Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 462 MANHWA MANIA

CHAPTER 462 MANHWA MANIA

The other Weston made a move for the door that led out of the Comic Hall. I was still recovering from what I had just been through in Marvel world. His words still processing in my mind I raised my hands saying, “Woah there, calm down. Let me hear some backstory before we go in there guns blazing.”

“They fucking killed her!” Other Weston yelled as he whirled away from the door. “Fucking Monarchs, man! I totally forgot this shit or it was way off canon. I have no idea. But they took Hancock over.”

“Okay, calm it, buddy. Count to ten, or whatever,” I said, raising my hands in a calming gesture, which only made him begin pacing in the room again. The red lights in the Comic Hall shined off his clothes. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans. Probably something he had been wearing in the last world, it almost looked comical on his small body. Our bodies were mirror images of one another, we looked about 12 years old as we always did in the Halls. 

“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. The version of me that stayed in the Manhwa Hall was exuding distress and despair. We had split our System granted powers a little over a year ago during our five year break from challenges. 

He had kept Hancock Boa as his summon. Our wife and the mother of our kids from the One Piece world. We had been able to choose her among all the other women from the Manga Hall we had a relationship with. Though we hadn’t loved her the most, she had been one of the many women with the most fighting experience and willingness to kill. Able to help us in our Challenges, she became our Companion during our otherworldly adventures. 

And though Hancock hadn’t known what she was signing up for, she had been excited about our task of jumping between worlds. Whatever she and other Weston had gone through must have been bad enough that anyone was at risk of being killed. I needed to know more though, the trick was getting him to calm down. 

“Start at the beginning,” I said with a tired sigh. He wasn’t listening though. I decided to be the first to explain to give him time. Her death or whatever the hell that happened probably only happened a few minutes ago. “After you and I split I went to a couple…” I looked in the direction of the Smut halls. “Fun rooms. A knockoff hero world and another interesting sex one.” I thought back to the college girls and Hancock there in the Domination World. 

That reminded of the last time I had seen her. Back in Marvel a few days ago I had seen the future version of Hancock. Though I had too much going on to get to know her, all the feelings I had for her had come rushing back. “Damn, didn’t realize how much I missed her,” I whispered. 

Weston was looking at me, his Haki slowly calming down as I continued, “that door is Invincible.” I pointed to the 5 o’clock door. “I got sucked away to another planet. Did some weird portal jumping shit. Oh right and I became part Viltrumite.”

“Viltrumite?” Weston asked, perking up. “Like you’re Invincible?”

“Oh no,” I said. “No, I did this quest to beat that Anissa Viltrumite. Do you remember her?”

“No,” he said. “It’s been like a decade since we read the comic.”

“You’d remember her if you saw her. Black hair. Amazing rack,” I said, laughing. “Anyway, I beat her and they gave me a Viltrumite form.”

“Like you can transform into a Viltrumite. Like that ass in that one Challenge? When he turned into one of those blue aliens from…shit I can’t remember anything.” He said, letting out a sigh. 

“Uh ya, Avatar,” I said for him. “No, it’s not like that. I think I’m like slowly getting the blood of a Viltrumite or something.” Despair was still radiating off of him. I continued to hopefully help distract him from whatever crap he had just left. “Um this is Marvel,” I pointed at the 7 o’clock door. “I got a bullshit power here to fuse stuff. Then that’s DC. I was actually an older guy there. Oh and there’s no freaking Batman.”

“No Batman?” Weston asked, actually offended. “Then who is saving Gotham?”

“His sister…and me, kind of,” I said. 

“Nice. She hot?” He asked the important question. 

“Not bad, honesty. But like really skinny,” I said truthfully. 

“Well, sounds fun,” he said with a shrug. “What about this one?” He pointed at the lone door with a green light over top. The 12 o’clock door. 

“That was Frank Miller’s, 300,” I admitted. “It was pretty quick and fun. Besides, after I noticed you closed a door and we were locked on how many we could open, I decided to close one as well.”

