At seven-thirty in the morning,
the old grandfather clock in the Kent house gave a dull, heavy chime.
Master Ian, who had pulled an all-nighter, was still full of energy. He came downstairs chewing on what he'd taken off the window and repurposed into a chew toy, wearing a T-shirt printed with the initials for "super-sized."
Batman's gadgets really were something else. With just a little tinkering, the tool that had locked down an entire window had turned into a long, portable rod.
"Smells good."
The scent of sizzling bacon drifted out from the kitchen.
Jonathan Kent was busy cooking.
"Where are Mom and Dad?"
Ian stuck his head around and looked everywhere.
"Thanks to Batman's little field trip into Metropolis, neither of them came home last night. They just kept calling me and telling me to keep an eye on you. They called over twenty times this morning alone."
"What exactly did you do this time?" Jonathan flipped the bacon in the pan, then leaned out of the kitchen just in time to see Ian pulling things out of his pants.
"I generated a whole new round of GDP growth for Metropolis. You're welcome."
Ian tossed aside the soft pad he'd pulled out of the back of his pants, then pulled another one out from the front of his shirt.
Unused protective gear belonged on the floor.
"No idea what that means, but it sounds impressive." Jonathan came out and plated up a sandwich for Ian. Whenever the adults weren't around, he was usually the one in charge of taking care of his two younger brothers.
Ian grabbed the newspaper off the table. The headline screamed:
Shocking! Gotham's Superhero Turns Into a Street Wanderer, Appears in Metropolis to Rescue Fallen Women!
That reminded Ian of something.
Beep beep beep.
He took out his phone and hit redial.
The call connected.
He immediately spoke in the warmest tone possible.
"Good morning, sir. Are you awake? If you're not, you can go right back to sleep. I just wanted to offer you my most sincere greetings for the day."
Ian still hadn't given up on the idea of getting a Lantern ring out of Batman.
Beep beep beep.
The call was cut.
The other side didn't say a word.
Ian didn't mind. Gotham weirdos were just naturally reserved and emotionally restrained. As long as he'd gotten today's emotional check-in done, that was enough.
Next,
came his greeting to his godfather.
And then the most important thing of all: his prayer to Miss Death.
He was very polite. He only contacted Miss Death before meals, just to avoid being mistaken for a clingy loser.
After his round of devout muttering, Ian got no response for once.
Just as he was about to assume Miss Death hadn't fully woken up yet, he opened his eyes and found a woman seated directly across from him.
Miss Death sat there in a black camisole, posture straight, slender fingers tapping softly against the table. Sunlight passed through her body, leaving behind only the faintest shadow on the floor.
"This doesn't feel right. Could you appear again from the beginning?"
Ian rubbed his eyes in disbelief, glanced around at all the ordinary colors in the room, then toward Jonathan working in the kitchen.
Miss Death stared at the boy in front of her.
"I don't stop time every time I appear."
The way she said it sounded reasonable.
So Ian believed her.
"Fair enough. I just thought if Jonathan saw you, he'd probably assume I got lured in by some dangerous woman last night."
Ian lowered his head shyly.
"??????"
Miss Death's mouth twitched.
"He can't see me."
The goddess rolled her eyes so hard it was almost graceful.
At that moment, Jonathan leaned out from the kitchen.
"What are you muttering about?"
Naturally, he had heard Ian's constant murmuring. It didn't even take super-hearing to catch that much.
"But he can still see you talking to yourself like a lunatic."
Miss Death added that with a smile full of malicious amusement, as though she were looking forward to seeing Ian embarrass himself.
However,
"Nothing much. Just talking to my imaginary friend."
Ian still remembered his father's warning. Jonathan and Jordan were too old. They couldn't handle the supernatural side of the world.
Hearing that,
Jonathan just nodded calmly.
"Oh, okay. Tell your friend I said hi too."
His warmhearted older brother didn't look disturbed at all. If anything, he looked like he'd finally solved a small mystery.
Then he turned and went back to the stove.
