The First Signs of His Abilities

Looking at the tiger claws that had suddenly retracted, Dilos hurriedly turned his palms over and examined them from every angle. Yet he couldn't find any pockets of flesh between his fingers like the ones cats used to conceal their claws.

"What's going on?"

Dilos squeezed his palms and arms, but couldn't feel anything extra inside them that resembled bones. He even took out his glasses and used X-Ray Vision to scan both arms, yet still couldn't find any extra bones or anything else.

"Could it have been a hallucination?"

Dilos couldn't help feeling puzzled. He touched the webbing between the fingers where the tiger claws had just emerged, then immediately dismissed the idea.

Those giant tiger claws that had just appeared definitely hadn't been a hallucination!

Although Dilos didn't understand how four pairs of bone claws could extend from his wrists when his arm bones were just like an ordinary person's, that didn't stop him from continuing to examine his body.

"Cats that can retract and extend their claws at will generally do so by contracting and relaxing their muscles. If that's the case..."

Thinking this, Dilos held out his left hand and suddenly tensed it, making his wrist curl like a claw. Then, just as he'd hoped, he watched the claws emerge.

The webbing between his fingers quickly reddened as he tensed his hand. To his astonishment, it bulged outward, spread, elongated, and changed shape, turning into four enormous, ivory-white tiger claws about thirty centimeters long.

Dilos tried to hold them in place while running his other hand over them, examining their details by touch.

"They feel extremely hard. They look thicker and sturdier than the claws of even the Siberian Tiger, the largest tiger in the world, and they're much longer, too. The way they join to my wrists looks seamless and solid. They don't seem like they'd break, even under too much force."

As he spoke, Dilos suddenly gripped one claw and gradually increased the pressure. Yet even as he squeezed harder, the claw showed no sign of denting or breaking.

"Wow, they're even tougher than I thought." Dilos sounded surprised. Then he suddenly tensed the muscles in that hand, sending his inner energy and blood rushing into his arm, and wrenched the claw sideways with all his strength!

With a swish, the claws on his other hand shot out too, because Dilos had used so much force. But he didn't care about that. What mattered was that the claw he'd tried with all his strength to break showed no sign of snapping. The spot he'd bent had only dented slightly, and the claw remained perfectly straight, displaying its formidable strength.

What's more, that dent returned to normal in just a second or two, right before his eyes.

"Could my arm strength have gotten weaker?" Dilos frowned, then picked up an aluminum alloy baseball bat and gave it a casual squeeze.

Crunch, crack, crunch, crack...

With a metallic screech that set his teeth on edge, the baseball bat crumpled into a twisted mess in Dilos's hand.

"Holy crap..." Staring at his handiwork, Dilos drew a sharp breath. "My strength has increased way too much. I wasn't even trying."

He looked strangely at the claw he'd just failed to bend with all his strength, and his expression shifted.

"The claws are unexpectedly tough. Even after a powerful blow, I don't feel any pain in my nerves. I can't feel anything at all in the webbing where they connect, either..."

As he analyzed them, Dilos tried to control the claws, extending and retracting them as he examined them. What struck him as bizarre was that they seemed like some kind of deformable polymer with an absurdly high resistance to impact and pressure. The material was concentrated in the webbing between his fingers, so whenever the claws emerged, they seemed to grow right between them.

He extended the claws and lightly scraped them across the aluminum alloy baseball bat. The tips left several deep gouges in the metal.

"I think I've accidentally made something incredible."

Dilos didn't know whether to laugh or feel helpless. By every measure, his physical abilities had clearly surpassed the limits of the human body. But now he was in a bizarre state where he couldn't control his strength. One careless move could wreck whatever was around him.

"But there's no point overthinking it now. I should start with a blood test and see how my blood has changed after the mutation." Thinking this, Dilos carefully retrieved the syringe he'd prepared, moving as cautiously as if his hands were tied, and jabbed it into a vein.

Crack.

With a sharp snap, the metal needle broke easily as Dilos stared at it in utter disbelief.

But that wasn't all. It was as if something had flipped a switch. Dilos had been so distracted by his new tiger claws that he'd only just noticed how extraordinarily sharp his senses had become.

He could hear the creatures in his room scuttling around inside their metal containers from seven or eight meters away, their movements making a steady clicking sound. His eyes could easily pick out several ants and mosquitoes from a few meters away. He could even see the markings on their bodies and the motion of a mosquito's beating wings in perfect detail.

Then a strange, indescribable sense began feeding him a wealth of information. He couldn't explain what it was.

It allowed him to quickly tell whether there were obstacles nearby without using his eyes, and even determine whether something was alive and whether it posed a threat to him.

Dilos didn't think "instinct" was quite the right word for it. "Some kind of scanning ability" didn't sound right, either. After thinking it over for a while, he realized that Spider-Man's Spider-Sense was the only ability that fit the description.

"So this must be the legendary Spider-Sense." Dilos shook his head, feeling a little helpless. "It's a bit different from what I imagined, but the ability itself is truly incredible."

Once Dilos had sorted everything out, he noticed something strange about where he was. At some point, his feet had ended up stuck to the ceiling. He could feel a strong suction through them, holding him upside down with ease.

Dilos could only purse his lips helplessly.

"Looks like I'll need some time to get used to my abilities, so I can..."

Before he could finish, his phone rang and cut him off.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep...

"Seriously? Does it have to ring right now? I've barely finished transforming, and I can't even control my strength yet."

As the phone kept ringing, Dilos muttered a few complaints, then cautiously made his way down from the ceiling. But before he could move, the suction in his feet suddenly vanished.

The next second, Dilos fell straight off the ceiling.

"Shit!"

Dilos swore in annoyance, then controlled his waist and legs, flipped in midair, and landed steadily on the floor.

He carefully picked up the phone from the table and answered. The next second, Dr. Connors's anxious voice came through the phone, making Dilos's expression change.

"This is bad, Dilos! Someone broke into the lab and stole all the experimental serums!"

Ps: People in the review section keep asking where the protagonist's claws come from, so let me explain. Just like Wolverine's claws, they come out from between the fingers. The technical term for that area is the webbing between the fingers. It isn't the space beneath the fingernails. The difference is huge, so please keep that in mind.

Everyone has four webbed spaces on each hand. That means four pairs between both hands. The protagonist has claws growing from every webbed space, for a total of four pairs. That's all there is to it.