As I soared through the vast silence of deep space, I tapped my wrist communicator, pinging Angstrom's frequency.
"I'm ready," I said, my voice carrying clearly through the comm-chip in my ear. "I'm heading back to Earth now. Your portals still require you to be in the exact corresponding physical location across dimensions to pull me through, right?"
"Not anymore," Angstrom's voice crackled back with a hint of smugness. "The Maulers made some universal pinpoint adjustments to my hardware. Stay exactly where you are."
A second later, a massive, swirling green portal ripped open in the vacuum of space directly in front of me. My surprise came and went in an instant as I surged forward, crossing the dimensional threshold and stepping out of the cold void into a massive, blindingly sterile biomechanical lab.
The portal snapped shut behind me.
"Welcome," Angstrom greeted, standing near a sleek control console.
"Yea," I responded, barely acknowledging him, my eyes instantly scanning the room.
Working at various stations around the massive lab were the Technicians. They were deeply unsettling to look at—a hyper-efficient, grotesque blend of pale organic matter and cold machinery. They moved with absolute synchronicity, their mechanical limbs whirring silently as they operated.
"Greetings, Mark Grayson—Invincible," one of the Technicians said, approaching us. It spoke normally, but its voice was entirely metallic and synthetic, completely devoid of any inflection or soul.
"Hello," I replied, playing the role of a polite diplomat.
They look like a mixture of Pinhead and one of the Godhand from Berserk, I noted internally. Them moving almost in sync is also rather interesting.
"Look who finally decided to show up," a deep, gruff voice rumbled from the back of the lab.
I turned and saw the Mauler Twins stepping out of the shadows. My eyebrows raised slightly. They had received some massive upgrades: dark cybernetic plating grafted seamlessly over their torsos and arms, and glowing neural-link nodes embedded directly into their temples.
One of the Maulers scoffed, glaring at the Technician standing near me. "Stay back, you soulless drone. We'll handle the biological briefing."
The Technician didn't react, simply turning and walking away with mechanical indifference. The tension in the room was palpable. The Maulers clearly viewed the Technicians as uninspired, mindless husks, while the Technicians undoubtedly viewed the Maulers as inefficient and emotional.
"The Technicians manufactured the Dyson-Sphere Nanites," one Mauler explained, crossing his heavy cybernetic arms. "But just like your last upgrades, we had to modify some things so that your Smart Atoms don't categorize them as hostile foreign entities and wipe them out."
"Will it hurt like last time?" I asked.
The other Mauler gave me a grim smirk. "Big time."
I shrugged. "Well, as they say, no pressure, no diamonds," I said flatly, removing my classic suit top. "Let's get this show on the road."
I carefully unlatched the Solar Charger from my chest, setting it on a nearby tray, and hopped up onto the heavy, metallic operating table in the center of the room.
A Technician hovered over me in a tailor-made hazmat suit, extending a long, horrifyingly precise mechanical appendage tipped with a thick needle.
"Commencing integration," the Technician droned.
The needle plunged directly into my chest cavity, piercing the bone, right before a second appendage simultaneously drove a needle directly into the base of my spine.
Almost instantly, my body reacted with violent hostility.
"Gahhhhhh!" I let out as my smart atoms went into overdrive, desperately trying to burn the microscopic invaders out of my system. My internal body temperature skyrocketed. My veins bulged against my pale skin, glowing a violent, radioactive violet.
The heat radiating from my body was catastrophic. The thick metallic table beneath me literally began to glow red-hot, the metal groaning and softening as it began to melt under the sheer thermal output of my failing containment.
I gripped the edges of the melting table, my fingers leaving deep, molten grooves in the steel. I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw cracked, fighting the blinding urge to thrash out and destroy the entire laboratory in a burning rage.
"Integrate them quickly!" Angstrom yelled, taking a step back from the intense heat. "The temperature is rising too quickly."
"The nanites are locking in! Give it a second!" one of the Maulers shouted over the roaring sound of my boiling blood.
And then... it stopped.
The violent violet glow in my veins flickered and slowly subsided beneath my skin. The blinding heat radiating from my body rapidly cooled.
I gasped for air, ripping my hands free from the melted metal of the table and sitting up. I looked down at my heaving chest.
