New Template

Chapter 42: New Template

Knock knock!

The door was rapped.

Chloe, who had been napping, came downstairs with pillow creases still on her face. She spotted Clark outside the door, rubbed her bleary eyes, and looked puzzled.

"Clark, what's up? You came to hang out?"

"Chloe, is your uncle home?" Clark, no longer putting on the tough act from before and back to his usual self, peered inside.

"He's at the factory and hasn't come back. I'm cooking for myself again at noon."

Chloe complained.

Her father worked as a department manager at the Fertilizer Plant under Lex Luthor, and he was always busy.

"My family's run into some trouble, Chloe. Can you help me out?"

Clark asked.

"Trouble? Come in."

Faced with a friend's plea, Chloe was curious but didn't refuse, letting him inside.

"Our family's Farms..."

On the living room sofa, Clark quickly recounted the situation.

"I need this Mr. Rickman's info."

"A handshake can make someone sell off their family's hard-earned farm land?"

Chloe, who loved digging into weird stuff like this, perked up instantly.

"Hold on, I'll grab my computer upstairs."

Thump thump thump!

She dashed up the stairs.

Clark touched the blue hood hidden in his pocket.

His plan was first to figure out if Rickman was a Metahuman, then get his address from Chloe, and finally go deal with the matter.

Soon, Chloe ran back down excitedly with her laptop, opening it to search for anything on Rickman. She suddenly remembered something and glanced at the door with confusion.

"Oh, where's David?"

With his family's farm and house about to be taken away, such a big deal, why wasn't David tagging along?

"David, he..."

Clark scratched his head, not sure how to say it. The moment he agreed to his brother's proposal, he activated Super Speed and rushed to Chloe's door, afraid of wasting any time and losing to his brother.

As for what David was doing now, he had no idea.

On the outskirts of town, in the vast, silent Forest.

Whoosh!

A figure moving near the speed of sound came to an abrupt halt, the gust it kicked up sweeping fallen leaves ahead.

Thanos template has been 100% fused.

Loading new template.

New template loading... 1%... 3%

Stopping his body and checking that no one was around, David scanned the information before him.

He had just wanted to refuse Clark's proposal, but suddenly the Thanos template finished fusing.

After Clark ran off, he immediately came to this empty Forest, ready to welcome the fusion of his second template.

"First time fusing two templates, better be careful."

David didn't want to cause a stir in front of the Farms and worry his parents.

"What will the new template be?" His eyes lit up with anticipation.

Suddenly, his body grew hot, a persistent heat. It felt like molten lava was surging through his veins, and the cosmic energy within every cell was churning and roiling.

His bones crackled.

Deep inside his body, something seemed to be merging.

His heartbeat raced uncontrollably. David looked at his hands—the purple tint from using strength beyond normal humans was fading slightly.

He touched his chin; the crease-like lines were smoothing out.

Crackle!

A ripple of purple energy, like an electric current, shot from his hand.

A distant large tree was struck, instantly looking as if it had been hit by a laser. A deep, more than ten-centimeter gash appeared on the trunk, sparking and vicious.

Sh-sh-sh-sh!

Ripples of energy lashed out, felling the surrounding trees in sweeping arcs.

The cosmic energy within his body roared. David felt that as the new template loaded and merged, the latent power previously hidden inside him was breaking through some kind of barrier.

Like a raging tide about to burst a dam, something seemed to be stuffed in his chest—a stifling sensation with a feeling of being on the verge of release. With a low growl, he threw a punch.

Hum!

A high-concentration wave of purple cosmic energy light burst from David's fist, roaring forward. It pierced straight through one towering tree after another, blasting all the way to several hundred meters away.

Every tree directly ahead now had a fist-sized hole bored through its trunk. Bark and wood had been scorched to ash.

In the blink of an eye, the blast had affected nearly a mile's radius. He quickly reined in the energy.

"Rick Rickman, forty-two years old. Attended Smallville High School, graduated from Kansas Western University, then worked in farm equipment sales after graduation."

Chloe read out the information the computer had pulled up on Rickman.

A tech whiz, she'd once developed a program that could aggregate and summarize search results, making it easier for her to write articles for the School Newspaper.

"Would you believe it? This Mr. Rickman, who's planning to build a Chemical Plant in our little town, isn't just our senior—he's a local too?"

Scrolling through Rickman Enterprises' latest corporate plans, she curled her lip.

"And this is how he repays his hometown?"

"Is there anything strange about him?"

Clark was more concerned with other details.

"Let me see..."

She dragged the mouse.

"After graduation, he went into sales. Dead last in performance, nearly got fired. But the next year, he shot up like a rocket, held the top sales spot for three years straight, used the massive bonuses to found his own company, and started his climb in the business world..."

Thinking back to how Clark had somehow talked Uncle Jonathan into selling the land and house, Chloe found this point suspicious.

"Even though people constantly criticize his company management as a mess, he's still sailed through smoothly, closed big deals one after another, and built a fortune worth hundreds of millions. Does that count?"

"If I'm not mistaken, the year he nearly got fired—wasn't that the year of the Meteor Shower?"

Clark took a deep breath. Just as David had guessed.

"Yeah. 1991."

She didn't even need to dig up news articles to confirm the year. No one in town would forget the year of the Meteor Shower. Chloe nodded firmly.

"Where does he live now, Chloe?"

Only one question left. Clark stood up excitedly.

"146 Monte Street, Metropolis."

A bit puzzled by Clark's reaction, Chloe answered anyway.

"Thanks, Chloe. Next time, I'll treat you to your favorite Caramel Milk Pudding. I've got to go."

Hearing the address, Clark thanked her and dashed off joyfully.

Not only was he far faster than David, but with Chloe's help, he'd saved the time of asking around. This time, he was sure to win.

"Wait!"

Chloe spotted a news headline on the webpage. Her face changed. She ran to the door to call Clark back.

But the open space in front of the door was empty. Clark was already gone.

In his blazing sprint—unlike David's speed, which still left a visible trail—Clark moved like a lightning bolt, too fast for the eye to catch. He pulled the Blue Hood from his pocket, eyes gleaming, and pulled it over his head.

This time, he was certain to get a step ahead of his brother.

But Clark didn't know that David hadn't even set out yet. In fact, he'd already decided to let Clark handle this matter first and see how it went.

Caw! Caw!

Dust billowed through the forest. A dull rumble startled flocks of birds into the air.

The energy faded from his violet skin. David clenched his fist in excitement. A surging, overwhelming power rolled through him like tidal waves.

The cosmic energy he'd only ever been able to sense but never mobilize now obeyed his will like an extension of his arm. He raised his palm and struck again.

A beam of energy slammed into a dead, fallen log in the distance.

Under the immense, concentrated force, the entire log was annihilated—not even a single fragment remained.

New template loaded—Black King template fused 30%.

"Black King... a mutant?"

Surprise and delight flickered in David's eyes.

Now he understood why the energy he'd never been able to release before was finally flowing freely.

"And it's not just that. There are other abilities too. The fusion of these two templates with my body seems to be more than just one plus one."

He clenched his fist. A dazzling purple light blazed from his eyes.

Wrote seven or eight hundred extra words. Please keep reading. New template. The protagonist will start leaving the town and Metropolis in the next day or two's chapters, take a brief trip outside, and encounter some new characters. (〃'▽'〃)