"Remember when I said that a metahuman like you is an ideal candidate for the CIA?"
"That was five minutes ago." Gwen snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. "I may be blonde, but I don't have memory problems."
"Right." I ignored her sarcasm. "Right now, I need you to play exactly that role. The role of the perfect spy. I need you to keep a very close eye on someone for a couple of days."
I opened Morris Bench's profile on my phone and handed it to Gwen. She took the smartphone and began studying it carefully.
"Hmmm." She bit her lip thoughtfully. "He looks like a typical small-time crook who suddenly got lucky. Look at that watch, those clothes. He doesn't know how to wear expensive things. He literally flaunts them, screaming about his wealth to the whole world."
"He is a crook. A meta-crook." I paused. "Have you ever heard of Hydro-Man?"
"Yeah, in passing. A couple of days ago, jewelry literally got washed away by water at several stores in the city. The police blamed it on burst pipes, but then the news suddenly went quiet. Don't tell me..."
"That's him. Morris Bench is Hydro-Man. And what's most unpleasant is that, like Sandman, he suddenly went to ground."
"Why is that unpleasant? He'll spend what he stole and then resurface."
"Or," I looked at her meaningfully, "he got an offer he couldn't refuse. He's a lone operator who isn't tied to any major gangs. He has unique skills and a sudden need to launder large sums of money."
Gwen put two and two together and her eyes went wide.
"Exactly! Kingpin! He needs to rebuild his empire. He needs new meta-independents who aren't shy about dirty work."
"They'd be perfect candidates." I snapped my fingers.
"But then Sandman is probably with him, too."
"I'm allowing for that possibility." I nodded. I had my own separate plans for Marko. "But for now, focus on Bench. I need everything. His contacts, his meeting places, his daily routine. Photos, video, it doesn't matter. Compile the most complete dossier on him that you can."
"Okay, I'll take care of it." Gwen nodded seriously.
I exhaled with relief. Surveilling Morris Bench would kill two birds with one stone. The first, obvious objective was establishing his connection to Kingpin or another criminal authority. The second, which was far more important to me, was gathering evidence for Peter. If Gwen captured the pair together on camera, ideally in a compromising situation, then no matter how much of a doormat Peter was, he wouldn't be able to ignore it. I wouldn't let him. This would be a painful but necessary surgical intervention.
"Be careful. Bench isn't just a thief, he's a meta. And if Fisk is backing him, his security could be professional. And try not to expose your main identity. Later, I'll make you a special stealth suit."
Her eyes immediately lit up with genuine interest.
"Wow! Will it be as cool as yours?"
"Possibly even cooler." I smirked.
"Understood, Cap!" she saluted me with a smile. "For a prize like that, I'll give it a hundred and ten percent!"
After saying goodbye, Gwen left the Base. Since it wasn't night yet, she had a chance to catch Morris living his new, luxurious lifestyle. And I, once again alone, swallowed a fatigue-relief pill and realized that the time had come. It was time to do some crafting. Mystical crafting.
I went into the lab, locked the door, and turned off the main light, leaving only one small lamp that flooded the space with a thick, red light. The room instantly transformed from a scientific workshop into an alchemical sanctum. I pulled the three remaining Ghost Orchid flowers from my inventory. I wasn't ready to work with vampire blood yet, but this was the ideal mystical ingredient for a first attempt.
Carefully, I extracted pieces of pollinium containing the phantasmin I needed from each flower, and I tuned in to my sensations. They were... strange. A quiet, mental whisper emanated from the pollen, an echo of an alien, inhuman logic. I didn't just feel it; I perceived the very essence of this substance.
The task seemed simple at first glance. Based on the "essence" of the Ghost Orchid pollen, I needed to create an artifact that would give me a permanent intelligence buff. Phantasmin, by its nature, is a mystical alkaloid, a universal neural conductor. But its nature was quantum, energetic. According to Peter, standard science was powerless here.
