Don't Own anything.
'thought'
"Speech"
"Tvs, Radios, and Text via book or newspaper... when those are around..."
I let out a long breath as I cross my legs, sat within a dark haze of blue smoke.
I inhale then exhale, my hands folded in my lap.
Reincarnation.
Rebirth.
Isekai.
A genre that I loved in my past life...
Hell, I still do.
It's just that I haven't really had much opportunity to read manga of any sort anymore, and the whole isekai genre doesn't become popular for another good eighty years or so.
The year is nineteen forty-three.
World war two is in full swing.
Luckily that's not really my problem right now.
What is my problem, is the startling realization that this isn't some mere world.
The German organization Hydra.
Thus meaning that this is somewhere within marvel.
If I had to make an educated guess, I would say that this is the Marvel Cenematic Universe- albeit a strange MCU variant with anime hair colors and stuff. and fun stuff doesn't really pop up for another seventy years.
I'll be old and gone if I merely did nothing but wait for that moment.
Which is why I'm doing something.
I have been doing something for the past couple of years.
I didn't exactly come here with zero boons.
The random omnipotent being who sent me here gave me two things, the first, one of the eighteen skyrim perk trees fully leveled with all perks that he selected at random, the next is intimate knowledge of one sole thing.
The rob chose 'Alchemy' as my selected perk tree, but not just any alchemy, the specialized Ordinator alchemy.
A key feature of that skill tree, perhaps the greatest part of it, is the zenith skill, called 'That which does not kill you'.
In game, instantly after taking that skill, you are greatly poisoned, taking one hundred and fifty damage per second for the next sixty seconds.
Considering that most characters won't have more than three hundred health by the time you take this perk, you'll need quite the substantial stash of health potions to survive.
The benefit for this, is a far greater enhancement for your potions...
But that doesn't make much sense, nor could I use the three points that this skill supposedly gives me, thus, I was given a special benefit.
My body can rapidly break down basically whatever poison I put in it.
I got bit by a rattlesnake when I was eight. I didn't even need to go to the hospital, just got some aloe leaf and I pretty much healed right up.
Then my family moved to New York and have been there since.
Another fun aspect my alchemical items is that fifty percent of the time they get a random beneficial quality, twenty five percent of the time, I get two. This, of course, also applies to poisons, except I am given bad qualities.
Now, back to ROB. They gave me alchemy, and seeing that a fairly powerful ability had fallen into my hands, I decided to capitalize on it.
For my knowledge, I requested to be given extensive knowledge on cultivation techniques, in particular crafting, medicine, and poison techniques.
Like, those in Murim.
The classic 'one hundred-year-old ginger' and 'Dazzling moonlight sky blade'. That sort of thing.
Why?
Eh. I was reading one of those cultivation manga before I died. I thought that it would be the best knowledge to reincarnate with as I could use my alchemical skills to refine pills and stuff.
I mean, that knowledge is clearly working.
I've had numerous bottlenecks, sure, but at the end of the day, my knowledge and skill will allow me to eventually become a true threat to Thanos in the future if I continue to do my little Murim thing.
A great benefit to Murim bullshit is that people who participate in it typically live for hundreds- if not thousands- of years, so if things go to plan, I'll still be around when he shows his ugly mug.
To a person who has no idea what cultivation is, it's basically a method to strengthen your body through meditation and absorbing 'ki', eating weird plants, medicine balls, and rocks. Then developing over the top kamehameha-like techniques that ignite the sky or some shit.
There are about nine levels of cultivation from what I can tell.
Well, ten.
The first is called 'body tempering', it lasts roughly one hundred days. During this time you typically use medicine to rid your body of impurities, then use basic sword, fist, or saber- which is different than sword apparently- techniques to get your blood rushing and your insignificant life force flowing. At which point, you will meditate, collecting 'strands' of your heightened powers and guiding them to your heart to store in your first 'super special spiritual core' or whatever.
The goal of doing that is to collect enough to open said 'spiritual core', otherwise known as an 'Acupoint'. In this case, the 'Heart Acupoint'.
Only when you open your heart, can your cultivation journey begin, you step into the first stage of being superhuman, known as simply 'beyond mortal'.
That.
Is where I am currently.
