Level 3 Bond 

After merging with the skin in Laura's nose and mouth, Alex could assist her breathing even in an oxygen-deprived environment. He would only have to complete the development of his matter transmission skill and it would be possible.

He could do the same with her food-based sustenance. By manipulating and changing the saliva that she produces into a nutritious liquid, he could allow her to sustain herself without eating any food for any amount of time.

After this initial merging process, Laura was lost in euphoria. If her body was completely healed, she'd have climaxed at least a few times by now. She had already experienced a few mental climaxes. Finally, Alex could start actively interacting with her healing factor and pushing it forward.

Until now, he'd only been able to interact with the hosts' abilities passively, granting them a passive overall increase and benefit. But after this level 3 bond, he would be able to actively affect those abilities.

For example, if he formed a Level 3 bond with Spider-Gwen, he could complement her Bio-Electricity ability with much more proficiency and actively influence it through his lightning manipulation.

It was the same with Laura. After initiating the Level 3 bond with her, he could actively guide her healing factor to heal her quickly.

There was another benefit to this. As her body regenerated, Alex was able to simultaneously merge with her skin. He wouldn't have to spend more time after she heals up to merge with her. But there was another consequence to Alex's actions. Laura, for the first time in her life, was feeling unprecedented euphoria as her healing factor worked its magic.

Slowly, as her body formed up, Laura felt like she was on some sort of euphoric drug. Though one benefit to Laura's healing factor was that her mind was also protected. No matter how much pleasure she felt, she wouldn't go crazy or lose herself.

Alex didn't have to actively act to protect her mind as he had to do with his other girls.

Through the next euphoria-filled hour, Laura's body was completely regenerated and she was in perfect shape. It was as if she'd never gone through the harrowing experience of having her whole body destroyed.

Though the same couldn't be said about her mental faculties. Her healing factor prevented her from going crazy, but that didn't mean that she wasn't affected by the mind-numbing pleasure. Each moment of the merger sent her into a crazy euphoric state. And she experienced an hour of that. Especially after her lower half was formed.

She came so many times that Alex had to actively force water down her throat since she wasn't in a coherent state to drink anything herself. He didn't stop the process in the middle since it would stagnate everything and it would take him more effort to get it back on track.

Though there was a big consequence of Alex's forceful actions, Laura's healing factor would be going dormant for a least a week after this action. It made sense. Alex had overclocked her ability to an extreme level and it would go dormant after being overused in such a rough manner.

Using the analogy of the healing factor being a muscle, after such intense use, it was now extremely sore and wouldn't function for a while.

The situation wasn't completely without benefit though, after that period of dormancy, her healing factor would be reset and the negative effects on her ability due to her imprisonment would be completely gone.

The ability would function perfectly normally after that. It would still take some time for it to reach the kind of level that it could regenerate her whole body instantly, but it would at least be possible, unlike when it had been artificially stunted by the Bastion.

[Sleep…] Alex told Laura soothingly as he caressed her forehead with a gentle touch while providing her all the warmth that she required.

As an empathetic species, Alex had felt all of the intense feelings that she was going through. With this level three bond, he also realized something else. Something that affected all of his thoughts and plans for the future.

'As I form a deeper bond with my hosts, I'll start truly caring for them… Even the ones that I planned to use as no more than tools for me…' Alex recalled his initial plans for Farm Earth. He'd planned on bonding with a large number of women to generate a huge amount of EP but until now, he'd only bonded with MJ. He'd been training her to be nothing more than a sex slave to him, but he still hadn't bonded with anyone else yet.

The main reason was that he instinctively felt that he couldn't maintain so many bonds. It just wasn't a feasible strategy.

'Especially since I need to bond with at least one person in each of the versions of Earth. I'd end up bonding with at least 40 different women…' Alex knew that he needed to do something else. This wasn't a solution that would work.

The deeper the bond with the host, the greater the connection and the more Alex would come to care for that host. Things would become extremely difficult with so many people and he might not even be able to go all the way to the final stage of the bond with all his hosts. So he would be limiting the girls that he bonds with from now on.

It wasn't exactly a huge loss for him. Just because he wouldn't bond with the girls didn't mean that he couldn't have a relationship with them. So his inner horny pervert wasn't feeling any sense of loss.

The only sore point was that he still couldn't understand where the Bonding Rate bullshit fits into all this. It was a completely different setting and its growth factored in everything— The Bond Level, his emotional connection with the hosts, everything was factored into the Bonding Rate. But Alex had no idea what its deal was.