So, magic entered the game. The magic of Essence Forging. I closed my eyes, focusing on that mental whisper, preparing not just to mix ingredients, but to weave the very concept of "super-efficient thinking" into a material object.
First, I needed a base. I concentrated, and a drop of blood that appeared on my fingertip obediently flowed onto the table, changing its nature before my eyes. The liquid metal gathered into a small, perfectly round pendant-dish of dark Iron Blood. Incidentally, even in this simple action, I felt a strange resonance once I tuned in to the new essence of my blood. I placed the three waxy pieces of pollinium on the resulting dish, stared at them... and began to wait. I didn't know for what, exactly.
One minute. Two. Five. Nothing.
"Yeah, I'm truly alternatively gifted." I muttered, scratching the back of my head.
The knowledge about Essence Forging was outrageously vague. It wasn't surprising, considering the system rated this skill as "common." I had to figure everything out myself. Naturally, I decided to cheat. Why beat my head against a wall when I could just find a door? I swallowed an NZT pill and felt the world gain a razor-sharp clarity. I should have just not bothered struggling from the start. I hope that doesn't become my life motto, hah.
Under the stimulant's influence, the vague knowledge instantly crystallized into clear instructions. I focused on the "Essence Forger" role and understood my mistake. I had been trying to approach magic with a screwdriver and a soldering iron.
The first stage was extraction. It was the most delicate and important. I focused all my attention on the pollen. Thanks to the skill synergy, I began to intuitively understand the Phantasmin's structure. To do this, I needed to abandon science, chemistry, and physics. I needed to focus on the very concept of intellectual enhancement: clarity of thought, the speed of neural connections, the flawless conductivity of ideas.
Even on NZT, tuning into this "conceptual" wavelength proved to be difficult. But I managed it. My will, acting like a tuning fork, made the pollen vibrate on a metaphysical level. I felt its physical shell thinning, disintegrating, and transforming into pure light, releasing its Essence.
What appeared on the pendant-dish wasn't just a glow. This was something alive, pulsating. It was a shimmering, gold-silver cloud that resembled a holographic neural network or a swarm of microscopic fireflies. There it was! It was the pure essence of intellect, freed from its mortal physical form. Holding this little cloud with my willpower alone, and keeping it from dissipating, proved to be quite the task.
Now came the weaving. The essence needed to be fused into the Iron Blood structure. For this, the material had to become malleable. I divided my consciousness. I held the fragile essence with one part while I focused on the amulet with the other. Obeying my will, the smooth disk began to smoothly change its shape. The metal flowed, and on its surface, as if it were being pressed from within, a relief symbol emerged. It was a smith's hammer.
Simultaneously with the transformation, I directed the essence cloud straight into the amulet's heart. The Iron Blood, being a part of me, greedily inhaled the essence like a sponge absorbing water. As the amulet gained its final form, the gold-silver essence crystallized within its metallic matrix. On the dark, almost black surface, thin, glowing patterns began to appear, resembling synapses. It was a visual manifestation of the merger. Now, the amulet didn't just contain the Phantasmin. It had become its carrier, its very embodiment.
When the last particle of essence was woven in and the form became perfect, I sent a final volitional impulse inside. It was a metaphysical lock clicking into place. The patterns on the surface flared brightly and immediately dimmed to a barely visible, living glow. The merger was now permanent. Since the amulet was created from my blood and for my brain, it intuitively tuned itself to my neural frequency, becoming not a passive amplifier, but an active symbiote.
[Artifact created: "Amulet of Clear Mind (personal)." Complexity: Advanced. +600 OP received!]
An artifact created using the art of Essence Forging. It permanently increases the wearer's (John Thompson) base intelligence by 100%.
On the table lay a small amulet of dark, smooth metal that was traced with thin, gold-glowing patterns. I picked it up. It was warm and seemed to vibrate almost imperceptibly in unison with my thoughts. Damn. This isn't just a piece of metal with some magic inside it. This is literally a part of me that has been given a new, amazing function.