My one hundred days of foundation took slightly longer than it should due to lack of materials. I was forced to wait several times due to not being able to find good quality ingredients to make said body purifying medicine, otherwise called 'body tempering liquid'.
I had to rely on my potion's random effects to give me something similar.
And when I say 'similar' I mean 'I was only able to glean a suitable effect as a side effect to the already random side effects. This resulted in something far less efficient than the original liquid.
Incredibly less effective. As in. It took me nearly four hundred days to do something a five year old child could do in a fourth of the time. However, seeing as how there was no way in hell I would ever find something like 'Ten year fire chi lotus leaf' or something equally as inane as that, it is a reasonable timeframe.
Then there's the whole 'perform basic martial arts to get your blood pumping' thing which posed a minor problem. At least my in-built knowledge gave me the basics on that.
It's sort of masochistic in a way as I had to POISON MYSELF to get the most out of my training.
At first, I used black widow venom by harassing a box full of them until they nibbled on my fingers. After around two months, that stopped working and I had to start doing acupressure with their venom.
After three hundred days of that, it started losing effectiveness, thus I proceeded to use my alchemy to create a toxin... which almost killed me despite my- at this point- peak human resilience and natural resistance to poisons.
Thus, I lowered the dosage considerably and tried again, with similar, albeit lessened, results.
I mean, I guess that my poisons are far more powerful than my potions due to there being three perks that buff poisons, one of which scales off alchemy rank and only two that remain a static number for regular potions. Both of which also work on poisons.
That leads me to where I am now, breathing in poison gas while meditating to increase spiritual power and rest after a tremendous workout, inching closer and closer to opening my 'Eye Acupoint'.
A special trait with Acupoints, is after unlocking each, there is a slim chance to unlock a 'special ability'.
For the eyes, the chance is around fifty percent. Typically involving some form of long ranged sight or scrying. Each of the acupoints has the capability of unlocking special traits, even Heart, it's just a lot rarer than most of the others, sitting at roughly one in ten thousand, far lower than the eye's one in two, the nose's one in one hundred, and even the ear's one in one thousand.
Not quite as rare as the mouth's one in fifty thousand, but that's sort of understandable.
Luckily, I have unlocked a special trait.
I haven't really thought of a good name for it yet, I was thinking something along the lines of 'toxic heart', or maybe 'black heart'. But basically, what it does is allow me to safely store poisons in my heart for future use.
What I do with this poison really depends, I can keep it stored and circulate it with my blood, potentially poisoning whatever causes me to bleed, or, in such a case, I can poison weapons with my blood if I so choose, then I also have the option of sending the poison into my lungs where I basically shoot it into the air stored inside, breathing out a cloud of toxic vapor when I exhale.
Or I can even condense and circulate poisons, making them more deadly.
It's fairly useful all things considered, but it does have its limits. There is only so much poison I can store in my heart, additionally, unless I want to mix it up, I can only store four unique poisons at a time, one in each valve of my heart.
It also seems to have had the effect of speeding up my 'poison arts' cultivation skill which has been crucial in making up lost time.
I let out a long breath, the little steel pot I filled with poison then boiled long since running out of poison.
I rise to my feet and clench a fist, letting out a slow breath.
I walk over to a nearby bucket of water, ditching my clothes and sitting them neatly in a pile to the left of where I was sitting.
I proceed to thoroughly scrub my body.
This will be the first time I leave this little shipping container of mine in a week.
Typically, when I begin 'poison meditation' like this, I stay for days at a time as thoroughly cleaning myself to make absolutely sure that the poison is gone is always a hassle.
After about thirty minutes I walk away from the bucket I haphazardly pour down a drain, leading into the sewer, then put on the clothes I had set aside in a paper bag, taking a moment to admire my own toned abs and muscles.
"Damn. I can't believe this works." I whisper to myself.
I leave the warehouse with a slow nod.
Slipping my hands into my pockets I calmly walk out of the warehouse, making my way down the dock's fairly empty walkways.
There's nothing scheduled to ship any time soon, so there's no reason for many people to be out here.
*BANG* *BANG*
Huh. That was pretty close.
A man rushes around the corner, sprinting as hard as he can, luger pistol clutched in one hand, seeing me, he raises it towards me.
Before he can fire I twist my body out of the way.
