Why Fight When You Can Lie Low?

After William Stryker left Sean's room, he quietly instructed the soldiers under his command to shoot immediately if they noticed anything amiss, without holding back.

He still didn't trust Sean.

He should have used the captured mutant children for the experiment. Why had he somehow come to believe Sean could do what he claimed?

As Sean watched Stryker leave, a thought surfaced in his mind: borrow the Professor's power to take control of the field and end everything here.

But he quickly dismissed the idea. He felt Professor X's power was dangerous—dangerous both to its wielder and to those it was used on.

Sean decided he'd better not touch that power.

This was the tragedy of being weak. Look at the current situation: Mastermind was watching Professor X, while four soldiers were watching him...

If he borrowed Polaris's power, he could subdue those soldiers in an instant. He could even crush Mastermind to death immediately. The Professor would be rescued... and once Professor X regained his freedom, he would become the biggest boss here. One round of mind control would end everything.

But... Sean still decided to play along obediently. If he could lie low until he won, why bother showing off?

He honestly had Yuriko lie down on the bed, then put on a convincing act of beginning to strip away the X ability.

He browsed through the list in the ledger and placed a facial paralysis condition on Yuriko. As expected, two seconds later, the condition was cured.

Her superhuman healing ability really was his nemesis. Unfortunately, he lacked illnesses like heart blockage or cerebral infarction. Otherwise, he could have tested whether Yuriko could heal herself from that sort of disease.

When William Stryker returned, Sean had one hand pressed against Yuriko's stomach.

Stryker got straight to the point. "How long?"

"Half an hour."

Sean answered without even raising his head.

"The X ability has to be extracted completely, without leaving behind even a trace, or it'll be ruined. And it can't be restored."

His fabrication sounded so convincing that it actually stunned Stryker.

Stryker said nothing and directly took Professor X and Mastermind away.

It looked like Stryker was preparing for one final gamble—using Professor X to kill every mutant!

Not long afterward, Sean felt the room begin to tremble slightly. He could also hear intermittent cracking sounds. The dam seemed damaged, as though it might collapse at any moment.

Stryker returned again at that moment and said to Sean:

"You only have ten minutes! Leave immediately once you succeed. Consider this gold my advance payment!"

After saying that, he gritted his teeth, turned, and left. He had to get out first. The dam could collapse at any moment, and no one could survive its collapse!

Telling Sean he had ten minutes was just a gamble on how fast the dam would fail. Whether it worked out or not was up to fate.

Stryker had it all figured out. He wanted to gamble on whether Sean could succeed. If he did, the gold he couldn't take with him could buy him a long life and an immortal ability.

Of course, all that depended on Sean not being a mutant and on him extracting the X ability before Yuriko was killed by the Professor.

Stryker left decisively.

Sean scratched his head. What was he supposed to do next?

"Ah!!~~"

Deathstrike, Yuriko Oyama, suddenly jumped up while clutching her head, looking as though she were in terrible pain.

Sean kept far away from Yuriko, afraid that the woman might suddenly claw him.

Professor X had begun. Through Cerebro, he linked his mind to the minds of mutants, then... used overwhelming psychic power to crush their consciousnesses, causing brain death!

Yet Sean felt nothing.

That made Sean grin. He really wasn't among the mutants!

But his mutant ability of limitless energy was undeniably real. It was probably because of the ledger.

Ever since Vanessa had gotten involved with Xavier School, Sean had been on edge, worried that **Professor X would discover he was a transmigrator.

But now it seemed those worries had been completely unnecessary. Professor X probably couldn't see his thoughts either.

Sean took out the Black Ledger and gave it a fierce kiss!

Before his excitement had faded, Sean's heart suddenly lurched! His girlfriend... Vanessa was a mutant!

She could die at any moment!

That was unacceptable!

Even if Sean intended to lie low until the end of time, he would never allow his girlfriend to remain in constant danger of dying.

Professor X's ability was instantly removed. With a debt of 50,000 units of source essence, taking away psychic power worth 9,900 was effortless.

The effect was immediate. Yuriko instantly returned to normal.

"Yuriko, let's get out of here!"

This place was no longer safe.

As he left, Sean craned his neck for one last look at the gold, but it was already gone. The ledger had probably taken it away the moment Stryker called the gold an advance payment.

By then, chaos had broken out inside the dam. The soldiers ran about like headless flies. In their panic, they didn't even have time to think about which exit was safer.

With the dam about to collapse, the best route was to get to the top and retreat toward the mountains on either side. But Sean could tell that most of the soldiers were heading for the main passage beneath the dam.

Those guys... Sean observed a moment of silence for them. About 0.1 seconds.

Yuriko led the way, and Sean moved quickly.

When he reached the mountainside, he happened to see a helicopter taking off.