"Does your entire family have some kind of psychological issue?" Miss Death looked genuinely taken aback as she watched Ian grin and take a sip of milk.
"This is what a stable household reputation looks like."
Ian sounded weirdly proud of himself.
...
Miss Death clearly wanted to ask what, exactly, he thought there was to be proud of. In the end, though, she held back and got to the point.
"I managed to extract a small amount of useful information from that massive flood of nonsense you call prayer."
She narrowed her eyes at Ian.
"You're saying that if the survival space of the multiverse keeps shrinking, higher beings will be downgraded, ordinary souls will overlap, and eventually the universe itself will collapse into ruins?"
That was her summary of what Ian had been babbling at her.
"Yep. Exactly."
Ian nodded.
"Mm. Interesting theory. So tell me, all this information that even I hadn't considered... your mighty super-brain whispered it to you while you were asleep?"
Miss Death raised a brow.
"Not whispered in my ear. It was under my skull."
Ian corrected her wording, then nodded again.
That answer made Miss Death rub at her temple.
"Honestly, I'm starting to regret why I bothered to fill myself with so much humanity not long ago."
The goddess took a deep breath, looking like she'd just swallowed a whole cactus.
"You do not have a super-brain. You weird little menace. I'll verify what you've told me. And until then, I'd appreciate it if you stopped bothering me three times a day!"
As soon as she finished,
Miss Death snatched the sandwich right off Ian's plate.
Then she vanished.
She didn't even leave him a single piece of lettuce.
"Looks like what she meant was that I should contact her at least four times a day instead."
Ian couldn't save his breakfast, so he grabbed Jordan's portion instead.
People who got up late needed to accept the consequences.
He had already reported everything he needed to report. Whether the powers above cared enough to act was no longer the concern of a mere Independent NPC.
Thump thump thump.
Sometimes,
Jordan was exactly that vulnerable to being mentioned.
Speak of Jordan, and Jordan appeared.
He came down the stairs rubbing his eyes, and Jonathan came back out of the kitchen with fried eggs and potatoes for both of his brothers.
"Why do you look so worn out?" Jonathan asked, concerned. The dark circles under Jordan's eyes made him think of a raccoon.
"It's nothing. I just didn't sleep well."
Jordan hesitated, then looked at the sandwich in Ian's hand and then at his own empty plate.
He felt no particular emotional reaction.
Food thief.
Same as always.
Jordan watched Jonathan head back into the kitchen, then turned to Ian. After a little hesitation, he lowered his voice.
"Ian, something weird happened to me again last night."
He kept glancing toward the kitchen, clearly not wanting Jonathan to hear.
"What weird thing?"
Ian was busy devouring the sandwich.
"Last night, after I left your room... my eyes hurt. Really bad. And in the middle of the night, I think I saw Batman in Mom and Dad's room, doing... something."
Jordan's tone was uncertain.
"Maybe it was a hallucination. I mean, that's probably what this is. I keep having weird flashes. My browser's already started recommending caskets."
"They're all insanely expensive."
He sounded even more desperate than he had the night before.
Unfortunately,
"What the hell!?"
Ian once again found himself deeply impressed by his second brother.
"You never left your room? You didn't see anyone else? Just Batman?"
He tested him carefully.
So Jordan had awakened X-ray vision too, huh?
Maybe after going back to his room, he'd just kept up his self-discipline.
Even while convinced he had some fatal illness, he still had the energy for that?
"Yeah. I never left my room. That's why I figured it had to be a hallucination. I only got a few blurry flashes."
Jordan rubbed at his eyelids, trying hard to recall it.
"You're unbelievable. You really are the true Superman of Metropolis."
Ian gave his brother a wholehearted thumbs-up. Being able to awaken one power after another like this really was a special kind of talent.
"Don't mess with me. I honestly feel like I don't have much time left."
Jordan sighed deeply.
Right now, he was mostly worried that if he died, Ian really would test whether he could resurrect.
"I'm betting you live. And not just live, but live comfortably. Maybe you should talk to Mom or Dad about this."