'Forget it. I'll just see how it all goes.' Alex decided to let things go with the flow, at least for now. Since he couldn't understand it in the short term, he would leave the problem to future Alex.

{ «Status- Host #7»

«Name: Laura Kinney (X-23) (Earth-Z)»

«Bonding Rate: 7%»

«Bonding Level: 3»

«Powers: Superhuman Physique (5->10 Tons)— Low Cosmic Healing Factor (Dormant)— Bone Claws (Vibranium-Adamantium Alloy skeleton)— Melee Mastery— Weapons Mastery— Espionage Mastery»

}

Another thing was that after merging with Laura's skin, Alex enhanced quite a bit of her physical prowess, directly doubling her physical attributes.

Alex looked at Laura's peacefully smiling face and felt that she looked so damn cute.

'She looks so cute. But we can't stay here for too long…' Alex thought as he let Laura sleep peacefully and took control of her body. He then extended his Mana Sense outward to make sure that there wasn't anyone approaching them, but he wasn't sure if the Bastion had troops that could bypass his detection, so he wasn't going to risk staying here to be ambushed. He had to leave quickly.

After the Level three bond, the enhancement that he could provide her increased by another fold. So, Alex's ‹Host Enhancement› ability could increase her stats by 5 times.

With this 5 times enhancement and the enhancement to her base stats, Laura's physical stats firmly surpassed the base stats of Alex's physique creation ability. So they would be able to get away from this general area much faster than if it was just Alex.

'Let's get going…' Alex thought while leaving the bunker in which he'd been merging with Laura.

'Where do I go, though?' Alex just now realized that he had no destination in mind. He and Laura were so focused on the whole escaping the Bastion thing that they had no idea about any other places.

'These abominations most probably also have their own territories… I hope I don't run into one of those.' Alex thought.

He's stopped and was contemplating what he should do.

'Fuck…' He had no idea what to do. And traveling without any direction might be even more dangerous.

'Should I wait for her to wake up? I'll see if she had some ideas…' Alex decided. He then spread out his Mana Sense to look for another bunker close to them. He was still going to change their position every once in a while.

Laura needed to get some rest after all that stimulation. He could've forcefully rejuvenated her, but he didn't want to do that kind of thing regularly. Unless the situation was actually dangerous, he would rather let his hosts sleep. This kind of forceful rejuvenation was similar to taking drugs. Although Alex's methods were nigh perfect with no side effects, real rest was still a better option in his opinion.

An hour later, Alex was still in the middle of nowhere realizing that there was a bunker present every couple tens of miles, which itself was unnatural.

'It seems that the long-term conflict in this world caused a lot of problems and the people decided to proactively take precautions…' Alex thought when he noticed the unnaturally large number of bunkers that he detected with his mana sense.

"Mmm…" Laura moaned a little as she was waking up.

[Morning, Laura…] Alex slowly freed her body from his control as she woke up.

"Morning Alex…" Laura took a few seconds to balance herself when she realized that she was standing.

[Why was I standing?] She asked confusedly. She didn't mention the merging process since their current situation was a little dire. She was planning to talk to Alex about that stuff later when they found some shelter.

[During the time that you were asleep, I decided to cover some distance and get away from the Bastion. I'd rather not deal with any more of those overpowered robots.] He told her.

[True… Where are we going through?] She asked him, thinking that he already has a plan.

[About that… I have no idea.] Alex was embarrassed when she asked him with a tone that conveyed her confidence in him. She'd expected too much from him.

"Oh…" She said.

[Yeah, I got no clue. I've been trying to look for some sort of human settlement similar to the Bastion but I haven't had any luck.] He told her.

[What about the information that you took from their servers?] Laura asked.

[No dice… They'd kept the higher secrets locked away behind a firewall. I had to cut my exploration short as the firewall started purging me out of the system.] He told her. He'd only been able to get the local data and research that the facility had from that terminal. And none of the information he'd got was related to the inner workings of the Bastion. Nor was there any information about communications with other communities.

Alex had some information about the Bastion's workings but it wasn't useful for now. There was a public governor and management in the city, but they were all mostly figureheads. The city was run by a subtle dictatorial influence that was enforced through the central AI that runs the city.

Alex's information wasn't of any substance other than the formula for Extremis along with quite a bit of research that The Facility had done on Laura. It was quite a large amount of stuff. They weren't only working with her bone marrow, they were also researching her flesh, blood, and even some organ tissues. Laura had gone through a very bad time there.

***

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