"So he's already getting ready to target me?"
Fenris quietly pricked up his ears from the side.
He did not think the current Tony could build anything truly capable of threatening him, but everyone knew geniuses like Tony never played by ordinary rules. One day he might actually come up with something like an Oxygen Destroyer.
Not that those things would do much. They would not hurt him in the slightest. But they would definitely be annoying.
"Keep it secret?"
On the other side, after hearing Jarvis's question, Tony rejected the idea without the slightest hesitation. "No. If it were anyone else, sure, I could keep it hidden. But Fenris... no, there's no need."
"Understood, sir."
Jarvis followed the instruction immediately, faithfully recording Tony's words. "Then would you still like to continue refining Mark II?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Not only am I going to build it, I'm going to build it better."
...
White light flared. As Tony's mansion gradually faded into the brightness, Fenris nodded in satisfaction.
The scene around him quietly began to change.
At Oscorp, inside a spacious laboratory, a tall, skinny young man was looking apologetically at the angry man in front of him.
"Peter, this is already the tenth time you've been late this month, and today is only the twelfth!"
"I do not understand. Are you really that busy? So busy you cannot even make it to class on time?"
"I'm sorry, Dr. Otto, I..."
"You're not apologizing to me. You're letting yourself down! With a girlfriend as brilliant as Gwen, why can't you study properly with her?"
"I will..."
"Next week is my magnetic confinement thermonuclear fusion experiment. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Study the papers I sent you carefully, and be there on time to help me!"
"My good friend Dr. Connors will be there too. He used to be your teacher. Don't disappoint us."
"Okay. I'll be there on time."
...
"Poor little Spider-Man."
Because of his identity as Spider-Man, Peter's normal life had already been seriously disrupted. Watching the dejected teenager get scolded into drooping silence, Fenris could not help giving him a sympathetic look.
The next moment, a strange pulling force came over him, and the scene around him changed once again.
"This ability would be perfect if it were just a little easier to control..."
As the number of observations increased, Fenris felt his head growing heavier and heavier. The mild dizziness from before was also becoming much stronger.
"Betty, all the data left in the Culver University lab has already been taken by Ross. Everything irrelevant was destroyed. I can only keep running..."
A somewhat familiar voice sounded not far from Fenris.
"Banner?"
After thinking for a second, Fenris remembered Bruce Banner, the man who had dropped out of the sky and landed on his car.
He had not expected to run into him here again.
The surroundings were an old, somewhat shabby apartment. Bruce Banner was hunched over an old computer, frantically searching for something.
A tall blonde woman sat quietly a short distance behind him, her brows tightly knit.
"Banner... actually, before those people got to the lab, I already made a backup of the files."
Betty hesitantly took out a flash drive and handed it to him. "I hope one day this can help us find an answer."
"What? That's incredible!"
Banner took the flash drive with obvious delight and tucked it into his clothes like a treasure. "With this data, I can go find Mr. Blue. With his brains added to mine, we'll definitely find a way to solve the Hulk problem."
"Banner, I really think you should try talking to my father."
Betty stood up and sat down face-to-face on Banner's lap, her warm breath brushing against him. "If we keep running like this, when are we ever going to actually be together?"
"Betty..."
Looking at the beautiful face so close to his own, Banner's breathing immediately quickened.
He wanted to kiss her, but the violent pounding of his heart in his chest made him grit his teeth and push his lovely girlfriend away instead.
"Ross only wants my cells. He only wants to turn them into a weapon. I don't have a choice."
Banner forced himself not to look at the disappointment in Betty's eyes and awkwardly changed the subject.
Sigh...
A bitter atmosphere began to spread between them. Banner hung his head and pretended to stay busy, aimlessly clicking the mouse in his hand.
Then suddenly, in an image attached to a news report about mutants, a somewhat blurry figure caught his eye, and Banner instantly straightened up.
"What is it?"
Betty noticed the change in him at once and asked.
"I think I just..."
Banner enlarged the picture several times, narrowed his eyes, and leaned close to the screen. A figure he remembered vividly suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"I think I just saw a ghost..."
"What?"
...
"Tch."
Seeing Banner make such a big fuss, Fenris rolled his eyes in disdain.
At least little Spider-Man had a smart, beautiful girlfriend like Gwen. Banner had it much worse. His girlfriend was right there beside him, and he did not even dare touch her.
"One's more miserable than the next."
After muttering that, Fenris found the world around him changing rapidly again as white light flared once more.
A golden pyramid lying dormant underground.
A colossal warship sailing through the cosmos.
A magnificent cluster of palaces beneath the starry sky...
Dazzling scenes flashed before his eyes one after another. Countless figures appeared in those visions, only to vanish again almost instantly.
In just a few breaths, it felt as if endless streams of information were pouring into his mind. The pressure Fenris was enduring kept rising, and intense pain spread from his head through his entire body, making him collapse to the ground uncontrollably.
"Again...?"
Fenris's face twisted in pain. Seeing the next scene beginning to take shape around him, he slammed a fist against his own head, but still forced his eyes open, unwilling to miss even a single image.
"Roar!"
Before the white light in front of him had fully faded, an earth-shaking roar reached his ears first.
"This is..."
Fenris looked around in confusion. Unlike the previous observer's perspective, this time he seemed to be the central figure in the event itself.
After scanning his surroundings, Fenris realized he was high in the sky. Dark clouds churned all around him, and faintly, within the thick cloud cover, he could see two figures wrapped in lightning.
Below him stretched a blackened land. It looked as though it had just been through a brutal war. The ground was scarred with pits and craters, and churned earth covered everything.
Looking down from the sky, he saw a bottomless trench that had nearly split the land in two.
(End of Chapter)
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