Heat Vision, Freeze Breath Awakens (Seeking Follow-up Reads)

Squeak~

A police car slowly pulled to a stop in front of a high-end apartment building in Queens.

Having wrapped up everything, Captain George stepped out of the car, shut the door, and walked briskly to the entrance.

"Whew..."

Though he was somewhat eager, he paused at the door. After taking a deep breath, he gently opened it and changed into his slippers.

Then, deliberately softening his steps, he made his way slowly toward his own bedroom.

But as he passed through the hallway and walked by his daughter's bedroom door, his steps came to an involuntary halt.

"It seems... it's been a long time since I've really cared about Gwen."

Tonight's experience had made George realize many things.

In that moment when the helicopter fell and death was nearly upon him—

He hadn't felt much fear of dying. As a police officer, he had long accepted that one day he might die in the line of duty.

But when death truly approached, what rose in his heart was an overwhelming reluctance to leave his daughter and wife behind.

He was afraid—afraid that he would never see them again.

As if gathering his courage, George stepped up to his daughter's door and slowly raised his hand.

But in the end, he couldn't bring himself to knock. He lowered it again.

"That Spider-Woman... she seems about the same age as Gwen, doesn't she?"

Leaving Gwen's bedroom door behind and heading toward his own, George suddenly thought of that spider-girl who had risked her life and her identity to save him today.

Before he had been about to lift her mask, it was precisely because he thought of his own daughter that he had stopped.

"Sigh. After something like today, the precinct is probably going to be swamped for a long time. Who knows when I'll get a chance to take a vacation and really spend time with my family."

George let out a helpless sigh, but could only silently return to his own bedroom.

Becoming a captain in his forties had undoubtedly cost him a lot—including time with his family.

At that moment, inside Gwen's bedroom, Gwen—who had appeared to be fast asleep in bed—

Her keen senses detected her father's departure, and she suddenly snapped her eyes open.

Slowly sitting up, she carefully peeled off the tattered bodysuit she had worn through tonight's battle.

"Hiss."

Even though she was careful, she still grazed her injured spot. The sudden, sharp pain nearly made her cry out.

"Good thing my body has changed—my recovery is several times faster than an ordinary person's."

"Otherwise, I really don't know how I'd explain this tomorrow."

Applying the medicine she had prepared earlier to the wound, Gwen endured the sharp pain and lay back down on her bed, slowly closing her eyes.

But a few minutes later, she snapped them open again.

"Damn it. I can't sleep at all."

Though her body was exhausted, her mind was still buzzing with adrenaline.

Finally, she pulled a pen and notebook from her nightstand, leaned back against her bed, and began to draw.

Soon, a vivid sketch was complete.

On the clean white paper, a figure in a black spider-suit leaped off the page.

Rip...

The moment she finished the drawing, she didn't hesitate—she tore it into countless tiny shreds.

Then she tossed them into the trash bin.

"Whew. Finally feel better!"

After venting in her own special way, Gwen's mood seemed to lift a little.

"And that guy... was he really Superman?"

As she replayed in her mind the figure floating in the air, the one that had left her utterly awestruck, Gwen slowly began to sketch again on the paper.

At that moment, far out in space—

Peter, with his arms spread wide, was embracing the sun.

He was also carefully sensing the completely different feeling of basking in sunlight here compared to on Earth.

In this instant, every cell in his body seemed to come fully alive.

Countless rays of sunlight eagerly merged into his form, transformed by the special changes in his body's cells into a unique energy within him.

Almost every minute—every second—his body was growing stronger at an astonishing rate.

After that, Peter basked in the sun in space for several hours, embracing it like a lover.

Not until New York's night had ended and the dawn of early morning had risen from the east.

Peter, who had kept his eyes tightly shut, suddenly snapped them open.

And the moment his eyes opened, a glimmer of golden light seemed to flow within his crystalline pupils.

The next instant, he abruptly reversed direction and shot downward toward Earth at breakneck speed.

In less than a minute, he returned from hundreds of kilometers away in space back to land.

But once back on Earth, Peter didn't rush to fly home.

Instead, he flew to a barren wasteland.

Everywhere stood massive boulders of varying sizes, not even a single weed in sight.

The shortest boulders were only a few meters tall, while the tallest reached nearly a hundred meters, like small peaks.

Peter slowly flew above a boulder roughly ten meters in diameter.

Eyes wide open, he stared at the boulder before him with a fierce intensity.

One second... ten seconds... one minute...

A full several minutes passed as Peter kept his eyes wide, glaring at the boulder.

As if the boulder were his mortal enemy, and he wanted to shatter it with sheer force of will.

Nearly ten minutes went by, and even with his Man of Steel body, he couldn't help but feel his eyes growing dry.

Then, a scorching energy suddenly gathered within his eyes.

In an instant, Peter's originally pitch-black pupils burst into a flash of crimson, like raging flames.

In a single moment, the fiery red consumed his entire eyes.

A bloody red light flickered in his gaze, like a demon crawling out of hell.

"Ah!"

With a roar from Peter, two thick beams of red Heat Vision shot forth from his blazing eyes.

Carrying terrifying heat and immense impact, they struck the boulder below him in an instant.

Sizzle...

The powerful force instantly pierced through the boulder.

The scorching high temperature caused the inside of the boulder to glow red from the heat, like red-hot metal.

Boom!

A few seconds later, the boulder, its internal and external temperatures now extremely imbalanced, exploded with a bang.

And Peter instinctively turned his head, but the Heat Vision didn't stop; it followed his gaze, carving a trench several meters deep across the ground.

Wherever the Heat Vision passed, everything was instantly cut through. Countless boulders split in half, and on the cross-sections, as clean as if sliced by a sharp blade, a faint red glow still lingered.

During this, he even sliced a boulder dozens of meters tall cleanly in half vertically.

The split boulder crashed to both sides, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Only when Peter turned his gaze to the sky, the crimson Heat Vision shooting straight into the clouds and dispersing them above, did he finally manage to control this immense power and abruptly shut his eyes.

Even then, through his closed eyelids, the two red-hot orbs within could still be seen.

Gradually, the red light in his eyes faded.

[Congratulations, Host. Successfully awakened Heat Vision and Freeze Breath.]

And the next moment, the system's voice rang out in his mind at just the right time.

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