*BANG*
A bullet flies past my shoulder.
'Alright. Fuck you, then.'
My body tenses as I rush forwards clearing surprising distance is a matter of moments.
Those within their foundation period would find themselves potentially stronger than normal humans, those who have truly stepped into cultivation even more so.
To put it into perspective, those who take the first step into cultivation typically live till they are one hundred. Easily. Most even pushing one hundred and twenty. Once you get to step two, however, you truly transcend. You gain a lifespan of around two hundred and forty years and gain the ability to actualize your ki and project it into techniques.
A 'Beyond Mortal' cultivator just has the Captain America package, strong, fast, durable, but once you step into stage two, you truly begin to flourish.
I reach the man drawing back a hand as he lets out a roar with a German accent. "YOU AMERICAN FREAKS!"
My palm strikes his chest, lifting him off the ground with a dull crack, his eyes bulge, hand loosening on his weapon and some vial of blue liquid.
I snatch the vial out of the air before it can strike the concrete floor, slipping it into my shirt as I stalk forwards to the man writhing on the floor, mouth wide as he gasps for air.
I reach down and grab his left upper canine tooth... and rip it from his skull, frowning down at it.
Cyanide.
A truly humongous man turns the corner, he has short blonde hair and is built like a brick house, wearing a white t shirt and brown cargo pants.
Speaking of Captain America...
He looks stunned at the man, then back to me.
"Hello, extremely muscular man, I assume this German spy here was running from you?" I question quietly.
"Yeah." He nods once, seemingly cautious of the fact I took him down so easily.
"Right. I'm going to go then, my shift is about to start over at that warehouse over there. If you want to interrogate him, you'll probably want to get him some medical attention, I hit him pretty hard."
I walk past the super soldier.
"Wait. What's your name?" Steve Rogers himself calls out.
"Arthur Steele." I call over my shoulder as I walk past him.
I can hear a low whirl as a one-man submarine rises from the water, the spy rolling into the water and seemingly trying to drown himself, distracting 'America's ass' and giving me ample time to walk away.
This formula is... genius...
FUCKING DAMN IT!
It's almost perfect for body tempering.
I've managed to identify all of the ingredients... all except one.
Some edits would need to be made to its production method in order to allow its effects to be shown through consuming it, but this is seriously impressive.
If I had this back when I first started, I could have finished in only one hundred- no. Eighty days.
The imperfect formula, that is, the perfected version might have brought it down to forty days. Maybe lower.
Ugh! That's so fucking annoying! I would have already long-since opened my eye acupoint and maybe have even made good progress towards my nose acupoint!
I sigh and shake my head. 'Don't get angry, Arthur, just keep this in mind if you do the classic cultivation thing and build a 'sect' or organization.
I rub my temples and let out a long sigh.
At least this tells me one thing...
There are plants out there that I don't know about.
Maybe I should create my own 'super soldier serum'. Who knows.
I let out a low hum as I look to a large watermelon-sized fungi sat on my table.
A genuinely fucking massive black truffle.
Fifty year old black truffle.
*Cough* I mean, fifty year yin energy infused fungi.
I got lucky and I found this, now I'm debating on if I should do what I'm supposed to do and just eat it straight, possibly ruining truffle for me for the next thirty or so years, or if I should do a big cultivation taboo and eat it on a burger or something.
I let out a long sigh, shoulder slumping.
Regretfully, my cultivation is more important than my pallet currently.
Mental note, create Black Garlic before it becomes a widely known thing.
I let out a long sigh as I reach over and grab the truffle with both hands, taking a deep breath as I lift it.
"This is going to suck." I observe.
*THUD THUD THUD*
I get up from my couch, letting out a long breath as I make my way to the door.
I slowly open the door. "May I help you?"
A woman with short brown hair stands there, she wears a dark green military uniform, a letter in hand. "Arthur Steele. Your country needs your help."
I let out a long sigh. "Ugh. A draft, seriously?"
"Yes, seriously." The woman growls, sounding genuinely offended. "While you are laying about in your house good men are sacrificing their lives for the freedom of our countries."
"Yes, and I truly appreciate that, I truly do, but I do in fact have bigger worries than a nazi regime."
"OH really? What could possibly be more important than-"
"Alright, hear me out... Mythology."
