Not quite understanding who exactly was addressing me, I tried to turn my head in the right direction.
"Who... who is that... Teacher?"
The figure of an old man appeared before my eyes. A peaceful, smiling face, the eternal black turtleneck — very comfortable, by the way. And hands folded behind a slightly hunched back. It was definitely him...
"If you had more strength, you would have defeated him."
"Yes, something like that." — sensing a strange buzzing in my head, I nodded. "Have you... Teacher, have you already killed Asura?"
"Not yet — he is very strong, and I am too old to fight for long." — Bang's face grew serious, and he cast a quick glance behind himself. "Quickly, Garou, we have little time — get up!" — he extended his right hand to me. "For the sake of victory, I will show you a technique from my special method. Accept strength from me and together we will defeat this monster!"
"...?!!!" — my open palm, already almost reaching Bang's, froze halfway. The click in my head that followed those last words was too loud and clear to ignore. My lips curved into a crooked smile. "An old man who admits weakness before me and offers an instant mastery of a special technique? Even without long and grueling training? Poor attempt, whoever you are. You should have prepared better..."
"Tch." — "Bang's" face changed in an instant. Now it was a faceless something, covered with countless overlapping spiral patterns. "Fool..."
A moment later, the being before me simply vanished. Without a doubt, this was God. Not the Biblical one, and not one of the Japanese ones either. Simply a mysterious entity of incredible power, imprisoned somewhere beyond the bounds of this dimension. According to canon, it had been responsible for the emergence of a certain number of abnormally dangerous monsters, granting its power to those who agreed to accept it and turning them into its puppets, or even apostles. Its influence on the ordinary world was supposedly constantly opposed by the number one hero. But if God had appeared to me, it meant Blast had looked away somewhere... well, none of that mattered for now. Thinking about opposing an omnipotent entity like that was well beyond my current level of strength. The fact that I hadn't lost myself in that encounter was already something...
With these thoughts, I opened my eyes again.
Lying by the familiar white wall, I was able to observe my teacher dealing with the monster that had previously struck me down. By now Asura Kabuto was already in his full berserk form — which was most likely why an alarm was blaring in the room. His skin had turned purple, his body had grown in size, his horn had lengthened extraordinarily, and the aura surrounding the monster had been amplified to roughly the same degree. For me, his transition into this form had ended in swift defeat. Which, in general, was completely unsurprising. Asura was extremely powerful even by Dragon-level standards.
That was precisely why I hadn't marched in here alone in proud isolation, but had called the old man for backup. Who, unlike me, could — not easily exactly, but without going all-out either — oppose the rhinoceros beetle and dominate throughout the entire battle. By the time I had gathered my strength and finally gotten to my feet, the fight between the hero and the monster was nearly over. Asura struggled for a while longer, of course, but before long his reserves of inner resilience were exhausted. And, torn and pierced through in several places by fists, he collapsed onto the floor of the trial room. Maintaining his vigilance, Bang also crushed his head — before finally turning to me as I slowly walked in his direction.
"Oh, young man, had I known these old bones would face such a trial, I would have spent more time warming up."
"Yeah, monsters like that deserve some respect." — looking down at the corpse of the monster at my feet, I gave a brief grunt. "By the way, I'm apparently fine, thanks for asking."
"Of course you're fine. I managed to pull you out of trouble at the very last moment. Seems you were only caught by the shockwave." — smirking in return, the old man picked up his turtleneck — clearly removed earlier — from the ground and quickly pulled it over his monstrously muscular body. "Now that this is settled..."
Our heads turned simultaneously toward the doorway through which we had entered. There, by the open gates, stood a considerably disheveled green-haired man in glasses — mouth wide open and eyes bulging.
Doctor Genus — Asura's creator, who had been carried along by the monster at his first appearance.
"Y-you... y-y-you... y-y-y-y-you..."
Having begun to stutter as we approached, the man couldn't manage to get out a single coherent word.
"S-Class hero, Silver Fang." — stopping, my teacher introduced himself calmly. "I presume you're the one responsible for the chaos going on here? So then — will you come to the police station on your own, or will you resist?"
"R-r-resist?..." — repeating the old man's words in a lost voice, the scientist began slowly sinking to the floor. "Years of research, experiments — and for what? Ordinary people easily defeated the final form of artificial evolution... ahhh, to hell with it all, and artificial evolution along with it. It seems I was the only one who needed to change..."
"Now now, there's no need to despair like this." — Bang patted him on the shoulder. "You're still young. When you get out of prison, you can take up something worthwhile and repay your debt to society."
