Godslayer in the Marvel Universe

Chapter 26 Young man! Do you crave power?

That night, Peter Parker tossed and turned, barely sleeping a wink.

Guided by fate, he indeed found the potentially priceless formula among his father's belongings. In this life, he met Dr. Connors of Osborn early on, and he decided to show the formula to the doctor.

Just then, his phone suddenly received a new email notification.

Emails sent in the middle of the night are usually not serious matters.

glance!

[What unknown side lies behind the aloof academic genius? Is this a suppression of human nature, or a decline in morality?]

"Another spam email?" He was about to swipe away when the picture in the email caught his eye.

The picture above is none other than his childhood sweetheart—Gwen Stacy!

Despite being bound by a deep sense of immoral guilt, Peter's right hand clearly had its own ideas and touched the spot almost reflexively.

I must admit, the guy who sent the email knows photography.

That was a comparison image.

Both are standing in the same S-shaped pose with their left hand on their hips. The one on the left is Gwen, while the one on the right is a masked woman in a black and white bodysuit standing atop a building.

Peter immediately realized that the woman on the right was Spider-Woman, who had recently become a sensation online and a new generation of New York urban legend.

People always have their own habits. Others might not recognize it, but Peter couldn't possibly not. That action, that posture, it's clearly Gwen!

Continuing to watch reveals a series of short videos: one showing Gwen nimbly dodging an attacker's attack and spectacularly flipping him over; another showing Gwen swinging between buildings on a spiderweb, giggling with delight.

All the evidence points to one fact!

"Spider-Man is Gwen!?" This discovery startled Peter.

Near the very end of the email, there was a line of bold, highlighted red text—

Young man! Do you crave power?

These words deeply touched a sensitive chord in Peter's heart.

Being beaten by Eugene at school doesn't mean Peter is a masochist; that frustration was just a trigger.

What truly irritated Peter was the long-standing repression he had experienced in his daily life!

Elite high schools are meant to be the benchmark for Ivy League universities. Is this a place for ordinary people?

The annual tuition and fees are as high as $50,000.

Apart from a few true geniuses, the school is mostly filled with the children of the powerful and wealthy.

Even though outstanding students like Peter and Gwen managed to keep their total expenses down to just over ten thousand through scholarships and student loans, they still felt like they couldn't breathe.

Peter's uncle and aunt were just ordinary working-class people.

In this situation, he can forget about indulging in luxuries in terms of food, drink, and other necessities.

Everything about the wealthy children around him weighed on Peter, subtly.

Let alone the children of the powerful and wealthy, even Thompson, considering his father is a retired football star, Peter doesn't think he can afford to offend him.

The intense sense of disparity in status and identity, accumulated over a long period, made Peter feel extremely depressed, which is why he became the talkative Spider-Man in history.

As a result, even though Peter knew there was something wrong with the email, he couldn't help but scroll to the end.

Below that red statement, there is a question:

What you desire most is...

【Naiko】or 【Power】!

One icon is Gwen wrapped in a black and white bodysuit, and the other icon is a mysterious spider web.

Faced with these two strange and mysterious choice boxes, Peter, who was going through puberty, felt a longing for Naiko, but more than that, he craved power! The power to transcend the ordinary!

Gwen is quite tempting, but if I gain power, wouldn't I be able to be like Gwen?

With trembling fingers, Peter selected the "Power" option.

The phone screen suddenly went blank.

For a moment, he almost thought it was some kind of nasty prank.

Soon, the following line of text appeared on the screen:

Young man! Since you've chosen power, you're destined to be a lone wolf! This is the price of power...

Below this line of text appeared a photograph.

Even though he hadn't been inside for a long time, Peter recognized Gwen's room at a glance. A red arrow pointed to the small cabinet above Gwen's desk.

Just as Peter was stunned, a five-second countdown suddenly appeared on the screen. Before Peter could react, the countdown ended, and the screen went blank.

This email even has an auto-delete function?

"I...this..." Peter's mind was in turmoil. Of course, he felt he shouldn't believe such an email from an unknown source. However, when he put together Gwen's recent mysterious behavior and her subtle aloofness, he instinctively realized that everything in the email was true.

"Gwen became a superhero without me?"

The young man felt a faint sense of betrayal.

