Chapter 64 - Evolutionary Reward

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

　　If Gwen hadn't come, he would have called the cleaners to come and dispose of the body by now.

　　"Thanks for the reminder!"

　　Russell said slowly to Gwen.

　　Although he had no way of seeing Gwen's expression right now, from the tone of Gwen's voice, she didn't take Mr. Negative's death seriously at all.

　　After hearing Russell's answer, Gwen nodded without another word.

　　Then, as Russell watched, she shot her spiders towards the building next door and quickly disappeared into the night.

　　A thought popped into Russell's head as he watched Gwen's departing figure.

　　Gwen would become Spider-Woman because she was bitten by a radioactively infected spider, which awakened her superpowers.

　　Granted, in Gwen's parallel universe, young Peter's destiny is to become a lizard man.

　　But it's clear that this isn't Gwen's parallel universe, but rather a hybrid universe with a mix of superheroes like Captain America and the Fantastic Four.

　　If she were to let her bite Little Peter, she might be able to awaken Little Peter's superpowers.

　　While the idea was a bit whimsical, Russell felt it wouldn't hurt to try.

　　Soon, though, he put that thought behind him.

　　No way!

　　It's not good to let Gwen bite Peter!

　　It's best to let Gwen bite him if she has to.

　　Peter is still too young for this kind of thing, and it's better to let him suffer as an adult.

　　Right!

　　This kind of thing should be left to him as an adult!

　　Once Gwen's figure had completely disappeared from sight, Russell deactivated his serum form and returned himself to his normal human form.

　　After making a call to Charlie the purser, he went to sit on the edge of the rooftop and looked out over Hell's Kitchen under the night sky.

　　Charlie is very efficient.

　　In less than fifteen minutes, Charlie arrived on the roof of the building with his five large men.

　　When Mr. Negative's body is packed away, he gives Charlie a gold coin.

　　"Good night, Mr. Bradley!"

　　Before leaving, Charlie removed his hat and turned to Russell.

　　"Good night, Charlie!"

　　......

　　After settling the matter of Mr. Negative, Russell goes back to his humdrum life.

　　Time passes.

　　Before I knew it, another week had passed.

　　This week, he did not take any more commissions.

　　Whether it was a commission from the Continental Hotel or from a detective agency, he didn't take a single one.

　　Now he focused his main efforts on the serum and the adaptation of the negative energy.

　　The serum is stronger than the venom, but the serum evolved from the venom, so adapting to it isn't a problem.

　　It took little effort for him to become thoroughly acclimated to the serum.

　　Perhaps because of the serum and the negative energy, two new features have appeared in the system that weren't there before.

　　"Evolutionary bonus function on!"

　　"Freedom Reward function on!"

　　"Evolutionary Reward: serum symbiote; Status: activated; Activation Condition: evolve venom with negative energy; Activation Effect: after activation, gain all the abilities of serum possession. Number of evolutions: 1!"

　　"Freedom Reward: negative energy; status; activated; activation condition: kill Mr. Negative; activation effect: after activation, gain negative energy."

　　On the face of it, the system has simply organized the serum and negative energy into two entirely new reward types.

　　However things are not that simple.

　　Unlike those regular rewards, the system doesn't give a list of evolution rewards and freedom rewards.

　　However, a part of the rewards that have been activated appear with a remark that has never been made before.

　　Number of evolutions!

　　"Unlimited Reward System!"

　　"Activated rewards: 5!"

　　"Regular Rewards: the Blessing of Wonder Woman, the Divine Assassin, and the Inner Symbiosis Battle Armor!"

　　"Evolutionary Reward: Serum Symbiote!"

　　"Freedom Reward: negative energy!"

　　The advent of the Evolutionary Bonus Serum caused the Regular Bonus Venom to disappear.

　　Or rather, the regular bonus venom, upgraded to an evolutionary bonus serum symbiote.

　　Of these 5 rewards, in addition to the evolution reward Serum Symbiote, 2 other rewards also appear with a new remark about the number of evolutions.

　　"Regular Reward: Blessing of Wonder Woman; Number of Evolutions: 0!"

　　"Regular Reward: Inner Symbiotic Battle Armor; Number of Evolutions: 0!"

　　The system still maintained its usual high and mighty style, and didn't provide any explanation for the new remark about the number of evolutions.

　　However, it's not hard to guess what the number of evolutions really means just by looking at the fact that the regular bonus venom becomes an evolution bonus serum.

　　To put it simply, both regular rewards, Wonder Woman's Blessing and Inner Symbiosis Battle Armor, still have the potential to evolve.

　　But what the conditions for evolution are, the system doesn't say.

　　As soon as he meets the evolutionary conditions, the two regular rewards, Wonder Woman's Blessing and Inner Symbiosis Battle Armor, become evolutionary rewards like the serum.

　　Although he didn't know what the conditions for evolution were, the presence of the remark about the number of evolutions at least let Russell know that there was still a chance for those rewards to continue evolving.

　　In addition to the evolution rewards, he was also interested in the system's newly-opened free reward function.

　　If the Evolution Reward is an upgraded version of the Regular Reward, then the Freedom Reward, is an additional supplement to the Regular Reward.

　　There were quite a few regular rewards given by the system, but the vast majority of them were in an unopened state.

　　It's been three years since Russell traveled to this world, and the system has only opened four regular rewards.

　　At this opening efficiency, hell knows how long he would have to wait for the other rewards to open.

　　So, to make up for this, or rather, by his mistake, the feature of free rewards was turned on.

　　He doesn't get to say when the regular rewards will open.

　　But not so with Freedom Rewards.

　　If he can copy other people's superpowers the way he copied Mr. Negative's superpowers, it's entirely up to him to decide when the Freedom Reward will show up.

　　As a simple example, if he were to copy Gwen's superpowers right now, he'd soon get a new free bonus.

　　Though his ability to copy has some limitations, and the free rewards he gets from copying are unlikely to be as powerful as the regular rewards of Infinite Ultron, Dark Dr. Strange, or the Power of Odin.

　　But the beauty of a free reward is that the choice can be made by him.

　　The system's opening of a new bonus feature was one of the happiest things he'd done in the past week.

　　Other than that, things are a bit dull and boring.

　　Forget about things like adapting to serums and negative energy, that military tech lab alone had been giving him a headache lately.

　　He had thought that with his current wealth, opening a military technology lab wouldn't be too much of a problem.

　　However, it was only after he actually started that he realized how troublesome this whole thing really was.

　　Spend a lot of money, this is nothing.

　　Problems that can be solved with money are basically not a problem, the trouble is with all the top-notch equipment that the lab needs to use.

　　He now finally knew why many top scientists were affiliated with various large groups and organizations.