"…"
"I beg your pardon?" The woman whispers.
"Dragons, King Arthur, Excalibur. That sort of thing."
"How in the blazes are FAIRY TALES that more important than defeating the Nazi regime?!" The woman growls.
"As long as Hitler believes the holy grail exists, it'll remain my problem. You won't be laughing when some random German battalion walks onto the battlefield with king Arthur's fucking Excalibur." I shoot back. "All mythology, regardless of how stretched it may be starts with a truthful story. Thor might have been a man struck by lightning who through a genetic defect was granted the strength of a dozen men, King Arthur could have been a man who was an expert at dueling and was never touched on the battlefield."
"You are... mentally deranged."
"You do realize you are talking to a man who is One: able to lift five hundred pounds with one arm, and Two: filled with so much poison that I could kill an elephant by spitting on it, right? And I gained these powers through the amazing ability called... ancient Chinese martial arts."
"I am aware." The woman states.
She silently stares. "About the first thing. The later parts are utterly insane sounding."
"Aren't you fighting nazi's who have laser weapons with a man who was previously weaker than most children and is now able to push train cars like they weigh almost nothing? I have a rattlesnake in the other room. I could very easily have it bite my hand."
"Or I could just do this." I shrug as I stare into her eyes.
She flinches as my eyes shift, glowing green lines shaped like a loose M appear on my pupils, forming what look like flower petals around throughout iris.
"What is- what are-"
"Magic eyes. From magic martial arts. Lets me dominate and command snakes." I casually admit.
"Now. Let's go do whatever it is we have to. You want me to fight hand and hand with Captain America? I heard he's making a unit of some sort, and since you are bothering me now, I can only assume that's where you are taking me."
I look to the numerous men rushing around camp, there's a large armored car of some sort with a high-tech laser weapon on the top, men doing basic exercises, campfires and cooking pots, even people getting medical treatment and first aid.
My guide leads me to a sole group crowding around a large bulky blonde man.
"Steve." The woman breathes out quietly.
He perks up and turns around. "Peggy!"
He turns around with a bright smile, briefly pausing as his eyes stray to me, familiarity briefly crossing his gaze.
"Who is this?"
"This is Arthur Steel, Martial Artist, Chemist, and a superhuman who has been drafted with hope of being put into your howling commandos. Codename Venom Dragon."
"Superhuman?" I hear many of the men around the campfire echo.
My eyes lock onto the man with a blue army hat sitting around the fire.
"It's been a while." I greet lazily. "The last time we met you were chasing that German spy, right?"
"You're the one who took down Heinz." The man blinks.
"That's right." I nod once.
He stands up and offers me a hand.
I take it and shake his hand.
"Good to have you." He states with a small nod.
"Good to be here." I reply with a grin. "Let's kick some Nazi ass together, alright?"
I slowly cast a gaze across the group. "Oh. And for future reference for your continued survival... if you ever see me bleed, fucking run. My blood is more toxic than cyanide and you will most certainly die if even a drop touches your skin."
I turn back to Peggy. "Anyways, as I was saying beforehand, it would be pretty nice if the US Government did this special thing for me. In ancient Chinese culture it's called a 'Gu'. Basically the entire concept is putting a bunch of poisonous and venomous things in a pot and letting them eat each other. The sole creature that survives having poison far surpassing what it originally had. I don't necessarily need it quite yet, but it'll be useful for me in the near future-"
Bullets whizz past my head as I sit crouched behind a large mound of earth.
I am sat next to a man in blue, a frankly gaudy shield rests on his arm.
I take a bite of jerky with a slight grin. "The most versatile metal on the planet and they use it to make a frisbee."
"You keep saying that, but this shield has served me well." The man replies.
"I know. I could do better though." I state as a small metal sphere lands between us.
I grab it and hurl it backwards as hard as I can, the grenade exploding somewhere in the air behind us.
"Could you?"
"Of course." I scoff. "I might be more into chemistry and alchemy, but I could certainly do something with that."
"Floating blades, hell, if I could get some of that and turn it into wire? A piece as thick as a strand of spider silk would be about as strong as one of those cables that hold up the golden gate bridge."
"Really?!" The superhuman questions.
