This was Ian's dream.
Or maybe it was also the universe Lady Death had called "shattered and extinguished." Whatever the reason his situation was different from that of the crazy chef, Ian understood that he had most likely become another host "parasitized" by the Marvel Universe too.
Honestly, it was not even that unlucky.
He had eaten enough sketchy cheap meals in his last life.
Getting poisoned just a tiny little bit in this one felt perfectly fair.
"It really doesn't matter. It can parasitize me all it wants, because I'm drawing power from it too. This dream and I are both getting what we want."
Ian was not worried at all that he would end up like the chef from the wastewater plant. After all, he could not hear any whispers in his ear, and he had not been influenced or tempted by the obsession of an entire universe.
In this dead, silent dreamscape,
Ian could not even find a single thing to talk to.
Honestly, he kind of wished there were whispers in his ear to chat with him. Really, what normal person would not want an invisible friend nobody else could see?
That would be cool as hell.
"Too bad I don't have that kind of luck. My mental health problems are probably connected to how bored out of my mind I get here every night. If some indescribable horror would just play cards with me every evening, I probably wouldn't have to keep seeing that gourmet lunatic doctor Dad found for me."
Ian stared at Galactus in the clouds for a long time.
The Devourer was falling very slowly.
So slowly it made no physical sense.
His neck was already getting sore, and the thing still had not actually crashed into Earth.
"What a waste of my emotional investment!"
Ian was not in a hurry. He remembered the crisp, urgent voice he had heard just before leaving this world last time. There might still be living beings in this place...
Well, according to Lady Death, maybe "echoes from this universe's past" would be more accurate.
"Lady Death, praise be to you, are you still there?"
Ian tried praying to the goddess he had successfully latched onto through pure personal talent. But this time he felt no connection at all between himself and her. The prayer did not even misdial and accidentally connect him to Marvel's version of Death.
Maybe Marvel's number one menace was dead too.
Ian found that pretty disappointing.
He had always hoped that someday he would get to see two Death goddesses trying to tear each other's hair out.
"No chance now, no chance... but there has to be something in this world that can communicate with me, whether it's still human or not."
Ian decided to head back to the place where he had previously found the bodies of Hulk and Homelander and try his luck again.
"Even if it's just an echo from the past, that doesn't stop me from asking what happened to this universe."
"And while I'm at it, I can invite it to come hang out and play a few rounds of Gwent with me every night."
"I get tempted by an echo to relieve my boredom, and the echo has to patiently play cards with me too. That's me winning twice."
After getting his bearings, Ian broke into a run toward the area he had already visited twice.
He moved fast.
Far faster than an ordinary person.
But because the ground was so slippery, when he tried jumping over an abandoned car in his way, he still ended up slipping and landing hard on his butt.
That did not slow him down at all.
"This is way faster than running!"
Ian was the kind of person who really knew how to adapt to local conditions. He used his hands as paddles and his butt as a sled, sliding across the ice. He could even swing his hips into the turns and drift.
The city was completely empty anyway.
No matter how ridiculous he looked, there was no risk of dying of embarrassment.
Actually, Ian thought it was kind of fun. Once his older brothers awakened the kind of steel-grade butt durability that could survive this sort of thing, he planned on inviting the whole family to find a snowy mountain and race.
Using both hands and feet,
Ian quickly slid his way back to the familiar street.
Then he froze.
"Where's my giant Hulk? And where's my Homelander with his head blasted off by my Moon Fang Cross Blast?"
Ian stared at the empty street in total confusion.
The giant crater Hulk had made was still there, but the bodies were gone. Even the blood had been cleaned up.
Could the voice he heard before returning last time have taken the corpses away?
"Don't tell me... post-apocalyptic survivors cut them up and ate them?"
Ian had seen some end-of-the-world movies before, and right as he imagined a bunch of survivors throwing a barbecue around Hulk's corpse...
"Hands up! Identify yourself and explain where you came from!"
