Chapter 25: Blood-Suckers
As the morning approached, Niklaus carefully laid her down, her body finally giving in to exhaustion.
She mumbled something incoherent, her voice slurred and soft. "You're... too much..." she muttered, a drooling smile crossing her lips before she sank fully into the bed.
Niklaus chuckled softly to himself, brushing a strand of hair away from her face as she drifted off, her body limp, eyes closed with a trace of drool slipping from her mouth.
Turning away from the bed, Niklaus walked to the window.
He stood there for a moment, gazing out at the faint light of dawn creeping over the horizon.
The night had been a mix of control, power, and something unexpectedly primal.
Niklaus stood by the window after getting dressed, glancing out at the city as it slowly came to life.
He was ready to leave, but something stopped him.
He paused mid-step, trying to recall the name of the girl sleeping soundly behind him.
It didn't come to him.
He shrugged it off—her name didn't matter much to him in the grand scheme of things.
Before leaving, he decided to offer her a parting gift.
With a silent command, he used New Order, dissolving the various traits and abilities he had experimented with during the night.
He replaced them with something more subtle, a weak enhancement that would grant her better vitality.
Placing his hand gently on her head, Niklaus focused, healing her body from the diseases and deficiencies she didn't even know were creeping in.
It was his way of paying for her unwitting participation in his experiment. Satisfied, Niklaus turned away and left the room, leaving the girl peacefully resting, unaware of the changes that had been made.
As Niklaus left the room, his senses immediately tuned into the presence of the vampires lingering around the area.
They were close—too close for comfort.
Annoying.
Deciding to deal with them once and for all, he disappeared into the nearby forest, reaching a quiet clearing.
He barely had time to take a breath before the first vampire appeared in front of him.
Without hesitation, Niklaus grabbed it by the neck and, with a single effortless motion, tore its head off.
Three more tried to swarm him, but they stood no chance.
His hands cut through them like a sword slicing through paper, leaving dismembered bodies in his wake.
He didn't particularly blame them for this aggression.
The last time he was in town, he had killed what probably looked like their leader.
What was his name again? Mercer? Marcar? No... Marcel.
Meh.
If they continued to annoy him, he mused, he'd just make them go extinct.
Leaving New Orleans behind, Niklaus decided to take off, flying aimlessly through the air.
But then something clicked in his mind, an urge to test his limits.
Instead of following the usual lateral path, he decided to go straight up.
He shot through the atmosphere at impossible speeds, the air growing thinner as his surroundings turned darker and colder.
His clothes began to freeze over, brittle under the extreme altitude.
He didn't stop until he felt his solar absorption start to fluctuate, going haywire under the intensified solar rays.
His power was probably inferior to Superman's famed solar absorption, but it was still enough to make him this strong.
Over time, his body had grown capable of handling nearly all his available life energy being converted into abilities.
Technically speaking, he had reached his limits in using New Order on himself to create new powers.
But that didn't mean he couldn't rewrite reality.
Far from it.
Rewriting reality for others, though—that was where things got complicated. It sent out massive psionic waves, attracting attention like the time he created an ability that interacted with both the external and internal — The Minimap.
That little experiment drew the X-Men's attention.
Speaking of the X-Men, the world didn't seem to care much about them.
Their appearances were so sporadic and mostly suppressed by the government, to the point where the public treated mutants like some urban myth—just another hoax.
'Oh well' Niklaus thought, amused by the naivety.
The world would learn the hard way eventually.
Niklaus's cells drank in the solar rays hungrily, the energy pulling him out of his thoughts.
One For All responded eagerly in kind, unbothered by the nature of the energy. It absorbed anything and everything it could get its metaphysical hands on.
Curiosity pushed him forward. With no need to hold back, Niklaus flexed his willpower, wrapping his clothes in a protective coating of energy and letting One For All run wild within him.
Then, with a burst of speed that made the atmosphere ignite, he shot toward the sun, faster than he had ever moved on Earth.
With no stealth required and no air resistance holding him back, his speed climbed rapidly—eight times faster than sound and counting.
He kept pushing, feeling the exhilaration of unrestricted movement as he rocketed through the void.
But as his speed soared, so did the radiation exposure.
The sheer intensity of solar energy soon became overwhelming, not just charging him but tearing through him, unable to be absorbed fast enough.
He was forced to stop, decelerating sharply before the radiation could tear him apart from the inside out.
If he had continued at the same pace, accelerating as he had, he mused, he would have crossed Venus in a few more minutes.
Not discouraged by the setback, Niklaus set a new goal for himself: to reach the sun in a single leap one day.
It was a lofty ambition, bordering on a daydream, but it drove him forward.
He knew the closer he got, the more difficult it would be to increase his speed.
The laws of diminishing returns were catching up to him.
Yet, the challenge itself excited him.
There was always another boundary to push, always more to conquer.
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