The constant, uncomfortable internal burning was completely gone.
I closed my eyes. In its place was a deep, rhythmic thrumming deep within my core. It felt like a massive, perfectly contained engine idling inside my chest. The nanites had successfully formed the microscopic lattice.
It's like I've got a second layer of thicker skin, I thought, clenching my fist, feeling even more solid.
"Incredible," Angstrom breathed, looking at the thermal readings on a monitor. "The radiation is completely trapped. It's converting into pure kinetic storage."
"Told you he'd hold up," a Mauler grunted.
I hopped off the ruined table, grabbing the Solar Charger and reattaching it to my chest beneath my Invincible suit top.
I looked at Angstrom, my eyes sharp. "I think it's time we test this."
Angstrom nodded, opening a portal, revealing a breathtaking, surreal cosmic landscape.
I stepped through, Angstrom following close behind, a space helmet forming on him.
We were standing on a floating platform in the middle of some kind of seemingly artificial solar system. Time felt instantly different here—heavier, yet somehow more fluid. Looking up into the cosmic sky, I could clearly see exactly twelve massive, distinct planets orbiting around a central sun.
"I discovered this anomaly while scouting," Angstrom explained, looking out at the expanse. "It's an abandoned system. From what I can gather, it was assembled eons ago by a long-dead race specifically for testing the biological limits of different species."
"Like a zoo?!" I questioned disbelievingly.
"Perhaps," he replied. "It's something many species across multiple dimensions partake in."
He pointed to the closest planet, a dark, bruised-looking sphere. "Planet One: a barren metallic wasteland with fluctuating gravity fields at different regional points. All at a baseline of five hundred times Earth's norm."
He shifted his finger to the next. "Planet Two: a world of endless heat with some regions ravaged by incinerating magma storms. Planet Three: a jagged ice-world locked at or near absolute zero. And they only get more extreme from there."
The way he's talking about them, you'd think they'd be a simple walk in the park, I thought.
"Do these planets have food?" I asked.
"Some have wildlife that have adapted to the environments of the planet," he replied. "But a word of caution, they're much tougher than what you might find elsewhere."
I nodded, then asked one final question. "What's the time dilation like?"
"Similar to the Flaxan dimension, but not quite at the extreme levels," Angstrom replied. "One Earth day equals exactly one and a half years in this realm."
I did the math instantly in my head.
"Then leave me here," I said, staring at the first planet. "And come get me in exactly two Earth days. With everyone on Earth still thinking I'm hunting my clones, this is a great opportunity to get familiarized with my new upgrades before the approaching Viltrumite War."
"Alright, see you then," he replied, with one final nod.
He stepped backward through the portal, the green tear in reality sealing shut behind him, leaving me completely alone in the cosmos.
I didn't waste a second. I launched myself straight down like a bullet toward Planet One.
The moment I breached the planet's atmosphere, its gravity hit me. It didn't just pull me; it slammed down on me like a physical, crushing wall. It drove me straight out of the sky, sending me crashing down into the dense, metallic dirt.
I landed hard, forced into a deep, straining squat.
Jesus, I grunted internally, feeling my muscles screaming under the intense pressure. I conquered four hundred times gravity in the Mauler's simulation room, but this extra hundred is a very noticeable leap.
I slowly forced myself to stand up. Then, I closed my eyes and focused inward. I pushed my Smart Atoms, intentionally triggering a miniature Solar Flare, attempting to see what would happen to the excess thermal radiation that would usually leak from my body.
The nanites reacted instantly. They captured the radiation the millisecond it was produced, converting it into pure kinetic energy. I felt the energy flood my muscles, acting like a pressurized hydraulic system beneath my skin.
The crushing weight of the 500x gravity suddenly felt manageable. I opened my eyes, a fierce, glowing violet hue bleeding into my irises. Then, I pulled my right fist back, funneling the stored kinetic energy down my arm, and punched the metallic dirt beneath my feet.
I released a massive, invisible shockwave.
The air visibly distorted around my fist from the sheer concussive force.
It's like one of those air ripple effects you see in cartoons, I thought. It's crazy how completely unseen it is. It's gonna catch a lot of people off guard.
