Heat Vision and X-Ray Vision

When the doctor arrived, Dilos began to act. He wrapped himself in bandages as usual to disguise himself. Once the doctor came over to him, he used his ability.

As his ability took effect, Dilos could clearly sense the mental waves emanating from the doctor. Relying on instinct, he slowly extended the mass of mental energy in his mind into the doctor's.

Of course, with Dilos's current abilities, controlling the doctor outright was impossible. He had to guide him gradually, interfere with his mind little by little, and slowly hypnotize him. In the meantime, he needed to stall for as long as he could.

"Doctor, how old are you?"

"Doctor, are you married?"

"Doctor, how does this machine work? Is it..."

Dilos was like a chatterbox, asking all sorts of pointless questions. But because his employer, Lex, had instructed him to, the doctor didn't say anything. That gave Dilos plenty of time to stall while he kept using his ability to interfere with the doctor's consciousness and hypnotize him step by step.

Even so, Dilos felt immense pressure. Gradually interfering with and hypnotizing the doctor was exhausting. Still, he persisted. A few times, his attempt was nearly interrupted, leaving him in a cold sweat, but fortunately, he ultimately succeeded.

"After examining Dilos, you found that he still hadn't fully recovered. You prescribed him several medications and estimated that it would take another two months for him to regain most of his mobility. He should come back for a follow-up then."

Dilos stared into the doctor's eyes, drenched in sweat as he used words and his ability together to hypnotize him. Once he was done, he felt completely drained.

It had been exhausting, but it was worth it. Chloe and Gabe's astonished expressions when the doctor left without noticing anything made Dilos feel especially accomplished.

"He didn't say anything?"

Chloe's eyes widened as she asked first. What she really meant was: had the doctor truly failed to notice anything?

Dilos hesitated, unsure how to answer her.

Should I keep it from them? The thought crossed Dilos's mind, but the more he considered it, the more he felt that hiding it from them wasn't right. Situations like this were bound to happen again, and if he kept concealing things from them, it would surely cause trouble. After thinking it over for a while, he decided to tell them about his ability and what he had just done.

"Isn't that a little wrong?" Gabe said with a troubled look. Chloe's expression was uneasy, too.

Dilos had been prepared for their reaction. He shrugged and told them the truth. "I can't help it. If people found out about my current condition, it would be terrifying. What if some ill-intentioned people captured me and cut me open?"

Seeing how conflicted they looked, Dilos understood their feelings. He would probably have reacted the same way. So he spoke gently. "Don't worry. I won't use this ability on either of you. And I promise that unless it's absolutely necessary, I won't use it on other people."

"I'm sorry. We're family, and I shouldn't have thought that way." Chloe looked embarrassed and guilty. "It's just that I recently saw a news story about a Metahuman with mental powers committing a crime. I should have known you're not like them."

Gabe felt guilty, too.

"I understand. Don't worry about it. Besides, we're family. Even if we all have secrets, we care about one another just the same." Dilos nodded and reassured them. He had seen the news story, too, and it was easy to jump to conclusions when something like that happened at such a sensitive time. On top of that, plenty of high-ranking officials had been demonizing Mutants in the media for years, and everyone was bound to be affected by it to some degree.

But once they'd talked it through, everything was fine. They were family, after all.

Some people became arrogant and self-centered after gaining Metahuman abilities. They might even hurt their families without a second thought, disregarding their feelings and turning against them. This often happened to people with especially powerful abilities. Others, however, grew even closer to their families after gaining Metahuman abilities.

So when someone later asked Dilos what he thought about this, he answered:

"I trust my family completely, and they trust me just as much. We sometimes argue, but because of that trust, we accept one another, protect one another, respect one another, and look out for one another. So unless something serious might happen, I won't use my ability to sense what my family is doing. Why would I use it for no reason? Abusing my ability could hurt the people I care about, and I could never accept that."

Afterward, the three of them returned to their usual way of getting along, but their bond had grown even stronger.

Then came Dilos's miserable stretch of typing away.

Dilos didn't know what had gotten into him. In just half a month, he had used his unbelievably good memory to rewrite the first three Harry Potter books one after another. Even though training Guoshu had made him far fitter than an ordinary athlete, his hands still hurt terribly.

But the effort was worth it. Dilos had tremendous confidence in the Harry Potter series and believed that publishing the books would bring him a result he could be satisfied with. However, he wasn't in a hurry to publish them. He had another plan—or rather, an experiment—to carry out. He'd wanted to try it ever since he got Clark's blood, but he'd never had enough time.

Honestly, Dilos was extremely envious of Superman's powers, such as X-ray vision, Heat Vision, and freezing breath. With the abilities he had now, he couldn't gain super strength, super speed, or super durability simply by using Clark's blood. But X-ray vision and Heat Vision might be another matter.

Kryptonian cells could absorb energy from stars, including various kinds of radiation. This radiation not only multiplied the strength of his cells, but also gave him superpowers like Heat Vision.

In his previous life, Dilos had wondered whether Superman's Heat Vision and X-ray vision were caused by some mechanism that let him emit electromagnetic waves and other forms of radiation from his eyes.

And based on how Superman had developed, it was quite possible that once the cells in his body had been enhanced to a certain point, he had also gained some control over his internal energy. That would have allowed him to distinguish which types of radiation could be used for seeing through things and which could be used for Heat Vision.

If this guess was correct, he could inject Superman's blood into some precision devices, then use related equipment to separate out specific types of radiation and direct them into particular devices for practical use.

There were plenty of small, suitable devices, and the most convenient and ideal one, in Dilos's opinion, was a pair of glasses. The only problem was figuring out how to test his hypothesis and then refine the process enough to make it work with a pair of glasses.