The Inherited Light

Richard was not the kind of fan who had studied Ultraman in depth, but he had heard plenty through the grapevine.

Many people who had never even watched the Ultraman series had likely heard of the famous Star of Ultra—a planet called the Land of Light, which Tsuburaya had placed in the M78 Nebula. Yet many people who had watched Ultraman still did not know that the name M78 had actually originated from a small mistake. In Ultraman's original concept, Tsuburaya had intended to place the Star of Ultra in the M87 Galaxy, but a printing error changed it to M78. Tsuburaya simply went along with the mistake, revised the setting to M78, and had used it ever since.

And by sheer coincidence, the first black hole ever photographed by humanity was also located in the M87 Galaxy. Except...

...Shouldn't that have been photographed in 2017?

Richard clearly remembered that, before he had transmigrated, the black hole image had been taken with the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017 and not developed and released to the public until 2019. What year was it now? It was only 2008, man! Where had Coulson seen a black hole photo in 2008?

But then again, in the Marvel Universe, a rich young guy was already flying around the world in a DIY suit of steel armor in 2008. Taking a picture of a black hole did not seem all that strange. For all he knew, they might have solved that problem back in the last century...

Coulson looked at Richard with a face full of suspicion, his eyes brimming with distrust.

Fine, maybe you could forget your own house number. But could you even get your own galaxy wrong?

When Coulson had first learned that this newspaper owner might be the silver giant who seemed like a god, he had come to visit feeling deeply uneasy. But somehow, that tension was gradually melting away. The other man did not seem all that different from an ordinary person.

Of course, that was only his subjective impression. He was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and if there was one thing he had learned from his boss, Nick Fury, it was never to let his feelings sway his judgment.

"Please cooperate, Mr. Li. This is important." Coulson felt a headache coming on. "Are you really an alien?"

If the other party really was an alien, Coulson felt that his impression of that lofty term, "alien," might need to change. Weren't aliens in fiction supposed to be highly advanced races with intelligence beyond imagination? Why did this alien give him the feeling that he might get lost on his way home...?

"Fine, fine, I'm not an alien. I'm an Earthling. I just have some... um... special talents. That's all." Richard spread his hands.

"Some special talents." Coulson recalled Ultraman's battle scenes and his body shuddered involuntarily.

"Understatement" was nowhere near enough to describe that.

"So, you're a superhuman?" Coulson asked.

"A little different, but you can think of it that way."

"Then could you share how you acquired your abilities?"

Richard stared at him expressionlessly.

Since you're asking so sincerely, I'll generously tell you... Would you believe me if I said my computer exploded while I was watching a show on it?

That was the truth, but there was no way the other side would buy it if he said it outright.

Sigh, what a headache. I have to make up another lie. Richard truly did not want to lie... As expected, this once again proved his point—these days, nobody listened to the truth. Everyone loved lies. What a strange world.

But thinking about it, it would be pretty interesting if S.H.I.E.L.D. really believed his story about "gaining superpowers through a computer explosion." S.H.I.E.L.D. itself would be fine, but if Hydra, which had taken root inside S.H.I.E.L.D., got wind of it, they might round up a bunch of people for human experiments—making a bunch of Hydra soldiers watch shows on computers every day, then manually blowing up the computers...

Come to think of it, as idiotic as that sounded, it really was not beyond Hydra. Those people had gone mad trying to create super-soldiers. Over the years, they had tried every method imaginable. What was so strange about trying a dubious remedy? Even if this one was especially dubious...

Richard thought for a moment, then said calmly, "There is a problem with the way you put it, Agent Coulson. To be precise, it wasn't that I obtained the light. The light chose me."

"Light?" Coulson caught his wording.

"Yes." Richard nodded. "I am not the first person to possess this power. Before me, countless predecessors possessed it and used it to fight evil. I am merely an inheritor, one of countless people who were chosen."

He was not just making that up. It could be considered the truth, more or less. That was how Nexus's power worked—it was passed from one Deunamist to the next, a power continuously handed down through inheritance. Richard just was not sure whether his own situation worked that way.

"You mean there were other Ultramen before you?" Coulson was stunned. That was impossible, wasn't it? How could something so huge have existed on Earth all this time without anyone ever discovering it? Were they all blind?

"There were indeed, but I never said they were in this world."

Coulson carefully asked, "So... aliens after all?"

"Maybe. Or perhaps people from other parallel worlds in the multiverse... But it doesn't matter if you don't understand. You only need to know that I am the current inheritor. And I myself am an Earthling—the kind with an exceptionally strong sense of racial pride and remarkably high ideological awareness." Richard spoke with the practiced fluency of someone reciting a standard answer for a political essay question.

In truth, this was the stance he wanted to make clear to S.H.I.E.L.D. He did not want to hide and pretend he was just an ordinary person, but neither did he want to be controlled. So he made it clear to S.H.I.E.L.D. that he possessed immense power, while also being one of humanity.

"Alright, I understand." Coulson asked again, "Then regarding what you just said about 'fighting evil,' is this 'evil' related to that thing from early yesterday morning?"

"That thing is called a Space Beast."

"A Space Beast?"

"Yes." Richard considered his wording. "I do not know exactly where those things come from, but there should be more than one of them. Space Beasts invade one world after another. Fighting them and stopping them from destroying worlds—that is Ultraman's mission, and the reason my predecessors kept fighting. Or perhaps it is precisely because Space Beasts have begun invading this world that Ultraman's light has appeared here."