From far away, he could see the blue-skinned pilot through the window. It was Mystique.

He could also see the black plane parked below—the X-Men's ride. That thing was useless. Even when the flood came, it couldn't take off, and it ended up getting Jean Grey killed.

Jean Grey had used telekinesis to hold back the flood and push the plane into the sky. She saved the Professor and the others, but sacrificed herself.

Of course, that was only the original plot.

What would happen now? Who knew?

Sean found a rock and sat down, preparing to enjoy the show. At worst, things would just end up like the original plot.

He still didn't know which X-Men had arrived here this time. There was no way to judge the exact situation.

If things followed the original plot, Jean Grey, Storm, Iceman, Wolverine, Rogue, and Nightcrawler would have arrived at the dam.

But Storm hadn't joined the operation to track Nightcrawler because of Sean, so he wasn't sure whether she would make it here.

If Storm came, then Polaris, who was with her, would definitely be here too. In that case, Jean Grey would have no need to sacrifice herself. No matter how weak Polaris was, lifting a plane shouldn't be a problem.

Three minutes later, a large group of people ran toward the plane.

Sean saw that flash of green hair.

Polaris, Lorna Dane.

Because of him, the plot had changed.

Unable to watch the grand spectacle, Sean felt somewhat disappointed. If Jean Grey had died here...

Dark Phoenix would have emerged. That was a mutant truly beyond Omega level, an existence even more powerful than Apocalypse, the ancestor of mutants!

With things like this, he probably wouldn't get to see her anytime soon. What a shame.

Disappointed, Sean shifted his attention to Yuriko Oyama, who had been standing beside him the whole time.

"Yuriko, how are you planning to repay your debt?"

Yuriko showed no reaction, as though debt had absolutely nothing to do with her.

Sean guessed that Mastermind's secretions were still affecting her. Yuriko was like a robot now, knowing only how to follow orders.

He checked the ledger and found that Yuriko did indeed have a special status called Confusion.

After hesitating for a moment, Sean chose not to remove it.

Yuriko's current state suited his interests better.

"Can you drive?"

Yuriko nodded.

Oh yeah~ The perfect female assistant.

Doctor White was a big shot with an assistant now.

She could drive, fight, couldn't die, and looked pretty good. Most importantly, her figure was perfect...

This time, he'd made a killing!

After chatting with Yuriko for a few moments, Sean noticed that the X-Men's plane still hadn't taken off. Water was already spraying from the dam, and it truly looked ready to collapse at any second.

What were those people even doing?

He casually returned Professor X's ability to him. Holding onto that thing felt a little too dangerous. What if he couldn't resist using it one day... Hiss~

Sean was worried that his little brain couldn't hold all that psychic power... What if he went bald?

While he was lost in thought, he heard a thunderous BOOM~

The dam collapsed. In just one second, the entire dam crumbled apart like a toppled building block tower.

The waters of Alkali Lake surged downward, carrying broken chunks of the dam with them~

The sight was utterly spectacular!

Sean's ears were filled with the roar of rushing water, like rolling thunder exploding beside him!

Nature's power was truly magnificent! Compared to it, all those superpowers were child's play.

A flood like this would be catastrophic anywhere. If someone could unleash a tsunami like this in Manhattan, Sean guaranteed that at least ten million people would die!

Before the flood swallowed the downstream area, the X-Men's plane finally took off.

But its engines didn't seem to be on. It had been forcibly lifted into the air.

"Tch~ As expected, machines can't be relied on for anything." Sean curled his lip in disdain and said to Yuriko:

"How are we getting back to the United States?"

That was a real headache. They didn't have a helicopter to ride now.

"I'll find a car."

Yuriko was brief and to the point, immediately taking action.

Sean opened his mouth, then gave up on calling her back.

This godforsaken place was truly isolated. Their phones had been confiscated, and even if they still had them, it wouldn't matter. There was no signal here.

That was North America for you. Wireless carriers would never build signal towers in places without people. It wasn't like back home, where nearly the whole country was covered. The superiority of socialism was pretty damn great!

Customer deceased. Advance payment locked.

The ledger delivered that message at that moment.

Sean's teeth hurt. 16,075 units of source essence! It was locked just like that? Ledger, get out here! Are you locking it up because you want to embezzle it??

Teeth hurting or not, Sean couldn't do anything about the ledger.

As long as it followed the rules, it could operate however it wanted.

But the rules had been made by the ledger!

This part is finally over... Four chapters spent, and all I got was one female assistant~ That's a bit of a loss! Thankfully, Doctor Stryker gave me 16,075 units of source essence, plus two debtors!

Sean could go wild for a while again~

By the way, did Canada have any interesting characters?

These past few chapters felt kind of boring to write~~ I'm too embarrassed to ask for votes~