"No, um, I was just checking on Gwen's room. That mysterious person secretly putting pornographic videos in a girl's room, that's outrageous. We have to find that person and make sure Gwen's privacy isn't compromised."

Driven by extreme curiosity, Peter went to Dr. Connors the next day to submit the formula. This naturally earned the doctor's praise, and he was even invited to participate in his interspecies research project.

This gave Peter a strong sense of being respected, and of course, a subtle thrill of having outmaneuvered Gwen and gotten ahead of her.

However, before Gwen's internship was over, he slipped away and went to Gwen's house.

"Oh, it's Peter! Here to see Gwen?" It was Gwen's mother who spoke. Mrs. Stacy shared her husband's opinion of Peter, Gwen's childhood sweetheart, and had long regarded him as half a son and a future son-in-law.

"Yes. Gwen hasn't come back yet?" Peter lied, feeling guilty.

"She's still an intern, haven't you forgotten?"

"Ah! Yes! Good heavens! I completely forgot."

"Is there something important?"

"It's nothing serious. How about I go upstairs to the living room and wait for her?"

"Of course, Peter."

Taking advantage of the trust people placed in him, Peter first went to the second-floor living room to escape Gwen's mother's sight, and then couldn't resist sneaking into Gwen's room.

The door wasn't locked; this time, Gwen was careless.

While Peter was certainly curious about the girl's bedroom, he was more interested in that place itself.

As if guided by some strange force, Peter approached the box that represented destiny...

"Peter! What are you doing?"

Led by a mischievous time traveler, Gwen returned home ahead of schedule.

To make matters worse, she found Peter in her room as soon as she got home, and he even found the thing she had hidden.

Peter was horrified and hurriedly tried to explain himself—no, he tried to justify himself.

"Gwen! No, I just heard some strange noises, so I opened the door to check."

He shouldn't have said anything, because when Gwen heard this, she instinctively looked in that direction and was instantly terrified—the mutated spider that bit her and turned her into Spider-Woman hadn't been killed; instead, she had secretly kept it as a pet. Her entry into the Osborn Corporation in this life was precisely to further study her condition.

Who knew, the spider somehow managed to bite open the transparent acrylic box that could even hold a hamster, and by then it had climbed to the edge of the cabinet above Peter's head.

"Ah—" Gwen screamed instinctively. At the crucial moment, she hesitated, unsure whether she should use her supernatural powers to stop what was about to happen.

In that moment of hesitation, the spider pounced on the back of Peter's neck as he turned around and bit him with a "smack".

Peter would never have imagined that the secret to Gwen's power was actually a spider!

Just like in countless parallel worlds, he was bitten by a spider again.

In excruciating pain, he screamed and accidentally killed the world's only mutated spider on the spot.

"Peter, Gwen, what's wrong?" Mrs. Stacy's voice came from downstairs.

"Ah! I, I got bitten by a bug." In pain, Peter felt dizzy and knocked over a lot of things. Feeling guilty, he ignored Gwen's help, shoved her aside, and practically tumbled out of the house.

Gwen, equally guilty, was ultimately just a high school student, and countless terrible consequences flooded her mind: The spider bit me, I mutated, but what about Peter? I'm not even sure if this power will kill me, what if he can't withstand the mutation and dies? If he dies, wouldn't it be my fault?

Thinking too much leads to hesitation. Gwen was stunned for a moment and realized that Peter had already rushed out of her house. When she rushed out the door like a normal person, Peter was nowhere to be seen.

It's no wonder she couldn't find him, because Peter had just stepped out the door and randomly boarded a bus, and the driver stepped on the gas, sending Peter out of Gwen's range of perception.

The scene of Gwen just now in the house and now wandering aimlessly at the front door was broadcast via surveillance cameras to the in-car television of a Rolls-Royce a kilometer away.

The Lance sisters were utterly astonished.

Dina: "Ang, you've... raised a superhero?"

"I suppose so!" Ang downed the glass of champagne in one gulp.

Sarah tentatively asked, "If it's safe, could you turn us sisters into Spider Women too?"

"Spider-Man? No, no, no! Spider-Man is cursed. Why be Spider-Man of all people?" Ang's words startled them.

Yup!

Spider-Man's curse... perhaps he's just destined to be a lone star, cursed by fate!

The greater the ability, the more you lose!

(End of this chapter)