The shockwave ripped through the planet's crust in a fraction of a second. It shook the ground beneath me, creating deep fissures.
Hmm, not bad for a first attempt, I thought, standing amidst the cracks, completely unburned.
The Solar Charger hummed on my chest, recouping the energy I had just expended.
I looked up at the sky, eyeing the remaining eleven planets orbiting in the heavens above. A dangerous, predatory smile stretched across my face.
Time to go to work.
For the next three years, I turned the abandoned solar system into my own personal training ground.
Planet Two had endless heat, humidity, and was ravaged by incinerating magma storms. Literal hellfire. Instead of being burned alive in some regions, the nanites in my bloodstream held off the extreme environmental heat, while my Smart Atoms absorbed and adapted to the extreme thermal temperatures.
Planet Three was the complete opposite: an ice-world with no chance of warmth anywhere. I had to learn how to constantly vibrate my kinetic energy on a cellular level just to keep my blood from freezing solid in some regions.
The middle planets were a rapid-fire sequence of localized hells. There were worlds with oceans of corrosive acid and atmospheres choked with toxic gas. There were worlds where it rained hail the size of SUVs—which made for great reflexive training—and there were even worlds where water would evaporate quickly during the day and freeze solid at night.
That long-dead race of sadists that brought these worlds together were genuinely psychotic, I noted.
But on a positive note, my biology was mutating and adapting very well. On a different planet plagued by continent-sized firestorms, my body was forced to adapt to the suffocating heat. My Smart Atoms learned to rapidly compress and cool the air in my lungs before exhaling, violently stealing the thermal energy from the environment. And just like that, I developed Ice Breath.
On the ninth planet, a world bathed in pitch-black darkness, I was forced to rely on more than just my senses. I learned to project the energy stored within me, creating an ambient, glowing aura of light around my body that pierced through the void.
By the end of my second year, I had reached the twelfth and final planet. I had pushed my body to its peak. The world-shattering kinetic shockwaves that once took intense focus were now second nature. I could unleash them consecutively without breaking a single sweat. My control was flawless. Furthermore, I discovered I could funnel raw energy through my palms, which differed from when I superheated my hands to burn someone. Now, I'd fire off devastating, concussive energy blasts at will.
I used them effectively when I went hunting for some wildlife for food. I went up against this creature that looked like a mix of giraffe and pterodactyl. It was a really freaky creature—still ate it though, but still freaky. The blasts took a noticeable chunk out of my reserves, but the sheer destructive output was more than worth the cost.
For my third and final year, I left the planets behind and aimed for the center of the system: the sun. It wasn't a normal star; it was a terrifying combination of different stellar cores, burning with unimaginable, blinding intensity.
In my mind, since a regular sun, as well as other types of suns I've been in contact with supercharged me a great deal, an artificial sun of this caliber was sure to power me up even more.
Boy was I right.
So, I flew directly into its corona, letting it supercharge my atoms. The massive, overwhelming influx of energy pushed my biology further. And with it, I felt a burning, agonizing pressure building behind my eyes until, with a primal yell, I unleashed a concentrated beam of pure thermal energy.
When the beam faded, I understood what I had just gained. Heat vision, I realized, panting.
It was incredibly difficult to control and depleted my reserves almost instantly due to the massive energy expenditure. So, I spent my final months hovering near the sun—steadily adapting to the feeling of it, and storing its radiation into my atoms—and relentlessly trained to tame the beams and manage the output.
I got it down to a level where I could expend just enough to not get overwhelmed by the power, but there was still more work to be done.
I was in the middle of another session when a green tear in reality finally ripped open, and a floating platform appeared from where I had first arrived.
Angstrom stepped through the portal, wearing his space helmet. He looked around, searching for me, and when he did, he saw me descending from the artificial sun, landing silently on the platform before him. My classic blue-and-yellow suit was tattered and reduced to rags from the extreme elements. My hair and facial hair had grown noticeably longer over the last three years. And yet, the aura I projected was the exact opposite of my ragged appearance: deadly calm and ready.
I looked at him, my eyes glowing with a faint, residual violet hue.
"Oh, are three years up already?" I asked flatly, my voice echoing in his comms. "Then, what are we waiting for? Let's go home then, yea?"