Evolution Reward

Even if Gwen hadn't said anything, Russell would have taken care of Mr. Negative's body.

If Gwen hadn't arrived, he would have already called the cleanup crew to deal with the body.

"Thanks for the reminder," Russell said slowly to Gwen.

Although he couldn't see Gwen's expression at the moment, from her tone, it seemed she didn't really care about Mr. Negative's death.

Upon hearing Russell's response, Gwen didn't speak further; she simply nodded.

Then, under Russell's gaze, she shot a web towards the neighboring building and swiftly disappeared into the night.

Watching Gwen's departing figure, a thought suddenly crossed Russell's mind.

Gwen became Spider-Woman because she was bitten by a radioactive spider that granted her superpowers.

Although in Gwen's parallel universe, the fate of the young Peter was to become the Lizard.

However, it was quite clear that this wasn't Gwen's parallel universe; it was a blended universe featuring superheroes like Captain America and the Fantastic Four.

If he could get her to bite young Peter, maybe it could trigger the awakening of his superpowers.

Although this idea was a bit far-fetched, Russell felt there was no harm in giving it a shot.

However, he quickly dismissed the notion.

No, having Gwen bite Peter wouldn't be a good idea!

If he really had to make Gwen bite someone, it would be better if she bit him instead.

Peter was still too young; it would be better for an adult like him to endure something like this.

Yes!

An adult like him should bear this kind of responsibility!

After Gwen's figure had completely vanished from his sight, Russell reverted from his Anti-Venom Serum form, returning to his normal human appearance.

After making a call to Charlie, the janitor, he came to the edge of the rooftop and sat down, gazing at Hell's Kitchen below in the night.

Charlie was remarkably efficient.

In less than fifteen minutes, he and his burly crew arrived on the rooftop.

Once Mr. Negative's body had been packaged and taken away, Russell handed a gold coin to Charlie.

"Good night, Mr. Bradley!"

Before leaving, Charlie tipped his hat and bid Russell farewell.

"Good night, Charlie!"

....

After resolving the matter with Mr. Negative, Russell returned to his ordinary life.

Time flew by.

Unbeknownst to him, another week had passed.

During this week, he didn't take on any new commissions.

Whether it was assignments from the Continental Hotel or cases from the detective agency, he declined them all.

His main focus was now on adapting to the Serum and the Negative Energy.

While Serum was more potent than Venom, given that it evolved from Venom, adapting to it wasn't much of a hassle.

He easily acclimated to Serum without much effort.

Perhaps due to the appearance of the Serum and the Negative Energy, the system introduced two new functions that hadn't been present before.

"Evolution Reward Function Activated!"

"Free Reward Function Activated!"

"Evolution Reward: Anti-Venom Serum Symbiote; Status: Activated; Activation Condition: Evolve Venom using Negative Energy; Activation Effect: After activation, gain all abilities of the Anti-Venom Serum Symbiote. Evolution Count: 1 time!"

"Free Reward: Negative Energy; Status: Activated; Activation Condition: Kill Mr. Negative; Activation Effect: After activation, gain the Negative Energy."

Superficially, the system had organized Serum and the Negative Energy into two entirely new reward types.

However, things weren't as simple as they seemed.

Unlike regular rewards, the system didn't provide lists for Evolution Rewards and Free Rewards.

But within the activated rewards, some had a new remark that had never appeared before.

Evolution Count!

"Infinite Reward System!"

"Activated Rewards: 5!"

"Regular Rewards: Blessing of Wonder Woman, Bullet Throwing, Endosymbiotic Battle Armor!"

"Evolution Reward: Anti-Venom Serum Symbiote!"

"Free Reward: Negative Energy!"

The emergence of the Evolution Reward Serum had caused the regular reward Venom to disappear.

Or rather, the regular reward Venom had upgraded to the Evolution Reward Anti-Venom Serum Symbiote.

Within these five rewards, aside from the Evolution Reward Anti-Venom Serum Symbiote, two rewards also had this new remark about Evolution Count.

"Regular Reward: Blessing of Wonder Woman; Evolution Count: 0 times!"

"Regular Reward: Endosymbiotic Battle Armor; Evolution Count: 0 times!"

The system still maintained its typical aloof style, not providing any explanation for this new remark of Evolution Count.

However, by looking at how the regular reward Venom transformed into the Evolution Reward Serum, it wasn't hard to guess the meaning of Evolution Count.

In simpler terms, the Blessing of Wonder Woman and the Endosymbiotic Battle Armor, among other regular rewards, also had potential for evolution.

But what the conditions for evolution were, the system didn't specify.

As long as Russell met the criteria for evolution, the Blessing of Wonder Woman and the Endosymbiotic Battle Armor would evolve into Evolution Rewards similar to Serum.

Though he didn't know what the conditions for evolution were, the appearance of the Evolution Count remark at least indicated that those rewards had opportunities for further evolution.

Apart from the Evolution Rewards, he was also intrigued by the newly introduced Free Reward function by the system.

If Evolution Rewards were an upgraded version of regular rewards, then Free Rewards were additional supplements to the regular rewards.

While the system offered numerous regular rewards, most of them were still locked.

Three years had passed since Russell's arrival in this world, and the system had only activated four regular rewards.

Considering this activation rate, who knew how much longer he would have to wait for the other rewards to become available.

Hence, in order to make up for this, or rather, by sheer accident, the Free Reward function was unlocked.

When regular rewards would become available, the system didn't specify.

However, Free Rewards worked differently.

If he could replicate the abilities of others, similar to how he replicated Mr. Negative's powers, then the appearance of Free Rewards depended entirely on him.

For instance, if he were to replicate Gwen's powers right now, he'd quickly gain a new Free Reward.

Although his replication ability had certain limitations and the rewards gained from replication might not be as potent as regular rewards like Infinity Ultron, Dark Doctor Strange, or Power of Odin, the advantage of Free Rewards lay in the fact that he could make his own choices.

The introduction of these new reward functions by the system was the most exciting thing that happened to him in the past week.

Aside from that, everything else seemed rather dull and mundane.

Adapting to Serum and the Negative Energy was one thing, but recently, he had been preoccupied with the military technology laboratory.

He initially thought that given his current resources, setting up a military technology laboratory wouldn't be much of a problem.

However, once he got started, he realized how much of a hassle it actually was.

Spending large sums of money wasn't a big issue.

Problems that could be resolved with money weren't really problems. What proved to be troublesome were the various cutting-edge equipment the laboratory required.

Now he finally understood why many top scientists chose to affiliate themselves with large corporations and institutions.

---

If you're interested in reading more, feel free to visit my patreon which already contains 30 chapters: 

https://www.patreon.com/XElenea