“Yeah, that’s annoying,” he said. “I closed Tutorial is Too Hard.”

“Oh shit,” I said, impressed. “The one where that guy picks the Hell Difficulty tutorial? The difficulty where everyone died?”

“Yah,” he tsked. “It wasn’t so hard with Observation Haki and our other skills.”

“When did the canon end?” I asked. 

“Well, it’s called the Tutorial is Too Hard for a reason,” he said. “Ended pretty much after the tutorial. We sped through it after a couple of months. Then got back to the Earth and beat this big bad boss. Kind of fun actually. There was all this drama with the weaklings from the lower difficulty floors. Hancock and I kicked their asses. Made a dictatorship over the other levels and difficulties.” He laughed happily as he wiped a tear from his eye.

“After we got high enough in the tutorial, there was this communal village and we took it over before anyone else got there. Then by the time they did, we were able to help people. Which resulted in this whole drama with the gamer people that wanted to do it on their own. That main guy from the canon especially wanted to do it on his own. He was on like the third or fourth floor by the time we were out of there. What an idiot.” 

“Hilarious. Anyone hot?” I asked. 

“Quite a few. Hancock had this whole fan club. Then she would put moves on some hot ones. And I was already sleeping with some by that point. They were trying this whole, push Hancock out of my bed thing, and thought she would get jealous. Then it turned into this great big orgy. These girls didn’t know what the hell to do.”

“Seriously? You ended up letting her sleep with chicks? I thought you were going to do this together,” I said. 

“We did in a couple of worlds,” he said, feeling a little better. “But we kind of mixed it up. I think you forget how strong the Chikyugi can be. So what if some chick goes down on her? Saves me from having to do it. And my chakra already drives them way more wild.”

The Chikyugi was basically the Sharigan for his balls. Other Weston had a special chakra element from Naruto World called Lust. Basically making his chakra force women to feel intense pleasure. This also had the added effect of making his libido bottomless, and since he and I had split we had apparently also split the libido. 

Though I didn’t have the cheat chakra skill, I had made do with the skills from the worlds I’d visited since then. 

“True, it was a pain to get good at sex without Lust Chakra,” I said with a cocky grin. 

“What?” He asked, perking up. “We aren’t bad at sex.”

“Oh yes we are,” I said, laughing. “Dude, chakra made it so you could just stick it in and they’d cum. No technique, no nothing.”

“Wh-“ he said, offended. “Shit…really?” He turned his head in confusion. “Shit. So wait, you’re good at sex now?”

“I mean, I’m better. I got this cool skill where I could sense electrical signals or whatever. Kind of figured out what women actually liked. And it got easy again.”

“Well fuck you,” he said. “I’ve got a few dozen harem members in the Manhwa hall. How many you got?”

“Uhhh…not as many,” I said with a frown. “I don’t know what it is. After Hancock, I was looking for more of a connection. And these American girls are all dramatic. Especially in Marvel,” I sighed, it was honestly probably my fault, projecting on most of them. “I don’t know. I think I’m in a funk.”

“Yeah, I get that. Hancock and I had our ups and downs. But I gotta admit I fucking-“ He groaned, remembering. “I can’t believe they killed her.”

“Who killed her?” I asked, before he could get off track again. “Monarchs? Did you piss off some kings in a world?”

“No-well yeah,” he said. “It was Solo-Leveling. You remember that Manhwa, right? Sung Jin-woo was the weakest hunter. Went through this test and became a Player where he could gain levels. Then started going to dungeons to level up and stuff. He became a necromancer class, and eventually the Shadow Monarch, super overpowered.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” I said. It was honestly probably the one manhwa that made me pick the hall back in the day. Such an amazing story, the ending sucked, but the rest of it was pretty great. 

“Well Hancock and I got to the world a few minutes before he became a Player. Past me in that world was actually friends with him. I rushed over and we were able to become Players too.”

