Chapter 232: The Power Stone, Secured!
Out on the street, Star-Lord walked along with the Orb in hand, glancing this way and that.
He hadn't the faintest idea he was already being watched by several different groups.
Down a side alley, Rocket and Groot crouched in the shadows, eyes locked on Star-Lord, Rocket's mouth running nonstop like he'd had honey smeared on it. "Does this idiot seriously not realize that walking in and out of shops with something like that in his hands is going to draw attention?"
"...I am... Groot," Groot answered blankly from behind Rocket.
Hearing that from behind him, Rocket's mouth twitched. "...Right, forget I said anything."
"Anyway, we took this bounty because we want a big payday, so don't mess up the target later. Just grab the idiot in the red jacket carrying the round ball."
"Groot, you got that?"
"...I am... Groot."
"...Great. I'm just going to assume that means yes."
"When I count to three, we rush him. Got it?"
Meanwhile, Gamora, sent by Ronan to track down the Orb on Xandar, had also spotted Star-Lord wandering in and out of shops.
"Well, would you look at that. Search high and low for something, and it just falls right into your lap."
"Of all people, the Orb Ronan's so desperate for ends up in the hands of some idiot," Gamora muttered under her breath.
Though she'd been sent by Ronan, Gamora had no intention of actually following his orders and handing the Orb over to him.
Instead, she'd already lined up a buyer of her own, planning to flip the Orb the moment she got her hands on it.
That way, she'd walk away with a nice payday, and the Orb would end up somewhere safely out of Ronan's reach.
Threading through the crowd, Gamora kept her eyes locked on Star-Lord as he ducked back into another shop, still trying to unload the Orb, already working out the perfect moment to make her move.
At the same time.
Matthew had noticed Star-Lord too.
Beyond that, he'd also picked up on the presence of Gamora, Rocket, and Groot.
None of the three interested him much. His plan was simple: grab the Orb, head to Knowhere to see the Collector, squeeze some money out of him, then call Ronan in and squeeze some money out of him too.
Once he had both payouts in hand, he'd disappear.
Back on Earth, he'd figure out a way to use the money to pick up some technical data and warships for the planet.
With that plan settled in his head, Matthew's height and features shifted rapidly in the shadows, and he settled in to quietly wait for Star-Lord to come back out of the shop.
About two minutes later, Star-Lord got kicked out by the shopkeeper again.
But the instant he stepped outside, Gamora, who'd already staked out a spot by the door waiting for exactly this moment, snapped a kick straight at him.
Caught completely off guard, Star-Lord went sprawling, and the Orb tumbled out of his hands onto the ground.
At the same moment, Rocket and Groot, still hiding nearby, let out a low "Go!" and burst out from their hiding spot, charging straight for the Orb on the ground.
Seeing this unexpected third party crash the party, Gamora's own dash for the Orb picked up speed.
Right about then, Star-Lord recovered on the ground.
His thrusters kicked in instantly, and his whole body blurred into an afterimage as he lunged for the Orb.
But the next instant—
Whoosh!
The Orb, which had just been rolling away across the ground, suddenly shot off as if it had sprouted wings, accelerating straight into the noisy crowd in the distance.
That left all three groups scrambling for the Orb frozen in place, empty-handed.
"Nobody said anything in the briefing about the Orb being able to run off on its own," Rocket muttered.
While Rocket and Gamora were both still trying to figure out why the Orb had just taken off by itself, Star-Lord was the first to snap out of it.
The moment he realized he'd failed to grab it, his thrusters kicked back in.
Flames erupting from the boosters, Star-Lord, who'd been about to hit the ground, shot back into the air and kept charging in the direction the Orb had flown.
Beside him, Gamora recovered at the sight of Star-Lord moving and, not about to be outdone, kicked off after him.
Rocket and Groot weren't about to fall behind either, chasing along right after.
But compared to how fast the three of them were moving, Matthew was operating on an entirely different level.
The Orb wove and darted through the crowd, completely unaffected by the packed streets.
About two or three seconds later.
Snap!
An ordinary-looking Black man with dreadlocks reached out without a sound and snatched the flying Orb clean out of the air, closing his fist around it.
The man then tucked the Orb into his jacket, perfectly natural about it, and within a few breaths shifted through several different appearances before vanishing entirely into the crowd.
Matthew's whole sequence of moves had been nothing short of seamless.
Even with how fast Star-Lord and the others had been chasing, they still ended up a step too slow to catch it.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Star-Lord stood in the middle of the crowded street, stomping his foot and cursing under his breath at having lost the Orb.
