After absorbing the powers, he remained still for a moment, listening.
The lab around him hummed faintly, like it had once been full of life, motion, and control. Now it was a hollow shell, its silence interrupted only by the shifting of his own breath. The remnants of the mutants' abilities pulsed just beneath his skin — unfamiliar, unstable, yet alive.
He flexed his fingers again.
First came the wings so sharp, insectile limbs unfurling from his back in sudden jerks. They buzzed once, unsteady, slicing through the stagnant air with a shrill tone before folding back down, twitching against his spine. The acid came next summoned instinctively, it dripped from his fingertips and sizzled through a cracked metal tray, releasing a hiss and the sharp sting of chemicals in the air.
He smirked.
Then he reached deeper letting the teleportation ability rise to the surface. Space shivered, air bending around him like heat over fire. His vision blurred for a moment, then it steadied. He didn't move far only across the room but it was enough to confirm it: the power worked. Dimmed, incomplete, yet functional.
And with each test, he learned more.
He moved from table to terminal, brushing aside the dust-covered monitors and shattered equipment. Some files were burned, others corrupted, but fragments remained.
Old printouts. Paper records. Scans of classified documents.
And in them the names, numbers, and warnings.
A series of symbols repeated across them: "X-Gene," "Category Omega," "Subject failed conversion."
He narrowed his eyes, scanning through one of the pages in particular. A report, fragmented but legible:
"Subject exhibits enhanced auditory-based offensive capabilities. Uncontrollable in open environments. Containment failure expected within 72 hours."
Another:
"Telepathic resistance exceeded projected parameters. Suggest termination and tissue reclamation for Phase Three testing."
And another, nearly torn in half:
"All surviving specimens are to be processed for elimination per revised Bolvar Industries directive: Mutant Termination Order 009-A."
His fingers tightened around the paper.
"Termination," he murmured. "So they feared them."
These beings, these mutants were not hunted because they were weak. They were hunted because they were strong. Because the world feared what it could not control, what it could not understand.
How very familiar.
He sifted through more reports, learning fragments of science, alien to him. Unlike quirks, these abilities were not shaped by society's evolution or the structure of law. They were... natural. Innate. Born to challenge whatever ruled here.
He found a photographs half-buried under a pile of folders, scorched around the edges. A group of them, clad in black uniforms, faces blurred by damage. But he could feel it the aura of power. The kind of strength that led revolutions or toppled nations.
And yet... they were all gone now.
Their corpses had told him the story.
These files confirmed it.
This world had tried to erase them.
And it had almost succeeded.
All For One stepped back from the files and surveyed the room once more. The lab wasn't just a graveyard it was a confession. The evidence of a war that was fought from the shadows, of power suppressed and punished. Not unlike the world he came from.
He breathed in slowly.
This place did not know him. Not yet.
But it would.
And if even beings like these had shaken this world before... then it had no idea what was coming.
He let the last of the documents fall from his hands, drifting like ash to the cold lab floor. There was nothing else of value here, no power to steal, no life to corrupt, only memories of war and failure sealed in dust.
Still, he remained curious.
He turned from the corpses and moved deeper into the complex, passing through warped steel doors and shattered glass halls. The flickering overhead lights barely illuminated the corridors, their hum broken by the occasional spark or distant echo. Machines long dead lined the walls some shattered, others melted, many filled with stagnant fluids and remnants of experiments long since abandoned.
He paused beside a rusted containment tank. One of the walls had caved in from within claw marks scoring the glass from the inside out. Whatever had once been kept there had escaped... or died trying. He studied the damage thoughtfully.
It reminded him of home.
He continued on, pushing through the remains of the facility. Elevators were collapsed. Emergency lights flickered endlessly in red. Storage rooms had been picked clean or burned out, most likely sealed off and left to rot once the last breath of resistance had ended.
So many signs of desperation. So many signs of retreat.
He stopped at what appeared to be a central control chamber or what remained of one. Wires hung from the ceiling like veins torn from a dying beast. The screens were shattered, the keyboards rusted, and a thick coat of dried ash coated every surface.
It was here that his mind wandered.
He thought of one man, Dr. Ujiko the only man he had ever trusted fully, the only one who had shared his vision. A twisted genius, willing to do what others feared. Willing to create.
"Perhaps I can find someone like him," he thought.
A mind of vision. A surgeon of purpose. A partner in his rebirth.
With someone like that… we could build an army once more. Not just of loyalists, but of monsters like the nomus. Titans forged of evolution and war. A legion crafted not from fear… but from design.
He allowed himself to dwell on the thought, only for a moment.
Then he let it go.
There would be time for that. Time to rebuild. To reshape this world in his image. But first… he needed to understand it. To walk its edges. To see its cracks.
To learn how deep its fear of power truly ran.
He left the command room and searched what remained of the lower levels, but they offered nothing new. No survivors. No tech worth salvaging. No resistance.
Just dust. Silence. And time.
Eventually, he came to a sealed exit a heavy blast door rusted in place. With a flick of his wrist and a spark of stolen strength, he shattered the lock and forced the doors open.
Light poured in.
For the first time since his resurrection, he stood beneath a sky that is not his own, but blue, vast and cold. The wind hit him with the scent of wild things and decay. Trees loomed in the distance, blackened by fire. Mountains rose from far beyond, untouched and uncaring.
A new world.
Untamed.
Waiting.
He took one step forward onto the scorched earth, then another.
Each footfall marked the beginning of something inevitable.
The Demon Lord had returned not to reclaim what was lost…
…but to conquer what never knew him.
And he had only just begun.