There was no response inside the empty mountain, so the two men followed the carved-out path deeper in. Before long, a tiny wooden cabin came into Logan's view.
The dim light inside pushed back the darkness. Hank carefully set his new invention down on a flat stretch of ground, then turned and took a few steps toward the door, about to push it open.
"What are you two doing here?"
A ghostly voice suddenly drifted down from high above inside the mountain. Neither of them had expected someone to be over their heads. Completely unprepared, both men jumped in fright.
"Fenris?!"
Logan gave a violent start and, burdened by the heavy radiation suit, struggled to tilt his head up. A slightly transparent figure was floating in midair, holding a thick book in its hands.
"How the hell did you get up there?"
Logan's eyes instantly went wide. "No, wait. Since when could you fly?"
"Can't fly yet... hold on."
With a pen clenched between his teeth, Fenris scribbled rapidly into the notebook in his hands. A moment later, he nodded in satisfaction, snapped it shut, and then slowly floated down in front of their disbelieving faces.
"You..."
"What the hell is this?"
Hank was even more dumbfounded.
"This is a new ability I've just learned. What you're seeing right now is my soul form."
Fenris drifted lightly through both of them, though the notebook in his hand slipped and dropped to the floor.
"Still rough around the edges. Sorry about that."
He bent down, picked up the notebook, and grinned.
"Soul form?"
"There really are souls in this world?"
Hank stared blankly, feeling like all the science he had studied for decades had just stopped existing.
"You're looking right at one, aren't you?"
Fenris slowly floated back into the cabin and tossed the notebook onto the table.
By now, dozens of notebooks had been stacked neatly inside the room. They were all the results of his nonstop studying during this stretch of time.
"If that's your soul form, then where's your body?"
Logan followed him in a moment later, reached out, and passed a hand straight through Fenris. Still unwilling to believe it, he waved his hand back and forth a few times before finally giving up.
"Over there."
Fenris pointed to the other side of the room.
When the two turned to look, they saw a cocoon over four feet tall resting quietly in the area with the densest radiation.
Brilliant, multicolored streams of light were drifting off it in thin strands, making it look strangely beautiful.
A finely crafted black sphere hovered silently beside the cocoon, faint golden light shining from it and outlining a barely visible energy shield.
The scene should have been impossible to miss. It was only because they had been so shocked earlier that they had overlooked it entirely.
"Give me a second. I'll be right there."
Seeing that both of them clearly had a long list of questions, Fenris simply waved a hand. His figure flashed, then vanished straight into the radiant cocoon.
"Oh, that feels good."
The moment the soul spell was released, Fenris felt an indescribable comfort surge out from every cell in his body. After enduring this period of intense exposure, both his physical abilities and the sharpness of his five senses had risen by far more than a single level.
Most importantly, after suffering through all that, the burning pain in his throat had finally returned to normal.
That constant feeling of needing to be careful every time he spoke to someone, afraid he might accidentally blast them with a mouthful of searing heat, was finally gone.
With just a brief inward focus, Fenris could sense a burning power rising from deep within his body, traveling up through him as if it wanted to burst out of his mouth.
He knew exactly what it was.
But to avoid accidentally destroying this place, he forced that stream of heat back down.
Taking a moment to glance at Mothra's progress in the Titan Encyclopedia, he saw that while the speed was a little slow, it was still moving steadily forward. Only then did he nod in satisfaction.
"A good meal is worth the wait. No problem."
Fenris was in no hurry. He suddenly tensed his whole body and burst straight out of the cocoon, his figure moving like a phantom as he appeared soundlessly in front of Logan and Hank.
The two men only felt their vision blur before a wide, toothy grin abruptly filled their sight.
"Fenris, you're faster than before."
By now Logan was used to Fenris appearing out of nowhere, so he deadpanned the comment without even changing expression.
"There's something weird about the way you said that..."
Fenris gave him a strange look.
"Can you tell me how you just did that?"
"In what form does a soul body exist?"
"And why, if you clearly don't have a physical body, were you still able to interact with a material object like that book?"
Hank's face was overflowing with curiosity now. He grabbed Fenris by the shoulders and shook him hard, desperate for an answer.
"It's magic. I only learned it recently."
"Magic?"
"So magic really does exist in this world..."
Hank parted his lips blankly. "Can I learn magic?"
"You probably can."
Fenris looked Hank over, taking in his current state of being covered head to toe in blue fur, and sounded a little uncertain. "But I can't teach you. If you want to learn magic, you'd probably have to put everything down and go somewhere very far away to study."
"Including your research... and aren't you about to become Secretary of Mutant Affairs?"
"That..."
Fenris's words immediately made Hank hesitate.
"Why are you looking at me?" Logan snapped when Fenris turned to him, his brows shooting up.
"What magic? Is it sharper than my claws?"
"That's so you, Logan."
Fenris turned his head aside helplessly.
"Now that we've delivered the thing, we're heading back."
Hank sighed. He looked like he had just taken some kind of mental blow, and his whole expression had gone hollow.
He pointed to the huge machine by the door, the one standing over seven feet tall, and suddenly seemed to have lost all enthusiasm. "That's what you wanted. It's simple to operate. Just mess around with it sometime and you'll figure it out."
"I'm leaving too."
Logan gave a slight nod. "The kids at the school miss you. Come out and see them when you've got time. Don't spend all your time hiding inside that cocoon."
Before long, the two of them gradually disappeared from Fenris's sight.
Logan's words made him pause for a second. When he came back to himself, he turned to look at the big thing they had just delivered.
"So this is the first-gen model?"
Mounted on a massive base was a doorframe-like device over seven feet tall, and the whole thing looked surprisingly refined.
"Doesn't seem all that bad..."
Just as Fenris reached toward the power switch, a sudden sensation flashed through his mind.
"The reactor chamber at Alkali Base?"
His brows tightened.
After Fenris had left, the military had gone there once, but of course, they found nothing.
Because the reactor chamber nearly a hundred and sixty feet underground had suffered a radiation meltdown, Alkali Base was destined to become a deserted wasteland sooner or later. By now, the place had long since been designated a restricted zone.
Thanks to his recent studies, Fenris had learned how to use dimensional portal magic at a basic level, so he would occasionally go there and stay for a while.
But now, one of the small warning spells he had left there had been triggered.
"Who would be going there at a time like this?"
Fenris slipped on the Sling Ring and forced himself to picture the base in his mind. In the next instant, a bright dimensional portal opened before him.
The moment he stepped into the reactor chamber, his ear twitched, and he caught two low voices talking outside.
"This place has been abandoned forever. Why'd the colonel suddenly send us back here with a team?"
"Said we're attacking some mutant school in a few days. That lizard guy who escaped from this base last time is in that school, and the colonel wants his physical data collected so they can come up with a targeted battle plan."
"Tell everyone to move faster. This place is way too dangerous."
(End of Chapter)
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