"Hmm?!"
"Fuck, you crazy bastard!"
The heavy Steamroller rolled toward him. Sabretooth's eyes widened as he desperately tried to turn over and escape, but he simply could not do it.
He could only lie there as terror consumed his body and mind, cursing hysterically while watching in horror as the enormous steel roller drew closer and closer.
Until death loomed before his eyes and mercilessly crushed him!
"Ah..."
Crack, crack, crack!
In the darkness, at an unmanned construction site, piercing screams tore through the silence of the night and carried far, far away.
Accompanied by the sound of bones shattering, Sabretooth was crushed into a pile of pulp.
"You were right. The process was a little boring."
A few minutes later, Ron drove the Steamroller back and forth, as though crushing an enormous biscuit.
His expression was calm, even somewhat bored, as he spoke of his boredom to Sabretooth, whose body on the ground was no longer recognizable as human.
It looked like something out of a story about a deranged serial killer.
If anyone had appeared there at that moment, they might have pissed themselves on the spot.
Half an hour.
He crushed him for a full half hour.
Whenever the thing on the ground recovered a rough human shape, he rolled over it again. Only after half an hour did Sabretooth finally die.
Flesh and blood could not withstand steel forever. More than a hundred full-body pulverizations and regenerations had depleted his healing power in a short time.
His Ability Points increased by 2,500.
Sabretooth was not supposed to die at this point in time. He should have remained active for decades, constantly entangled with Wolverine, and even participated in Magneto's Major Event of trying to turn humans into mutants.
Though his role was not irreplaceable.
But now he was dead, and fate had already changed.
"Not bad. I've almost made back my investment."
This was only the beginning.
"I have my ticket. Time to prepare for entry."
He straightened his clothes, cast one final glance at Sabretooth's corpse—a sight that could give anyone nightmares for a long time after one look—and turned to leave.
Super regeneration was powerful, but even Magneto, who casually caused global-scale disasters, had been captured alive by the military more than once and manipulated as an experiment. What did Sabretooth amount to?
If the military had not wanted to keep him alive for some use, he would have been killed long ago.
Using only common things from daily life, Ron had no fewer than dozens of ways to kill Sabretooth.
"Excuse me, my name is Charles Xavier." "Erik Lehnsherr."
Inside a bar, the young Magneto, Erik, and Professor X, Charles, approached a man with a wolverine-like hairstyle. They had just introduced themselves with friendly smiles when, before they could say anything else—
"Get the fuck out of here!"
With a cigar clenched between his teeth, the man took a puff without even turning around. He coldly cursed at them, refused to communicate, and bluntly told them to get lost.
"..."
Their expressions froze. They exchanged a glance and had no choice but to leave.
Outside the bar.
Charles helplessly spread his hands.
"That fellow mutant was too rude. We hadn't even opened our mouths before he told us to get lost. There's simply no way to communicate with him."
"Though I don't know why. Let's find someone else."
Erik frowned.
What was wrong with that guy inside? Had he eaten gunpowder? Or was he always that arrogant?
"Perhaps it was because his exceptionally sensitive nose caught the mingled scent of the two of you."
A slightly teasing voice came from nearby.
"He thought you were a gay couple looking to bring him along for some fun. He was disgusted and told you to get lost."
The man inside was Wolverine. At this point, this was practically his only shining moment against Magneto: he had bluntly cursed away the young Magneto. After Stryker turned him into the real Wolverine, though, he would only suffer defeats whenever he faced Magneto.
Today, he had dismissed him with indifference and disgusted curses. Before long, Magneto would teach him what it meant to "pick it up and put it down."
"Hm?"
The two turned their heads. A handsome young man stood leaning against the wall nearby with his arms folded.
"Gay? We're not..."
Hearing that, Charles hurriedly defended himself. Having always been known as a playboy at university, he did not want anyone misunderstanding his sexual orientation.
"I know you aren't."
Ron walked over with a smile.
"Not yet, anyway..."
He added another line.
The two men before him were the young Magneto and Professor X. They had only recently met, brought together by a common enemy—the Black King, Sebastian Shaw.
Using Cerebro, built by Beast Hank, Professor X had brought Magneto along to search everywhere for fellow mutants willing to join them against him.
Erik wanted to kill the Black King in revenge for his mother, whom the Black King had killed when Erik was a child. Charles wanted to shatter his scheme to start World War III and save the world.
"Oh, what do you mean, not yet? We may be friends, but we will never have that kind of relationship."
Erik's frown deepened, but he said nothing. Charles repeatedly waved his hands and stressed the point with great concern.
If he got labeled as gay, all those beautiful ladies would stay far away from him in the future.
Ron sized them up.
