Powers Unlocked

From the inside to the outside, this underground city seemed to be composed of many concentric circles, with her target at the centre. Daisy had been walking for an hour and felt that even a person with no sense of direction wouldn't get lost—just follow the straight path.

Nevertheless, she didn't let her guard down. Following what she saw in movies and TV shows, she marked arrows on the ground whenever she passed the intersection of curves and straight lines to indicate her direction of travel.

In the empty tunnel, only the sound of her footsteps could be heard. To keep herself alert, Daisy would stop and rest every two hours, drink water, and restore her energy.

And so, from noon, when she left the watchtower, until now, when her wristwatch showed it was 8:00 in the evening, she felt like she had been walking endlessly for eternity.

Seated on the ground, she attempted to eat the compressed biscuits but found them too dry to finish. Not wanting to use up too much drinking water, she had to ration it carefully, knowing that she would need to return the same way once she unlocked her powers.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Daisy felt a slight relief from her tense nerves. She discovered that as long as she held the obelisk tightly, her physical strength seemed to recover slightly. Though not much, it was still precious in this ghostly place.

Gritting her teeth, Daisy stood up and continued walking towards the centre of the city.

Even though she hadn't seen any soul along the way, she kept her hand on the stun gun as it was her only means of survival at the moment.

By midnight, her energy was still good, but her spirit was already weary.

Daisy had no choice but to end today's journey.

After finding a suitable spot to attend to personal needs, she leaned against the wall and placed her backpack on her chest. Clutching the Obelisk, she kept her body warm and closed her eyes to sleep deeply.

This desolate and gloomy underground city, which had been devoid of human presence for thousands of years, wasn't a good place to sleep by any means. There were no comfortable beds, pillows, or blankets, she found herself curling up for rest.

Her consciousness was sometimes clear and sometimes muddled. In the haze, she dreamed of her new book being rejected pitifully and being defeated by Thanos, with blood all over the place.

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

Feeling embarrassed and baffled, she tidied herself. Unable to sleep anymore, she decided to continue walking towards the city centre.

...

"Oh, my God! I finally made it!" Daisy was now dishevelled, and if it weren't for her long hair, one could hardly tell her gender. After stumbling for a whole day, she finally arrived at the city centre.

Six tall stone gates were evenly spaced in a circle, two meters apart, supporting the inner stone chamber. A one-meter-high stone platform stood at the centre. Daisy gazed upward, trying to understand the design of this structure. A weak beam of light refracted several times before landing on the stone platform.

Rubbing her somewhat stiff cheeks, Daisy first observed her surroundings.

According to her memories, once the ritual, Terrigenesis, began, the stone doors would automatically close, sealing the environment inside. The Obelisk would shed its metal exterior, revealing the Terrigen Crystal inside and emitting a mist.

Now, she was worried that if the evolution were to complete, would these stone doors automatically open again or remain closed forever?

After careful observation, she concluded that there was no mechanism for moving the stone doors—no mechanical transmission, no power supply. She couldn't figure out how these stone doors would move on their own after the ritual started!

She recognized the need to be tough on herself in this situation. She decided not to think about things she couldn't understand for now. Even if the stone doors were permanently closed, she wouldn't be afraid with her powers.

Taking out one of the last two bottles of water, she poured a little into her palm and splashed it on her face to feel more awake.

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

With a rumbling sound, the six stone doors began to move according to a predetermined trajectory. Three minutes later, they completed their alignment, halving the interior space, and sealing the environment.

The Obelisk converged the projected light from above and began to rotate with the stone platform, making a crisp sound as the metal shell of the Obelisk scattered, revealing its pale blue crystal. The crystal seemed alive and grew many branches, transforming from a single crystal into a cluster in just ten seconds.

Daisy watched nervously as the crystal crazily expanded. Her veins bulged on the back of her hand, and her nose twitched slightly. Blinking without pause, she gazed at the crystal cluster. In her original timeline, half of the Terrigen energy was taken away by another Inhuman, and later, someone broke the evolving crystal she had obtained. This meant that she didn't reach the full potential she could have had.

Now, she would experience this evolution alone, and everything would be different.

Daisy waited quietly. After a short time, the stone platform stopped rotating, and the crazy growth of the crystal cluster also calmed down. The surroundings fell silent, with no signs of anything unusual.

'Is that it?' She felt a bit incredulous.

She took a step forward, and suddenly, a transformation occurred.

The light in the stone chamber dimmed, and Daisy couldn't see very clearly. Vaguely, she saw the crystal seem to emit gas from within, and this gas quickly fermented in the sealed environment, emitting an acidic smell. The air became somewhat stuffy, and Daisy was sure that the PM2.5 levels here were off the charts. She wondered if inhaling this stuff would be harmful to her lungs.

While she was lost in thought, she felt her body tingling, and when she looked down, she noticed that she was petrifying from her fingers to her wrists.

If one didn't know the truth, they would surely be terrified...

In reality, she wasn't doing much better. Her body was becoming more and more rigid, and black and grey stone-like substances were rapidly climbing on her body.

'Calm down, it's just a process!' She tried to encourage herself. Her mind was blank, and the petrification was rapidly progressing. She lost her perception of the outside world and completely transformed into a stone statue.

The ritual hadn't stopped, and the crystal continued to emit a mist. In this sealed environment, the mist had nowhere to go, and most of it was absorbed into Daisy's body.

Until the crystal had depleted its energy and evaporated into the air in a rather unscientific manner, the stone chamber fell silent.

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

"Crack... Crack..." The stone statue began to crack, starting from the fingers. After days of fatigue, her fingers, which had been a bit dirty, returned to their fair complexion, revealing a faint glow.

The cracks grew bigger, from her fingers to her palms, her arms, and all the way to her cheeks.

Daisy felt that the entire world had changed in her perception, but she couldn't discern what had changed. There was something more within her, but all of this was obstructed by a layer of uncomfortable stone skin.

"Ah!—" she shouted loudly, as a surge of power erupted from her cells. It was like a flood that had accumulated for a long time, now unleashed and unstoppable. The force exploded from inside her, outward.