Chapter 161
Logan was screaming for nearly five minutes straight as his muscles bubbled and swelled, and his skin flashed a silvery white at times. At the ten-minute mark, it all stopped, and Logan fell to the floor.
Without needing to scan him, I already saw the improvements. He was significantly taller—about six feet, notably thicker, and seemed to be constantly radiating heat.
I scanned him, getting a full read of the improvements.
Logan 'Wolverine' Howlett
One of the most powerful mutants to ever inherit the Feral mutation, Howlett was blessed with bone claws, which were later laced with Adamantium, an unmatched healing factor, and animalistic instincts.
Those mutations are further enhanced and changed with the addition of Extremis and the super soldier serum.
Weaknesses: Extreme Cold
Strength: Improved superhuman physiology, Extreme heat generation, and conductivity, Adamantium Skin, Twilight Adamantium skeleton, infrared vision, night vision, heat sense, massively improved superhuman regeneration.
I whistled at the result, breathing a bit heavily from exhaustion.
"That good?" Pietro asked.
"Oh yeah," I said. "Those monsters won't know what hit them."
I went back to forging while Logan was resting and started on My Twilight Sentinel armor. I had been putting it off for a while now. It was high time I created the ultimate defense against attacks from all sides.
I started with the underclothes first. Opting to use my destroyed Vibranium armor as a base as well as the remains of the most powerful monsters I faced in the dessert. The Devourers were greener than even the mutated seal things, but their durability was undeniable. It took some searching, but I found some of their remains, and it'd taken more effort than I'd care to admit to pry off their skin.
I merged it with what remains of my armor, some twilight Vibranium and Adamantium, and finished it off with some basic Demon Aegis protection runes.
The end result was a grey and silver scale-patterned body suit that I was determined to make the standard for my new legion of operatives. I bet Peter would kill to have a suit like this.
Twilight Devourer Skin Suit
Made from the remains of one of the most dangerous predators ever to roam the earth, the Devourer Skin suit is impossibly durable, energy absorbent, and possesses self-repair capabilities fueled by energy absorbed. Each scale regrown comes back stronger.
Abilities
Evolving scales—Each scale severed or destroyed comes back twice as durable. Works up to three times.
Extremely impact resistant
Energy absorption
Enchantment
Protection Runes
Storage runes—900DE/900AE.
Next came the Twilight Sentinel Armor.
Actual work didn't start until I completed the blueprint and created a shortlist of runes I planned to add.
I also started work on a new rune that was supposed to make moving around in all of that Adamantium easier.
A Weight Reduction Rune
Decode and Forge and Enchant made it easy to pluck parts from my Gravity Seal and Demon Aegis seal to forge something new and different. It reduced the effective weight of an object by 60%, which was perfect for my purpose, and it had its inbuilt energy storage system, which meant I didn't have to micro-manage it or draw from the storage runes that liter my future armor.
The breakthrough with the runes was enough to start me on another upgrade spree. Using insights from the whip of the African Sorceress, I was able to upgrade my precision rune and give it a more effective edge.
The change was ever so slight, graduating from Precision Rune to Precision Rune II, which amounted to about a 30% boost in effectiveness.
The Rune and every other one in my arsenal got another round of improvements when my arcane weaponsmithing skill finally reached Adept Tier. Tired of having two separate smithing skills, I decided to combine both, creating an Epic skill that was far better than the sum of its parts.
Advanced Arcanemsithing
Taps into the primordial strength of aspectless magic and combines it with all manner of arms.
Tinkerer: You gain a basic intuitive understanding of how all weapons work, regardless of complexity.
Impact Rune--> Arcane Amplification: Temporarily empower any magical or physical technique, infusing them with Demonic or angelic energies. Cost 30 AE or DE for her activation.
Demonic Aegis Seal -->Demonic Aegis Shield II: Drawing on your knowledge of density and gravity magic, generate a shield that protects you from all forms of attacks. 450 Durability points.
Precision rune --> Precision rune II: Greatly improves the overall effectiveness of your precision rune by 50%.
Rune of Accumulation--> Storage Rune II: Greatly improves the effectiveness of your Rune. Storage runes can now store up to 400 energy points.
Weight Reduction Rune --> Weight Reduction Rune II: Reduces the relative weight of an object by 70%
Gravity Seal--> Extremes are more pronounced.
Rune miniaturization-->Runes are overall smaller and easier to inscribe on metal or any surface.
Symbiosis --> Your Arcane magics effortlessly integrates with technology.
The upgrade had me frozen in awe for a solid minute straight, re-strategizing. Some of the upgrades were so game-changing I was almost tempted to leave out a chest hole for Tony's reactor and try to get my hands on repulsor beams.
Ultimately, I decided against it. I likely had an entire asteroid's worth of Vibranium to mine. Later iterations of my armors could be more technologically advanced. For now, I needed something that could deal damage and protect me.
After some consideration and a great deal of work, my final rune stack looked something like this.
30 protection runes, 12 impact runes, 9 precision runes, 1 weight reduction rune, and 25 storage runes.
