Marvel: I am Iron Man

"Beep beep beep... beep beep beep..."

"...Turn off the alarm, Jarvis, I'm awake."

Tony sat up in bed, and the curtains at the head of the bed automatically opened. The morning light streamed into the bedroom, unfolding a stunning panorama of blue water and sky.

After washing up, Tony downed his breakfast drink in one gulp. It tasted pretty good. It had a hint of sweetness and a subtle herbal aroma; the flavor was unique but quite invigorating.

"Jarvis, what's this?" Tony asked casually.

"Cold-pressed, freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juice, sir," Jarvis said. "A blend of kale, apple, ginger, and lemon, with no added sugar. A specially formulated blend that balances nutrition and taste, sir."

"Rich people have so many tricks up their sleeves."

Tony muttered something, then suddenly felt that it would be a waste to give himself a cup of this stuff if it was expensive. After all, he was in a hurry, and he'd just take a sip of anything fancy that was served to him.

Jarvis took advantage of his brief break during breakfast to say, "You have another invitation this week, sir."

"What?" Tony asked casually as he wiped his mouth.

"Ms. Mambo, a Hollywood star," Jarvis said, thoughtfully projecting a holographic image of the photo in front of him.

A strikingly beautiful blonde. In the photo, she reclines on a vintage velvet sofa, her satin skirt cascading gently, every curve bathed in the honey-colored glow of the morning light. Her blonde hair cascades down from behind her ears like a beach kissed by waves.

She is indeed very beautiful. And since she would actively invite a notorious playboy like Tony Stark, it's safe to assume she's mostly after the seafood merchant.

But Tony didn't think much of it and waved his hand: "Cancel it."

Just kidding, he now knows that a high-ranking Hydra executive, skilled in disguise and even more adept at assassination in bed, is after his head. If he can't control himself at this point, he could easily be killed.

Besides, his time is extremely limited. He wishes there were forty-eight hours in a day, half of which he could spend in the lab researching and upgrading, and the other half outside dealing with enemy threats while searching for and collecting new usable trump cards.

As for seeking pleasure with celebrities like the rich second generation enjoys... I can't say I'm completely uninterested, but I'll at least wait until he feels a little more secure before considering it.

In addition, he had already experienced everything he was supposed to in his predecessor's memories. After all, the original Tony Stark was a womanizer, accepting everything from fashion magazine cover models to Hollywood rising stars, which left him with plenty of material to reminisce about.

He could manipulate the original body's memories as if he could experience them firsthand, so even if he only relied on his memories, he had already tried all the new and exciting things, and this kind of thing was no longer so tempting.

It's more important to focus on becoming stronger and increasing your chances of staying alive. After all, you have to be alive before you can enjoy life.

The development of the Mark 6 naturally gave Tony greater resources, and this new energy armor was also a landmark upgrade for Iron Man.

But that's still not enough.

Tony knew that although he seemed to be able to roam freely on Earth thanks to the Iron Man armor, his current level of strength was at best only the threshold of the coming chaotic world.

There isn't a particularly clear division of power levels in the Marvel Universe. In the official setting, numbers from 1 to 7 are generally used to assess the strength of a character's various attributes, but this assessment is still rather vague.

Therefore, in order to make it easier to assess his own abilities and set short-term goals for himself, Tony developed a general evaluation system.

He categorized the entry-level superhero as "street-level." Heroes at this level vary greatly in skill, ranging from fighters like Daredevil whose physical abilities are merely those of an ordinary person, to superhumans like Spider-Man who can dodge bullets and lift trucks with their bare hands.

The next level he set as his benchmark was "Iron Man level." That is, he used himself as the benchmark, taking the standard combat power of the Iron Man armor as a reference, and considering himself as his current combat power level.

In the movies, he viewed most of the upgrades and replacements of the Mark series as minor advancements within that level, and the strength shown by the Nano Armor in the movies was probably the ceiling of that level.

He set the next benchmark as the Hulk, or "Hulk-class".

This refers to the normal Hulk—most of the heroes he chose to benchmark against when developing this system are in their normal state. And this refers to the MCU Hulk; the comic book Hulk and the movie Hulk show a significant difference in power levels.

From now on, let's tentatively classify him as Thor-level.

This doesn't refer to Thor in the early stages of the movies. From Tony's perspective, in the early MCU, Thor and Hulk were roughly in the same league.

Here, he is being compared to Thor in "Thor: Ragnarok," where he was inspired by his father's dying wish and awakened his own thunderous power without the aid of Mjolnir. Later, Thor obtained Stormbreaker and even performed the feat of splitting Thanos with six Infinity Stones, which was the highlight of Thor's MCU career.

The above ratings are purely subjective and may not be accurate—in fact, accuracy is not important at all, because they only represent Tony's own benchmark of strength, and their sole purpose is to assess his progress in strength and the strength of some enemies.

In his mind, only those at the Thor level could barely be considered capable of standing alone... or perhaps Captain Marvel level would be acceptable. They never directly fought in the movie, so it's hard to say who's stronger.

However, Thor and Captain Marvel from the MCU parallel universe of the spin-off series "What If" have fought each other and seemed to be evenly matched, so they are temporarily classified as being on the same level.

The MCU movies have certainly given Captain Marvel a lot of screen time. She single-handedly scared off Ronan's Starfleet, tore apart Thanos's flagship "Sanctum II" with her bare hands, and took Thanos's punches without flinching. Compared to Hulk, who was completely demoralized by Thanos's military-style punches at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, it's like one is the director's favorite child while the other is just a random passerby.

Furthermore, it's important to know that, according to the established lore, Ronan's Kree Empire is one of the three strongest empires in the Marvel Universe, and Thanos is the universe's number one terrorist. The fact that Captain Marvel could easily kill both of them demonstrates that, at least below god-level, her strength is enough to allow her to roam freely in this universe, and she wouldn't be intimidated even by the universe's top powers.

Tony felt that he could only give him a sense of security when he had a suit of armor that could rival Thor or Captain Marvel.

And that was just the beginning. Captain Marvel is only among the top of the regular combat forces in the universe. There are all sorts of powerful beings above her in the Marvel Universe, and she should not be underestimated at all.

The road ahead is still long, but for Tony at this stage, he feels that Captain Marvel level is already far enough away, so thinking about the next level is pointless and will have to wait until later.

The more Tony thought about it, the more anxious he became. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and decided he should focus on the work at hand first.

"Let me think about it... I'll start with this one."

Tony glanced at his to-do list.

"Jarvis, show me how the 'Hydra' files you created are coming along."