Chapter 253: Six Months

"Real power is not violence. It is the ability to make the world bend to your will. Ivan, I believe you understand what I mean."

Edgar watched Homelander leave, then laced his fingers in front of his stomach and spoke quietly.

"Of course." Ivan smiled. He knew exactly what Edgar was driving at. Only power sat above raw strength. Superheroes were nothing special. In front of real power, they were tools, pieces the people in charge moved however they liked.

"Ivan, I do not care who the mystery man is or what he wants. As long as he does not clash with my plans I can live with him running around in front of me. Put another way, if he works with me I am certain it becomes a win for both of us." Edgar looked at him, the meaning sitting heavy in his voice.

"He will not refuse an invitation from you, Mr. Edgar."

...

[Laser-eye fusion in progress. Current progress: 98%]

Six months went by in a blink.

Forget the rest of it. The super physique alone took Ivan three full months to fuse.

When it finished, his body sat at three-star world level.

Ordinary weapons could not touch him. Maybe only a nuke could put him down for good. Those things hit tens of millions of degrees at the blast point.

Even Thanos would have to kneel if the Stones stayed in the pocket. With the Stones a nuke would not even be a problem.

Ivan stood in the yard, picked a cobblestone off the ground, and pinched. It crumbled in his fingers.

Truth was, he had a hard time finding anything left that could measure his strength.

Power level was even harder to pin down.

He looked at the rockery across the garden. His right eye fired a red laser and punched a clean hole through the stone.

At the same time, his left eye fired a blue beam of about the same force. Then both beams cut off. The center of his pupils filled with another color, deep and strange.

A flowing purple disc turned in the depths of his eyes, like a sea of stars sitting there.

The color was not sharp. It looked elegant, almost gentle.

Its power sat above the other two. The rockery split down the middle in an instant. Ivan caught both sliding halves with telekinesis and set them down easy.

By mutant comic rankings, he would land Beta or Gamma. Push hard and maybe Alpha. His powers had no weak spots, and he could control them at will.

That did not mean a lower-ranked mutant was weaker. Take the laser eyes that opened into a special space. In theory, they had infinite stamina. He could even feed energy to the Phoenix.

His rank might not sit at the top, but the ceiling on his abilities did not lose to any mutant.

Ivan ran through what he had. Plenty of them still had room to grow. Stormfront’s thunderstorm weather, fused with Storm’s mutant power, could maybe climb to Omega. Solar storms counted as weather too.

What he used most was the shapeshifting he took from Parasyte. It scaled with body strength. In theory, there was almost no ceiling. Fuse Superman’s steel body and he could cut a planet in half, comic Superman anyway.

The heart engines were support. They boosted his combat power a lot right now. Three months ago he tested it.

After fusing Homelander’s physique he could only open four hearts. When he tried the fifth, the blood roaring through him smashed his eardrums.

He had not forgotten his healing either. Muzan’s flesh restoration worked by rewriting his own cells, so it grew stronger with his body.

Every cell split burned a mountain of energy, though. Sometimes his stamina could not cover multiple rebirths.

Ivan thought of the healing factor inside Wolverine. Fuse the two and his own healing would climb another notch.

Once he had finished running through his powers he drove to the movie promo event. The film had already pulled in over a billion at the box office and the response worldwide was strong.

As Vought’s vice president, he had to show his face for the cameras.

Adam, the director, was talking easy to a reporter in a low-cut red dress.

"None of us saw a hit this big coming. We hit every kind of problem during the shoot. We beat every one of them."

"How did you talk Vought’s VP, Mr. Greevs, into playing the villain? He was excellent in the part, but a lot of people still hate him for it."

The reporter smiled.

"Actually Mr. Greevs asked for the role. We almost had an accident too." Adam glanced over and saw Ivan walking toward him.

"Can you tell us what happened?"

"Of course."

Adam described the close call. "My God, when I saw the wire snap over Mr. Greevs’s head my heart got squeezed in a fist. My brain went blank. I thought that was it. Vought would bury me.

Instead, he did not even get a scratch and he finished the scene. He is not a professional actor, but I have never seen anyone work that hard in my whole career."

"Hey, Adam. You look good today."

"You too, Mr. Greevs." The director stepped aside and gave him the mic.

"Mr. Greevs, we heard you fell more than ten meters and walked away unhurt. Is that true?"

The reporter shoved the microphone in his face.

"They blew it up. You know directors. They need a brain that runs a little wild or you never get a great picture." Ivan smiled.

"We also heard you wrote the script yourself, Mr. Greevs. I did not expect that kind of talent."

The reporter had taken Vought’s envelope. Ivan stayed patient with her.

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