The Unseen Underground Laboratory

"Connors?"

Yuri raised an eyebrow. How had those two ended up mixed together? He looked around the room—there were all sorts of bizarre experimental machines, most of them covered in dust, with the newest-looking items being a dozen or so cages holding white mice.

"Yes."

Tony pulled Yuri over to the lab table illuminated by shadowless lights, pointing at the green lizard-mouse inside the transparent tempered glass. "There's a problem with our experiment. No matter what we do, the potion that turned Connors into a Lizardman can't perfectly regenerate lost limbs."

At that moment, the lizard-mouse in the test chamber began to regress. The green scales on its body faded one by one, but simultaneously, its limbs and tail started to crack and crumble!

Connors sighed, looking helplessly at the furry white ball of flesh in the chamber. "It's as if the potion has a memory. When the time's up, everything reverts to how it was."

Kate, who had been following closely, finally couldn't contain her curiosity. She snuck a glance at Yuri, and when she saw he wasn't paying attention, she reached out with lightning speed, grabbed a cage with a white mouse, and lifted it to her face for a closer look.

"Squeak! Squeak!"

The poor little mouse looked terrified. It scrambled on all fours to the farthest corner of the cage from Kate, burying its tiny pointed head deep into its belly.

Seeing this, Yuri simply let go of the hand he'd had around her slender waist. "Take the cage and play somewhere else. Don't open it."

"Yes, sir!"

Under Tony's "You really know how to have fun" gaze, Kate stuck out her little tongue and licked Yuri's cheek, then obediently took the cage and slipped off to a corner to play.

With that nuisance temporarily gone, Yuri slung an arm around Tony's shoulders, squinting as he said darkly, "Before we start anything we need to do here, aren't you going to explain why an agent claiming to be from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division showed up at my workshop with a dozen of his men?"

"Haha!"

Tony thought about brushing it off, but when he saw Yuri's eyes faintly starting to turn pure white, he quickly raised both hands in surrender. "I can't explain, but I can compensate!"

"Give me the details."

Yuri sat cross-armed on the edge of the lab table, leisurely watching Tony, whose expression wasn't looking too great. "You've only got one chance."

"Fine."

Tony, after all, was one of the top capitalists in the beacon of freedom, and a capitalist's greatest skill was painting grand visions. Facing the white mouse in the cage, he launched into an impassioned spiel. "As you can see, I'm conducting a great experiment! It will bring hope to hundreds of millions of disabled people around the world, and it will bring immeasurable wealth and fame to its inventor... Yuri, isn't that compensation enough?"

"Sixty percent!"

Yuri shot back without hesitation. "Twenty percent is your compensation to me. The rest is my value as one of the inventors of this technology."

"No!"

Tony instantly bristled. If this technology ever hit the market, it would need help from all sides, and the most valuable gift would naturally be its shares. If Yuri divided it up like that, the original shares left for Stark would be less than ten percent!

"Forty percent max!"

Tony held up four fingers, explaining seriously, "First, Dr. Connors needs at least five percent. Second, Stark Industries must hold over twenty percent. The rest goes to Congress, various organizations, associations, medical institutions... so the most I can give you is forty percent!"

"Hold on!"

Connors, who had been listening the whole time, finally couldn't hold back. He sized up Yuri, who didn't look like a researcher at all, and asked Tony in confusion, "Why are you two discussing the split already? Who is he? Why do you think he can definitely solve our problem? Why—"

"Snap!"

With a snap of his fingers, Yuri put Connors into a deep sleep right on the spot. He held up five fingers, looking Tony straight in the eye and saying slowly, "Fifty percent. Not a penny less. You should be glad we have some history, or I'd have you counting money for me without even knowing it, just like Dr. Connors."

Connors, completely under Yuri's control, chimed in at just the right moment: "I offer all the help I can, free of charge. I don't want any shares or profits."

Tony swallowed hard. He was reminded of the fear of being completely dominated by a certain someone in a certain cave.

His little mustache twitched a couple of times, and Tony finally conceded. "Fine, fine. Inviting you here was a mistake. You're nothing but a bandit!"

Yuri chuckled and steered the conversation back on track. "Come on, Tony. Let me see your experiment process."

A flash of innocent white in his eyes, Dr. Connors, having forgotten everything from moments ago, picked up a micro-syringe with a worried expression and drew a small amount of Lizard Potion.

Tony, meanwhile, operated a robotic arm to forcibly break a white mouse's hind leg, secured it, and then worked with Connors to inject the potion into the poor creature.

"Squeak! Squeak! Squeak-hiss~ hiss~"

Yuri gently placed his right index finger on the tempered glass shield. Strands of golden energy passed through the bulletproof barrier and went straight into the white mouse, which had fully lizardized.

Scales, flesh, bones, claws, nerves, brain, cells, genes...

Yuri closed his eyes, silently sensing the great changes happening inside the mouse. Kate, who had been playing with her mouse in the corner, quietly moved to guard him, her nearly perfect body radiating an extremely dangerous aura.

"Whoa!"

Tony finally gave Kate a proper look. An electric shock seemed to run through his entire nervous system. Faced with such a divine face and demonic body, he instantly forgot the unpleasantness from before, and the prodigal son of the Stark family was back online. "Forgive me for asking, but are you Yuri's companion? I don't see how he could possibly deserve—"

"Shut up!"

Kate exploded with speed imperceptible to the naked eye. She grabbed Tony by the neck with one hand and effortlessly lifted him off the ground. Lowering her voice, she said in a tone that brooked no argument, "If you say one more word that disturbs the boss, I will kill you immediately."

Tony had never seen anyone with such intense killing intent. The moment he met those beautiful eyes, it was as if a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, a forest of bones, came crashing down on him. The terrifying pressure left him unable to breathe for over ten seconds even after she set him down.

"Ha—!"

Tony took a deep breath, his face purple. Kate was still guarding Yuri just as before, but in Tony's eyes, that divine face and demonic body had turned into something as terrifying as a primordial beast. Like the white mouse in its cage, he scrambled away from Kate on all fours until his back hit the wall, and only then did his ragged breathing slowly calm down.

Just then, Yuri's brilliant golden eyes reopened. He instinctively looked to where Tony had been standing. "Alright, I know what the problem is."

He blinked, then looked at Kate, who was wearing an innocent expression. "Where is he?"