After I was done synthesizing them all, I moved to creating the armor itself. Using the first iteration as a template, I made something a bit more streamlined out of solid Vibranium as a base and merged them with specific monster parts.
The metal shards from the morphing cambion who could control metal and some Vibranium scales.
It produced two distinct but important effects.
Armor Manipulation allowed me to partially manipulate the metal that made my armor temporarily so that I could integrate more physical weapons like Invictus without exposing myself and losing some enchantments.
Evolving Scales ensured my armor had self-repair.
Finally, I fused the melted-down Adamantium and the multitudes of runes.
The end result was something that felt like it was straight out of a high-fantasy novel.
I felt like a god in it, like I was constantly in Devil Trigger. So much energy strummed through the storage runes in the armor, and I felt like I could maintain maximum output for hours on end. After reading through the description, I reckoned I could.
Twilight Sentinel Armor
Made from the amalgamation of Adamantium, Vibranium, organic demon metal, and the scales of a slayed devourer. It is Forgemaster Dante's greatest creation yet. It is impervious to all but the strongest physical and magical attacks and will strike fear in the heart of all who see it.
Abilities
Armor manipulation
Evolving Scales
Adamantium Defense
Energy conduit
Enchantments
Demon Aegis Seal II
Arcane Amplification
Precision Rune II
Weight Reduction Rune II
Storage Rune II
Like my skinsuit, the armor came out Silver with a purple undertone, but it looked distinctly different from the first iteration of the Twilight Sentinel Armor. Unnecessary sharp edges were eliminated, and the armored face was covered in a strange pattern reminiscent of Damascus steel.
I was very pleased with the finished product. And just as I was about to start on Rin's armor, my apprentice came for me. Yao was ready for me, apparently, but Logan was still asleep.
Mordo was next, and his transformation cost 300,000 for each resource. I also integrated a hint of Adamantium as well for extra defense. The end result was what I imagined a base-level human would achieve should they be put through the process.
Mordo
A Powerful Master Sorcerer and combatant, Mordo is one of the most decorated members of the Sorcerer Order on Earth. Formerly limited by his body and human mind, his potential has been unshackled by the combination of the Extremis and super soldier serums.
Weaknesses: Extreme cold.
Strength: Enhanced mind, Magic, Extreme heat generation and conductivity, Superhuman physiology, healing factor, improved senses, and combat ability.
Mordo was up minutes after the process was done, and he was fucking jacked. He went from his impressive height of 6 feet to 6 feet 3 inches. Muscles were practically bursting from his strained robes. His eyes glowed red, and his hands lit up with heat energy.
He nearly lost control of the heat until Yao calmed him down with soothing words. The heat vanished just as quickly as it appeared, and within an hour, he was sparring with Rin, who was offended by the sorcerer's improved physique. They were practically neck and neck physically, with stats approximately over 100 in every category.
It wasn't long before he moved onto spells. They came out blisteringly fast, and he chained together so many complex spells even I had trouble keeping up.
The Ancient one even complimented him on his display, causing the stone-cold Mordo to preen a little at the praise.
I chuckled internally and traded a few barbs with everyone before heading back in. Dr. Hanson especially had questions about the entire process, understandably. She didn't even need to ask for an enhancement before I offered to upgrade her at a later date. For now, I was going to make her a demon Aegis bracelet to protect her from all danger.
It wouldn't take much for anyone to connect the dots, and I'd forced her into the lifestyle. The least I could do was properly protect her.
Rin's armor was a light version of Twilight Sentinel with more Vibranium than Adamantium. It was a half armor mostly carried by a modified Wakandan body suit.
I merged some devourer skin, a silver of Adamantium, and impact runes. Energy absorption wasn't particularly a problem because of the vibranium base.
For protection, the armor received 20 improved Demon Aegis seals and a Weight reduction rune to keep the armor as light as possible.
The morphing weapon was what consumed most of my time.
I first created the hammer, modeling it after one of the many great hammers I saw in one of my favorite video games, Elden Ring. But I didn't go too crazy with the size, opting to settle for something lightweight enough to swing around one-handed but large enough to utterly devastate the monster. It had a Vibranium core and handle and an Adamantium shell.
I enchanted it with all of the Arcane Amplification runes I could reasonably stuff into it.
By comparison, the sword was more conservative. It was still broad, nearly as tall as Rin was, but it was completely made of Adamantium and enchanted with several Precision II and Amplification runes. I skipped the storage runes in both instances because Rin wouldn't want more energy. He was practically a walking reactor.
I already hooked him up with the cheat that his father popularized in the comics—punching the wall to generate kinetic energy and bank it for a future conflict.
I finished off weapon creation by combining both weapons using the organic metal from the cambion I killed earlier as a Catalyst.
The end result was a weapon capable of spontaneous transformation. The downside was that you had to bear the weight of both weapons simultaneously. I fixed that problem with a Weight Reduction Rune.
Rin called the weapon, Rose, naming it after his mother.
I didn't object.