Power Gain

This underground city, from the inside out, is like a composition of numerous concentric circles, with its center being her goal. Daisy walked for an hour, feeling that even if she were directionally challenged, she wouldn't get lost. She just had to follow the straight path.

However, she didn't let her guard down and, imitating what she had seen on TV, drew arrows on the ground marking her path.

In the empty passage, only the sound of her footsteps could be heard. To keep herself focused, Daisy would stop, rest, drink water to regain her strength every two hours.

And so, from noon to exactly 8:00 in the evening, as shown on her watch. Daisy felt like she had been walking non-stop.

Sitting on the ground, eating compressed biscuits, she took a couple of bites before tossing them back into her backpack. They were too dry! She also didn't want to consume too much water; she had to ration it carefully. After all, even as a Quake, she wasn't Superman. She would need to retrace her steps after gaining her abilities.

Closing her eyes slightly to ease her tense nerves, Daisy noticed that holding the Obelisk in her hand helped her recover some of her physical strength. Although it wasn't much, it was precious in this place.

Gritting her teeth, she stood up and continued on her way.

Despite not encountering a single soul along the way, she still tightly held onto her pistol. It was her only means of self-defence at the moment.

When it was midnight, while she had enough strength, her mind was exhausted.

Daisy had to call it a day.

After attending to personal needs at a distance, she leaned against the wall, placed her backpack in front of her chest, held the Obelisk, and kept her body warm. Closing her eyes, she drifted into a deep sleep.

This silent and dark underground city, untouched by human presence for thousands of years, didn't seem like a good place to sleep. There were no comfortable beds, no pillows or blankets; she curled up pitifully.

Her consciousness alternated between clarity and drowsiness. In the half-sleep state, she would sometimes dream of her new book being in a terrible state, and other times dream of being knocked down by Thanos, blood covering the ground.

She slept for three hours. When she woke up, she found that she had indeed bled, but it had nothing to do with Thanos; it was purely a bodily issue...

Embarrassed and bewildered, relying on her previous memories, she straightened up. Unable to fall back asleep, she decided to continue walking toward the city center.

°°°

"Oh my God! I finally made it!" Daisy was messy at this point. If not for her long hair, you wouldn't even be able to tell her gender. After stumbling for three days, she had finally reached the very center of the city.

Six large stone doors were arranged in a circular pattern, spaced two meters apart, supporting the internal chamber. In the center was a one-meter-tall stone platform. Daisy looked at the top, not knowing how the structure was designed. A slightly intense light shone right into the stone platform.

Rubbing her somewhat stiff cheeks, Daisy observed her surroundings.

According to her memory, once the ritual started, the surrounding stone doors would automatically close, creating a sealed environment. The Obelisk would shed its metallic casing, revealing the inner Terrigen Crystal and emitting a mist.

Now she was worried whether the stone doors would automatically open once her evolution was complete. "They won't remain close, would they ?"

After a careful observation, her conclusion was that there was no conclusion. There were no mechanical mechanisms or power sources. She really couldn't see how these stone doors would move on their own after the ritual began!

Being a woman, she needed to be harsh on herself; she decided not to dwell on things she couldn't understand. With her newfound abilities, she wouldn't be afraid even if the stone doors remained completely closed. As Quake, she had no need to worry!

Taking out her last two bottles of water, she poured a little into her palm and wiped it on her face to look more awake.

Daisy placed the Obelisk in the center of the stone platform, she took two steps back, and waited for the ritual to begin.

With a rumbling, the six stone doors began to move in a predetermined trajectory, slowly coming together until they fit perfectly three minutes later, halving the interior space and sealing the chamber.

The Obelisk converged the projected light from above and, with excitement in her eyes, began to rotate along with the stone platform.

After a crisp sound, the metallic outer shell of the Obelisk scattered around, revealing a pale blue crystal inside. The crystal seemed alive, automatically sprouting many branches that transformed from a single crystal into a crystal cluster in just ten seconds.

Daisy nervously watched as the crystal expanded wildly, veins popping on the back of her hand, nostrils twitching slightly, unblinking as she stared at the crystal cluster. In the previous timeline, her crystal energy had been diluted by another Inhuman. It could be said that the previous Quake had never reached the height she should have.

Now that she had this evolution all to herself, everything would be different.

Daisy silently waited. It didn't take long for the stone platform to stop rotating, and the crystal cluster's rapid expansion also began to calm down. Silence enveloped the surroundings, with no apparent anomalies.

Is this the end? She couldn't believe it.

Taking a step forward, a sudden change occurred.

The light inside the chamber dimmed slightly. Daisy's vision wasn't very clear, but she faintly saw that the crystal seemed to emit a gas from within. The gas quickly fermented in the sealed environment, exuding a slightly sour odour. In this sealed environment, the air became polluted. Daisy dared to guarantee that the PM2.5 levels here were off the charts, and she didn't even know if inhaling it was harmful to her lungs.

Lost in her thoughts, Daisy suddenly felt her body tingling. She lowered her head and saw that her fingers were starting to petrify, turning into a greyish-black stone material.

If she didn't know the truth, she would have been terrified...

In reality, she wasn't doing any better at this point. Her body grew increasingly stiff, and the dark gray stone material climbed rapidly over her body.

"Stay calm, you're fine. It's just part of the process!" She tried to encourage herself. Her mind was blank, and the petrification process was extremely fast. She lost her perception of the outside world and turned into a complete statue.

The ritual hadn't stopped, and the crystal was still emitting mist into the sealed environment. In this confined space, the mist had nowhere to go and was mostly absorbed into Daisy's body.

It wasn't until the crystal's energy was depleted that it strangely evaporated into the air. The stone chamber then returned to tranquility.

"Thump... Thump..." After an unknown amount of time, a faint, imperceptible heartbeat emanated from within the stone statue and grew clearer.

"Thump... Thump…" The statue began to crack. It started with the fingers, after several days of fatigue, the once stained fingers regained their originally paled colour.

The cracks grew wider, from the fingers to the palms, the hands, all the way to the face.

Daisy felt the world around her shifting in her perception, although she couldn't quite grasp the nature of the changes. There seemed to be something new within her body, yet it was blocked by an uncomfortable layer of stone skin.

"Ah!" She let out a shout as a surge of energy burst forth from her cells. It was like a long-contained flood that, once unleashed, was unstoppable. It felt like a thunderclap on a clear day, the stone skin bursting outward as if an explosion had gone off from within.