"You—you can actually save him?"
Looking at the dying Yinsen, Tony didn't even have time to doubt if the man was a fraud. He lunged forward, gripping Peter's shoulders with trembling hands. "If you save him, I'll give you as many of those suits as you want!"
Watching the frantic billionaire, Peter couldn't resist a dry joke that neither Tony nor Yinsen found particularly funny: "If you keep squeezing me like that, I might not be able to."
Tony hurriedly let go, stumbling back. Peter knelt down and pressed his palm firmly against Yinsen's blood-soaked chest.
Yinsen's vision was blurring, the edges of the world fraying into darkness. He struggled to catch Tony's hand, whispering brokenly, "Don't... feel guilty... this was my choice. My family is waiting for me... You can do so much more. Don't waste your life."
Having finished his "mentor" speech, Yinsen offered a faint, peaceful smile. He turned his eyes toward Peter. "Young man, I appreciate the sentiment, but my body... wait, what?!"
He suddenly realized his speech was becoming fluid. The icy chill of blood loss was being replaced by a surging, gentle warmth. Moreover, his scalp felt incredibly itchy, as if something was sprouting.
Wait, why did I think 'sprouting'?
In the eyes of a man with doctorates in both medicine and physics, his wounds were fatal. Yet, they were knitting together in a way that defied every law of biology.
He watched, mesmerized, as his own regrowing flesh literally squeezed the embedded bullets out of his body like seeds from a fruit.
For a moment, the devout man wondered if this masked figure was an angel sent by the Almighty.
"Done~"
It took less than a minute for the Horse Talisman to restore Yinsen to peak health. Peter clapped his hands clean and turned to Tony. "I've fulfilled my end of the bargain. Now, pay up!"
Without waiting for an answer, Peter reached out. He dismantled the Mark I armor with a few efficient wrenches and "plucked" a bewildered Tony Stark out of the metal shell like pulling a radish from the soil.
The moment Tony was out, Peter placed his hand on the suit. The long-awaited system prompt chimed in his ear:
[Detected Deep Purple Grade Sacrifice: Iron Man Armor Mark I]
[Description: The first suit built in a cave by Tony Stark and Dr. Yinsen. The origin of the MCU, possessing profound commemorative significance.]
[Sacrifice Value: 8,000 Points]
[Confirm Sacrifice?]
Hiss—!
Peter inhaled sharply. So this was the "Main Pillar of the MCU" tax? Just a commemorative item, yet it was worth 3,000 points more than the radioactive spider's remains!
He didn't hesitate. Sacrifice.
In the next second, the bulky armor vanished into thin air, leaving Tony and Yinsen staring at the empty space with dropped jaws.
"You won't be needing this anymore either, so I'll take it as a tip!" Peter noted his balance had surged to 8,700 points.
Adopting the "every little bit helps" mentality, he snatched the glasses right off Dr. Yinsen's face. While Yinsen wasn't a major Marvel hero, his proximity to Tony's origin story made his glasses worth a solid 300 points, rounding Peter's total perfectly.
Yinsen: "???"
As a man with severe myopia, Yinsen instinctively reached out to grab them back, terrified of being functionally blind. But as his hand swiped through empty air, he froze.
He realized his vision wasn't blurry. The clarity wasn't because he was "seeing the light" before death—his eyesight had been perfectly restored.
Yinsen's hand hung in mid-air. He felt like kneeling and bowing to Peter. Life saved + eyesight fixed + hair regrown (wait, hair?), and all he took was a pair of old glasses? He's a saint! I'm gonna cry!
Beside him, Tony Stark looked at the rejuvenated Yinsen—who now had a full head of hair and looked ten years younger—and his eyes turned green with envy.
Tony didn't need hair... but he still had shrapnel crawling toward his heart!
Furthermore, he was dying to ask if this masked doctor treated, uh... "performance issues." Middle age was tough; while he was doing okay with a bit of "prep work" for Pepper, he knew peers like Obadiah or Justin Hammer were struggling way more.
Why else would they attack his Playboy lifestyle so much? Pure projection!
Tony was this close to asking. But under Yinsen's curious gaze, he swallowed the words. I'm Tony 'Stank'—I mean, Stark! I have a reputation! I can't ask that in front of an audience!
Besides, he refused to believe he couldn't handle some shrapnel. With my invincible brain and world-class intellect, I'll handle the shrapnel and the "downstairs" issues myself!
As they walked out of the cave, Tony's teeth began to grind at the sight of the piles of Stark Industries weapons surrounding the camp.
He used to think they were just business, just numbers in a ledger. This trip had shown him how catastrophically wrong he was. He had already decided: the moment he got back, he was shutting down the weapons division.
Noticing Tony's suppressed rage, Peter decided to be "charitable." Leaving these weapons for local warlords would only lead to more suffering.
After using the Glider to ferry the two men to a safe distance, Peter hopped back onto the board and triggered the EMP Pulse.
As the beam tore through the caches, the desert was illuminated by a spectacular fireworks display of exploding munitions. Tony and Yinsen stood frozen. They had pegged this masked man as a "Magic User," but suddenly, he was pulling out high-tech directed energy weapons?
As Peter drifted back toward them on his surfboard, Tony couldn't contain his confusion. "How does a board that small generate that much power? Did you... Did you invent an Arc Reactor, too?"
Peter looked at him, his voice calm and cool. "It's just a little bit of magic."
Tony: "..."
Seriously? The end of science is just theology?
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