The Beginning

I don't really know how to explain this, but life can sometimes place things you are completely unprepared for directly in your path.

Of course, when you surpass these challenges, they can either destroy you or make you better. But I don't think I can ever surpass mine.

It isn't exactly something I can think of as an obstacle to defeat… well, it isn't exactly an obstacle. It's more of a cage I need to escape from soon.

In fact, to better explain my current predicament to you all, I would have to start from the very beginning.

My name is Maxwell Page, and I am your average 23-year-old. I had nothing extraordinary going on in my life.

I worked as a freelancer to put food on the table. I didn't make enough money to afford some of life's well-known luxuries, but I could get by.

I was even planning to save enough money for my eventual marriage, despite being as single as an amoeba.

Anyway, in my free time, I was one of those who either read comics or watched movies to pass the time, and recently, I had been doing it a lot.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with that. After all, many people spend several hours on social media without even realizing how much time they've wasted. But things got way out of hand when it happened.

I was sitting in my living room watching Marvel's Endgame for the nth time this year. I liked the movie, but as a fan, theories and various opinions would always form in my mind as I rewatched it over and over again.

My opinion was simple: Tony could have done better. Yes, I understand that at that particular moment, he wasn't thinking calmly.

He had a near 7-foot titan with impossible strength and stamina standing above him, so he did the first thing that came to mind.

However, he could have either de-aged them by several million years in an instant, turning them into nothingness, or he could have wiped them out of reality using the Reality Stone.

That way, you can be sure that no one could actually revive him, like they had done to the people of Earth and the universe.

Even better, he could have imprisoned Thanos and his entire army inside a pocket dimension of his own creation, where they would live out their lives in complete void.

There were many ways he could have used the gauntlet without killing himself, but I understand why he opted to snap his fingers instead.

He was in a situation similar to when you're a timid guy and you have a lanky guy with an abnormally perfect gun telling you to hand over your wallet. You'd hand it over out of desperation, but if you'd calmed down, you'd realize the guy was holding a toy replica.

Of course, my opinion was just a personal thing—something that even I didn't take that seriously. But then it happened.

A massive holographic board appeared directly in my living room, and on the board were the words:

[Do you think you can do better?]

At this moment, I was already freaking out because I knew it wasn't a prank. I was an introvert, and so were most of my friends, so we only met face-to-face when necessary.

I didn't have any hologram projectors in my apartment—in fact, I didn't even think the technology had reached this level—so almost instinctively, I knew something out of the ordinary, in fact, something extraordinary, was about to happen. But no matter how much I tried to calm down and think, I couldn't.

As a webnovel and self-insert fanfiction reader, scenes like this always lead to one thing, and I was extremely ready for it.

Looking at the question, my mind ran through a couple of necessary thoughts: "Who is behind this? Is the being behind this on my side, or just pissed about my opinion? Is this for real?"

All these questions ran through my mind at speeds I didn't even know were possible.

At the end of it all, I answered yes. After all, I was your average Otaku. I could swear that at some point, all Otaku had thought about such things.

At this moment, though, saying that I was ready wasn't really far-fetched.

As soon as I answered, the question on the holographic board changed.

[If you were ever thrown into said universe, what would you want your superpower to be?]

Okay, after reading this, everyone already knows how I felt. I was beyond excited at this point.

This was beyond what I initially hoped for. I envisioned being dropped into the universe as a powerless schmuck, but even then, I knew my way to becoming incredibly powerful.

There were many ways of doing so in the Marvel Universe, many of them difficult, but at the end of the day, I would achieve my goal.

However, despite my excitement, my once-lost common sense slowly began to surface. By agreeing to this, I would be leaving all this behind.

Normally, I didn't have any family that would miss me, and my friends would probably never even know I was gone. But even then, I had worked hard for all I had now.

Was it all really worth it? That was what I should have thought. But that thought only lasted at most a second before the long list of superpowers I had concocted for such a situation appeared in my mind.

"Grant me the ability to learn and master anything at unparalleled speeds... Make me a God of Learning," I answered as I struck an exaggerated pose.

Soon after, all I saw was black as I was taken from my world.