The second-generation Super Beastification Serum reshaped the body far less violently than the first. Its transformation wasn't as brutal or instantaneous, because it required massive amounts of energy and nutrients to restructure the host.
The nutrient solution filling the cultivation tank was a formula Zod had personally mixed. The tank was also hooked up to an enormous power supply—ten miniature arc reactors.
There was no helping it. Stark Industries held the patent for large-scale cold fusion reactors. Even if Zod understood the theory, he couldn't legally build one.
Just as, in the future, even if Tony Stark learned how a micro-arc reactor worked, he wouldn't be able to manufacture one either.
Blonsky floated unconscious in the tank, looking very much like the beast-soldiers back in Kronos during their adjustment phase—except here, it was the serum itself recalibrating his body. Once the process finished, Blonsky would be the first and only Super Beast-Soldier.
Five days later, he began to stir.
Dr. Connors didn't hesitate; he immediately notified Zod. If Blonsky displayed even a hint of violent instability, Connors—an utterly unenhanced scientist—couldn't hope to survive the fallout.
Zod had barely arrived when Blonsky's eyes snapped open. He roared, shattered the tank, and his entire body erupted into rapid mutation.
Blades like steel scythes burst from his fingers.A rugged, armor-like carapace formed over his skin.Every muscle swelled with explosive power.
One glance was enough to tell—nothing about him resembled an Earth-born organism anymore.
Ferocity. Brutality. Violence incarnate.
Blonsky lunged, swinging a massive claw at Zod. Zod lifted his left hand and caught it without flinching.
"Much stronger than a standard beast-soldier. A normal one would've died from that swipe."
Zod made his assessment just as Blonsky roared again. A glow ignited at his chest, and a mass of scorching plasma condensed inside his jaws.
A plasma cannon.
This was a specialized organ Zod had designed—one of the biological weapons he'd integrated into the serum. It gathered internal energy and released it as molten plasma hot enough to melt steel in an instant.
Blonsky unleashed it like a meteor shot from a gun barrel—far faster than any ordinary person could react.
Zod caught it one-handed.
The searing heat didn't even scorch his skin. He clenched his fist, crushing the plasma into dying sparks.
"Again. Show me how many surprises you've got left."
He expanded his bio-field, shielding the surrounding environment, then taunted Blonsky openly.
Blonsky's back split open.
Six biological missiles fired out in a shrieking burst.
His modified physiology allowed him to generate liquid explosives internally, pack them into micro-shells, and launch them as guided ordnance—controlled to a degree by neural signals.
Each one was powerful enough to blow a tank into scrap. A single hit could reduce heavy armor to shards.
Zod didn't move.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
Fire swallowed the chamber.Yet everything around remained untouched beneath the protection of the bio-field.
Dr. Connors stared, eyes burning with fanatic awe.What a miracle.
When the flames cleared, he saw Zod gripping Blonsky by the throat—an unreal, almost mythic sight.
Zod hurled him against the reinforced wall. The wall remained pristine.
Blonsky's bones did not.
The impact broke him from head to toe, and in an instant, the violent frenzy faded. His awareness returned.
"What… happened?"
He stared at his monstrous form, stunned.
"Congratulations, Blonsky," Zod said calmly. "You've become a product of a new era—a super-soldier."
Super-soldier?
Blonsky felt the sheer might surging through him—just as Zod kicked a barbell toward him.
Thunk.
It struck Blonsky's foot, and pain shot up his leg.
"This bar has a built-in gravity engine. At its current setting, it weighs one ton," Zod explained. If he simply wanted mass, he could have forged an enormous weight—but at that scale, the size would be absurd. The gravity engine kept the equipment compact while raising its effective weight.
And Zod had discovered something surprising: gravity-based training accelerated his body's absorption of sunlight.
Blonsky lifted the barbell.
One ton felt like a golf ball in his grip.
Power.
As someone who worshipped raw strength, he didn't care that he now looked like a monster. This overwhelming might—this form—was a marvel of a new age.Zod Heath truly was a genius ahead of his time.
"Your muscular output is thirty times that of a normal human—and I mean muscle output, not your overall strength. Your bone density is dozens of times stronger. Your carapace can withstand a tank shell. Your neural reflexes are fast enough to track bullets—and dodge them, not that you need to…"
Zod continued listing his enhancements.
But Blonsky's mind flashed back to the scene of Zod utterly manhandling him moments earlier.
"What about you? Just how strong are you?"
Zod shrugged. "No idea. There isn't an instrument capable of measuring it."
Ever since he discovered that gravity-training accelerated his solar absorption rate, his growth had skyrocketed—like a car with no brakes.
Perhaps Marvel's sun simply wasn't the same as the one from the DC universe. More importantly, Zod had recently made a shocking discovery:
He possessed psychic power.
A gift Superman never had. Something closer to Professor X… or even Jean Grey.
Mental and psychic energy.
It left Zod unsettled. Yes, it meant he could no longer be controlled by telepaths or mental attackers—but what unknown weaknesses or consequences might come with it?
He had confirmed that this new ability came from the difference between Marvel's sun and DC's sun. He wanted desperately to examine his cells and genes, but the risk terrified him. In the Marvel universe, unexpected mutations were the number-one thing to fear.
Yet in this strange "blessing in disguise," Zod managed to develop one application of his psychic abilities:
Mind-Wave Control.
Mimicking the Beast King's method of controlling beast-soldiers, Zod embedded a fragment of his psychic essence into each one of their minds. Their own mental energy sustained it, allowing Zod to command them from any distance.
No matter the range—they would all obey him.
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