Suddenly,
a crisp female voice rang out from behind him.
It carried clear caution.
Ian hurriedly climbed to his feet, patted the grime off his butt, and turned around.
A tall girl stood not far away.
She had a striking figure.
Her black leather pants outlined her long legs, and she wore a tight tactical vest on top. In her hands was a sleek, futuristic-looking firearm, its muzzle aimed steadily at the boy in the distance.
That instantly excited him.
The moment he saw the weapon in her hand, his eyes lit up.
This was a perfect chance to farm experience for the [Student] class.
"Look! My hand's going into my pocket! Can't you be a little more professional? Do you even understand American tradition? At a moment like this, you're supposed to dump the whole magazine into me!"
Ian's gaze reflected the girl's figure.
She had a seriously outrageous chest.
At minimum, that was several pounds of weight right there. Ian did appreciate that kind of body type, but personally, he would have preferred that amount of weight to come in the form of a fully loaded magazine.
"????"
The girl was visibly stunned by what Ian said. At first she thought he was mocking her, but after snapping out of it, she frowned and warned him in a stern voice.
"I'm not joking with you."
As she spoke, she shifted the muzzle slightly, aiming at the ground beside Ian, and pulled the trigger, intending to scare him with a warning shot.
What happened next was completely beyond her expectations.
Fwoosh.
A streak of red light flashed past.
She had only aimed at the empty ground beside him.
But Ian actually lunged straight toward the red beam, both hands thrusting out in midair. This lunatic was actually trying to catch a shot that had never even been aimed at him.
The girl was profoundly shaken.
[You attempted to learn how to catch a bullet barehanded. Although your practical learning attempt failed, you still picked up some reckless techniques. Student class EXP +5]
Ian was fast.
But not fast enough to pull off his first success.
He caught absolutely nothing.
Ian was deeply embarrassed.
He squeezed the hand that had failed to catch the shot.
"Uh, I'm just a little rusty. I used to be really good at catching bullets with my bare hands."
Ian liked telling small lies. He decided that the real reason was probably the giant shiny forehead of Galactus in the sky messing with his concentration.
Otherwise,
how could someone with physical ability eight times greater than a normal person's fail to catch a bullet?
That made no scientific sense.
"Please give me a second, thanks."
Ian raised a hand in a timeout gesture toward the baffled girl, then turned and sprinted toward a frozen car by the roadside.
Pure violence
was the simplest way to open a door.
Crash!
"Not this one..."
Crack!
"Not this one either..."
Finally,
after checking several ruined cars in a row, Ian found what he wanted.
A pair of sunglasses.
"Can I get one more shot at this?"
Ian adjusted himself, trying to get on the same wavelength as the hero from The Matrix.
"..."
The girl watching this entire sequence looked at him strangely.
"It's a laser gun," she said flatly. "It doesn't fire bullets."
That finally made Ian understand why he had failed to catch the shot, and why the experience gain had been higher than usual.
So the difficulty had been raised.
Now it made sense.
Of course,
even after realizing that, Ian still was not ready to give up.
"I don't believe you, unless you shoot me one more time so I can't keep talking tough."
Ian was eyeing every last shot in her weapon. He decided to use the oldest tactic in the book, baiting her into it.
Unfortunately,
his provocation failed completely.
The girl looked at him,
rolled her eyes,
then took out a radio.
"Betty, this is Gwen... I've caught the one who can teleport, but I think there's something wrong with his mind. I need a doctor over here to help evaluate him."
"Let's find out whether he's gone insane like those other superheroes did."
The girl was calling for backup.
Ian was stunned by the name she had used for herself.
But more than that,
he cared about the misunderstanding.
"I'm not crazy, and I don't need a new psychologist."
Ian knew his current psychologist was a genuine madman, but he still felt it would be rude to speak badly of Doctor Hannibal.
After all,
that man's medicine really packed a punch.
(End of Chapter)
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