"Young?" — a somewhat unhinged smile appeared on the kneeling man's face. "But I'm far older than you are..."
"Hm? Really?" — leaning down, Silver Fang looked carefully at Genus's face, then at me. "Is he delirious?"
"No, I don't think so." — shaking my head, I thoughtfully chewed my lip. "Listen, Teacher, I understand this is all a little off-protocol and all that, but..."
"Speak, young man. What are you thinking?" — Bang raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Should we really hand him over to the police?" — meeting his attentive gaze, I nodded in the prisoner's direction. "You rightly said that for the very fact of creating such creatures, he should repay his debt to society. But on the other hand, all these monsters were never mindlessly released onto city streets. Even that first one — the mantis — it was as if it was simply waiting for a hero to come fight it. Not demolishing buildings, not killing people, nothing of the sort... of course, we clearly don't have an innocent lamb here — that's quite obvious. But since the only known victims of his actions so far are me and your back, perhaps..."
"Handing him over to the Association is something I won't allow." — frowning thoughtfully, Bang shook his head. "There are many truly good people there, but also those whose motives and actions give me very serious doubts. Getting their hands on someone like him — who knows... if we don't hand him to the police either, there's only one option." — having evidently made up his mind, the old man looked me in the eyes again. "You, Garou, could be the one to oversee his conduct and ensure that his debt to society is being constantly repaid. If you're ready to take on that responsibility, and if he himself has no objections, I won't object either."
Having settled on that, Bang questioned our — now my — prisoner about whether any more monsters remained in the facility, received a negative answer, said his farewells to me, and set off back to his dojo. I, remaining alone with Genus, waited a little longer for him to recover somewhat from the shock, then dumped a bucket of water on him — literally — and crouched down in front of him.
"So then, dear villain — let's get acquainted. My name is Garou." — pausing briefly, I placed my hand on his shoulder. "And so there are no misunderstandings, let's get one thing clear right away." — my palm tightened slightly, sending cold sweat streaming down the scientist's face. "You are my subordinate. And I'm the king and God around here. Understood?"
"Y-yes..."
From the moment of that panicked nod, the entire House of Evolution passed under my direct command. The eight-story building above ground, the laboratory and testing range below, all the data from the experiments and trials on breeding new species, the test subjects themselves in all their various forms — and of course the most important asset of all: Genus's incredible scientific mind.
At first, the scientist remained in a constant state resembling a trance, reacting to external stimuli sluggishly and with a kind of uncertainty. However, by the day I finally finished taking inventory of everything I had obtained through the raid, he had more or less returned to his usual state.
Naturally, what followed was an attempt to break free from my supervision — and when that didn't work, he fell into apathy, lamenting that the purpose of his life was lost. This didn't last particularly long, however. Having roughed him up slightly... a couple of times... and reminding him that the world didn't begin and end with artificial evolution, I brought the doctor back to his senses and restored him to working condition. Now Genus had a new goal — to find out where the limits of baseline humanity lay: the humanity he had previously, so carelessly and hastily, written off. From this point forward, the scientist obeyed me not only out of fear of being beaten again, but because he had genuinely come to want to see what heights I would reach. Work began in earnest.
To begin with, we relocated the laboratory and all the other underground facilities to a new location. There was no need to dig anything out for this. Several dozen giant moles, bred specifically for the purpose, handled the task with surprising speed.
We also changed the "sign" — that is, the name. Genus came up with something elaborate, full of references to the works of great scientists of the past and entirely unsonorous. I didn't even bother memorizing it, and simply called the place the laboratory, the complex, or — half-jokingly — my personal dojo.
Full-scale self-cloning was something the scientist had to abandon. And since all the already-created doubles had been killed by Asura Kabuto at the very start of Bang's and my raid, the problem dissolved on its own. For handling operational tasks, it was decided to create a certain number of mutants — this time no stronger than Tiger level and stripped of independent will. Only once, on my own initiative, did I permit my protégé to break this rule and bring an already near-complete Demon-level monster to its final form — while also modifying it to remove the bloodlust inherent to all monsters. Before long, every interaction with the resulting creature made me feel as awkward as it was possible to feel. But that was a story for another time...
After restoring and overhauling the former House of Evolution's methods of operation, Genus — now existing in strictly a single copy — had to devise ways to make me stronger. While naturally remaining human.
The first useful idea came fairly quickly. Since I had grown stronger during the battle with Asura, the solution was simply to repeat that experience and find out whether it would work again. But since I had forbidden him from breeding monsters that powerful and so obviously uncontrollable, the scientist had to put his brain to serious use and dedicate himself entirely to the project we gave the short name: "Simulation"...