A few days passed. The people who had attacked the laboratory seemed to have vanished without a trace, and there wasn't a peep from them. But Dilos knew they were only keeping a low profile for now. If the need arose, they would show up again.
Dilos hadn't wasted these past few days, either. He had taken apart his Super Glasses and carefully adjusted the regulator inside with a screwdriver to change the frequency of the X-Ray Vision. As he made adjustments, he used it to look through his wrist. He stopped only when he could see the muscles and nerves beneath the skin.
"Just as I thought. There's something extra in my hands." Dilos peered through the glasses at his hand, his brows furrowing. In the image reflected through the lenses, he could see many little things in the muscles of his wrist and fingers—things that could perhaps be called muscles.
These tiny, round things were about the size of grains of rice, and there were so many that they filled his entire wrist. In the X-ray image, their color was remarkably similar to that of human bones.
He called them some kind of muscle mainly because they had the distinctive striations of muscle and could contract and change shape. Otherwise, Dilos would have thought a whole mass of little round bones had grown inside his hand.
"It's not just my wrist." Dilos shifted the glasses from his wrist to other parts of his body. These strange muscles were present to some extent everywhere, though they differed in various ways from the ones in his wrist.
He had also discovered that, thanks to the strange muscles and the changes to his skin, he could now withstand ordinary bladed weapons. Even regular bullets couldn't pierce his skin. Not even the claws he had grown from his own hand could hurt him. As for other weapons, he wasn't sure. He didn't have any suitable equipment to take a proper sample from his body.
Just then, the strange muscles in the fingers of the hand he was examining began to swell and change shape. The skin covering his fingers changed with them, growing thick, pale, and razor-sharp. In the end, the five fingers of Dilos's hand were replaced by five enormous, thirty-centimeter-long, ivory-white claws.
"The reason the skin between my fingers could transform into claws before was these muscles. And judging by the way my skin has changed shape, it's mutated to some extent, too."
As he thought, Dilos flexed his fingers. He found that these enormous, vicious-looking claws could bend and move along with his fingers.
"Unlike before, now they can move along with the muscles in my hand after transforming." As he analyzed this, he adjusted the strength of the glasses' X-Ray Vision. Then he noticed that the strange muscles were connected to a dense network of nerves.
Dilos's thoughts stirred at the sight. Under his control, the skin between his fingers, including the webbing between his thumb and index finger, changed shape along with the muscles, forming a set of enormous ivory-white claws.
"The nerves running through these muscles are much denser than they were a few days ago... Was I unable to control the transformation back then because these nerves hadn't fully grown yet? It seems that after I mutated, the nerves in these strange muscles weren't fully developed, so I couldn't control the changes properly."
"Now that the nerves are nearly fully developed, can I do this?"
At a thought from Dilos, the claws on his hand shifted into a different shape. The parts covering his finger bones stayed the same, but the rest of the thick, transformed claws began to narrow and sharpen, like curved blades fitted over his fingers.
He even found that he could reshape the skin on the back of his hand with a thought.
The claw formed by the skin between his thumb and index finger changed shape at his command, too. It first shortened, then shifted direction, until it was just over ten centimeters long and pointed the same way as the claws on his four fingers.
"So I can freely change their shape and direction. What an unexpected discovery."
As Dilos thought this, the claws between his thumb and index finger and between his other fingers returned to their original skin, leaving only the claws transformed from his five fingers.
Then Dilos couldn't resist playing around. He started transforming the claws on his fingers into other shapes, such as a rod or a short dagger. Unfortunately, no matter how he changed them, they couldn't detach from his body.
He could change their length at will, but only up to a point. The longest they could grow was thirty centimeters.
"Not only that, but after transforming this time, I can feel through them. Is that because the nerves have fully developed?"
Dilos changed his hand back to normal and clenched his fist, feeling the tremendous strength within. He couldn't help smiling.
"After some preliminary tests, the increase is huge. My strength output is around one ton, and I can unleash three tons of force in a burst." Dilos had tested this at a junkyard without anyone knowing. The commotion from his strength tests had frightened people, but he was still pleased.
"After the initial transformation, my strength couldn't possibly increase all at once to the point where Hulk could dismantle a tank with his bare hands. That would be ridiculous, and even if I managed it, it would likely seriously damage my body. This is only the beginning. As time passes, just like a growing body, I'll get stronger. Even without tempering my body, my strength can increase dramatically over the next few years."
Thinking about how powerful he would become, Dilos laughed out loud. Then he suddenly frowned and rubbed his ears helplessly, wearing a wry smile.
"Last of all, I need to learn to control my enhanced senses, including my hearing and smell. Judging by what I've observed, these senses can be controlled after they're enhanced, just like the strength my body has gained. But I still need more time to get used to these abilities and learn to control them."
Thinking this, Dilos raised one finger and tapped a keyboard. To his surprise, the keyboard clung firmly to his finger as he lifted it, without the slightest sign of falling.
"Just like this electrostatic adhesion ability, which lets me stick myself to a wall—I can control it with ease!"
Before you continue