Coveting

"My God, how did you do that?"

Peter, who had been standing off to the side the whole time, had seen Dilos teach those guys a lesson from beginning to end. He looked at Dilos's rather slender build and instinctively squeezed the muscle on his exposed arm.

"I can't even budge it..."

Peter's eyes were filled with shock and envy. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and it took him a while to ask, "How did you get muscles like that?"

Basically, no man didn't want to stay in shape and have strong muscles, too.

Peter compared his own arms with Dilos's and looked a little helpless. Dilos's arms looked slender, but they were all muscle, and overall he seemed a size bigger than Peter.

Compared to Dilos, Peter looked like skin and bones.

"To get a body like this, you have to stick to a lot of exercise for years."

Seeing the envy in Peter's eyes satisfied Dilos's little vanity, but he still found the situation rather absurd.

Just thinking about how this man, who would one day become Spider-Man, envied his muscles seemed unbelievable.

Then Dilos remembered that Peter Parker hadn't been bitten by a radioactive spider yet, and his body hadn't changed. So his reaction was perfectly normal.

After giving it some thought, Dilos decided he should get to know Peter properly. Given how disastrous this world's future seemed likely to be, he and Peter would probably have plenty of chances to interact.

With that in mind, Dilos took off his glasses. He didn't want people to remember him only as the guy wearing those ridiculous glasses.

"Oh my God!"

As soon as Dilos took off his glasses, Peter cried out in surprise again. Dilos couldn't help feeling a little helpless.

"I just took off my glasses. Do you really have to make such a big deal out of it?"

Dilos grumbled to himself, but Peter's next words left him embarrassed.

"You're Dilos Sullivan! The author of that bestselling Western novel, Harry Potter?!"

Peter seemed overjoyed. He circled Dilos several times, until Dilos couldn't take it anymore and reached out to hold him in place. Only then did Peter settle down. But although Peter's body had stopped moving, his mouth hadn't.

"I'm your fan. Really. No, I mean, what are you doing here? I'm just so happy."

Peter rambled on incoherently until Dilos repeatedly put a finger to his lips, and he gradually quieted down.

Even so, the excitement on Peter's face didn't fade.

"Ahem, sorry." Peter coughed a few times to hide his embarrassment. He reined in his emotions, then forced himself to look composed in front of Dilos's smiling face.

"Hello, Mr. Sullivan. It's nice to meet you. My name is Peter Parker."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Spider-Man."

"Sorry, what did you just say?" Peter didn't understand what Dilos meant at first. Dilos felt a little awkward. He'd been secretly thrilled that the legendary Spider-Man was a fan of his books, and had let slip the nickname for Spider-Man he'd known back on Earth in his previous life.

"Nothing, it was just a slip of the tongue." Dilos smiled. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Peter Parker."

"But please don't get so excited. I don't want to be mobbed by other fans."

As he spoke, Dilos cautiously glanced around, then put on those ridiculous thick-rimmed glasses again. Peter realized that if he hadn't already known who Dilos was, he wouldn't have recognized him.

Dilos hadn't been exaggerating. Fans in this world had a bad habit of secretly taking pictures, and annoying paparazzi existed here, too. If his glasses weren't such a good disguise, some bored fan would have exposed him online by now. Then those reporters, always chasing headlines, would probably have shown up in New York to hunt him down, take pictures, and write about him.

And so, Dilos and Peter chatted for a while. Besides novels, they talked about biology and physics.

Peter was thrilled. He'd never expected his idol to be so passionate about science, or to understand and grasp scientific concepts far better than he did.

That was only natural. Dilos had started studying those subjects years ago to prepare for the disasters to come. With that foundation, years of Guoshu training and the side effects of his own superpowers had given him far better memory and learning ability than most people.

As for Peter Parker, first, the amount of knowledge he'd encountered was limited. Second, he hadn't been bitten by a radioactive spider yet, so his brain was still within the normal human range. Even though Peter Parker was a top student at school, he couldn't compare with Dilos at this stage.

The two hit it off so well that Peter even invited Dilos over to his house.

Dilos wasn't about to turn down an opportunity like that. Before coming to New York, he'd done his homework. Among the news articles he'd found were reports about Peter Parker's father, Richard Parker.

Just as the movies in his previous life had portrayed him, Richard Parker had worked with Dr. Connors at Oscorp on cross-species genetic transplantation technology. But unlike in the movies, nine years ago, a gang of assailants with unknown motives had broken into Richard Parker's lab and tried to seize his research data and experimental products.

Richard Parker had refused to give in, and fought the assailants alongside his wife. In the end, the couple and the attackers had all died together, and the research data and experimental products had been destroyed in the struggle.

That was the official version. Dilos believed there was no way the whole story could be explained in just a few sentences.

But that wasn't what mattered to him. Richard Parker's research materials were what mattered most. The newspapers had reported that the research data was destroyed, but that didn't mean Richard Parker hadn't kept a backup at home or somewhere else.

Dilos wasn't the only one who could think of that. He was sure Peter's home had probably already been searched, and if those materials existed, someone had likely taken them.

Still, he held on to a sliver of hope.

What if Richard Parker had hidden his backup well enough that those people hadn't found it?

And so, with plenty of ulterior motives, Dilos stepped through Peter's front door.