Chapter 81: Relaxing
Having achieved a small goal, Lex decided that it was time to head home, rest for a couple of days, and then return to continue his training. He didn't actually need the rest, of course; the Essence of Transcendent Self made physical exhaustion almost meaningless for him, and even after spending four straight days pushing his mental abilities to their limits, his body remained perfectly capable of continuing. That didn't mean he didn't want a break, though, and after spending so long alone on an alien planet, Lex was starting to feel like a little time around the people he cared about would do him some good.
He took out the Player's Handbook and used it to teleport back to Earth.
The moment he arrived, Lex immediately felt something change.
A wave of energy seemed to pass through him, subtle at first but unmistakable once he focused on it. The sensation wasn't coming from the mansion or anything nearby; it was the planet itself, the immense living energy of Earth resonating with the Gaia Bloodline now coursing through him.
“So I was right,” Lex murmured, closing his eyes for a moment as he examined the sensation. “The Gaia Bloodline really is stronger on Earth.”
Because of his connection to the bloodline and the control granted by Transcendent Self, Lex could manipulate the energy flowing through his body with considerably greater precision than he normally would have been able to. Rather than simply allowing the energy to circulate through him, he deliberately gathered the vital energy produced by his connection to Gaia and redirected it toward the World's End Flower Garden. The garden responded almost immediately, its growth accelerating as the influx of energy began feeding into the strange supernatural ecosystem contained within it, although the improvement was modest rather than miraculous. It was perhaps ten or fifteen percent faster than before, enough to be noticeable over time but nowhere near enough to transform the garden overnight.
Since he had teleported directly into the mansion's garden, Lex had expected Fluffy to notice him almost immediately. The giant polar-bear-sized creature usually had an impressive ability to detect him, and Lex had half expected the familiar heavy footsteps to come charging across the garden the moment he appeared. Instead, he stood there for several minutes without seeing so much as a tuft of white fur.
“Huh.”
Apparently, Fluffy wasn't there.
Lex shrugged and headed inside.
“Welcome home, Master,” Grayfia greeted him almost immediately.
“Where's Fluffy?”
“Madam Donna has taken him for a walk.”
“Figures.”
Lex wasn't particularly surprised. Donna had become rather attached to Fluffy, and taking the massive creature out for a walk had gradually become something of a daily routine between the two of them. With that mystery solved, Lex continued farther into the mansion until he found Gwen and Regina sitting together in the living room, apparently going over something displayed on one of the holographic screens.
“Hey, girls.”
Gwen looked up from the screen.
“Oh, you're back. So how was training?”
“Technically, I'm still training. I just came home for a short break, but it's going pretty well.”
“Regardless, do you want to join us?” Gwen asked, gesturing toward the holographic display. “We were discussing the place Ultron fled to. The Negative Zone.”
Lex's expression changed slightly.
“Oh, yeah. Speaking of Ultron, what happened to that Reed Richards guy?”
“You didn't hear?” Regina asked.
“Nope.”
“He got away without any consequences,” Regina replied, leaning back in her seat. “After coming back from that space trip, everyone involved in the experiment somehow ended up with superpowers, and Reed started making deals with people while shifting the blame for Ultron onto us. His argument is basically that our research was responsible for the AI going rogue because he used some of it when building Ultron.”
Gwen's expression darkened slightly.
“Which isn't completely baseless, since he was working with us on the Mind Stone research and the original project to create an artificial intelligence capable of protecting Earth. The problem is that he ignored most of the procedures and precautions we recommended, went ahead with Ultron anyway, and then disappeared into space.”
Regina snorted.
“Now he's trying to turn it into a dispute over stolen research instead of answering for the fact that he created a genocidal AI after ignoring everyone's warnings.”
Lex frowned.
“Can't we do something on our own?”
“Not legally,” Regina answered.
“But we've been using Cortana to ruin Reed's public image,” Gwen added. “It's actually surprisingly easy because there are already plenty of questionable things attached to his name. We've also gotten some support from the king of a small European country called Latveria.”
Lex raised an eyebrow.
“Latveria?”
“Yeah. Apparently Reed ruined one of Doctor Doom's experiments, which supposedly resulted in Doom's face being scarred.”
Lex stared at her for a moment.
“Doctor Doom?”
“You'll probably meet him eventually,” Regina said casually.
Lex considered everything they had just told him, and his thoughts briefly returned to one of the quests he had received from the Space Mall. He wasn't normally a particularly petty person, but there was a difference between letting someone make a mistake and watching someone deliberately shift responsibility for their own mistakes onto his friends. He wasn't exactly committed to following some rigid moral code when someone started playing dirty.
Then another thought surfaced.
Natasha.
The memory of the quest came back to him, along with the single piece of information that had bothered him ever since he had seen it: Natasha would sacrifice herself.
He still didn't know which Natasha it referred to, where it would happen, or even why she would make that choice. There was nothing useful he could actually do with the information yet, but that didn't make the thought any less uncomfortable.
Lex pushed the thought aside.
He would figure it out eventually.
His attention returned to the holographic display in front of Gwen and Regina, where a collection of research concerning the Negative Zone was being examined. The moment Lex began reading, however, something strange happened.
Information started surfacing in his mind.