“No fucking way,” I said, genuinely impressed. “That’s like the ultimate cheat.” Since he could fight monsters and gain crazy good stats, it was like speed running the entire Hall. 

“Exactly,” he said. “It was going great too. Lots of dungeons and leveling up. And it was kind of challenging too. Hancock and I were rocking it. We got our own class, or Job or whatever. Then that upgraded into our own Monarch class. I was the Monarch of Light, and she was the Monarch of Venom. I didn’t think it was a problem cus I thought we squeaked into Jin-woos trial just in time to become Players. Like the Architect that made the trial made a mistake and had to make us Players.”

“Right, and doesn’t the real Shadow Monarch actually take over Jinwoo or something?” I asked, trying to remember the story. 

“I don’t fucking know anymore, man. The real thing and Manhwa is too jumbled in my head,” Weston said. 

“I get that,” I said. It was hard to remember what canon was once you got new memories and were immersed in the story. 

“Anyway, apparently we were not the only Players. The Architect set the dungeon to awaken Players around the world around the same time. There were another 30 potential Monarchs. Only 21 of us made it to the Awakening. We just got done with the part where the Monarchs take us over.” He shook his head. Becoming depressed again. 

“Oookay,” I said. “So why is that bad?”

“Because the Monarchs are the gods of that world. The whole Player aspect was set up to make our bodies stronger to become their vessels. When we were strong enough, the gods took everyone over.”

“Everyone as in…”

“Everyone, including Hancock. The Monarchs wiped out everything about them. The only two that made it through their memory purge were Jin-woo and I. The only reason Jinwoo didn’t get his mind erased was because the Shadow Monarch was done fighting.”

“And why did you not get overwritten by Agent Smith?”

“Smith?” He asked. “Oh the Matrix?” I nodded. “That’s a good analogy. Yeah it’s basically that.” He shook his head, still pissed off. “The only reason I made it was because of my Identity Theft Resistance Bonus.”

“The what?” I asked. 

“Identity theft resistance. We got it at the end of Naruto when that guy tried to take us over.”

“Oh right and we thought it would only be useful if we ran into Captain Ginyu.”

“That one,” he said. “Definitely a better bonus than we realized. That fight for dominance was hard. I doubt I would have made it without it.”

“They are gods,” I said. “Guess you got lucky.”

“Sure as shit don’t feel like it,” he said. “I was worried about Hancock after I retook control of my body. Summoned her and she was someone new. She was fucking strong too. She and I were neck and neck in levels and when I killed my Monarch I was pretty weakened.”

“Sure,” I said. 

“What? I was.”

“Sounds like you got our ass kicked by a girl.”

“Dude, I’m not in the mood,” he said anger flaring in him. “I tried everything, but there is no Hancock in there anymore. And those other 19 Monarch dicks kicked our asses. It’s pretty much an end of the world scenario in that world. I have no idea what to do and I really needed a break.”

Putting his head in his hands I could see he was upset. Not only losing Hancock but it seemed he just escaped a near death experience. Problem was, I had no idea what to do. If I went to a new Hall, I would lose a lot of my strength. I now had a Challenger slot for my Viltrumite Form, but who knew how much strength that would alot me, or if I would need 100% in my Form to even use the full strength in a new Hall. 

“So what the fuck do you need me for?” I asked. 

“Dude, I have no fucking idea. I was hoping since you went to the Comic world that maybe you got some psychic powers and could maybe help me pull the real Hancock out,” he said.

“Damn, no, turns out other versions of ourselves aren’t smart enough for psychic crap either,” I said. 

“Well, what can you do?” He asked, as if this was somehow my fault.

“Fuck you,” I said. “What the hell can you do? You’ve been in Manhwa for the last year. Talk about cheat skills, man. You should have been able to beat one world and flown through the others.” 

