NOVEL NEXT Chapter 121: Cracking an Amber
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"If you don't share someone's pain, you can never understand them."
– Nagato, (Naruto)
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After Rudeus found the amber, he soon declared lunch. He didn't want to break the amber now. It was only after the exploration ended that he would free the trapped X-men.
So, the crystal was kept safely by Rudeus in his inventory as he gave the excuse of opening it in a safe controlled environment to everyone watching.
After that, he brought out dozens of bento boxes from his inventory filled to the brim with various dishes, the primary theme being Japanese cuisine for today. He had specially hired one of the most expensive chefs in Japan to prepare all of this.
He had even bought scores of extremely expensive bottles of sake to match the concept.
"Everyone dig in. Eat and drink to your heart's content. There is much more where that came from." He said as he used his telekinesis to float the food and drinks to everyone. Of course, only the teachers were allowed to drink alcoholic drinks while the rest of them just drank non-alcoholic juices and shakes.
Krakoa even changed some of the island's trees and turned the area they were sitting in into an orchard filled with Japanese cherry blossom trees to fit the theme as they all talked among each other, shared drinks, and had a magnificent time just chilling.
Some enjoyed it even more than others like Wolverine who somehow ended half of Rudeus' sake stash without dying, although that didn't annoy Rudeus at all.
In fact, he didn't even care. He was busy being fed by all of his girls who had all mostly accepted the idea of sharing him and even appeared to be cool with it, at least on the outside.
After the entire thing was over he decided to finally end the adventure.
"Okay. Let's end the exploration here. Psylocke and her team is already the winner of the contest and they will soon receive their prizes in the form of food cooked by professional chefs three times a day, every day for the entire next week. However the others need not be sad, I am sure that you will all have your chances to win the next time we go exploring again" Rudeus declared with a smile on his face.
After that, he opened a boom tube to the mansion through Zoya and dropped everyone back at the school.
"I will take you to Earth tomorrow buddy. Till then, you should prepare your luggage if you have any." Rudeus said as he made a joke and he too went back to Earth. He still needed to open the amber crystal and let the X-men out after all.
'*Sigh* I have so many responsibilities.' He muttered to himself.
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Regret. That was what he was feeling right now. He hadn't really regretted anything after he came to Marvel. In fact, he was happy with everything he had done till this point but he truly understood what regret was after he broke apart the amber crystal trapping the X-men and released them.
He had foreseen a lot of things that could happen while they were on this trip and he had prepared for them in advance as well. He was even prepared for a fight breaking out with him against the newly freed X-men. But nothing like that happened.
All of the X-men were very peaceful and most of them looked tired and weak except Vulcan and Darwin. The two looked vastly different from the other trapped metahumans, mostly because they had merged into one being for some reason, maybe to protect themselves more efficiently but this resulted in something unimaginable.
It had resulted in... a retard. The combined being looked like an abomination, it looked like Dr. William Barkin after he took the g-virus in Resident Evil which shouldn't have happened because as much as he remembered from reading the comics, the combined entity should be extremely powerful with the will of Vulcan being dominant personality and should have escaped from Krakoa while the other metahumans trapped there died.
But that was clearly not the case. Instead, everyone trapped there survived for some reason but rather Vulcan and Darwin weren't able to merge successfully. Maybe this was because of the presence of Rudeus. Maybe his very existence had changed the timeline somehow like a flashpoint, resulting in events playing out differently than they were supposed to. Maybe, the end outcome always seemed to remain the same in all overall events but the process of how the outcome came to be changed.
"Talk of an ugly fusion. Well, I guess not everyone can pull it off like Goku and Vegeta." Gwenpool came out of nowhere and said while licking an ice cream.
"Zoya, can you find out why this happened?" Rudeus asked, ignoring Gwen.
"According to my deductions, some of the energy needed to complete the fusion successfully was used to sustain the lives of the metahumans trapped in the crystal to preserve their lives, so the transformation was not successful due to lack of energy and they got stuck in that form," Zoya concluded.
'I see. I guess I can help them and change them into 'better-looking' individuals since it might be due to my existence's fault that they got stuck in this form.' Rudeus thought, however, he didn't at all feel like blaming himself.
He didn't say anything anymore and just decided to cure the merged being. Activating his Rinnegan he began to observe their souls and the way their bodies and life energies fused.
'I was right.' He thought with a smile as he saw their souls tangled together like two strings. Due to the unsuccessful merging of their souls, the energy flowing through their bodies, or one single body in this case was also abnormal. Darwin's body was supposed to be converted into pure energy and strengthen Vulcan which would have enabled him to escape and survive because of which Darwin too could live on through him. But that didn't happen.
Due to lack of energy, not only was the transformation unsuccessful but also even their souls got tangled up instead of co-existing together.
Rudeus used his Rinnegan's abilities and combined them with his divine spirit skill and immediately inserted his incorporeal hands into their physical bodies and then gently let extremely small amounts of divine energy flow through them, slowly untangling their souls and separating them.
As a result, the body too began to react and began to take the shape of their original souls. It looked like it was going through the process of mitosis and giving birth to two different bodies.
"God, that's the weirdest thing I have personally seen in this universe and that's after I have seen Beast in the morning on a bad hair day," Gwenpool said with a face of disgust.
Rudeus like always of course ignored her, trying not to laugh and just focused on his work. Soon, he completed the entire process and successfully separated the two and cut apart the last bit of skin connecting them while quickly using divine healing to heal all of their injuries and unseen damages.
"Wow, You really are powerful, aren't you?" Emma said. She had come to his HQ to spend time with Rudeus since she was bored and had come to meet him and see what he was doing with the huge amber.
"What, did you think I am weak or something?" Rudeus raised one of his brows. He had fought many battles in front of her, so he wondered why was she more impressed with this little display than the other times he had used his powers.
"No, it's just seeing a fight is somewhat common as many metahumans have the power to fight like gods but it's miracles like these that truly make one believe that not all mortals who fight like a god can be a god. But you are definitely one." Emma said as she looked at the groaning figures of Vulcan and Darwin.
"Oh." Rudeus didn't deny the statement at all.
"Anyways, let's call Ororo, Jean, and the others. I think we need the original X-men to come and explain to these guys how they ended up sealed in a piece of amber for years and why nobody rescued them." Rudeus said as he sent a telepathic message to them.
'I just hope they don't try to kill Professor Xavier. He already is more or less useless and has too many of his students wanting to kill him.' He thought while sighing at Charles' misfortune.
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