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After Star-Lord's departure, that chapter could finally be considered closed.
From then on, Arthur and the others entered a race against time.
They absorbed as much alien knowledge as they could. As for what couldn't be understood on the spot, they logged it using high-grade StarkTech scanners and custom data cores, planning to dig deeper once they were back on Earth.
Over the next few days, thanks to round-the-clock effort, Tony and Banner made real breakthroughs in their research on the so-called ultra-long-range communication system.
But their ambitions went far beyond what Arthur had imagined.
They weren't just looking to establish a communication link, they wanted to develop a portable teleportation portal.
Imagine it: two people having a real-time chat across star systems, and instead of just talking, they could open a portal mid-conversation and walk straight into the same room.
It sounded like pure science fiction, even Arthur hadn't thought to aim that high, but those two were absolutely fixated on making it real.
They even drafted a working prototype plan. But one glaring problem remained.
Portable energy.
Portability meant the energy source had to be compact, but the teleportation matrix demanded enormous energy loads to remain stable. Getting those requirements to align was proving almost impossible.
Arthur didn't waste his breath pointing it out. These two might look human, but their minds worked on a completely different level.
If they had thought of it, they'd figure out how to solve it.
Meanwhile, Arthur had his own list of tasks to work on...
The first was waiting on news from Ronan. Arthur was torn between anxiety and anticipation as he thought about what might happen next.
If Ronan's group could actually kill Thanos, then everything would come to an abrupt, perfect end. Mission complete. Game over. No need to fight a war they might not win.
But somewhere deep down, a voice kept whispering that things were never that simple.
The second task, he had already put in a request to Nova Prime for a massive shipment of Kree warships.
Their purpose didn't need much explanation. Arthur's Disassembler System had been itching to feast.
And beyond that, he was also considering whether to make a pit stop at a major trading hub. There might be opportunities to pick up rare gear, alien components, or even unique enhancements.
Inside a massive storage hangar, Arthur crushed the final white crystal in his hand and let out a slow, satisfied breath.
Nova Prime had handed over six hundred Kree spacecraft, and Arthur had disassembled all of them in one go. The Disassembler System immediately began its upgrade sequence, entering a phase he couldn't predict the end of. Meanwhile, Arthur processed the immense rewards.
And they were glorious.
Aside from a flood of colorless crystals, the highlight was an elite-tier skill: Body of Domination.
Arthur wasn't sure if it was a higher evolution of his steel-like body abilities, but he could tell this one was on a whole other level.
Once activated, Body of Domination would prevent any incoming attack, no matter how strong, from interrupting his movements. Even if he took damage, his attacks would keep coming without hesitation.
In high-stakes combat, where it came down to trading blow for blow, this would be absolutely devastating.
Even better, the skill book disassembled this time had been Intermediate-level right out of the gate.
And there were dozens of them.
After studying and integrating them one by one, Arthur pushed the skill to Advanced, which unlocked something even stronger: Energy Body of Domination.
"Holy crap, Energy Body of Domination?!"
Arthur practically winced every time he saw another skill with the word "Energy" in it. For some reason, that term always made his skin crawl.
Besides that, he also gained an offensive ability.
Its name was... questionable: Dark Energy Blast.
Functionally, it let him convert his internal colorless energy into a focused dark-energy pulse that could be fired from either his palm or fingertips.
It bore a striking resemblance to ki-based energy attacks from Dragon Ball, but with a distinctly Marvel twist, powered entirely by the unique neutral energy within Arthur's body.
The moment he acquired it, it was already at Intermediate level. And once it advanced, Arthur found himself genuinely excited to see what it could become.
Since it was called Dark Energy Blast, Arthur figured there was no way it would evolve into something like Energy Dark Energy Blast at the Advanced level... If it did, he honestly wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry.
This, by the way, was exactly why he never shouted out the names of his attacks during battle. If he did, it would sound less like a devastating super move and more like he was stuck in a loop trying to say a tongue twister.
And then... Arthur's worst fears came true.
The Disassembler had gone ahead and gifted him with a full-blown tongue-twister of a skill name.
Frustrated beyond belief, Arthur renamed the two energy-based skills on the spot.
The basic Dark Energy Blast became Dark Wave.
And the upgraded Energy Dark Energy Blast? He went with Dark Super Wave.
Sure, they sounded a little over-the-top and maybe even a little cringe, but at least they didn't feel like a speech error waiting to happen. In fact, Arthur felt strangely satisfied with the change.
When even someone as creatively-challenged with names as Arthur couldn't stand the originals, you knew something had gone wrong in the design room.
But oddly enough, those skills weren't even the most important rewards he gained.
The real breakthrough was happening inside him.
The moment he crushed that final white crystal, Arthur sat down and focused inward, meditating in the way he'd learned from past system evolutions, and was shocked by what he discovered.
All the white star-like nodes of energy within his body began to shrink in an utterly bizarre and unnatural way.
The scattered white stars, his core omnipresent energy points, started collapsing inward, gathering rapidly at the center of his being. Slowly, they merged into a condensed cluster, and as they fused, a golden aura enveloped the entire mass.
What he saw next made him pause in disbelief.
The golden energy coalesced into a smooth, glowing orb, round, dense, and blindingly radiant. For a moment, Arthur genuinely wondered if he'd accidentally crossed into cultivator territory. This looked exactly like a golden core from some mystical energy path, except his was huge.
Not that he had any frame of reference for how big one of these things was supposed to be.
But before he could even process that thought fully, the sphere, his gleaming "golden core", suddenly deformed.
As if someone had smacked it with a vibranium brick, the perfect orb flattened on one side.
Then the left.
Then the right.
The bottom. The back.
Within moments, the golden sphere had morphed into a perfect cube.
Still glowing. Still very gold.
Arthur stared at it, utterly stunned.
At first, he didn't make the connection. But as he kept looking, it finally clicked, and he smacked his forehead: "Large gold crystals!"
That's exactly what it looked like.
A massive, radiant cube of golden energy, just like those high-density resource crystals he'd encountered in advanced alien tech.
The glow was overwhelming, flooding his entire system with light and warmth. The sheer density of power contained within that cube was staggering.
It wasn't just energy anymore.
His entire body had undergone a qualitative transformation.
Arthur had suspected for a while now that once his internal energy network passed a certain threshold, something big would happen.
He'd guessed the trigger point might be when he reached one thousand white stars.
But in reality, the change occurred at one thousand two hundred and ninety-six.
(End of Chapter)
PS-"For every 200 power stones, I'll release one bonus chapter (Current-08)!"