Ian gave him a very pointed suggestion.
"Maybe."
It wasn't clear whether Jordan had actually taken it in.
"I'm full. I'm heading out for school."
Ian glanced at the time, set down his utensils, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and then casually stuffed the napkin into his backpack.
"Today's Saturday. What school are you going to?"
Jordan looked up, baffled.
"As long as you carry school in your heart, any time can be school time."
Ian pulled out one of his reserve excuses.
He actually had other things to do outside.
Avoiding his parents for a while was only secondary. Cashing the check and taking Mr. White out to buy chemical supplies were the real reasons, and those were not secrets he could share.
"Do I at least get to tell you that's... impressive?" Jordan looked worried as he watched Ian sling his heavy backpack over his shoulders and leave the house.
After only a few bites,
"Pff! Pff! Pff!"
A sound came from the kitchen.
"That's not protein powder!"
Jonathan's voice sounded alarmed.
Jordan hurried over and found Jonathan staring suspiciously at a cup full of white liquid.
"What happened?"
Jordan first looked at Jonathan's protein powder tub, which was now full again, then walked over to the trash can.
He solved the case almost immediately.
"It's the fake sweetener Ian always dumps into his coffee milk tea."
He pulled dozens of empty packets out of the trash.
The two brothers stared at each other.
"He probably forgot to buy your real protein powder yesterday."
Jordan also found some cash tucked underneath the protein powder container and handed it over with a strange look on his face.
What could Jonathan even say?
Emotionally and morally,
he could only forgive his youngest brother.
"It's fine. Sweetener is sweetener. Ian probably just wanted me to dirty-bulk."
Sure enough, the power of money worked wonders. Jonathan clutched the two hundred dollars and instantly became the embodiment of understanding.
"Then drink it."
Jordan pointed at the cup in Jonathan's hand.
"I will. Just... not right now."
Jonathan was obviously barely holding it together, but he still insisted on acting tough.
Jordan no longer had the strength to tease him. He grabbed a bottle of ketchup and went back out to the dining room.
Then he noticed the chew toy Ian had left behind.
"What is this?"
He saw the bat emblem on it, and his pupils shrank instantly.
"So I wasn't hallucinating?"
Maybe his real super-brain was finally beginning to awaken.
The news about Batman being in Metropolis.
The scene he had glimpsed.
Mom's frantic, furious mood last night.
Everything suddenly clicked into place.
Jordan sucked in a sharp breath.
"Mom and Batman..."
He didn't dare keep going.
If he did, he'd end up feeling sorry for his father.
No.
Wait.
Was that really their father?
Or...
No.
No, he couldn't think about it anymore.
Jordan felt like one more thought would make his brain explode. He hurriedly dropped Ian's bat chew toy into the trash and pretended nothing had happened.
Of course,
if that horrifying suspicion was true, then maybe he actually could still survive this.
And it would also explain why Jonathan, Ian, and even he himself all seemed a little... off.
They shouldn't be in Metropolis.
They belonged in Gotham.
They'd be normal there.
"What is wrong with you?" Jonathan came back out carrying his own plate and saw his second brother trembling all over. He was growing more convinced that Jordan really was physically unwell today.
"Nothing!"
Jordan bolted.
He rushed back upstairs to his bedroom.
He stared at the box holding his private treasure and tried to forget the impossible reality he had just pieced together.
He might not get along perfectly with Clark, but that didn't mean there wasn't real father-son affection there.
Memories flashed through his mind one after another.
And just as Jordan was trying to escape reality,
Ring ring ring.
His phone started ringing.
Jordan's fingers shook like electrically stimulated frog legs because the caller ID clearly said Mom.
For one terrible moment, he really wanted to throw the phone out the window.
"Hello?"
In the end,
reason won out over fear.
He answered.
"Your brother isn't picking up. Is Ian with you?" Lois's voice came through the line. In the background, printers at the paper were working furiously.
"He was just here a minute ago."
