"A bit on the short side…"
Pendragon remembered that MHX Alter's official stats perfectly duplicated Saber's. Height, one meter fifty four. Weight, forty two kilos. That old saying, "if you are under X kilos you are either flat or short," suddenly felt very on point. He had managed to hit both conditions. Truly, blessings for all.
If a girl with his current height put on this outfit, people would just think it was cosplay. But on him, there was only one word for it: breathtaking.
His face already belonged to that legendary tier that destroyed both male and female defenses on sight. He came with a built in cool aura and a mysterious buff that automatically raised his style rating.
In a dress, he was an absurdly cute beautiful girl. In menswear, with his original boyish temperament layered on top, he could only be described as an otherworldly bishounen.
Looking at the mirror, at that thin frame, that pale skin, that clean, youthful air, anyone who saw him would sincerely marvel at his beauty.
After all, this was a Saber face, not the Old Saber variant. Handsome was never going to be his lane in this life. Acting cute was his only way to survive.
Pendragon was extremely pleased with how he looked now. Men's clothes really were a thousand times more comfortable and convenient. Suspenders, stockings and short skirts were absolutely not his thing. Even if you killed him, even if you threw him out of a spaceship to die in the vacuum of space, he was never wearing a dress again.
He wondered for a moment if taking off the glasses would make him look cooler. By the time the thought finished, his hand had already taken them off his nose.
For the first time, his dark golden eyes looked at the world with nothing in the way.
Everything seemed to freeze. The flow of time slowed to a crawl. In Pendragon's vision, the dust motes floating in the air were like a still frame from a movie, suspended in place without moving at all.
"Did my eyes just get faster?"
The glasses were an auxiliary tool that allowed his enhanced optic nerves to rest. When he wore them, his eyesight actually dropped.
Pendragon had never expected that lifting the first seal would give him something this close to time stop.
Every movement felt incredibly laborious. He had to burn through huge amounts of mana just to make his actions match up with his boosted dynamic vision.
He was not used to this state at all, so he shut his eyes and put the glasses back on. Better to behave and be a quiet literature boy.
Once he had finished tidying himself up and indulged in a deep round of self admiration, Pendragon sat down to look up some information online. He needed to figure out exactly what kind of world he had landed in.
"Man, Apple is such a plague of a company. They had to have sponsored this whole show."
Back in the dramas from his original world, it had always looked like there was only one brand on the planet, Apple. Every cellphone and computer was a bitten fruit. He had wanted to rant about it for ages.
Ranting aside, though, Pendragon still reluctantly chose to boot the machine. He had never used such a high end device before and was honestly curious.
A dividing line of pure poverty.
"This thing is garbage."
After fiddling with it for ages without finding the browser, and with no idea where to download software, Pendragon simply pulled out his own quantum light brain and connected it to the local network.
Then he brute forced a certain famous domestic "Shocking Browser" onto the poor Mac and started surfing the web with it.
"Shocking! The One Who Came From The Stars Was Actually Here For Him…"
Front page headline.
What the hell, did that Korean drama "My Love from the Star" get a sequel? And did the production team spend a fortune to buy ad space from the Department of Shock News?
Pendragon despised it from the bottom of his heart, but curiosity still made him click.
"…"
Yesterday morning, an alien ship had appeared over New York City. Iron Man had confirmed with his own eyes that he was on the scene, then promptly dropped off the radar. Today, Stark Industries stock prices were already trending downward.
That was what the article actually said. It even embedded a replay from an American news channel. Pendragon stared at it blankly. The rumors really were true, everyone working at the Department of Shock News had talent.
Ignoring the clickbait title, Pendragon's first reaction on seeing the alien ship was, crap, could that thing be mine?
But the ship's design was different. In the video there was a giant ring shaped device, and next to it Tony Stark's face, zoomed in and looking tragically worried. And that was clearly the scene from Avengers 3, Infinity War.
Where was the promised two dimensional world? Even if he was not needed to save human history, he still deserved to go hang out in Fuyuki City and enjoy a peaceful life.
Pendragon had literally just rewatched Infinity War before transmigrating, so the plot was fresh in his mind. It would not be long now before that crisp snapping sound echoed across the universe.
(A parallel world aside: right after Infinity War hit theaters, the video site "Wise Station" tried to ride Marvel's hype by rerunning the MHX Alter banner. Pendragon's seven hundred seventy seven pulls included the Valentine's stash.)
"No. Absolutely not."
Pendragon's head shook like a rattle drum, his ahoge swaying along with it like a blade of grass in the wind.
One snap, equality for all, half of all life in the universe erased at random. The power of the completed Infinity Gauntlet and its six Infinity Stones was terrifying beyond reason.
Even if his own mysterious item was supposedly on par with it in terms of setting and prestige, Pendragon had no intention of gambling on that fifty percent chance.
What if the Black Bean Paste and the Infinity Gauntlet annihilated each other and he got shredded into confetti in the process?
Once that first chill of fear passed, Pendragon gradually forced himself to calm down. He stared at the computer screen with those dark golden eyes, lost in thought.
It looked like his only option was to steal Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet.
Before all six stones were assembled, facing a five stone Thanos would not be that scary. Probably.
The key was to be unexpected. First observe in secret, then wait for an opening, then find a way to hit the big boss with one decisive strike.
While his memory was still razor sharp, Pendragon carefully replayed the entire movie in his head.
No, there was something even more important he needed to confirm. Was this actually the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or was it the comic universe?
Pendragon did not read American comics. If the world ran on comic continuity, he was dead in the water.
"So, intel. I need intel."
Any time an anime got adapted into a movie, the plot changes were never minor. Sometimes even core character settings were flipped on their heads.
Take Thanos for example. In the comics he was a pretty straightforward villain. In the films they had scrubbed him clean and turned him into a tragic family planning officer, forcibly stuffing a "misunderstood hero" arc into his backstory. Pendragon had sat there in the theater, absolutely stunned.
As long as the major events in this world's hero history lined up with the movie plots, he could be sure he was in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.