for it to count, but it seems that it just wasn't enough.

Haaa…. Well, no sense in worrying about it now. Maybe I can make up for it in the other tests?

It's gonna be alright.

"Next, weightlifting!"

I think I did okay by lifting the heaviest set with moderate difficulty using both my arms.

Note to self, improve physical parameter enhancements ASAP.

"Next, shot put!"

The metal ball bounced off the other side of the testing area before dropping all the way down to the ground. I caught it at a distance using my telekinesis before it would hit anyone.

And now for the next test… Vertical Jumping.

This was the easiest one for me.

"Next, vertical jumping!"

"Hmph. Ready Perfectly."

I shot myself up in the air fast and hard enough to the point where I almost hit my head on the ceiling. The only reason I didn't was because I had the sense to protect my precious head (and my psychic powers) using my arms.

After landing safely, it was time for the fun to begin.

"Whack-A-Mole!"

"ATATATATATATA…!"

My ameteur levels of limited combat prediction that I unlocked after progressing a lot in my ESP worked like a charm together with the techniques I used in the Side Step test.

"Punching Machine!"

My hand was halfway into the machine thanks to my various psychic abilities and a bastardization of one of Bang's punches that I saw online. It was hardly proper martial artist level, but it was still better than any of the punches that I could throw without training.

I couldn't blow the machine away through raw power like Saitama did, so I thought the most impressive way to finish this last test was to break a part of it.

A small peak with my ESP showed that they were giving me good marks for this.

Unfortunately, I couldn't catch the rest of their internal discussion and scoring, as I was hurried along to another part of the facility to face the bane of Saitama and scrub heroes like Darkness Blade… the written test.

… Okay, it was pretty easy.

Nothing much to say about that.

I was congratulated by some of the staff for passing and was given my results in an envelope before being told to speak with the panel for my personal orientation and a PR specialist on my hero name.

Huh, this part of the process was more personable than I thought it would be.

I opened up the envelope and took in the fruits of my labor.

B-Class.

89/100

Written Portion: 44

Fitness Portion: 45

"... I hate it when I'm one mark off."

After wallowing in regret over not doing as well as I hoped like some Asian kid with parents that wouldn't accept anything less than 100 marks for about… 5 Namekian minutes, I went to eat the free food they provided before speaking to the people I was scheduled to meet.

The panel was very informative on their expectations of heroes and how that might change according to public perception in the near future, given that the organization was new, they (and the heroes) needed to be adaptable.

There were some interesting things like how different classed heroes had benefits for costuming and weapons. I liked the sounds of those. Whew, at least I don't have to dig for trash and save up for a costume.

B-Class heroes had quite the sizable budget and the Hero Association will help them procure whatever they required within the budget provided they were compliant with the regulations.

C-Class heroes had to procure their own stuff.

Wow, sucks to be them.

Oh wow, I'm already thinking like an arrogant "hero" within the association.

The Class System is too stronk!

Need… to inject… "speshul Isekai protagonist that gives no shit about the hierarchy" juice into my veins!

Aw yeah, that's better. I already feel like a proper Japanese Isekai hero now that I decided to take things like slavery unfairness to the lower classes in stride.

… Like hell I am!

I may not be able to change the system now but once the Neo Heroes come into being, and if I had sufficient standing and popularity, I could stay within the Hero Association and maybe push for change then since the higher-ups would be pressured to do whatever it takes to ensure continuing stability.

The orientation was completed after they went over patrol routes and the last bits of protocol.

Now it was time to speak with the PR specialist.

"So between General Psycho and Psy-specialist, which do you prefer?"

"None! Where did those suggestions come from!?"

"From some anonymous board on the internet."

The guy showed me his laptop with some memed images of my fearless smile as I walked towards Crabman and another captioned image of my finishing move.

"Since you called it Houtengeki many users have likened it to General Lu Bu's spear, hence the General part."

"I'd rather be called General Kenobi."

"Pardon?"

"Nevermind. What are the other options? Wait, mind if I throw in one of my own?"

"I don't see why not."

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

I've already been ripping off some techniques from that manga so why not take it further?

"Animus."

My first patrol shift started the day after.

K-City was generally a safe place to be in contrast to a hellhole city like Z-City.

I only had to rescue a couple of idiots from getting Isekai'ed into another world by Truck-sama during my afternoon patrol shift. Other than that, I could train and patrol simultaneously in relative peace.

My costume was a temporary one as I wanted to save on cleaning costs, and that I didn't want any costume that was hard to put on and off. I was currently using a dark-green duster until I had a better idea on what to wear.

So far it's pretty comfy, and I have no complaints in that department. I wouldn't mind wearing this for the long term, but I'll see how it goes.

…

Night shift.

Hmm, everything seems pretty peaceful… oh! Speak of the devil mysterious being!

I leapt towards one of the forest parks, a popular one for dates and all sorts of activities, and headed towards the screams of several young men.

"Ahhhh!" "Run for your life!" "It's gonna eat us, help, someone!"

"Hello there! I'm Animus, your friendly neighborhood hero, what's going on?"

They started talking about a camping trip and how they were telling campfire stories before it went wrong. I wanted to smack them for not telling me of the threat immediately, they really shouldn't be using more than 20 words in such a dire situation.

The monster came while they were talking.

"I found you!"

A giant blob, thing, came running at our direction.

"Now you shall face the wrath of MARSHMARROW! The spirit of all the marshmallows that you kids have improperly roasted-"

I unleashed a torrent of flames using my Pyrokinesis at the giant succulent marshmallow.

"AHHHHHHHH! It burns! No… I'm being over roasted… nooooooo!"

My first monster elimination of my hero career was disappointing, as expected.