I pushed my consciousness deeper, down to the cellular level. I found the mitochondria of his cells, the power plants. They were glowing with a sickly green energy.
I stripped away the biological dampeners. I rewrote the genetic instruction that told his cells to hold the energy. I changed the command to release.
Beneath my hands, I felt his skin twitch. The heat radiating from him spiked.
Soldier Boy's eyes snapped open.
He gasped, a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. He strained against the straps, metallic chains groaning.
"What..." he choked out, his voice a distorted rasp.
The scientists outside the glass began to panic.
Alarms blared.
Red lights flashed.
"Energy spike!" one of them screamed in Russian. "Core temperature is rising! He is waking up!"
"Increase the dosage!" another shouted.
The radiation pouring off him was intense. The radiation washed over me, but it found no Compound V in my blood to burn.
He was getting hotter and hotter. I channeled my other power.
Cryokinesis (Tier 1).
I focused the entirety of my cold manipulation into my hands, pressing them harder against his burning chest.
I pulled the thermal energy out of his sternum, dropping the surface temperature of his skin to absolute zero in a nanosecond.
The reaction was catastrophic.
Inside his chest, the nuclear fire was raging at thousands of degrees. On the surface, the skin and bone froze instantly, becoming brittle as glass.
The temperature differential was impossible.
Soldier Boy screamed. It was a sound that shattered the glass of the containment pod.
The feedback loop hit critical mass. The energy tried to push out, but the frozen flesh couldn't expand.
Pressure.
Infinite pressure.
I triggered my escape.
Teleportation (Tier 1).
Snap.
I appeared on a snowy ridge, two kilometers away, overlooking the base. I was still tiny, standing on the branch of a pine tree.
I returned to full size, balancing on the thick limb and watched.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, the ground heaved.
A dome of blinding light erupted from the center of the base, expanding outward at supersonic speed.
The concrete bunker vaporized. The guard towers turned to dust. The fence, the trees, the snow… everything within a five hundred meter radius was simply erased.
The shockwave hit me a second later, a wall of wind and sound that rattled the trees, but I held my ground, my Tier 1 strength anchoring me.
A mushroom cloud, glowing with an eerie green hue, rose into the night sky.
I waited for the dust to settle. The crater was glowing, the earth fused into glass.
Teleportation.
Snap.
I materialized in the center of the crater. The heat was intense, residual radiation crackling in the air. The ground was slag.
In the center of the devastation, lying in a pool of cooling glass, was what remained of Soldier Boy.
His Tier 1 Super Defense had kept his body mostly intact, but he was undeniably dead.
His chest was cracked open like a geode where the thermal shock had occurred. His skin was gray, burned and frozen all at once. His face was frozen in a rictus of agony.
The blast had killed him from the inside out.
I walked over to the body.
I placed my hand on his shoulder.
The body vanished into system inventory.
I stood alone in the smoking crater. I focused on my form.
Shapeshifting (Tier 3).
My bones cracked and shifted. My muscles broadened. My height increased by two inches. My face reshaped itself, the jaw squaring, the nose breaking and healing, the stubble sprouting.
In seconds, standing in the crater was Soldier Boy.
I looked down at my hands. They were his hands.
I rolled my neck.
I smiled. It was the smile of a man who knew he was the only apex predator left in the jungle.
"Homelander," I said, my voice a perfect gravelly match for Jensen Ackles.
Teleportation.
Snap.
[Aryan's Perspective, The Penthouse]
"System," I said. "Show me the harvest."
The interface lit up.
[Supe Neutralized: Soldier Boy (Ben). Powers Detected: Super Strength (Tier 1), Super Defense(Tier 1), Super Stamina (Tier 1), Radiation Blasts (Tier 1), Disempowerment (Tier 1), Immortality (Tier 2), Regeneration (Tier 2), Enhanced Senses (Tier 2)]
[Choose Option: Retain or Convert?]
"Retain Radiation Blasts (Tier 1)," I ordered. "Retain Super Stamina (Tier 1), Immortality (Tier 2) and Disempowerment (Tier 1). Convert the rest."
[Processing...]
[Powers 'Super Strength (Tier 1),' 'Super Defense (Tier 1),' Regeneration (Tier 2), Enhanced Senses (Tier 2) converted to XP... +16,000 XP.]
[Duplicate Power Detected: 'Super Stamina (Tier 2)'. Converting to Experience Points...]
[Conversion Complete. You have gained 3,000 XP.]
[Powers 'Radiation Blast (Tier 1)', 'Disempowerment (Tier 1)', 'Super Stamina (Tier 1)' and 'Immortality (Tier 2)' successfully integrated.]
A surge of heat flooded my chest, radiating through my limbs. I felt my stamina expand instantly, the very concept of fatigue becoming an alien notion. And immortality... it was a subtle, grounding shift, a locking of my cells into a state of permanent perfection.
"System. Pull up the final status."
The interface refreshed, the blue text glowing with an undeniable finality.
[FINAL STATUS]
[HOST: Aryan Spencer]
[CURRENT XP: 19,100]
[POWERS:]
Telepathy (Tier 1)
Biokinesis (Tier 1)
Cryokinesis (Tier 1)
Resurrection (Tier 1)
Super Speed (Tier 1)
Teleportation (Tier 1)
Regeneration (Tier 1)
Super Stamina (Tier 1)
Super Defence (Tier 1)
Super Strength (Tier 1)
Radiation Blast (Tier 1)
Disempowerment (Tier 1)
Cloning (Tier 2)
Telekinesis (Tier 2)
Immortality (Tier 2)
Enhanced Senses (Tier 2)
Shapeshifting (Tier 3)
Size Alteration (Tier 3)
PS: Here we go, the bonus chapter is here. Come on guys, we just need 48 more Power Stones for the next one, haha.