Free Web NovelChapter 3: Ch 3: Terrorist’s Resolve
The wail of ambulances and fire trucks filled the evening air, but thankfully, no real tragedy had occurred. Thanks to Spider-Gwen.
The Dunphy family inside hadn’t even realized how close they had come to disaster until a breathless, panicked Luke burst in and told them.
A large chunk of the damaged helicopter had broken off and fallen onto their roof, and the fire department had simply come to remove the debris and ensure everything was safe.
Insurance would cover the minor damage, so at least that was one less thing to worry about.
Still, the whole family was visibly shaken once they understood what had almost happened. Luke caught the scared looks on everyone’s faces.
He also chose to politely ignore the dirty looks his sisters, Haley and Alex, were shooting at the firefighters.
’Not the time, ladies,’ he thought dryly.
In those girls’ defense, the firemen were ridiculously handsome. And burly. And currently climbing around their roof with very capable arms.
Anyway...
The incident had hit Luke hard.
He couldn’t shake the gut-wrenching feeling of pure helplessness as that burning helicopter spiraled toward their house. One random weekend Spider-Man villain had nearly wiped out his entire new family.
That was the wake-up call.
He couldn’t stay powerless in this chaotic world. He never could have! He was just in denial. But not anymore.
Later that night, after a dinner that was way chattier than usual (everyone clearly trying to shake off the nerves), Luke slipped back into his room and closed the door.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his phone for a long moment.
With a deep, steadying breath, he opened the T-Stream app.
His thumb hovered over the button for a second.
Then, before he could overthink it any further, he tapped Accept.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the screen flashed white.
A sleek, almost annoyingly elegant welcome card slid into view, complete with a little confetti animation that felt wildly inappropriate for something called a Terrorist System.
[ Congratulations on accepting your 1st Quest! Welcome aboard! ]
More notifications popped up in rapid succession, each one accompanied by a cheerful ding that made him wince.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: New Recruit
Welcome to the family. Please ignore the screaming.
Dashboard page unlocked!
Shop page unlocked!
Stream unlocked!
Tools unlocked!
About page unlocked!
And just like that, the interface transformed. The grayed-out locks disappeared, replaced by vibrant icons and actual information.
Luke let out a slow breath. "Great. Things unlocked."
He had options now. Actual menus to explore. And he was absolutely going to explore them, because if he was going to do this—if he was really going to do this—he needed to understand what he’d just signed up for.
Dashboard first.
The screen loaded into a clean, minimalist layout. Dark mode by default—because of course it was. A small profile icon sat in the corner, currently just a silhouette with a question mark.
[--------------------------]
Username: Luke Dunphy
Terrorist Rank: none
Power Level: F+
Achievements: New Recruit
Terror Points: 0
Active Quest: Beginner’s Quest
[---------------------------]
[---------------------------]
[ Beginner’s Quest: Live Terror Stream ]
[Objective: Conduct a live-streamed terror operation using the Start Stream feature within any commercial or public facility.]
[ Conditions:
15+ minutes duration
5+ hostages (As a test of user’s control of the situation, just for the first quest, hostage casualties are prohibited.) ]
[ Reward: Quirk- Explosion + 50 Terror Points ]
[ Failure: In case of failure to achieve the given conditions or declination of the quest, the Terrorist System will be removed from the user’s device forever. ]
[---------------------------]
Luke squinted at the Power Level.
F+.
He’d seen enough anime to know what that meant. F was the bottom of the barrel. The plus was probably just the system being polite.
’F+ means I’m probably above your average civilian,’ he thought. ’Barely. Like, "won a fight against a particularly aggressive cat" above.’
How the system calculated that, he had no idea. Maybe it scanned his body. Maybe it just guessed. He filed the question away for later.
Below the profile sat the stream statistics section—basically a ghost town at the moment.
[---------------------------]
Latest Terror Stream Stats:
---------------------
Max Viewers: none
Total Duration: none
Total Hostages: none
Total TP earned: 0
Graphs...
