After reaching an agreement with Tina, Dilos's life returned to normal. Still, whenever he thought back to what had happened, he couldn't help feeling smug about how much smarter he was.
For instance, before he threatened Tina, he'd used his ability on her, subtly planting suggestions and hypnotizing her bit by bit. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been easy to make someone as reckless and fearless as Tina back down so readily.
Of course, his powerful Heat Vision had helped, too. But it wasn't as impressive as he'd imagined. The reason the iron door had burned through was that he'd added a little something to it. Otherwise, no matter how powerful his glasses were, he couldn't have burned down the entire door.
The glasses simply weren't made with good enough materials or technology. If he'd really raised the Heat Vision's power enough to burn through an iron door in an instant, the Super Glasses would have exploded, unable to withstand the energy.
After their last conversation, Lex had also realized that the meteor rocks in Smallville weren't as useless as he'd thought. Based on the information Dilos had gathered from Chloe's Wall of Weird, it was practically certain that these extraterrestrial meteor rocks could grant people superpowers.
Tina, for example, had been born with brittle bone disease and, by all rights, shouldn't have lived past the age of three. But after she was exposed to radiation from the meteor rocks during the meteor shower disaster when she was three, her condition improved. She also gained the ability to reshape her bones and skin, transforming herself into other people—even imitating their voices so perfectly that they sounded like the real thing.
Only Dilos could recognize Tina after she transformed. Lex had always wondered how Dilos managed it. In response, Dilos had only smiled mysteriously and said, "You'll find out in time."
On top of that, Tina had superhuman strength and durability, with an arm strength of up to one ton. Even if a boxer punched her square in the face, she wouldn't feel a thing. She was the strongest woman—or rather, the toughest girl—Dilos had ever met.
But this also gave some indication of just how strong Dilos had been at the time, even if he'd used An Jin to unleash his power against her weak points.
After the incident with Tina, Lex completely believed Dilos's theory about the meteor rocks. He secretly sent people to search Smallville for any remaining pieces and store them in his private laboratory warehouse...
Besides that, Dilos had secretly drawn a few more tubes of blood from good boy Clark, using the same method as before. Looking at those tubes had made him feel smug for quite a while. Of course, he hadn't overdone it. Those few tubes would last him a long time, and taking any more would only make Clark suspicious.
During that time, after a few casual tests and some discreet surveillance with a pinhole camera, Dilos also noticed that Clark had changed. At some point, Clark's abilities had grown stronger, and he'd developed new ones, too. In the end, based on the evidence he'd gathered, Dilos concluded that Clark had seemingly developed all his other abilities except super hearing and flight. Because of that, Dilos spent less time with Clark, in case the boy discovered some of his secrets.
Dilos went about his ordinary days studying, practicing Guoshu, and researching Tina and Clark's blood. But after a little over three months, his peaceful routine was shattered.
Dilos had become famous—very famous. It had started two months earlier, when he'd submitted a manuscript to a publishing house owned by Lex. Since he was a friend of Lex's, Dilos had gotten favorable terms in the paperwork and contract.
Lex didn't know much about the novel business, so he hadn't had high hopes for Dilos's book. Still, he'd put a clause in the contract: the better the book sold, the higher the percentage of the profits Dilos would receive.
But just as Dilos had expected, the novel was met with rave reviews soon after publication. Even Lex hadn't seen that coming. His business instincts kicked in, and he immediately set things in motion. With Lex's help, media outlets rushed to promote the book. In just two short months, sales had topped ten million copies, and they were still climbing.
Dilos went on to win the American Book Award, the Children's Book Award, and even the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. His book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, became a bestselling novel across Europe and America.
Dilos hadn't gone out of his way to conceal his identity when he signed the contract, so when the publisher asked whether he was willing to make his identity public, he agreed without a second thought.
What did he have to lose? In his past life and this one, a brand with a name behind it could draw in customers right away. An unknown brand had to work several times—or even dozens of times—harder to get the same results, and sometimes still didn't get the expected return.
People said that once you were famous, everything you did turned out well. The saying was exaggerated, but it wasn't entirely baseless. For the sake of his future, the first thing he needed to do was become famous!
By now, Dilos had already earned twenty million dollars from his book alone. And that wasn't all—sales were soaring.
Once you got a taste of success, who wouldn't want to be even more famous? Dilos now hoped his good reputation would spread as far as possible. With Lex's help, newspapers and TV stations were full of reports about Dilos and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Before long, his name had spread across Europe and America, and his fame was beginning to approach that level in Asia, too.
When Dilos's face appeared on television—without his glasses—everyone in town who knew him was stunned. Some were shocked, some were happy for him, and some were jealous. Others were already thinking about how to get close to him...
The next day, when Dilos drove Chloe to school, plenty of people pointed at him and whispered. On his way to class, the people who knew him, even a little, were much friendlier than before. Even those who barely knew him greeted him warmly.
Male Student A: "Oh my god, Dilos, how did you do it?"
Male Student B: "Dilos, you're so cool."
Female Student A: "Dilos, I had no idea you were so literary."
Female Student B: "Dilos, I'm having a party at my house the day after tomorrow. You'll come, right?"
Dilos responded to his classmates' enthusiasm with nothing more than a polite smile, but inside, he was over the moon. Their excitement and all the praise on the news had thoroughly satisfied his vanity.
The book alone had earned him a fortune, easily solving his family's financial problems and giving him the capital to start a company in the future.
Inside Chloe's Torch Newspaper Office.
"From today on, I'm rich! As expected, everything comes easily to a genius like me." Dilos sighed smugly. Unlike when he was out in public, he wore a thoroughly self-satisfied expression.
"Could you at least try to keep it down?" Chloe rolled her eyes, helpless at the sight of her cousin's nose practically reaching for the sky. But she rarely saw Dilos this happy, so she decided to let him enjoy himself.
At first, she'd been upset that her cousin had written such an incredible novel without telling her. She hadn't found out what Dilos had done until he appeared on TV and in the newspapers.
Dilos had later explained that he'd wanted to surprise her and her father, but she was still a little miffed.
Why?
Because Dilos had become famous, the reporters dug up details about his family, including Chloe and Gabe, and suddenly they were famous, too. Chloe, especially, had spent the most time with Dilos. With her sweet, pretty face, she'd been pestered by the media nonstop.
She, Chloe, was supposed to be the future queen of journalism. Shouldn't she be the one reporting on other people? How had things ended up the other way around? The reporters hadn't dug up anything interesting, but she was still annoyed.
"Come on, Chloe, don't dwell on it." Dilos looked at her sulky little face, amused and helpless. As her cousin, who'd grown up with her, he knew exactly what she was thinking.
"Just think of it as a warm-up for your own rise to fame. Once you make it big, this sort of thing will happen all the time." Dilos chuckled and patted Chloe's smooth, lustrous hair to comfort her. She slapped his hand away without a hint of gratitude.
Watching Chloe sulk like a little kid, Dilos couldn't help laughing.
"Come on, Chloe." Dilos draped his jacket over her shoulders and smiled. "It's time to get you a nice car. What do you think of a BMW X6M?"
Chloe bared her teeth and made a face. The little bit of annoyance she'd been feeling vanished.
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