All-Things Analysis

Two hours.

Batman's Thought Network and Tony's Creation Factory had crossed paths for the first time.

A minuscule area of fusion had appeared somewhere in the prefrontal cortex.

There, the two ways of thinking no longer repelled each other. Instead, they had begun to "translate" between one another.

But the crossover was expanding very slowly.

Each bit of expansion meant more neural synapses had to be reconstructed, and more pain signals erupted inside his skull.

Three hours.

He had bitten through the rubber rod.

He spat out the bits of rubber in his mouth. His gums were bleeding.

Under these extreme conditions, his Super Senses had become unusually sensitive.

He could hear the blood vessels pulsing inside his brain and feel every nerve fiber tremble as it was taken apart and reassembled.

That sensation could drive a normal person insane.

But Lynn was no longer normal.

He already had seven abilities. He could withstand this kind of pain.

Four hours.

The fusion progress had reached sixty percent.

The crossover area had expanded substantially, and the two ways of thinking had begun to truly interlock.

Batman's analytical logic chains had started actively integrating with Tony's engineering design space.

He could feel his brain undergoing a change unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Before, analysis and creation had been two separate production lines.

He could analyze the essence of a problem and design a solution, but there had been a transition between the two.

Now that transition was disappearing.

Five hours.

He briefly lost consciousness.

He had probably passed out for about ten minutes.

When he woke, his mouth was full of the taste of blood—his nosebleed had run down his throat.

He turned onto his side and spat the blood onto the mat.

His Healing Factor was working overtime, repairing the ruptured capillaries in his nasal cavity.

The sixth hour.

At one moment, the pain vanished.

It wasn't lessening. It was gone.

It was as if someone had flipped a switch. All the conflict, tearing, and reconstruction had stopped.

The two ways of thinking were no longer two.

They had become one.

[ Ding! Fusion successful! ]

[ New ability acquired: All-Things Analysis! Quality: SS-rank! ]

[ All-Things Analysis: Instantly understand the essential structure of any substance, energy, or even concept, and identify its weaknesses, operating principles, and potential uses. A higher-dimensional cognitive ability that surpasses mere intelligence and engineering. ]

Lynn slowly opened his eyes.

The basement was still dark.

He had turned off the wall lamp six hours ago.

But he could see everything.

The fluorescent tube on the ceiling.

He knew without turning it on the mercury vapor pressure inside, the remaining thickness of its phosphor coating down to the micrometer, and that its remaining lifespan was about 347 days.

This wasn't information from his Super Senses.

His Super Senses could hear the current humming inside the tube and smell the trace chemicals evaporating from its seal. But those were only raw data.

All-Things Analysis worked in a completely different way.

It directly told him the "essence" of an object.

What was the essence of a fluorescent tube?

An energy-conversion device that used an electrical discharge in mercury vapor to produce ultraviolet light, then converted it into visible light with phosphor.

What was its conversion efficiency? About twenty-two percent in its current state.

What was the theoretical maximum? Twenty-eight percent.

Where did the difference come from? The aging coating had reduced its photon absorption rate.

The entire analysis had taken less than 0.1 seconds in his brain.

Lynn looked down at his hand.

His hand had changed, too.

Not physically—his indestructible skin was just as tough as before, and his Healing Factor was still repairing the internal damage caused by six hours of fusion.

What had changed was his "understanding" of his own body.

Superhuman Strength, fifty-five percent—he could now see the "essential structure" of this ability.

It wasn't only the quality of the copied ability that kept it at fifty-five percent.

Jessica Jones herself hadn't developed her powers very far. She had never trained systematically, and the way she exerted her strength was crude and inefficient.

If he trained his neuromuscular coordination specifically, he could theoretically raise his output efficiency to around sixty-five percent.

Indestructible, sixty-five percent—he could now directly "see" the natural frequency of the protein cross-linking structure. He no longer needed to adjust it bit by bit with instruments like he had when operating on Luke Cage.

Healing Factor, sixty percent—the underlying mechanism was accelerated cell division.

But Frank's original version also included an immune system optimization plan, and that part hadn't been fully copied over.

The structure, limits, and possible areas for improvement of every ability were now perfectly clear.

But the biggest change was All-Things Diagnosis.

Lynn opened the system's All-Things Diagnosis function.

Before, it had only activated automatically when he was dealing with a "patient," scanning for medical information—injuries, illnesses, and physiological indicators.

Now it resonated with All-Things Analysis.

He looked at his arm. All-Things Diagnosis no longer gave him a description like "indestructible skin, harder than ordinary blades."

Instead, it told him—

This protein network originated from Luke Cage's genetic mutation. The mutation had been triggered by the acid bath and electric field stimulation used in the Judgment Day Experiment.

The protein's unusual arrangement essentially imitated the beta-sheet structure of spider silk proteins, but its density was four orders of magnitude greater.

This was an analysis of the superpower itself.

He could now see what a metahuman's abilities came from—genetic mutations, chemical alterations, external enhancements, or something deeper.

Lynn stood up.

His legs were a little weak—the six-hour fusion had taken a tremendous amount of energy.

But his Healing Factor was rapidly replenishing it.

He went to the sink, washed the dried blood off his face and out of his nose, and changed into a clean white lab coat.

Then he went upstairs, sat back down behind the front desk, and poured himself a cup of hot coffee.

He opened the Reputation Points panel. Current Reputation Points: 480.

A hundred points had been deducted for the fusion.

It wasn't a fortune, but it wasn't a pittance, either.

He took a sip of coffee and looked out at Hell's Kitchen in the early morning.

The world looked different to him.

Not more beautiful, or uglier.

It was simply "clearer."

He could instantly understand the operating condition of every car that drove by: its engine, the wear on its brake pads, and the logic behind its gear shifts.

From every passerby's gait and breathing rhythm, he could infer their physical condition.

With All-Things Analysis, he could choose his next patient more strategically.

Lynn set down his coffee and opened the appointment book for the day.

An ordinary day had begun.