Jordan's voice drifted around like he really was a terminal patient.
"And now?"
Lois sounded very serious.
"He went to school."
"School? On a Saturday? What school?"
Lois sounded baffled. She even checked the date and time, just to make sure the overtime pay she was earning today hadn't somehow messed with her sense of reality.
"I asked him the same thing. But I think I get it now. He's probably trying to hide from you guys. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he dragged half his classmates out of bed to force them into class too."
To be fair, Jordan had ended up sympathizing with Ian quite a lot by accident.
He remembered that bat-shaped iron bar. Even he could figure out what it implied. As the smartest kid in the house, there was no way Ian had missed the meaning.
"What did Ian tell you? And what exactly do you think you understand now?"
Lois assumed Ian had confessed something at home, so she carefully probed for more.
"Ian didn't tell me anything. But I still gradually figured everything out on my own."
Jordan swallowed hard.
"Yes. I figured it all out... Mom, you and Dad are on your second marriage, right?"
The other end of the phone fell completely silent.
Jordan could hear his own blood pounding in his ears.
"What are you talking about?"
After a moment,
Lois spoke again, her tone unnervingly steady.
Jordan let out a breath.
He relaxed just a little.
"I... I..."
He touched his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror.
"I think I might've awakened bat vision. On TV, Batman's eyes always look red when he's out, too."
It was an extremely roundabout way of putting it.
But Lois was not stupid.
"Glug glug glug."
There was the unmistakable sound of someone drinking something on the other end.
"Put Ian on the phone!"
Lois's voice actually cracked.
Now that was what real reputation looked like.
"It has nothing to do with Ian. I figured this out by myself! I have some brains too!"
Jordan hurried to defend Ian.
And to be fair, that part was true.
"Good."
Lois sounded like she was suppressing something.
"Then stay home. I'm sending your father back to deal with you."
After calming down slightly, she'd realized Jordan might have awakened Kryptonian abilities.
That made this serious.
Lois did not dare lose her temper carelessly.
Still,
even while trying her best to stay calm, she still underestimated all of her sons.
"Uh... which dad is coming back for me?"
Jordan asked cautiously.
That single sentence nearly blew Lois up on the spot.
...
Talent wasn't everywhere.
But the Kent family clearly had a better success rate than most.
While Jordan was busy pushing the nerves of the strongest people in the house to their limit, Ian had already begun his wonderfully productive day.
Cashing the check was easy.
While minors usually couldn't cash checks at a bank alone, if the minor was the direct beneficiary of the check, some banks were still willing to process it.
Joker had thought it through very carefully.
The exchange went very smoothly.
Almost too smoothly.
"If I don't say anything, who would ever know I'm already rich?"
Ian bought a breathable pair of flesh-toned stockings on the street, held his thermos cup, and followed Mr. White's directions until he found Metropolis's black market district.
"I used to work for Lex... I knew he was developing bio-enhanced soldiers. It was because I wanted to get away from him that I ended up making that ignorant bargain with a demon..."
Mr. White sounded wistful from inside the thermos.
"It was the great Trigon!"
The demon head in Ian's backpack corrected him at once.
Ian's body really was crowded today.
"Bio-enhanced soldiers? Good. Now that's the kind of thing I like. But I need to confirm something first. That isn't just drugs, right? Kids from positive-energy households are sworn enemies of vice forever!"
Ian maintained proper caution and a morally upright heart.
"..."
Mr. White was silent for a moment.
"It's only a strengthening serum. It was meant to create super soldiers. Lex's ambitions weren't limited to military contracts."
Even now, just bringing it up made him uneasy.
"Mm-hm. Good. Very good."
Ian was satisfied.
So under Mr. White's guidance, he reached what passed for Metropolis's black market.
Really, it was just a rough stretch of street full of shops with different signs that sold illegal goods under the table while doing regular business on the side.
For example, the store hiding chemical supplies behind its front was a century-old tailor shop called Old Joey Custom Suits. A bald man in work pants was inside, doing careful stitching.
