Initial Display of Abilities

Watching the tiger claws suddenly retract, Dilos hurriedly flipped his palms over, checking left and right, yet he could find no sign of the fleshy sheaths feline animals used to hide their claws between their fingers.

"What's going on?"

Dilos squeezed his palms and arms, but he couldn't feel any extra bone-like structures inside his hands. He even pulled out his glasses and used their X-ray function to scan both arms, yet he failed to discover any excess bone or anything else.

"Could it be a hallucination?"

Dilos couldn't help but feel puzzled. He touched the webbing between his fingers where the tiger claws had just emerged, then immediately dismissed his previous thought.

The massive, oversized tiger claw that had just appeared was definitely not a hallucination!

Although Dilos didn't understand how four pairs of bone claws could extend from his wrists when his arm bone structure was identical to a normal person's, this didn't stop him from continuing to study his body's condition.

"In the animal kingdom, those felines that can freely retract their claws basically rely on the contraction of muscles to sheath and unsheath them. If that's the case..."

Thinking this, Dilos extended his left hand and suddenly exerted a sharp burst of force, causing his entire wrist to tense into a claw-like shape. Then, he watched the process of these claws emerging just as he had hoped.

He saw the webbing between his fingers suddenly turn red as he tensed his hand, and to his astonishment, it bulged, expanded, elongated, and deformed, transforming into four milky-white, giant tiger claws about thirty centimeters long.

Dilos tried to maintain this state, stroking the claws with his other hand. He began to analyze the details of the claws based on the tactile feedback.

"They feel incredibly hard to the touch. The claws themselves look even thicker and sturdier than those of a Siberian tiger, the largest of all tigers, and they are significantly longer as well. The connection point between the claws and the wrist looks perfect and stable; it doesn't look like they would snap under excessive force."

As he spoke, Dilos suddenly gripped one of the claws and slowly applied pressure. He noticed that even after exerting force, the claw showed no signs of denting or breaking.

"Wow, they seem sturdier than I imagined," Dilos said, surprised. He then suddenly tensed the muscles in that hand, channeled his internal yuanqi and blood flow into his arm, and gave the claw a violent, sideways wrench!

Swish. Because Dilos had used too much force, the tiger claws on his other hand also extended. He didn't pay that any mind, though; he was focused on the fact that the claw he had tried to snap with all his might hadn't even come close to breaking. After he applied his full strength, the area he had bent only slightly indented before firmly showing off its formidable resilience once again.

Furthermore, the indentation recovered to its original state at a visible speed within just a second or two.

"Could my arm strength have weakened?" Dilos frowned, then picked up an aluminum alloy baseball bat and squeezed it casually.

Crunch, crack, crunch, crack...

With a sound of metal that set his teeth on edge, the bat was twisted into a pretzel shape by Dilos's casual squeeze.

"Holy..." Dilos gasped, looking at his handiwork. "My strength has increased to a terrifying degree. I wasn't even trying."

As he spoke, he looked at the claw he had failed to break with his full strength with a strange expression, his face shifting.

"The durability of the claws is unexpectedly high, and there's no nerve pain after a heavy impact. Even the webbing connected to the claws feels nothing..."

Dilos analyzed as he tried to control the extension and retraction of the claws, observing them constantly. What he found eerie was that these claws were like some kind of high-strength polymer that was deformable and possessed an absurdly high resistance to impact and pressure. This polymer was concentrated in the webbing of each hand, so whenever they deformed into sharp claws, it looked as if they were emerging from between his fingers.

He tried extending the claws and lightly raked them against the aluminum alloy baseball bat, finding that the claw tips left several deep gouges in the metal with just that gentle touch.

"I think I've inadvertently created something incredible."

Dilos didn't know whether to laugh or feel helpless. Although his physical fitness had clearly broken through the limits of the human body, he was currently in a bizarre state where he couldn't control his strength; one wrong move and he would destroy everything around him.

"But it seems useless to overthink it now. I'll just start with a blood draw to see what changes have occurred in my blood after the mutation." Thinking this, Dilos carefully found a syringe he had prepared, feeling restricted, and aimed it at his vein.

Snap.

With a sharp snap, the metal needle broke easily, leaving Dilos staring at it in disbelief.

Yet that wasn't all. It was as if this had triggered a switch; Dilos, who had been distracted by the tiger claws, only now realized that his five senses had become abnormally sharp.

Dilos could hear the click-clack sounds of things moving inside metal boxes in his room from seven or eight meters away. His eyes could easily see ants and mosquitoes several meters away, and he could even clearly see the stripes on the insects and the movement of the mosquitoes' vibrating wings.

Then, an indescribable sensation began to feed a massive amount of information back to him. He couldn't put into words what this feeling was.

It was a sensation that allowed him to quickly judge whether there were obstacles around him without using his eyes, including whether those things were living organisms and whether they posed a threat to him.

If he called it intuition, Dilos felt that wasn't quite right. If he called it some kind of scanning ability, that didn't feel right either. After thinking for a long time, he realized that only Spider-Man's "Spider-Sense" fit the description of this ability.

"It seems this is the legendary Spider-Sense," Dilos shook his head, feeling somewhat helpless. "Although it's a bit different from what I imagined, in terms of its effect, it's truly incredible."

Once Dilos had sorted all of this out, he realized that his current position was a bit strange. At some point, his feet had stuck to the ceiling. Dilos could feel a powerful suction from his feet, allowing him to hang upside down with ease.

Dilos couldn't help but curl his lip in resignation.

"It seems I need some time to adapt to these abilities first, to prevent..."

Before Dilos could finish his sentence, a ringtone interrupted him.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep...

"Seriously? You have to pick this moment? I just finished transforming, and I can't even fully control my strength yet."

Listening to the phone ringing incessantly, Dilos complained helplessly and carefully walked down from the ceiling. However, before he could move, the suction on his feet suddenly vanished.

The next second, Dilos fell straight from the ceiling.

"Damn it!"

Dilos cursed, controlled his waist and legs, performed a flip in mid-air, and landed steadily on the ground.

He carefully picked up the phone on the table and pressed the answer button. The next second, the anxious voice of Dr. Connors on the other end made his expression change.

"It's bad, Dilos! Someone broke into the lab and stole all the experimental serum!"