Tony and Connors

A meal.

The five of them broke twenty-four table knives, poked holes in thirteen lunch boxes, and bent nineteen forks.

Ethan stared at the clear fingerprints on the discarded stainless-steel cutlery in the trash bag and swallowed hard. Sure enough, every one of these "new employees" was a tough one!

After the meal, Yuri showed them how to wash the cutlery, step by step. This went much more smoothly. After their earlier lesson, all five of them had learned to keep their strength under control. Aside from using a little too much dish soap, they managed not to accidentally break any more utensils.

After Yuri watched them put the remaining cutlery back in the foam box, he clapped his hands and called the five over. "All right, your task this afternoon is to learn and master the Inuit language. This is very important. It'll affect our search for our people in the Arctic Circle in the future."

"Yes, sir!"

Ethan blinked. "Our people?"

Could there really be more muscle-bound people who could "accidentally" crush a steel spoon besides the six standing right here?

"Ethan."

"Here!"

Yuri paused, then smiled and patted the shoulder of the only pure-blooded human in the workshop. "You're not a soldier, and I'm not your commanding officer, so you don't have to do that."

"What I wanted to ask was, could you help them with their language studies? As far as I know, you're fluent in several languages, including English, aren't you?"

Ethan rubbed his smooth, high forehead and said with some embarrassment, "But Inuit isn't one of the languages I know."

"That's all right."

Yuri pointed to the five, who had already begun huddling together over a laptop. He sounded very confident. "They're quick learners. I just need you to share your experience with learning languages and teach them some gentlemanly manners."

Ethan raised an eyebrow, completely baffled. His experience with learning languages was one thing, but gentlemanly manners?

Could anyone learn those in such a short time?

"Go on. Take them upstairs to the second floor. I'll watch the shop."

"All right..."

Ethan cast a lingering look at the workshop's front counter, his sacred place for slacking off. He had a vague feeling that these leisurely days might not last much longer.

Bay Villa.

Stark's private luxury estate.

Underground garage.

With the help of Dum-E, the mechanical arm, Tony had set up a new lab bench among the many luxury cars. Surprisingly, helping him was a one-armed man in a lab coat: Dr. Lizard, the very man Tony had said he'd hand over to Yuri once he was finished.

Dr. Lizard, Connors, set down a box of white mice and bowed sincerely to Tony. "Mr. Stark, thank you again for giving me the chance to continue this research."

"Don't mention it."

Tony took an ultrafine syringe and carefully drew about a milliliter from the Lizard Potion, which had almost been loaded into the Canary Device. "We won't have much time together, so let's get started. Hopefully, we can produce some results we can control."

Connors helped secure one of the mice and carefully asked while Tony injected it, "Mr. Stark, are you really sure you don't need to study biochemistry systematically?"

"No."

Tony pulled out the needle and pointed an extremely complex-looking camera at the cage. When he was done, he hurried over to the analysis computer and sat down, carefully recording the data as it refreshed on the screen. "If you reach my level in any field of science, you'll be amazed to discover that biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, information science... they're all connected at the end of the day!"

Connors was stunned. He knew there was a significant gap between him and Tony in knowledge and intelligence, but from what Tony had said... did he think he had already reached the end of science?

Impossible!

Absolutely impossible!

Connors went over to Tony to see what he was recording.

"Number of abnormal limb movements," "Body temperature at different points," "Analysis of abnormal behavior," along with a jumble of formulas and symbols scrawled on paper...

The mouse in the cage had already begun shedding fur and swelling up. Patches of dark green scales appeared on its body, and several gleaming claws burst from its once soft, pink feet.

"Squeak! Squeak! Squeee! Hiss..."

The mouse's squeaks gradually turned into lizardlike sounds. Connors heard them and immediately said, "Now! Mr. Stark, the mouse has turned into a lizard!"

Stark glanced at the data on the computer. His powerful mind memorized every last figure in an instant. He jogged over to the completely transformed mouse and took out his tools to test its abilities in detail.

"Super Strength, super defense, super recovery..."

The tray in Tony's hands already held twelve twitching lizard mouse legs, front and back, as well as three lizard mouse tails wriggling like loaches. In other words, he had already severed the lizard mouse's limbs and tail three times.

But the lizard mouse in the cage still looked perfectly whole, without a scratch on it. If not for the green blood splattered on the cage walls, no one would have believed that the somewhat violent little creature had ever suffered a severed limb.

"That should be enough..."

After Tony's fourth brutal round of testing, Connors warned him, "The potion's effects will gradually weaken as the number of times a severed limb regrows increases. Based on my previous experiments, it's about four or five times."

Sure enough, the dark green scales on the mouse gradually faded away, and white hairs began sprouting from its body again. The numbers on the computer plummeted like a waterfall, and soon a scrawny white mouse was back in the cage.

"The lizard state only increases the efficiency with which energy is used. Regrowing severed limbs still draws on the body's energy reserves. I inject myself with a large amount of glucose before transforming each time, so I don't end up like this."

Connors used himself as an example as he carefully explained why the mouse had changed this way. He added in frustration, "And it can only regrow organs that were already there before the transformation. No matter how much I improve the formula, it still can't restore my severed arm."

Tony opened the cage and lifted the feeble white mouse by its tail.

"Squeak... squeak..."

He ignored the mouse's weak pleas for mercy and casually tossed it to Dum-E, the mechanical arm waiting nearby. Then he tugged at his beard and thought as hard as he could.

He wasn't interested in Super Strength or super endurance at all, because those abilities were bound to be products of genetic modification. He didn't want someone inserting lizard or spider genes into him.

The only thing Tony was interested in was the super recovery of the lizard state. Its potential commercial value aside, its healing ability alone was enough to make anyone's heart race.

Science was connected at the end of the day.

That was absolutely true.

But there was another saying: at the end of science lay theology.

A pair of brilliant golden eyes flashed through Tony's mind. Thinking of his miraculously healed chest, he nervously touched his nose. "If he finds out I sold him out..."