Ian used the code phrase Mr. White had given him.
"What do you want?"
The bald man gave Ian a surprised look. He clearly hadn't expected old Mr. White to stoop so low that he'd start sending minors to buy products for him.
The thought disgusted him.
Of course, what he didn't know was that the shameless bastard in question was literally inside Ian's thermos.
Because he assumed Ian was an errand boy for a trusted customer, he quickly brought him the goods.
The deal went very smoothly.
So smoothly, in fact, that Ian felt cheated.
"I'm just a kid. Shouldn't you be robbing me, then kidnapping me, then selling me off to some sweatshop?"
That was the kind of plot Ian thought was suited to him.
The bald shopkeeper just snorted.
"This is a long-term business. You think I'm short on your little bit of money? Trust. Trust is the most important thing in black market work. Stuffing you in a sack and selling you off would make me what, a few extra bucks?"
He sounded dismissive, but Ian found the logic annoyingly persuasive.
So in the end, Ian could only leave, disappointed.
His Fair Trade Mode had its own activation requirements.
And sadly, this shop had not earned the privilege.
"Where have all my favorite bad guys gone?"
Ian walked through a gloomy alley looking deeply aggrieved.
"Is this serum really worth six thousand dollars?"
Since the quantity wasn't even all that large, Ian strongly suspected that Mr. White might have still been taking kickbacks from the store even after death.
For all he knew, the store owner was now prepaid on a few blondes for Mr. White in Hell.
It was impossible to say.
"Give me a few tries and I can absolutely reconstruct the formula for that strengthening serum."
Sensing Ian's hostile gaze, Mr. White hurried to make promises.
"Why go through all that trouble?"
Ian directly dumped the ingredients together,
then drank the entire gray mixture in one swallow.
The next moment,
[Barbaric Tyrant EXP +13]
He leveled up.
His stats rose again.
[Strength: 21 → 22.1]
[Constitution: 38 → 41.5]
[Intelligence: 3.0 → 3.2]
[Spirit: 7.6 → 7.7]
Clearly,
Barbaric Tyrant focused on Constitution, while Berserker favored Strength.
Neither did much for Intelligence or Spirit, which left Ian mildly disappointed.
Of course,
[Minor Genetic Breakdown]
the new negative status he gained was a decent consolation prize.
[Berserker EXP +2]
One training session.
Double reward.
Ian was finally satisfied with the six-thousand-dollar expense.
"Too bad he didn't have more stock. Otherwise I'd be flying by tonight."
Ian looked at his newly earned class skill point and ignored all the flashy options.
He learned a new skill: Solar Gaze.
Instantly, he felt his eyes heating up.
"Golden light. Good. At least now Mom won't get the wrong idea."
He checked himself in a mirror and looked very pleased with the sense of pressure he now gave off.
Since he still wanted to level up,
he kept wandering through the area searching for other shops.
Inside the thermos, Mr. White silently sank to the bottom.
Then the demon head in the backpack suddenly spoke.
"I smell Hell."
It sniffed with its rotten nose.
"And a filthy liar."
The disgust in its tone was impossible to miss.
Ian didn't have a hellhound's nose,
but with his newly improved eyes, he had already seen the man coming from the far corner.
At the street corner,
Constantine was walking this way in an old beige trench coat, a cigarette in his mouth.
The moment their eyes met,
Ian wanted to walk around him.
But Constantine took the detour faster.
He turned immediately and sprinted away, as though if he ran a second slower, something terrible would happen to him.
He didn't even stop when one of his shoes flew off.
Ian stood there, completely dumbfounded.
"What the hell? Is he the plague, or am I the plague? I should be the one avoiding him!"
Ian was so annoyed he nearly jumped.
Human nature was contradictory like that.
Being wary of other people felt one way.
Realizing other people were wary of you felt very different.
"I think he made the correct choice."
The demon head muttered from inside the backpack.
"Shut up! I was wearing a mask! How could he still recognize me? He must've had to rush home to take a dump!"