“I know, I know,” he said. “We were trying to get through Solo-Leveling and then do that. I didn’t expect this shit as we neared the end of the canon. Besides, you know Manhwa sucks at mixing it up. Everything they have is either, heroes, demon kings, or necromancers. I was severely limited on variety of skills.” 

“Yeah, I don’t think I noticed that while reading manhwa,” I admitted. “But you’re not wrong. I have some cool abilities, but nothing psychic. My Observation Haki is on point, but that’s about the best I got.”

“Alright, well either way, I need your help. I think you can swoop in and help me get out of a bind. From there we can-” 

“Hold up,” I said, raising my hand. “We have no idea what happens if I try to go to another world. Especially a new hall. Which, by the way, I didn’t stay in long enough to get World Lasting Physique. Oh that reminds me, you haven’t found a Challenger Slot for that yet have you?” He shook his head. “So you’re weak here. We need to…” I looked around the room we were in. “I think we should clear a world.”

“What?” He asked. 

“Let’s clear a world. We can do some testing. Catch each other up about what we have been up to, go through with the canon,” I said with a nod. 

“How would that even work?” He asked. “Would there be two of us in the same door to Memory Meld?” 

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “Let’s go in one of these doors and find out. We still have two doors we can open in this Hall,” I said, checking our Door Screen. “By the way, why do you have an extra door available in Manhwa?”

“Oh, we got an extra one when we opened all the smut doors in Manhwa,” he said.

“Fuck me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You and Hancock really did figure out your own system.”

“Yeah, and there were actually a few fun worlds,” he said. “So yeah, if you need an extra door, just open all of the side doors in a room.” He looked around the room again. “What are you thinking? Have you opened any others in this room?”

“No,” I admitted. “DC is as far as I’ve gotten on that side, so I’m guessing the Boys is next to it,” I said. “We could try for a super power, or…” I pointed to the 1 o’clock door next to 300. “Maybe we could open one of these, and try to clear the canon together.”

“Dude, I was hoping to get back to Hancock. She really-”

“Is stuck in time,” I reminded. “As long as you don’t summon her, there should be no issue.” My mind froze for a moment. “There’s an idea.” I said with a nod. “We could go to Marvel, then summon her and have Xavier dig into-shit, nevermind,” I said, frowning. 

“What?” He asked, actually liking the idea. 

“Marvel is in a weird spot. I’m kind of adrift in outer space right now. I’d need some time to get to X, but the System or whatever has me on some weird canonball run.”

“You’re in a race?”

“No, the System has me earning a new role in the world or something. Ever heard of a Galactic Hero?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve messed with roles at all in Manhwa.” Looking around he slowly nodded. “Fine, you’re right. We probably each have our own tips and tricks. I could probably use a little time away from Manhwa anyway. Pretty sure I forgot what it felt like to be weak, and might have been steamrolling a lot of people.”

“Like who?” I asked, smiling wide. This was the kind of drama I liked.

“Besides Tutorial is Too Hard? In Second Life Ranker I kind of flew through their tutorial too. Then beat the shit out of the Horn tribe twins, and I think started a war between some Ranker guilds,” he said. “I got really strong between the other worlds and it got on easy mode. Hancock and I got a little trigger happy, and I think I seduced some Ranker’s daughter enough to make her backstab him, then there was this all woman guild that Hancock took over…and well yeah it’s uh been a year.” 

“And I’m looking forward to hearing all about it,” I laughed. “Come on.” I walked over to the 1 o’clock door, next to 300. “Let’s go in a nice and relaxing world, and we can catch up. Maybe we will get lucky and we can finish the canon in a few weeks.”

“Fine,” He said. “Just a few weeks, alright? I don’t want Hancock to be gone too long.” I opened my mouth. “I know she is frozen or whatever, but still. I love her.”

“Good,” I said, about to pat his back, but then remembered that touching him might make us fuse back together. I thought better of it and opened the door instead. Stepping inside, I was looking forward to seeing what he could do.