[--------------------------]
The rest of the dashboard was exactly what it looked like: a standard stats page for a streaming platform. A few empty graphs, viewer tracks, etc. An average, low-effort streaming platform, judging by the design choices. No flashy graphics. No personality. Just cold, hard numbers waiting to be filled.
He moved on.
About page.
Luke leaned forward, eyes scanning the text. This was probably the first and last time an about page of a platform would require this much attention from him.
The huge block of text explained that Terror Stream was a multiversal platform that delivered real-time terror streams to viewers across worlds, universes, multiverses, and beyond.
Streamers like him were carefully selected and given the chance to earn Terror Points (TP) by completing quests. Those points could be spent in the Shop.
’Obviously...’
The most important part, though, was the freedom it emphasized: he could choose his own style, motive, and persona. The system didn’t care about morals or winning — it only cared about creating terror and giving the viewers something unforgettable.
It would also never force him or issue a quest to determine the fate of the hostages. And it also gave a warning about trying to be over smart or try a loophole. Viewers might report him and he’ll get banned from the app.
Luke stared at it for a long time.
So that was the deal. He was a performer now. A content creator for an audience of cosmic entities.
The system cared about two things: terror and entertainment.
Just like any other corporate firm, it gave a few rewards to the employees and probably made huge profits from its clients.
The shop page was next, and it was a lot!
Everything was in here.
Real money? Yes.
Information? Guides on everything from lockpicking to building a spaceship.
Tools and gadgets? Standard stuff. Non-standard stuff. Stuff that definitely violated several international treaties.
’Ooh, a Little Boy and a fat man are here too. Sorry, Japanese peeps.’
Ah! Finally, Anime powers.
’Thank you, Japanese peeps.’
Ackerman bloodline. The Hanma bloodline. Above 200 TP.
He kept scrolling.
Goku template. Saitama template. The price had so many zeros he stopped counting.
Sung Jin-Woo template. Same deal. Basically unobtainium.
Pokémon. He could buy Pokémon. A Magikarp was somehow still 80 TP, which felt like a personal insult.
Next—
Stream page.
Compared to the Shop, it was almost disappointingly normal.
A clean interface.
A big, very clickable button.
Start Stream.
Nothing much.
After that it was Terror Tools.
Luke clicked it. And paused.
"...Oh."
Okay.
That was interesting.
Very interesting.
Terror Tools turned out to be far more impressive than the bland name suggested.
The section was packed with features for information gathering, hacking, surveillance, and anti-surveillance. It looked less like a toolbox and more like the control panel of a one-man intelligence agency.
Unfortunately, almost all of it was locked.
Only the Anti-Surveillance tab was available. Everything else was grayed out, inaccessible, and covered in lock icons.
Most features required the completion of the Beginner’s Quest before they could be used. Others demanded TP to unlock and upgrade.
For now, Luke could only stare at the possibilities.
And there were a lot of possibilities.
Well, at least Anti-Surveillance worked.
This shall come in really handy to keep police away from Dunphy house.
Luke was excited. He treated the quest that the system gave him not as a gunpoint demand but as a job that he’ll get paid to finish.
After finishing exploring the application, he leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.
Fifteen minutes. Five hostages. Zero casualties.
That was the bar. The bare minimum to complete the quest and keep the system alive.
But the Shop had made one thing painfully clear: if he wanted the good stuff—the powers, the bloodlines, the Saitama template—he needed TP. And TP came from quests.
He needed a plan.
He needed a persona.
"What kind of terrorist do I wanna become..."
Luke said it out loud. Then immediately winced.
’That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d think,’ he mused, dragging a hand down his face.
But here he was. In the Marvel universe. With a terrorist system in his pocket and a family that had almost died today because he was too powerless to do anything.
Dual identity.
That was non-negotiable. He couldn’t do this as Luke Dunphy, son of Phil and Claire, brother of Haley and Alex. That guy had a future. A family. A life. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
The terrorist needed to be someone else. Someone the world couldn’t trace back to a suburban house with a slightly damaged roof.
He sat down at his study table, pulled out a notebook, and wrote at the top of a fresh page:
OPERATION: FIRST STREAM
Then he stared at the blank paper for a long time.
How?
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