Then he turned to look at Gamora and Rocket, standing not far behind him, his expression souring.
"...This was you two, wasn't it!"
Rocket: "???"
"What?" Gamora frowned, confused.
"I am Groot..." Groot, still stuck on repeat.
"Ha! You really want me to lay it all out for you?!" Star-Lord wore the expression of a man who'd already figured everything out.
"In this whole little plan of yours, you two were only supposed to keep me distracted. Someone else was grabbing the Orb the whole time!"
"And once I turn around, furious that I've lost the Orb, and come after you two, you'll just play dumb and say you've never even heard of whoever took it..."
"Then, once I've given up looking for it entirely, you'll go split the payout somewhere. Am I wrong?"
Star-Lord looked thoroughly pleased with himself, like he had the whole thing figured out.
Gamora just stared at him, at a complete loss for words.
Rocket looked at him the way you'd look at a complete idiot.
"He really is a dumbass," Rocket said, spitting to the side.
"I don't even know the person you're talking about, the one who supposedly took the Orb!" Gamora shot back, lips pressed thin.
Star-Lord let out a short laugh at that. "Ha! I already knew you'd say something like that!"
"Since I've already seen through your little scheme, if you two know what's good for you, you'll hand the Orb back over right now."
"Otherwise, you're going to seriously regret messing with the one and only, known throughout the galaxy—Star-Lord!"
"...Star-Lord?"
"That's right!"
"Never heard of you. Get lost." Rocket started to walk off as he said it.
If the Orb was already gone, then even dragging some idiot back with them wasn't going to satisfy the client.
Given that... forget it.
Just as Rocket lifted a foot to call Groot away from the idiot in question, Star-Lord decided he wasn't having it.
He yanked the energy pistol strapped to his leg, pulled the trigger, and blasted a bowl-sized crater into the ground right at Rocket's feet.
"Did I say you two could leave?"
Before the words had even finished settling—
A cold, mechanical warning blared from overhead.
"Beep, beep, beep—this is a Nova Corps advisory! Private conflicts are prohibited on Xandar!"
"Now! Drop your weapons! Cease resistance!"
"Or we will open fire!"
Watching a squadron of armed drones closing in fast, Rocket cursed under his breath and turned to Star-Lord. "Great job. Now none of us are going anywhere."
While Star-Lord and the others found themselves surrounded by the Nova Corps, Matthew, by contrast, had already made a clean getaway.
Aboard his ship, Matthew set his next destination to Knowhere, switched on the autopilot, and settled comfortably into the couch, slowly opening the Orb he'd taken.
The Orb twisted in his hands.
Its internal locking mechanism was forced open through brute strength.
A moment later, a gemstone giving off a soft purple glow came into view.
The Power Stone.
The Power Stone: the most critical of the six Stones, and also the single most destructive.
In the right hands, it wasn't just capable of destroying an entire planet outright, it could also double the power of the other five Infinity Stones.
Matthew stared at the Power Stone, now just inches from his hand, and slowly raised his palm.
The instant the Blacklight Virus in his body registered the Power Stone, something that had stayed dormant and quiet for a long time suddenly erupted with an overwhelming urge to consume it.
That hunger was a hundred times more intense than what he'd felt back when he first laid eyes on Apocalypse.
Strong enough that Matthew nearly closed his hand around it on instinct alone.
But right as his fingers were about to make contact with the Stone...
Matthew forced that wild, greedy urge back down, slowly lowering his hand instead.
Sure, he could take a nuclear blast head-on these days, hell, he could probably go bathe inside the sun and come out fine. But he genuinely had no idea whether his body could actually withstand the Power Stone itself.
The Blacklight Virus was good at telling what was edible, what was worth consuming for evolution's sake. But it had no way of knowing whether this particular thing might just be too potent a dose, and end up killing him in the process.
Just to be safe, Matthew didn't act on the urge right away. Instead, he pulled up the System panel.
His gaze drifted slowly down the list, finally settling on Dynamic Adaptive Evolution.
Right now, Dynamic Adaptive Evolution was only at Level 1, adapting fairly slowly, without the ability to quickly adjust and evolve in response to sudden, unexpected situations.
If he wanted that ability to keep up with the Power Stone's violent, chaotic energy in real time, it would need an upgrade.
[Dynamic Adaptive Evolution (LV1): Evolution mode stays permanently active, allowing continuous adaptation to an opponent's attacks in combat, along with counterattacks.