It was an amazing skill. If only it weren't so exhausting.
I had created one tiny amulet and I felt like I had been unloading freight cars for three days straight without any sleep. I was experiencing a deep, all-penetrating mental burnout. I looked at my watch, and I was even more shocked. It was five a.m. I had spent over seven hours on this process. And I hadn't noticed it at all. To me, it felt like everything had taken no more than an hour. I had been in a trance of creation, completely disconnected from reality.
"No wonder I feel like shit." I croaked in the silence of the empty lab.
I added a simple leather cord to the amulet. I would make a platinum chain for it later. I put it around my neck. The cool metal touched my skin, and I felt... changes. They were there. Absolutely. It wasn't the all-consuming effect that the Ghost Orchid serum had given me, but this was a permanent, background enhancement. It was like a cold menthol breeze that had permanently cleared my consciousness. Combined with the NZT pills, this would be something incredible.
I left the workshop and sat on the couch. It was time. I opened the technology tab, spent 500 OP, and unlocked "Strange Science."
The world exploded.
No, not physically. My perception exploded. This wasn't like downloading data or receiving dry knowledge. Rather, it was as if someone who had been blind from birth suddenly gained sight and saw colors for the first time in their life.
The air ceased to be empty. Now, it was filled with a barely visible, constantly moving, shimmering haze, like heat shimmering over hot asphalt. It was the cosmic dust of an invisible world. These were Reishi, spirit particles. Around living beings, and around me as well, this haze condensed, forming a swirling, barely visible cocoon. I could finally see an aura. Not as a mystical color, but as the density of quite real particles. I lowered my gaze, and I sensed and saw a quietly humming miniature sun inside my chest. It was a bright, stable core of light. It was my Reiryoku. It was my spiritual battery.
All of space had gained weight and density. I began to feel Reiatsu, spiritual pressure. The universe's background noise was barely perceptible, but my own Reiatsu felt like a light, warm mantle of power that was enveloping my body. It was funny. Now, I could determine the power level of anyone I met just by looking at them, or rather, by feeling them.
But most importantly, an intuitive understanding came to me. I looked at my hand and, for the first time, I perceived it not just as flesh and blood, but as a complex information-energy structure. I literally felt my Chain of Fate, the anchor that was chaining my soul to this vessel, like a powerful power cable. All the mysticism, all the esotericism that had clouded people's minds for centuries, disappeared. In its place, there came a new, breathtaking physics.
There were no ready-made recipes in my head, but there were fundamental laws. And I burned with the desire to test them in practice. I needed to create something. Right now.
I extended my hand, palm up, and concentrated. There were no grandiose incantations. It was just pure intention, backed by new knowledge. I used my Reiatsu as a spiritual magnet, as a gravitational well. The particles of Reishi that were shimmering in the air obediently flowed toward me like iron filings, gathering above my palm into a trembling, hissing, barely contained clot of light that was the size of a tennis ball.
The first stage was complete. Now came compression.
I slowly clenched my fist, directing a flow of energy from my inner sun. My Reiryoku became a hydraulic press. The glowing sphere in my hand began to compress, becoming smaller, denser, and brighter. The air around me crackled from the concentrated energy. My muscles tensed, not from a physical effort, but from a purely mental one.
Next was the key stage: formation. Simply compressing the particles wasn't enough. They would scatter. Using the basic knowledge from the non-mage package, I began to mentally construct a stable crystalline lattice from the Reishi. In parallel, I imposed a form onto this lattice. It was a simple, thin, perfectly sharp blade. The blade of a scalpel. My will became the form, the blueprint by which the atoms of this new world arranged themselves, locking them into a solid matter.
The light in my fist collapsed inward, freezing. When I unclenched my fingers, the result lay on my palm.
[Artifact created: "Spirit Scalpel." Complexity: Normal. +200 OP received!]
