[Today's release count 2/3]
___
Ivan's heart finished repairing itself in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.
Keep going! Full power!
He kept pushing his heart between broken and healed. Thanks to the insane effect of his adaptive talent, the organ grew stronger with every cycle. Each boost was tiny, but the sheer number of times it happened added up fast.
Before long, the fusion progress on his panel hit 99%.
The desire mirror appeared behind him automatically. Too bad it only lasted three seconds before Ivan crushed its head in one palm.
This level of mirror was pathetic.
Compared to the first two, it was nothing. The gluttony one at least fed his hunger to get stronger. The self-healing one had been a heavyweight, nearly dragging him under with that raw fear of death.
But Heart Engine? It had almost nothing to do with him. He didn't crave speed that badly.
Otherwise, back in the Boys universe, he would've gone for A-Train's super speed first instead of the life-saving carbon super body.
Once the fusion reached 100%, Ivan stretched out his right hand. The palm slowly liquefied and began shaping itself into a new heart.
It was a perfect 1:1 copy of his current one, but both strength and ability fell short of the original.
"Looks like the best way to get full performance is to plant it inside and let it grow for a while."
As Ivan turned, the half-formed heart on his right arm collapsed back into a mess of flesh and instantly reformed into a normal hand.
Hearts were way harder to hide than eyeballs. You could tuck an eye under the skin easy. But a heart? After compression, the space inside his body was limited. Fitting even half a heart in there would be a pain in the ass.
Suddenly, Ant-Man's shrinking ability popped into his head. With something like that, he might actually pull it off.
"Fuck. Who knows what tier Marvel is?" Ivan muttered, feeling a headache coming on. In his book, Marvel was at least four-star or higher. Unless the panel sliced open a path, he wasn't getting there anytime soon.
"Wait. I think I saw a similar ability in the Vought hero database. Some guy who shrinks too. Pretty sure his name was Termite."
"Though that prick can only shrink, not grow. Basically the castrated version of Ant-Man."
Even if he solved the space issue, figuring out how to make multiple hearts work together at full power was another problem Ivan would need to research.
Ivan Greevs' next plan was simple: plant a few miniature hearts inside his body first, then slowly modify and improve them. He'd solve the placement issue later. That way, if the main heart got wrecked, the backups could kick in right away.
...
The next day.
Ivan was in his room figuring out the best spots to tuck the extra hearts when someone started pounding on the door.
When he opened it, they told him Yoon Ji-soo had appendicitis. She needed proper treatment fast or she could die.
Lee Eun-hyuk knew some basic medicine, but he preferred leaving the real shit to professionals. So he came looking for Ivan.
"No problem. Take me to her," Ivan said.
He might not have worked as a doctor, but he understood human anatomy better than most professionals. To him, appendicitis was just a quick, minor operation.
"Get a sterile environment ready. I need anesthesia, antibiotics, the works. Also find me a surgical gown. Everything used in the operation must be properly disinfected or the wound will get infected," Ivan ordered as he entered the small room and checked Yoon Ji-soo's condition.
"We don't have those drugs in the apartment. We'll have to go to the hospital nearby," Lee Eun-hyuk said, frowning.
"Better hurry then."
Ivan slipped on a pair of gloves. At the same time, an extremely thin invisible tentacle slipped into Yoon Ji-soo's belly and moved around inside her like a living probe. It wasn't as small as a real nanobot, but it did the job.
Too bad he still didn't have X-ray vision. That would've made this even easier.
Human tissue structures were all pretty similar with only tiny differences, so it didn't take long before he located her appendix.
"We'll go find the supplies," Byeon Sang-wook, Park Yu-ri, and Cha Hyun-soo volunteered to head out together.
The rest of the group started prepping for surgery under Ivan's instructions.
They hadn't been gone long when Yoon Ji-soo's face twisted in pain.
"No time to wait for them. We're doing the surgery now," Ivan said coldly. Lee Eun-hyuk stepped up to assist him.
If Ivan hadn't already killed the muscle monster, it probably would've attacked Cha Hyun-soo's group by now, and Seo Yi-kyung would've had to ram it off a cliff with a fire truck to save them.
"Steady hands," Lee Eun-hyuk muttered in quiet admiration. Ivan's cuts were incredibly precise and his hands didn't shake at all.
The appendix was a blind tube, about six to eight centimeters long. It got infected by bacteria easily. Luckily, Yoon Ji-soo's hadn't turned into pus or started rotting yet. If it had, they would've needed a tube to drain it.
Ivan could've finished this piss-easy surgery in under ten seconds if Lee Eun-hyuk wasn't standing there watching like a hawk. He would've just sent a tentacle in, sliced the appendix clean off, and yanked it out through a one-centimeter hole.
But with an audience, he had to play it straight. He made a four-centimeter cut above the appendix, reached in, hooked it with the scalpel, and pulled the whole thing outside the body.
One quick snip at the root, stop the bleeding, disinfect. Done in one smooth motion.
"Finished," Ivan said, tossing the used cotton into the tray like it was nothing.
Truth was, even a simple operation like this gave him ideas. The useless blind tube reminded him that some parts of his own body were just taking up space. Might as well rip them out and make room for the extra hearts.
"So fast? How did the surgery go?" the people crowded outside the door asked, rushing forward the second Ivan stepped out.
"It was a huge success. Textbook perfect," Lee Eun-hyuk said from behind him.
Right then, Seo Yi-kyung pulled up in the fire truck. Not long after she returned, Cha Hyun-soo's group came back too.
When they heard the operation went smoothly, everyone let out a big sigh of relief.
Back in his room, Ivan was performing surgery on himself. After cutting out a few extra useless tubes, he now had three miniature hearts planted inside his body.
Unfortunately, they were only hooked up to blood vessels for now and couldn't actually function like real hearts.
"Would be nice if I could get my hands on some freak with multiple hearts to study," Ivan muttered. "Would save me a shitload of trial and error."
___
[]~(￣▽￣)~*
Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69