Upgrade to LV2 — Evolution mode stays permanently active, rapidly adapting to any surrounding conditions or attacks, both counterattacking incoming force and attempting to replicate that same power.
Upgrade costs 150,000 System points.]
Rapid adaptation, plus power replication.
Not bad at all.
He glanced over at the Power Stone beside him.
A single thought, and the upgrade was confirmed.
150,000 System points drained away instantly, like a river breaking through a dam, transforming into a stream of blue light that flooded into Matthew's body.
No one could say how much time passed.
The upgrade finished, quietly.
Once it was done, Matthew could feel that the Blacklight Virus inside him had grown noticeably more active.
He turned to look at the Power Stone, still hovering calmly in midair beside him, and slowly reached out a hand.
But before his palm could even get close, his own body seemed to sense the terrifying energy source ahead of it and rapidly toughened itself in response.
Clusters of purple crystal began forming across the skin of his fingertips, before crumbling into dust and scattering into the air.
Clearly, his body, or rather the Blacklight Virus itself, was attempting to replicate the Power Stone's raw power, and failing partway through the attempt.
Bathed in the Power Stone's glow, Matthew's flesh churned and shifted.
A living armor of flesh spread across his entire body in an instant.
The next moment!
Matthew stopped hesitating and closed his hand around the Stone.
In that split second—
The power inside the Power Stone surged into his body through his palm like a breached dam!
Under the Stone's onslaught, that purple glow poured out like magma rising from deep underground, tearing through Matthew's skin and racing up his arm.
Cracks!
Everywhere that power passed, the very fabric of space warped and twisted under its violent, terrifying force.
Even a body as strong as Matthew's couldn't hold up entirely against that kind of impact, and hairline fractures began spreading across his flesh.
But his brutally resilient body and near-savage regenerative ability meant that even as the Power Stone tore him apart, it was simultaneously reforging him back together.
By now, Matthew's entire body was completely wrapped in a wash of purple light.
Twin beams of violet fire erupted from his eyes, looking exactly like a pair of purple searchlights.
Aboard the ship, with the Power Stone clenched in his hand, Matthew felt only one thing right now.
He was stronger, right now, than he had ever been in his entire life.
He even had the fleeting sense that he could compress gravity itself into a black hole with a single snap of his fingers.
Of course, maybe it wasn't just a sense at all.
A burning sensation spread through his entire body.
Dynamic Adaptive Evolution was operating at its absolute peak in that moment.
He was adapting to the onslaught tearing through his body at an incredible rate.
Under that extreme adaptive pressure, Matthew's skin took on a faint purple, crystalline texture, and his tolerance for the Power Stone's power climbed another full tier.
Matthew stayed focused on the frantic churning of his adaptive evolution, but there wasn't a trace of excitement or joy on his face.
He could feel that, no matter how fast he kept evolving, the energy output pouring out of the Stone in his hand wasn't shrinking at all. If anything, it was climbing exponentially, like it had no upper limit whatsoever.
Every single second, the Power Stone's output grew larger than the second before, and his evolutionary ability, which had managed to hold its ground against it up to this point, was starting to fall behind.
Then, at a certain moment, the crystallized skin on Matthew's palm began cracking and flaking away in large patches, and Dynamic Adaptive Evolution finally started to buckle under the strain.
Seeing that, he didn't hesitate for a second.
A single thought.
Invisible gravity coalesced into a massive hand, forcing the Orb shut once more.
The instant the Orb sealed closed, the Power Stone, wild and violent just a moment before, went completely still and silent again.
"That was close..." Matthew looked down at his arm.
His hand had vanished entirely, the destruction eating all the way up into part of his forearm.
It was only because Matthew had managed to reseal the Orb so quickly that the rest of that side of his body hadn't been completely annihilated in that raging torrent of power.
"No wonder it's the most destructive of all the Infinity Stones... even with this body of mine, plus Level 2 Dynamic Adaptive Evolution, I could barely hold on for about half an hour."
"Looks like fully mastering this kind of power is still going to be a long road ahead."
He gave his arm a shake.
The damaged flesh restored itself instantly.
Matthew sat back in his chair, turning the Orb over idly in his hands.
Right as he was absorbed in that.
The System, quiet for a long stretch, suddenly stirred to life.
[Pass duration has ended.]
[Updating Pass theme—]
[Update complete!]
[Current Pass theme: the "Bio-Phantom Virus" theme.]
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