"You have the souls; purchase the items as I've instructed."
I did as commanded, purchasing Fountain of Youth from the Seven Deadly Sins and the (Perfected) Doomsday's Bloodline.
"Good, now consume the Fountain of Youth."
A wave of magic rippled through me, reinforcing every cell and centimeter of muscle and merging with my second mutation—regeneration.
It felt fuller now. More powerful. Kind of like what I imagined an Omega-level mutation would be capable of.
But My Lord Shin wasn't done.
"Now, the serum," he commanded, and the clone to my left nodded, pushing a vibranium-tipped needle into my neck and pumping me full of a unique concoction. It'd been made by the High Evolutionary, a few Kree scientists, and Corvus.
It was a gene accelerator, designed to expand the latent potential of my original X-gene as well as infuse me with celestial genetics, making me better capable of manipulating the Infinity Stone.
The changes it made to me were far more violent than the first concoction. My organs rioted, my blood boiled, and my bones broke. Something deep in me changed fundamentally. I saw new shades of color, invisible lines of cosmic energy spiderwebbing across the cosmos.
The Fountain of Youth healed every break, burst vessel, and failing organ, restoring me back to my baseline, but with a few significant changes. The vector angles that guided my Precision mutation were significantly clearer, and I could accelerate objects faster along them now. If I really pushed myself, I wagered, I could even shoot my bullets faster than Light.
Dante was sure to struggle against that, even with all of his advantages. Yet, I knew it wasn't enough, not if I wanted to secure victory, as did Shin.
"Imbibe the Bloodline."
I shuddered, taking in deep non-breaths. My soul was full to bursting after the serum and the fountain of youth. This was certain to shatter it. Yet, my Lord was confident it wouldn't kill me. If anything, he promised the bloodline would do the exact opposite.
I believed him. Yet, I was hesitant to resign myself to that kind of pain.
"It is the price of true strength," my Lord reminded me. "There is no power without sacrifice. The pretender endured it and flourished, and so will you."
His words gave me the courage I needed to flip the mental switch.
Lightning snaked through my body, throwing the delicate balance I'd established into disarray. My muscles swelled, and my bones shattered and lengthened. My skin turned ashy white, and my DNA unraveled and retwisted.
The feeling of strength was intoxicating, overwhelming even, but also destabilizing.
My soul signature flickered and cracked. A massive fault line ran down the center of my soul, and a cascade of interconnected fractures spread from it. In an instant, I was driven halfway through total soul collapse.
The pain was worse than getting burned by Anathema Fire, worse than the soul beam Rin tossed at me, and worse than feeling the psychic assault of the Phoenix. It was what I imagined hell would feel like, yet that felt like I was still underselling it.
Just when I thought my pain would drive me mad, my body reacted.
Energy washed over my fractured soul, matching the tempo of my heartbeat, and the cracks started calcifying, fusing with the other broken bits, and strengthening them.
The repairs were happening faster than I could follow, and I found myself gasping in surprise.
"Amazing, isn't it? It took me 500 years and the best biologists in 23 universes, but I stabilized one of the most dangerous bloodlines in the multiverse, and it's paying dividends."
An involuntary snarl escaped me, and I was squeezing my blades so hard I was afraid they'd snap.
"With every wound, you will grow in strength and power, but only to a point…You will be tempted to try and ascend, become a god…won't you?"
With every telepathic command he spoke into my mind, I could feel my telepathy rise, evolving to eliminate that particular weakness.
I relished in the newfound power. I understood why the cost of this had been so prohibitive: 300 billion souls. It had taken a few solar systems and hundreds of clones, but I'd managed it in the end.
My Lord hadn't planned on enhancing me to this point until he'd gathered all of the infinity stones and was ready to go after the Celestials.
The original plan had been to fight them wearing Dante's body, with me at his right hand, but you know what they say about plans?
Dante had evolved quicker and less conventionally than even my lord predicted. Reading his status hadn't been enough. Not nearly. And his allies and their families were far more protected than I'd like. Pressuring a few of them did bear fruit, but none that I could leverage to hurt him directly.
"Spend them anyway," my Lord commanded. "We're well past the point of subtlety. All that truly matters is the fight in front of you. Hold nothing back."
"I wasn't planning to, my Lord."
--
Dante's POV
It happened too fast. Lauren changed right in front of my eyes. Her muscles swelled, her energy level spiked, and her soul went brittle and then turned hard as stone.
Thousands of Ceros shot from her hand and chest, reaching me in a fraction of a second. Time Warp activated on instinct, and then the time-compression runes on my armor.
The beams slowed a great deal, but not so much that I could physically dodge them. I had to teleport, closing the distance, and swung my hammer at him, channeling a sea's worth of energy into Staggered Carnage.
Lauren flowed to the left and lashed out, her soul weapon screaming at my neck.
A portal opened up just in time, teleporting the blade into the small of her back. And then my hammer, still in motion, slammed into her chest. The density spiked immediately, reaching the mass of a small planetoid in the blink of an eye. Lauren, to my shock, looked directly at me just before impact. Her dead, soulless eyes, boring into mine.
Her midsection vanished instantly, but the rest of her stayed in motion. I was ready for the energy-infused slash from the Necro Sword. What I hadn't counted on was it being strong enough to drain a quarter on the Ancient Defense Array on my shield, even after Riposting it.
The blow left her hand crisscrossed with scars that vanished in an instant. And so had her stomach wound.
Red baleful eyes stared hungrily at me through her bony mask.
"You won't weasel your way out this time," she snarled.
"Who said anything about weaseling?"
My hammer teleported under her jaw, rocking her hard enough to break her mask.
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