The current Erik was not very different from the future Magneto. It was only that there was a long-suppressed gloom between his brows, like a lone wolf that had long lived in darkness and pain. He did not yet possess the leader's bearing that age and experience would later give him.
And Charles was quite far from the bald Professor X who radiated saintly benevolence.
Compared with a calm and kind sage, the young Professor X was more like a combination of scholar and playboy. He also did not yet have the bald head that would later proclaim him a powerful man.
His thick, curly brown hair was combed back, giving him a refined yet slightly unruly air.
"I didn't expect that after being misunderstood and rejected by one fellow mutant, we would meet another the moment we stepped outside."
Halfway through his explanation, Charles seemed to discover something delightful. He looked Ron up and down.
He possessed telepathy and mind control, allowing him to sense whether someone was a mutant at close range.
To his senses, Ron was also a mutant, just like the people they had come looking for.
"My name is Charles."
A friendly smile appeared on his face as he sincerely held out his hand.
"Erik."
A fellow mutant? Erik looked over and gave his name.
"Ron."
After shaking Charles's hand, Ron introduced himself briefly and neatly, in a style rather similar to Magneto's.
"Huh? I can sense you, but I can't see into your mind."
Looking at Ron, Charles's expression suddenly turned astonished.
He had encountered one person whose thoughts he could not see through before: Emma, the White Queen by the Black King's side. But Emma was also a powerful Psionic Ability user.
This fellow mutant was not. He did not possess any psychic ability. How was he doing this?
"You were peeking into my thoughts?"
The system could spend Ability Points to block any probing of his memories and thoughts, preventing anyone from learning of the system's existence. This was the system's most basic rule and ability for protecting its host.
Glancing at the more than one hundred Ability Points that had vanished, his face instantly darkened.
"Sorry, Ron. I didn't mean to."
Caught red-handed, Charles gave an awkward smile when he saw that this newly met fellow mutant seemed highly resistant, then hurriedly apologized.
The current Professor X was not as steady as he would be in old age, nor did he yet respect others or possess much self-restraint.
Whenever young Charles wanted to know something, he would immediately use his ability to pry into another person's memories and thoughts. It had almost become instinct.
Ron had long known this and prepared himself to spend Ability Points. Since he had anticipated it in advance, he was actually quite calm inside, but he still put on this expression.
Only this way could he make Charles restrain that behavior around him.
"Charles, I told you before. No one likes having their past memories casually browsed through, or having every thought in their heart known by someone else."
Remembering how his own memories had been examined before, Erik's expression turned unpleasant and his tone cold.
"Uh, I won't do that again."
Facing the hostile, oppressive gazes of the two men, the future Professor X, Charles, was extremely embarrassed and repeatedly apologized and promised not to do it again.
"Ahem, fellow mutant, we're saving the world. Want to join us?"
Then he changed the subject, winked at Ron, and delivered that very cool line he used to recruit other mutants.
Saving the world—what a cool thing that was. He believed no one could refuse.
What boy had not fantasized about saving the world?
A few days later, at a secret CIA base.
At night, inside a room for government employees to relax and unwind.
Sitting beside the bar, Ron slowly savored a glass of whiskey as he watched the people seated on the sofa by the floor-to-ceiling windows and secretly shook his head.
"My name is Raven. What are your names, and what are your abilities?
"I've decided to give myself a codename: Mystique!"
The equally immature Mystique, who had grown up following Charles, Beast Hank, who conducted research at this base, and the other mutants recruited by Professor X were excitedly introducing themselves to one another as if they were holding a social party.
"A bunch of giggling, immature young fools. They have no idea how serious this is. They think being recruited into a special CIA department to take part in saving the world is something cool."
He had accepted the invitation to supposedly save the world and returned with the future Magneto and Professor X to a secret CIA base where they were temporarily staying.
It was not because saving the world was unbelievably cool, but because he wanted to disrupt fate and gain Ability Points.
After figuring out the current point in time of the X-Men universe, he immediately had a target whose ability he wanted to acquire.
A fiery light appeared in Ron's eyes as he took a sip of whiskey.
"In the X-Men universe at this point in time, the person whose ability I want most is neither Magneto, who can manipulate magnetic fields, nor Professor X, who can mentally control others. It is the Black King, Sebastian Shaw!"
The mutant Black King, controller of the Hellfire Club, possessed the ability to absorb all forms of energy—kinetic energy, fire, electricity, nuclear energy, and more—convert them into his own energy, and release that energy.
He had once drained all the nuclear energy from the reactor powering a nuclear submarine.
He was a supervillain whom Magneto and Professor X had to join forces to defeat through a trick in the end.
And he... would be here soon.
Before you continue