Chapter 6: Bio-Electrostatic Adhesion Levels Up by 1
[Spiderman System]
[Name: Dante Arashi]
[Earth: 76]
[Strength: E+]
[Speed: E+]
[Endurance: E+]
[Agility: E++]
[Reflexes: E++]
[Intelligence: E]
[Skills: Bio-Electrostatic Adhesion: 1 (49/100). Organic Webbing: 0 (0/10). Spider-Sense: 0 (0/10). Accelerated Healing Factor: 0 (0/10). Enhanced Immunity: 0 (0/10). Superhuman Balance: 0 (0/10).]
“Great!” I shouted, clenching my fist. A sense of victory surged through my body like a pleasant jolt of electricity. “I’ve reached level one!”
My excitement flared instantly. My eyes shone like a child who had just received a brand-new toy. “Now, let’s try leveling up Superhuman Balance!”
I took my stance, then jumped in place, trying to spin in midair and land perfectly upright. For a brief moment, my shadow seemed to hover above the rooftop floor. But what happened instead—
“Whoa!”
Thud!
I crashed face-first onto the rooftop. My elbows and knees slammed against the cold, rough surface, sending a sharp sting through my body.
“Okay… total failure,” I muttered with a grimace. But I didn’t give up. I tried again. And again. And again. Sometimes I fell in such ridiculous ways that if anyone had been watching, they would probably have laughed until they cried. After several more tumbles, I finally managed to spin and land in a perfect stance.
“Ha! I did it!” I said with a small laugh, brushing a bit of dust off my shirt.
Then I raised the difficulty.
I stuck myself to the wall, trying to stand straight up as if I were walking on the floor. My calves tensed, and the center of gravity in my body felt as though it had shifted to some strange, unnatural direction.
But my balance wavered, and I fell again. I tried once more. And again. Over and over, until at last I could stand firmly on the wall. The wind swirled around me as my perspective changed—now the sky was beside me, not above.
Next came the extreme test: jumping from one wall to another.
I clung to the right side of the building and looked toward the neighboring structure, about five meters away. A distance that normally wouldn’t be far at all… but at this height, five meters felt like a bottomless chasm.
“Come on, Dante… you can do this,” I whispered softly. My hands clenched tight, and I held my breath for a moment.
I bent my knees, then leaped.
My body shot through the air. In a split second, countless worst-case scenarios flashed through my mind—then my palm landed perfectly on the opposite wall.
The strange pulling force of this ability immediately drew me in and locked me in place. I laughed in relief, exhaling as if I had just escaped a tiny brush with death, then jumped back to the first building.
And so it continued—jumping, sticking, balancing my body—over and over again until time slipped past without me noticing. With every leap, my muscles grew more accustomed to the movement, more refined.
By the time I stopped, the sun was already high in the sky, and my stomach had begun to growl. I had been concentrating so hard that I had completely ignored one of my body’s built-in warning systems.
“Ugh… looks like it’s already lunchtime,” I muttered, wiping the sweat from my neck. “Right… I didn’t even have breakfast this morning…”
I made my way down the building in a light descent, sliding smoothly along the wall before landing on the ground without a sound. The soles of my feet touched the earth as lightly as a professional athlete’s.
Then I started walking, searching for something good to eat. After all, today was still a day off. I would only start working as a security guard at Stark Industries on Monday—three days from now.
My thoughts drifted to warm food—ramen with rich, savory broth, or maybe a massive burger with melted cheese oozing in my mouth. My stomach grew louder, as if protesting that I needed to refuel immediately.
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After a few minutes of walking along the busy sidewalk, I arrived at a small café on the corner of the street. Neon lights from the surrounding shops reflected off the slightly wet asphalt, as if the city itself had just finished crying in a light rain.
The café looked simple from the outside. Its signboard was made of old wood, the lettering slightly faded, yet it was precisely that plainness that made the place feel warm. The gentle aroma of freshly roasted coffee wrapped around the air like a pair of welcoming hands, greeting anyone who stepped inside.
A small bell above the door chimed softly as I entered, marking my arrival. The sound was like a quiet word of welcome, subtle yet clear enough to make a few customers glance up for a moment before returning their attention to their laptops or their cups of coffee.
The room was bathed in dim, yellow light, creating a soothing atmosphere. Several abstract paintings hung on the brick walls, lending the place a simple but distinctive artistic touch. A faint sweetness from freshly baked pastries drifted through the air, mingling with the dominant scent of robusta coffee.
I took a seat by the window—a wooden chair with a thin cushion that had gone a little flat, but still comfortable enough for sitting for a long time.
From that window, I could see the traffic that never truly stopped; cars passed one after another, and pedestrians hurried along, their jackets occasionally fluttering in the city wind.
I opened the slightly worn menu, its corners stained with coffee, as if it had already borne witness to countless customers’ stories before me.
My gaze immediately went to the price list on the right. Ah, numbers. The eternal enemy of the lower working class. After a few seconds of thinking—more accurately, rearranging my personal survival strategy—I finally ordered the cheapest food and the cheapest drink on the menu. The taste did not matter. As long as it could fill my stomach without draining my wallet, that alone was already a luxury for now.
Why was I like this? When I was about to start working at Stark Industries—the largest technology company in the world.
Just mentioning the name made people look on in awe, imagining advanced skyscrapers, super-intelligent technology, and Tony Stark, always glamorous in the public eye.
I should have been able to indulge a little, shouldn’t I? Show the world that I was part of all that.
But the truth was… I was not yet sure whether I would really last long there.
After all, the reason I had been accepted as a security guard at Stark Industries was not because of my skills, but because I knew someone.
Happy Hogan.
Yes, Happy Hogan—the man known in the MCU as May Parker’s boyfriend. In this world, we could be said to be fairly close. I still remembered the way Happy had patted my shoulder with that casually confident air, though it was obvious he was helping me out.
Because of that connection, Happy recommended me for a job as a security guard at Stark Industries. Not an important position, of course—I would only be guarding the parking area—but still, it was Stark Industries. Even the concrete floor of the parking lot was probably worth enough to buy a small apartment.
The problem was, that company was not a place that could be called “peaceful.” Even calling it a high-risk workplace felt like an understatement.
Everywhere in the Marvel multiverse, Stark Industries always had trouble—whether from terrorist attacks, rogue robots, or supervillains who decided that building would be their next training target. If something bad happened in the world… Stark was usually right in the middle of it.
And in this world, Earth-76, the situation was even more uncertain.
I knew that the Captain America here was not Steve Rogers. The one famous in this world was Captain Carter—a tough woman from Britain who had received the supersoldier serum.
In my hazy memories from YouTube videos, Peggy would later be found frozen in the modern era by Russia, America, and Britain before eventually retiring in London.
After that… I could not remember very clearly. My mind felt like a library with a messy catalog: the information was there, but it had to be searched for in a random way first.