A scalpel created using the art of spiritual energy manipulation. It is capable of interacting with spiritual entities and constructs, and cutting the immaterial.
This was a shard of ghostly ice. It was small, about ten centimeters long, and it was semi-transparent, with a light bluish glow. It seemed as though fog was moving slowly inside of it. To the touch, it was as hard as diamond, yet it was almost weightless. It wasn't cold or warm. It simply... was. To an outside observer, something had appeared from nothing. It was a physical object, created from pure energy by thought alone. In half an hour of work, I had gained 200 OP and, far more importantly, I had gained my first successful experience. I was holding proof in my hands. It was proof that, for me, there were no longer any boundaries between mysticism and science.
Despite all the external simplicity of the finished product, I intuitively understood that I was holding something incredible. This wasn't just a knife. An ordinary knife wouldn't harm a ghost, but this one could cut a ghost to pieces. In theory, with this scalpel, I could perform real operations on souls. I could sever curses, break unnatural bonds, and extract alien mental parasites. Any magical barriers that were woven from spiritual energy could now be not just battered down with brute force, but carefully opened, like a surgeon making a precise incision.
It was so small, so elegant, and so multifunctional. It was truly a shame that, due to my lack of experience, I had burned a good half of my entire Reiryoku reserve in creating it. In my chest, where a miniature sun had recently been humming, I now felt a deep, sucking void. With time and practice, I was sure, I would learn to do the same thing with far less expenditure. But now, now I needed to recover.
I placed the scalpel in my inventory, sat on the floor in the lotus position, and closed my eyes. The Reiryoku recovery process is mostly passive. The soul, like a lung, constantly breathes, absorbing the Reishi that is scattered in the atmosphere. But this process can be accelerated. I concentrated, turning my will into a magnet, and I began to actively attract and assimilate the spirit particles. My hungry soul, after the huge expenditure, greedily drew in the energy, and I felt the void in my chest slowly beginning to fill with warm light.
Ideally, of course, I needed not just to recover, but to increase my overall battery capacity. There were methods for this. The most obvious, but also the most tedious, was training the spiritual muscle. It involved the regular use of Reiatsu, bringing yourself to complete exhaustion, and then the subsequent recovery. Just as muscles grow after micro-tears, the soul's vessel expands after cycles of depletion and replenishment. But this is a long, grueling path. It is the path of dumb perseverance. It wasn't my style. Time is not only money, but knowledge, which is far more valuable.
The second option was to find a place with an anomalously high spiritual pressure. The constant external pressure would force my soul to adapt, becoming denser and more capacious. I thought a place like Kamar-Taj would be ideal. But getting a visa to Nepal, trekking into the mountains, and knocking on the mystics' gates with a request like "Hey guys, let me train." Alas, for now, this was only possible in naive fantasies.
So, for me, only the third, my favorite path, remained. Engineering. Specifically in this case, Reishi Engineering.
Why persevere when you can build? Using my new knowledge, I could theoretically create a Reishi concentrator. It would be a device that would actively suck spirit particles from the atmosphere, compress them, and allow me to inhale them directly. And if I combined this with a sealed room where a high spiritual pressure was artificially created, this wouldn't be training anymore. It would be industrial power production. It would be exponential growth compared to the old-school methods.
But everything, as always, came down to resources, time, and experiments. Brilliant ideas without a lab and materials are just hot air. I wanted to embrace everything at once, but the path to power was turning out to be frustratingly thorny in practice.
I spent another couple of hours in meditation, recovering my strength and running through plans in my head. Finally, I felt the sucking void be replaced by the familiar fullness and power. My spiritual battery was recharged.
I stood up. Before I left the Base, I should make something else interesting. I hoped S.H.I.E.L.D. had had enough time to grasp the scale of the upcoming deal and prepare an offer that I couldn't refuse. Especially since, with the appearance of Strange Science in my arsenal, my value as an asset had jumped to yet another level.
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