Ian was furious.
He briefly considered stuffing the demon head's mouth with one of his socks,
but ultimately decided his feet didn't deserve that kind of mistreatment just because he was angry.
Then he heard a wail in the distance.
"No! What happened to me just now!? Why was my head so foggy that I agreed to buy this car!?"
The sound came from the direction Constantine had come from.
Ian's ears perked up at once.
The moment he realized that the voice was indeed coming from the path Constantine had taken, he knew someone had definitely been conned again.
"Damn it, why doesn't Constantine ever try scamming me? I love being scammed! Even if he only punishes human trash like himself, that doesn't mean I can't become a little trash too!"
Ian followed the voice until he reached an open lot.
There, a thickset used-car dealer was kneeling in front of a black Dodge Hellcat, wailing in despair.
He kept trying to fling the keys from his hand, but it was like they were glued to him.
Clearly,
something had latched onto him.
"What!?"
Ian immediately keyed in on the important part.
"A Hell-grade muscle car with nine soul rings! That's basically a Titled Douluo-class ride!"
His interest exploded.
He hurried over to the despairing dealer and spoke softly.
"Eight hundred dollars. I'll take it."
Hearing that,
the dealer jerked his head up like a drowning man spotting land.
Then he saw the stocking-masked boy standing in front of him, and at first he instinctively assumed he'd been confronted by some kind of escaped robber.
But once he realized Ian was just a kid, he relaxed a little.
"Kid, do you even have a license? And you're buying a car?"
He looked conflicted,
as though he were engaged in some inner struggle.
"Laughable. If I'm about to become a soul ring, why would I need a license?"
Ian thought the man's brain might be underperforming. He sincerely hoped the man would go home and drink several bottles of walnut juice.
"..."
The dealer's conscience stopped struggling immediately.
"So it's money over your life, huh? Fine. Take it!"
He yanked a thick wad of cash from his pocket and slammed it into Ian's hand along with the keys.
The instant the keys left his hand, his whole body visibly relaxed.
"You brought this on yourself. Not my fault. Not my fault."
As if repeating it enough times might convince his own heart, the dealer bolted like he was escaping a fire.
And so,
Ian was left standing alone in the empty lot,
staring at the keys and the money in his hand,
wearing a very blank expression.
"I said eight hundred. He gave me seventy-two hundred. There really are a lot of suckers in Metropolis."
Ian couldn't help sighing.
He decided he might need to raise his prices a little.
Yes.
His school pricing model was clearly not appropriate for the outside world.
Now that he had already earned back all the money he'd spent, Ian began circling the sleek American muscle car a few times.
"So cool..."
Of course, Ian wasn't interested in the car because of the soul rings.
What he cared about was that a muscle car with that many soul rings obviously had automatic driving functionality.
"Maybe even self-repair. This is literally the car of my dreams."
As his finger brushed over the hood, the Dodge Hellcat's headlights flickered in a distinctly eerie way.
"This car runs on human blood only."
The demon head's voice floated out from Ian's backpack behind him.
Very creepy.
And yes,
Ian was genuinely startled.
Because he instantly calculated the numbers in his head.
Even if he sourced blood wholesale as a direct collector, a 400 mL bag of whole blood would still cost between two and three hundred dollars.
That kind of fuel was far more expensive than oil.
"As expected. High-end cars come with high-end operating costs."
Ian couldn't help sighing.
Then his mind sparked once,
twice,
and on the third spark he came up with the perfect solution.
"I keep telling people I'm both wise and resourceful."
Ian straightened up again, pleased with himself.
"What do you mean?"
The demon head sounded puzzled.
"Human blood is expensive. A Hellcat should drink Hell blood. Free fuel is the best fuel."
That explanation only made the demon head more confused.
"What Hell blood?"
The demon was still baffled.
However,
that confusion only lasted until Ian reached into the backpack and pulled it out.
"No! Don't do this!"
As Ian twisted it like wringing out a wet rag,
the demon understood.
(End of Chapter)
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