Chapter 321: Exclusive Skill — I'll Treat Myself!
Ethan stared at the exclusive skill in complete confusion.
Exclusive Skill: [I'll Treat Myself!]
What did that even mean?
What kind of skill was this?
Did skills get any weirder than this?
But once he'd actually finished reading it through, Ethan had to admit — annoying as it was, this thing was genuinely powerful. And somehow, it was perfectly suited to them.
Note: them. Not him. This skill wasn't for Ethan at all — it belonged to his Family.
Exclusive Skill [I'll Treat Myself!]: Usable only by the Host's Family members. Using this skill, a Family member can "invite" a version of themselves to take over their own body — at random, either from a different parallel universe, or from a future point along a different timeline. Effect duration: 2.5 hours. Cooldown: 30 days.
Ethan's first reaction: this was insanely strong.
His second reaction: this was a nightmare.
Functionally, it worked like a possession skill — like calling down a god to inhabit your own body — except the "god" in question could only ever be some other version of yourself, pulled out of a different era or a different reality.
Used right, it was terrifying. Any time one of his Family ran into an enemy they couldn't beat, they could just... call in themselves.
In the right hands, this thing was flat-out busted. Take Thor. If he ran into Thanos right now and the invocation happened to land on Rune King Thor — or the version of him carrying the full weight of Odin's own power — Thanos would get stomped without even trying.
Rune King Thor: the version of Thor who sacrificed his own eyes to Yggdrasil and received the World Tree's runic wisdom in return — able to perceive every microscopic detail in the universe, and see macro-structures wider than the universe itself. Basically the strongest version of Thor in existence.
Of course, for some of his Family, the skill barely mattered. Caine, for instance. Or John Wick. Neither of them had some absurdly overpowered alternate self floating around out there waiting to be summoned.
So on paper, not much upside for guys like that.
Except — wait. Ethan suddenly had a thought. Maybe it wasn't useless after all. If the skill really could reach across realities, and wasn't locked to just the Marvel side of things, then maybe Caine really could pull in the genuine Ip Man. Or "Iceman."
The actor behind Caine had, after all, played a pretty heavyweight role under that title — and hey, the name practically had "hero" baked right into it, which fit the Marvel universe just fine.
Even John Wick's own actor had once played John Constantine. If the skill could actually reach that far, things were about to get very funny.
And if it really could cross that many realities... maybe it could pull someone in from the entire DC universe.
As for why Ethan called it a nightmare — the core problem was that the invocation was completely random. Take Wanda as an example.
If she happened to invoke the version of herself from Avengers 4 — the one who tore through the Darkhold without hesitation just to track down her missing kids — she'd be functionally unstoppable. That version of Wanda could solo Kamar-Taj and the Illuminati on her own.
But if instead she pulled the version of Wanda who already had her kids and had settled into a quiet, ordinary life — a version who couldn't beat anybody — the whole invocation would be a complete waste.
In the middle of a fight, that could get someone killed. Summoning a version of yourself weaker than you already are is basically volunteering to die.
Ethan figured that unless it was truly necessary, this skill was better left alone. Who knew what you might pull — some zombified Deadpool, a Dark Doctor Strange type — and there was no telling whether his Family could actually keep something like that under control once it showed up.
Then again, there was also a chance of pulling in this world's own future Family members — which could mean learning firsthand what this universe's future actually looked like.
All told, the skill was an ocean of possibility. But every inch of that ocean would need real testing to map out.
The one thing that genuinely stung: he couldn't use it on himself. Ethan would have loved to try invoking his own future self — if only to find out whether that version of him had ever made it back to his original world.
Still, Ethan was starting to notice a pattern in how the System had been behaving lately. Leveling up didn't move the needle much for him personally anymore. More and more, its whole purpose seemed to be lifting up his Family instead.
Part of that was simple enough: Ethan himself didn't need the boost the way he used to. Setting aside true multiversal-tier existences — things like the Living Tribunal, or Death herself — there wasn't much left that he couldn't already handle.
Compare that to the rest of Hell's Kitchen. Outside of Ethan, nobody had cracked past cosmic-tier — Thor being the benchmark there. The biggest jumps his Family had made were things like Kingpin going from peak-human all the way up to a cosmic-tier existence.
But "ordinary cosmic-tier" wasn't much to brag about. If Caine, or Uncle Fisk, went up against the Black Order — or a slightly stronger Thor — they might not even win. Forget about Captain Marvel, who Ethan himself had already put down.
Captain Marvel could steamroll every superhero on Earth except Ethan. Unfortunately for her, she ran into Ethan, and got written off early.
Ethan knew the real problem here too. Hell's Kitchen might look like Earth's strongest faction right now, but if he weren't around, it genuinely wouldn't be a match for Thanos.
Worse, there were still Eternals hiding somewhere on Earth. Ethan had already clashed with one of them directly. They hadn't come looking for trouble yet — but there was no telling when that might change.
What Ethan needed most right now was time. Hell's Kitchen did have a decent bench of multiversal-tier heavy hitters — Strange, Wanda, Pietro, Tony, Thor, Vongola Primo, Banner.
Among the mutants, Jean and Iceman, along with a few members of the New Mutants, were also closing in on multiversal-tier territory.
"Heh... a long road, and a heavy load." Ethan let out a sigh.
He wondered how Loki was holding up. Honestly, a reformed Loki — assuming the personality actually improved — would count as multiversal-tier in his own right.
Forget the God of Stories, forget the Sorcerer Supreme version. Even just the movie-canon "old" Loki — the one who could conjure an illusion of the entire realm of Asgard out of thin air — wasn't anyone to sleep on.
"Here's hoping this Loki actually turns himself around in Hell's Kitchen."
Meanwhile, the very Loki Ethan had just been thinking about was currently running for his life.
"Goddammit — one at a time, cowards! There are way too many people in this stupid neighborhood!"
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