"Yeah. Can you imagine that strength in that surface area? You could probably cut a tank in half if you wrapped it tightly around it and dropped a heavy weight off a cliff." I snort with a slight eye roll.
"So. How long are we supposed to stay here?" I question as roll over and gently place my hand on the dirt wall, peeking up and over briefly before ducking down as a flood of bullets pepper the mound, sending soil spraying over myself and Steve.
"Until Dugan gives us the signal." Comes the captain's reply.
"Did he ever say what the signal... was?" I ask as I look back to him.
"No, but he said 'oh, you'll know'."
"…"
"That doesn't seem like a very good strategy. You should probably talk to him about that because all of our lives are on the line." I deadpan as a rocket slams into the earth behind us, sending a large plume of fire and earth exploding upwards.
I sit back down next to Steve and adjust my green helmet. "I still don't think me being out here is a good thing. I wasn't joking when I said if I bleed I'll kill you all. I've got so much cyanide and other assorted poison stored in my heart and pumping through my body that if I so much as breathe wrong and expel everything in my lungs, everyone within thirty feet would probably drop dead in seconds."
"…"
"Well, except you. You'd probably last a few minutes being a super human and all." I admit.
*BOOM*
The earth seems to shudder for a moment as the gunfire peppering our location abruptly ceases.
"…"
""That was the signal."" We both state at the same time as we turn and lunge over the earthen mound, rushing towards a huge compound in the distance, a machine gun nest has collapsed inwards, it is now nothing more than a smoldering wreck that shoots plumes of fire upwards.
A single pistol rests in my hand as we both run forwards as fast as we can, taking advantage of the brief pause in battle, most people are looking in the direction of the explosion, that is what we can use to our advantage.
We rush the machine gun nest, Steve himself reaching it before me and clearing the barbed wire barricade in a single bound.
I hear screaming as there's a loud clang somewhere within the hole.
I hop over the barbed wire after him, taking care to not cut myself as that'd be such a headache.
I lift my hand and squeeze the trigger of my pistol.
A figure in black armor legs out a shout as my bullet strikes the glassy eye of his suit and pierces his brain.
The glowing blue rifle he was holding falls to the floor, causing me to dive towards it as similar men begin pouring from the bunker I am now stood just in front of.
The weapon finds itself in my hand as I blast it towards the first man, a beam of blue shooting from the barrel and washing over the first man.
He is vaporized.
There is nothing left.
"Holy shit." I whisper. As I do it to another.
Less armored soldiers pour from the bunker, but they are gunned down by Mr America himself as he rushes over with his shield and a handgun, standing slightly behind me with his arm in front of us both, granting us some cover.
I press my hand against the shield to steady it as a sustained beam of blue crashes into it, forcing us back slightly.
The soldier who was shooting it finds himself quickly vaporized by my own gun.
I stand, dropping the hydra weapon- as it is attached to the corpse of the first guy I killed via some sort of battery cable- and raise my pistol as I move up.
Some poor saps who apparently aren't important enough to be clad in solid metal armor and be given a laser rifle escapes the bunker, clutched within one of the men's hands are two large potato masher grenades. "HEIL HYDRAAA-"
I shoot him in the head, then crouch down, picking up one of the dead armored figures by the collar and using them like a shield.
Shrapnel pelts his body as I wince slightly, the floor rumbling from the detonated explosive, he promptly seems to take out all of his allies.
I lift the man and run forwards, using his armored body as a shield, bullets ping off his figure as I make it into the bunker
I hurl him forwards abruptly, knocking over some of the men as I reach over and tear a large gun emplacement off its tripod.
I spin forwards, pulling the trigger of the German buzzsaw, the men throughout the bunker letting out loud cries as large holes are punched through their bodies.
Steve himself quickly steps in behind me, pointing his handgun at the path leading deeper into the bunker.
I glance down, lifting a grenade from one of the fallen soldiers. I twist the cap off it and hurl it down the hallway.
I share a look with Mr America and wait briefly...
The bunker shudders, causing the two of us to rush into the new room, guns blazing, targeting anyone who wasn't killed by the grenade.
If we keep at this pace, the entire compound will be captured at the end of the hour!
Heyo. decided to change this to my Snippets, ah well, Dragon ball degenerate wasn't meant to be~ here, have something i've had in the back for a long while.