Chapter Twelve: The Concept of the Divine Body

"Help, someone please save me."

Gwen followed the voice and saw a drunken man harassing a young girl.

"Damn it."

Without hesitation, Gwen rushed forward, pulled the man away, and knocked him out with a punch.

The girl hurriedly straightened her clothes, repeatedly expressing her gratitude to Gwen.

As the girl thanked her over and over, Gwen suddenly felt a surge of pride. If she hadn’t been there today, who knows what might have happened to this girl, who was about her own age.

Catching sight of the Captain America poster on the wall, a sense of purpose blossomed in Gwen’s heart.

"Maybe I should do something."

...

"Today in Queens, a masked girl appeared who calls herself Spider-Girl..."

Michael stared at the news in disbelief.

What on earth? Spider-Girl?

Thinking back to Gwen’s strange questions that day, and his own careless remark—"With great power comes great responsibility"—the answer was obvious. This Spider-Girl was Gwen.

Gwen became Spider-Man?

Then was Peter Parker’s blood sample taken for nothing? No wonder there had been no mutation in his blood.

But right now, the most pressing issue wasn’t who Spider-Man was, but the fact that he had spoken those fateful words.

Everyone who ever said that line to Spider-Man ended up dead.

Telling Spider-Man "With great power comes great responsibility" was as fatal a flag as saying, "I’ll marry you when I get back," or "You guys go ahead, I’ll hold them off." Nearly everyone who uttered such lines died, and those who said it to Spider-Man never survived the next day.

Even in "No Way Home," when the three Spider-Men gathered, two of them had to finish the sentence together.

"Oh my god."

He had to take time off, absolutely. Nowhere else was safe.

Michael decided to hole up at home for a few days, using it as an excuse to relax and work on his own projects—like preparing the vampire bat serum.

As for the super-soldier serum and cross-species gene fusion, he’d nearly finished his research, but had no intention of handing it over to Oscorp.

His plan was to optimize the serum to the level used by Captain America, and that would be enough; he would never give Oscorp a perfect serum.

In the original film, Dr. Morbius’s plan was to combine bat serum with electroshock therapy, then go into a bat cave and get bitten by bats.

That reckless approach actually worked—almost unthinkable.

The movie’s strategy was basically a gamble.

According to Keisha’s analysis, the combination of super-soldier serum, Spider-Man’s abilities, vampire bat serum, and Lizard serum could piece together the qualities of an invincible body, making physical capabilities equivalent to a second-generation super-soldier.

But to achieve the prerequisite of a "body of steel" required some special genes.

The so-called "body of steel" meant flesh as hard as iron, with immense endurance, impervious to mortal weapons.

In the first Avengers, those who achieved this were the Hulk, Thor, and Loki.

Loki was out of the question—getting his blood would be next to impossible. Hulk was mutated by radiation, his blood unstable and filled with gamma rays. After much thought, only Thor remained.

The "invincible body" would be an enhanced "body of steel," with even greater defense and superhuman regeneration.

Thor’s healing wasn’t extraordinary; the typical examples of super regeneration were Wolverine and Deadpool.

But Michael had no idea how to find those two.

However, right in front of him, the Lizard possessed super regeneration, which was enough for now.

As for the third-generation super-soldier level, if he added the invincible body, that would be nearly demi-god.

A true god, however, would be a further enhancement on the third-generation super-soldier: not only possessing the invincible body but also some unique genetic abilities.

For example, Angel Yan’s power of thunder, Rose’s space-time engine, Galen’s galaxy power, Liu Chuang’s godslaying might, He Xi’s clone technique, and so on.

Michael had no idea how to achieve these for now. Besides, he didn’t even have the physique of a first-generation super-soldier, let alone divine genes.

The most urgent task was to purify a large amount of bat serum for experimentation.

Moreover, Michael didn’t intend to experiment on others—he planned to clone himself.

Firstly, cloning himself spared him the guilt of harming others, and secondly, the experimental data and experience from clones could be more easily transferred to his own body.

The downside was that money would burn away rapidly—like water slipping through his fingers.

Gazing at the tiny embryo in the container, Michael prayed Tony would take down Iron Monger soon and announce himself as Iron Man, so he could get funding to continue his experiments.

Ah, the misery of being broke.

...

Seaside Villa

Pepper Potts was watching television as news about Stark Industries played. Nearly all economists agreed the company was finished, and everyone was dumping Stark stock.

She didn’t understand Tony’s intentions, but she knew changing Tony was impossible.

"Hey, Potts, how big are your hands?"

"What? Tony?"

Pepper was baffled by the question—why would he ask her that now? What was he up to?

"I mean, are your hands small enough..."

"Okay, come downstairs, I need your help."

"Alright, I’ll be right there..."

Nervous, Pepper made her way to Tony’s underground lab.

When she arrived, she saw Tony lying on the workbench, holding a glowing device identical to the one embedded in his chest.

"Only you can help me. I need you to swap this out."

Tony waved the new arc reactor in his hand.

There were only the two of them in the villa. Jarvis, after all, was only an AI; for this kind of tactile work, he was unreliable.

Pepper looked at Tony’s chest—he’d already removed the reactor, but a wire still connected inside.

"This thing saved your life?" Pepper couldn’t help her amazement.

"Yeah. Now I need you to replace it."

Tony looked pained.

"What do I have to do?"

"The wire’s stuck. You have to put your hand in, pull out the magnetic coil, then put the new one in."

"You want me to stick my hand in there? Pull something out of your body?"

Pepper found it hard to believe.

After Tony’s confirmation, she forced herself to suppress her disgust, reached into the wound, pulled out the stuck coil, and Tony quickly pressed the new one in.

Looking at her hand, now covered in pus, and the dirty old reactor, she asked,

"Tony, what should I do with this thing?"

Tony, panting, replied, "I like everything, but I don’t like holding onto the past. Just throw it away for me."

In the end, Pepper didn’t throw away the device that had saved Tony’s life. Instead, she cleaned it up, put it in a box, and gave it to him as a gift.

She never imagined that this gesture would one day save Tony’s life again.