Thankfully, overall, the birthday had not gone too badly.
He got to eat the cake.
He just never got to eat the rest of the food.
Starting today, Peter was truly eighteen years old.
After seeing Gwen and the others off, Peter lay on his bed and looked at the Level 4 Chest displayed on the system panel in his mind. Without hesitating, he opened it.
[Ding. Opening Level 4 Chest...]
[Ding. Congratulations, Host. You obtained Deadpool-Level Super Regeneration, Ultra-Sonic Player, and a full set of Earth-616 Peter Parker glamour photos!]
[Deadpool-Level Super Regeneration: An almost absurd healing ability. Nearly impossible to kill. You'll be back in top condition within a day. Deadpool survives all his nonsense thanks to this...]
[Ultra-Sonic Player: Can emit ultrasonic waves. The noise is inaudible to humans, but may have unexpected effects on certain alien lifeforms with extremely sensitive hearing...]
[Earth-616 Peter Parker Glamour Photos: A set of self-indulgent artistic photos taken by the main-universe Peter Parker. No real practical value.]
Looking at what had come out of the chest, Peter was not surprised.
These things were like blind boxes. Sometimes you got something amazing, sometimes you got nonsense.
Take the Earth-616 Peter Parker glamour photos, for example. What was he supposed to do with those?
If he were really interested, he could just take a set himself.
Though the middle-aged version of himself with the big belly looked way too awkward.
Straight into storage to gather dust.
Peter opened the system panel and checked his personal stats.
[Host: Peter Parker]
[Age: 18]
[Occupation: Antihero]
[Organization: Antihero Multiverse Squad (Bond Active). Captain: Peter Parker. Members: New Goblin Harry, Ultimate Green Goblin Norman, Spider Soul Weaver Elda Valleta.]
[Skins: Spider-Man Dark Suit, Wraith Spider Suit, Spider-Man Wrestler Suit x2, Spider-Man Last Stand Suit, Earth-1048 Advanced Suit, Kamen Rider Killbus Armor.]
[Abilities: Super Strength, Super Endurance, Super Senses, Spider-Sense, Wall-Crawling, Regeneration Factor, Webbing (3/5 Peak Tobey Spider-Man abilities), Perfect Combat Mastery, Soul Shock, World Ender, Super Regeneration.]
[Passive Ability: Bloodlust Slaughter]
[Special Ability: One Time Rewind]
[Items: Spider Arm-Blades, Electro-Pulse, Doctor Strange's Scalpel, Hulk's Boxers, Electric Webbing, Death Substitute, Ultra-Sonic Player, Multiverse Travel Card]
[Skin Points: 500]
Looking at it now, he had already accumulated quite a lot of items and abilities, though there were still some he had never even used.
Peter decided he still needed to strengthen himself through real training.
Skills and items were important, sure.
But true strength was still his own strength.
After all, Spider-Man was the type of mutant whose body kept evolving in ways that bordered on the absurd. Once his physical abilities kept improving, the value of everything else would become even harder to measure.
...
Inside the secret training room of the Defenders Alliance base, a large group of mutants, altered humans, and tech-enhanced personnel were training.
Rows of Vulcan cannons spewed fire, unloading endless streams of bullets at them.
And the ways they chose to deal with the attacks were all different.
Some dodged with ease.
Some relied on their tough bodies and simply tanked the fire head-on.
Some even launched their own attacks to intercept it.
It had already been more than a week since Hydra resurfaced once again.
In order to deal with Hydra more effectively, every trainee in the base had begun intense, nonstop training.
Still, that week had actually been fairly quiet.
No major incidents had happened.
No supervillains had come out causing trouble either.
Even ordinary crime had dropped sharply lately, because every criminal in New York now knew there was a terrifying figure in the city.
A guy who gave veteran superheroes no respect at all and whose battles caused destruction on a level close to a natural disaster.
Who in their right mind would want to risk their life against that?
Tony had finally upgraded his bulky armor and replaced it with the Mark 15.
This new suit had been developed using data collected by JARVIS from analyzing Kamen Rider Killbus.
You could say it was effectively anti-spider armor.
There was a slight resemblance to Killbus in the design, though it still carried much more of Iron Man's own style.
It also borrowed the transformation concept.
Instead of needing bulky machinery to mount the armor piece by piece, Tony could now control it through a wristband, allowing the suit to fly in and assemble itself directly onto his body.
As his combat ability improved, so did his adaptability.
Steve, meanwhile, had been wearing a sour expression for seven straight days.
Everyone knew exactly why he was upset, but no one chose to bring it up with him.
To be honest, plenty of them already found his behavior hard to tolerate, including his wife Carter. The two of them argued often because of his personality.
Still, no matter how formidable a man was, there was always one person he feared.
In front of Carter, he lost every time.
Watching the orderly training below through the glass window, Tony returned to his seat in the office and had JARVIS play a video.
That video had not only been reposted like crazy online, it had even gone viral internationally.
No one knew which idiot had uploaded it.
The footage showed what happened seven days earlier, after Hydra reappeared, when that spider-kid transformed into the armored spider form.
In the video, the armored spider barely even seemed to exert himself, yet the surrounding buildings suffered major damage. Even some innocent civilians were caught in the aftermath of the battle and ended up as casualties.
And in under three minutes, a well-equipped Hydra force had been completely wiped out.
At the end of the video, the monster fled, and the armored spider, at some point after dropping the armor, swung away with Ghost-Spider.
What remained behind was nothing but ruins.
And Steve, standing in those ruins, furious and having contributed almost nothing.
As soon as the video was uploaded, it exploded across the internet and was shared everywhere.
People had called Peter Spider Punisher before, but that was mostly a mix of online joking and strange admiration.
Now, though, they had truly seen his power, along with the destruction that followed whenever he used it.
And since he had repeatedly stated that he was not some kind of superhero, the result was immediate.
Not only did villains panic, but the ordinary people of New York began to panic as well.
Would a figure like that eventually become a threat to them too?
The video was soon picked up by people with an agenda and turned into a weapon for attacking Wraith Spider online.
Later, official agencies, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Defenders Alliance tracked down the uploader through the IP address.
What they found was a cold corpse.
The slash across the neck was obvious. The blood had long since dried, and the victim's eyes were still wide open in death.
Everyone knew whose work it was.
But no one felt sorry for him.
Because that person had not been a good man to begin with. He had dedicated himself to smearing every enhanced individual or so-called hero he could target.
That had indirectly pushed many people into despair, and some of them ended up taking their own lives.
Now that he was dead, everything was simply over.
As the saying went, cast aside your personal standards and enjoy a shameless life.
He definitely cast aside his standards.
Unfortunately, he died before he got to enjoy the rest of it.
(End of Chapter)
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