The H'El Template was responding to what he was seeing, feeding him knowledge concerning spatial structures, dimensional interactions, energy behavior and the theoretical relationships between different forms of space. It wasn't merely handing him a neatly organized textbook; instead, it felt more like instincts and understanding were suddenly forming behind information he had only just encountered.
Lex's eyes narrowed.
He immediately understood something important.
Raphael could extract the information from the H'El Template, but there was a difference between Raphael processing the information for him and Lex actively engaging with it himself. When he actually focused on the knowledge contained within the template, the process became considerably faster, as though his own mind was finally learning how to access something that had always been sitting just beneath the surface.
Lex leaned closer to the holographic display.
He began reading.
Minutes passed.
The more he read, the more pieces began falling into place. Concepts that should have required years of specialized study started becoming intuitive, and when he encountered something unfamiliar, the H'El Template seemed to provide the necessary context almost automatically. It wasn't making Lex omniscient, but it was giving him a foundation of knowledge so absurdly broad that connecting new information to it became increasingly easy.
By the time he finished reviewing the research, Lex had already begun mentally reorganizing the information.
He picked up a nearby stylus and started writing.
Gwen watched him for several seconds before slowly leaning toward Regina.
“Wait a minute.”
Lex continued working.
“You also have expertise in dimensional awareness and spatial coordination?”
“Apparently.”
Gwen stared at him.
“Lex... are you actually smart and just act like that?”
Lex stopped writing and looked at her.
“Like what? Were you going to say an idiot?”
“I was going to say brute.”
She paused.
“But idiot works too.”
Lex puffed out his cheeks.
“For your information, I'm pretty smart.”
He gave her a proud smile before returning to the calculations.
Gwen watched him for another few seconds, and something in her expression had changed. She had always known Lex was powerful, and she had always been physically attracted to him, but there had been a certain restraint in the way she interacted with him, as though some part of her had always kept a small distance between attraction and actually acting on it. Watching him tear through a problem that had occupied her and Regina for days, however, had apparently cracked whatever remained of that restraint.
“So,” Gwen said, sliding the holographic display closer to him, “how about helping me build a way to enter and exit the Negative Zone safely? Or at least something that could help us locate Ultron before he has time to prepare?”
“Sure.”
Lex accepted the challenge without hesitation.
He deliberately didn't call on Raphael.
If he did, the entire thing would be trivial. Raphael could process the information far faster than he could, and having her simply hand him the finished answer would defeat the entire point. Gwen had presented him with a problem, and Lex wanted to solve it himself.
Instead, he relied on the knowledge being fed to him through H'El, the research they had already gathered, the information he had accumulated from working with Raphael, and the countless pieces of technology and scientific knowledge he had encountered since arriving in this world. His mind moved through the problem from several different angles, testing possibilities, discarding unstable approaches and gradually assembling something that could actually work.
Two hours later, the living room looked like a miniature laboratory.
A rough prototype sat on the table, surrounded by components pulled from Lex's inventory. The device resembled a compact version of the Null Void Projector Gwen had previously described, but the underlying technology was entirely different. Lex had combined the principles they had studied with H'El's knowledge and materials that had been sitting inside his inventory for who knew how long, many of them accumulated because Raphael had a tendency to collect anything that might eventually prove useful.
The device wasn't perfect.
It wasn't even particularly stable.
But it worked.
At least, it worked well enough to establish a two-way connection with the Negative Zone, allow a small number of people to pass through, and bring them safely back.
Gwen stared at the prototype.
“Two hours.”
Lex looked at her.
“It took us two days just to get a good grasp of the Negative Zone, and you just came in here and solved the whole thing in two hours?”
Lex shrugged.
“I had some advantages.”
“Some?”
Gwen stared at him for another moment.
Regina leaned toward Lex and lowered her voice.
“Psst. If you're going to shoot your shot, now is probably the time. The girl is already ovulating over your brain.”
Lex glanced toward Gwen.
“To be honest, I kind of want to try you first.”
He gave Regina a wink.
Regina's smile widened.
“I would suggest why not both, but I'm pretty sure she won't agree to that.”
“You guys do know I can hear you, right?”
Gwen's glare could have cut through steel.
Regina immediately raised both hands in surrender.
“I'm just saying.”
Gwen sighed and rubbed her forehead.
“Well, I'm leaving. I haven't had proper rest in the last two days because of this.”
She started toward the door, but stopped just before reaching it. For a moment she remained still, as though deciding whether she really wanted to say what she was about to say, before finally turning her head back toward Lex.
“And Lex?”
“Yeah?”
“A gentleman should take a girl out on a date before expecting anything.”
Her expression remained almost perfectly composed, but the faint blush appearing across her cheeks betrayed her far more effectively than her voice did. Before Lex could respond, Gwen turned around and walked out.
Regina watched her leave.
Then she looked at Lex.
“Damn.”
Lex chuckled.
“You know, Lex, come to my room tonight. I'm in no way going to be the last girl out of us.”
She turned and followed Gwen toward the exit, leaving Lex standing there.
“What else can I expect from the Ultimate Chad?”
Lex shook his head, then looked around at the disaster the three of them had created in the living room. Rather than leave it for someone else, he began cleaning everything up himself, gathering the scattered components and returning the unused materials to his inventory.
Once the room was back in order, Lex glanced toward the Negative Zone prototype.
His short break was over.
Soon enough, he would be heading back to that distant planet.
And this time, he intended to push himself even further.