Winning Hiro Over

By the time Lu Wen woke up the next morning, it was broad daylight.

Venom was still slowly recovering inside him.

There was no helping it. This guy feared fire, and the radiation inside Lu Wen filled his cells with radiation-generated heat.

He had no divine power, magic, or anything of the sort that could help Venom adapt all at once. He could only wait.

Once this guy had more or less recovered, he could go to the hospital and help treat that badly injured boy. Otherwise, with the treatment dragging on like this, who knew how big a medical bill the hospital would send?

He just did not know whether he could help heal Tadashi's brain damage. He remembered that Venom needed to consume phenethylamine to sustain himself. Having someone who ate substances found in brains repair a brain... that felt a little unreliable, didn't it?

"Hey, Venom! Let me ask you something."

"What is it, boss?" Venom answered in his raspy voice.

"Can your healing ability repair brain damage?"

Venom fell silent for a moment.

"It depends. If it's not too serious and only a small amount of tissue is damaged, I can do it. But if important neural regions are damaged, there's nothing I can do. I can't replace every cell in a host's body."

"All right, got it. We'll see when the time comes." With that, Lu Wen got up, put on his clothes, and went downstairs.

As for the pajamas Cass had brought him yesterday... they really were a little small, and they pinched at the crotch, so he simply had not worn them.

Downstairs, he had no idea whether Aunt Cass had stayed up all night or was simply used to getting up early. In any case, when Lu Wen came down, he saw her busy behind the counter.

"Morning." Lu Wen sat down at the counter.

"Morning." Without even turning her head, Cass slid a cup of hot coffee in front of him. "Your sandwich will be ready soon."

Lu Wen picked up the coffee and took a sip. The temperature was just right, as was the strength.

He sat there watching Cass deftly turn the eggs and bacon in the frying pan at the stove, her movements thoroughly practiced.

A few minutes later, a plate with a sandwich was set before him. The bread was toasted golden brown, the egg fried with a perfectly runny yolk, and bacon and lettuce nestled inside. It looked very good.

"Thanks." Lu Wen picked up the sandwich and took a bite. "Where's Hiro? Didn't he come back this morning?"

"He's still at the hospital. He stayed with Tadashi all night." Cass put the pan in the sink, turned around, and wiped her hands.

"I still have to watch the café. Could you please take that boy some breakfast in a little while? Thank you."

"No problem."

Lu Wen nodded and continued eating his sandwich.

When he arrived at the hospital, Hiro was alone, leaning against a window in the corridor outside the intensive care unit. He held a can of coffee bought from a vending machine, already half empty.

"Here. Aunt Cass made this for you."

Lu Wen walked over to Hiro and handed the gloomy boy the breakfast Aunt Cass had made.

"Thank you, but I'm not hungry."

Hiro forced a smile, took the breakfast, and set it aside, the worry on his face still refusing to fade.

"Come on. Even if you starve yourself to death, your brother won't get better right away. And you'd be letting all Cass's hard work getting up early go to waste."

"Oh... all right. But..."

Before Hiro could finish, Lu Wen leaned closer with a smile and cut off what he was about to say.

"You really are a stubborn kid! If you give me another pile of meaningless excuses to refuse a human being's normal need to eat, I'll use my three tons of arm strength to feed you."

Hiro froze for a moment at the oppressive presence right in his face. Then he registered what Lu Wen had said, and the young genius's pride made him instinctively argue back.

"Three tons? Are you kidding? How could a human have three tons of arm strength? Even physical enhancement couldn't do that, and I don't see any... exoskeleton or anything on you, either. So don't try to fool me!"

That had triggered his underlying programming.

"Then how do you think I carried your brother out of that fire while kicking through several walls?"

"Uh... well..."

"If you don't believe me, just test me later and you'll know. I happen to want to know how strong I am, too."

Kids were still relatively easy to coax, even geniuses. As long as you sparked their interest and challenged something they refused to accept, their confidence and pride would drive them to prove themselves to you.

A week later...

Tadashi's condition had stabilized, and his life was completely out of danger. What came next was treatment.

With Lu Wen constantly provoking him every day, Hiro gradually regained some of his energy. But he still went to the hospital to see his brother every single day without fail, and he still worried.

Lu Wen did not mind letting this assignment run a little longer, either. Time here flowed more slowly than in the Marvel Universe where he lived, so he was not worried about running out of time.

And during this period, he had delivered a batch of supplies for an order from an apocalyptic world, completing another order and earning a thousand points. Counting his current order, that made four completed!

Meeting all his KPIs for the year would not be difficult.

Besides, he was waiting here for one reason alone: to let a certain old geezer make more robots for him.

The Swarm Robots Hiro had made were incredibly practical. Through a neural sensor, they could do anything he wanted. In Hiro's own words, the only limit to them was imagination!

Personally, he thought they were far more awesome than Doctor Octopus's four mechanical arms.

He was taking them with him, no matter what!

After all, Hiro had personally destroyed this invention in the end, and there was no knowing whether he ever made it again afterward. So he could not miss out on this original version.

And during this time, that old professor bent on avenging his daughter had built an assembly line and produced countless microbots. That would save Lu Wen the trouble of going back and asking Tony to make them from scratch.

So he would give the old man some time to make more for him.

"My God! Are you really human? Three tons of normal force, sixty tons of maximum explosive force! How is that possible? Is my machine malfunctioning?"

Holding a tablet, Hiro exclaimed as he looked at the data analysis on its screen.

"Don't make such a fuss. It's only sixty tons, just a fully loaded Dayun truck. And that's maximum explosive force. Save your surprise for when I can put out sixty tons normally."

Lu Wen calmly ate the cookies Cass had brought over, completely unconcerned about the figure.

The figure was not necessarily accurate. The most likely explanation was that Hiro's crudely cobbled-together machine could not fully measure the limits of his strength.

Besides, even those figures only placed him among the top of the hormone-enhanced crowd. They really did not amount to much.

"Do you even hear what you're saying? Is that supposed to be human language?" Hiro stared in shock at the utterly unruffled Lu Wen.

"Hiro, I believe you're a technological genius. But if you also studied a little chemistry and biotechnology, I believe you could develop a similar genetic serum.

"You know, with these numbers, in the world I currently live in, I'm barely qualified for a seat at the table. There are a bunch of people there who can chase down cars on foot, hold back helicopters with their bare hands, and survive jumps from over a dozen stories up. There's even a spider kid who can stop a subway train traveling at top speed by sheer strength...

"Not to mention all the other absurd freaks and monsters. These little numbers of mine really don't amount to much! I'm just a super minion."

Lu Wen shrugged with complete indifference.

He was telling the truth. His strength might look impressive, but in the Marvel Universe, with freaks and monsters everywhere, it honestly did not amount to much.

Otherwise, he would not have to be so selective about the orders he accepted now. If he had not had a spider freak to fall back on for the last order, he would have had to think twice about accepting it.

Hiro was completely dumbfounded. Lu Wen's words seemed to have opened a door to a whole new world for him. It felt just like the day his brother had taken him to the university.

"Then, then could you tell me how you became like this? Just a rough explanation of the principles would be fine. Also, what do you mean by all those freaks and monsters? Are they even stronger?"

Seeing that Hiro's interest had been thoroughly piqued, Lu Wen's lips curled slightly.

"Got him."