Chapter 80: Chapter 80 - Change

Wondering the futuristic sci-fi looking streets of the city of Erkol whilst admiring the advanced crystalline themed structures and high-tech machines that would occasionally pass by, Bey'on could be seen with an ever so curious gaze as she continued to analyze all that she could, recording everything she saw into her tablet. Spencer who resided at her side was just as intrigued as she was, but he placed more of his focus on Rex-Mall, as he was currently guiding them through the city.

As the three of them made their way through the city of Erkol without any real form of interference, Rex-Mall remained vigilant as he scanned every conceivable corner to look out for any potential hazards or hostiles. Whilst he placed all of his focus on doing this, Bey'on and Spencer were simply enjoying themselves as they marveled at the city.

Watching as the two were enjoying themselves, he was beginning to feel at ease with the current situation, despite the image of him almost killing all of them without moving so much as a finger still vividly remaining in his mind, his shoulders relaxing a little as he continued to guide them.

"We'll be entering a more populated area ahead. From that point, we should be able to enter the Data Center as well as the labs containing all of Erkol's technological resources." Rex was very relieved that there were no unnecessary issues on the way here, causing him to take an invigorated sigh, looking at the two not responding to him, but at least they remained docile.

Once they reached the more populated zone, Spencer, Bey'on, and Rex maneuvered their way through the crowd of people without much issue, approaching the large crystalline structure with nothing but anticipation and wonder.

"Huh..." As they were about to exit the crowd, Spencer felt something bounce against his leg before promptly falling to the floor followed by an ice cream-like substance falling on his flip flops. Turning his attention to the source, he could see a small child no older than 4 yeas old on the floor next to him on the brink of tears. He raised a brow whilst Bey'on also looked at the child in confusion.

Rex-Mall also turned his gaze to the small child and the ice cream on Spencer's feet, his body abruptly filled with fear as he realized what had happened. His gaze traveled from the child to Spencer's almost expressionless face, causing him to quickly fear for the child's safety. From his view, he could see Spencer lifting his platinum-colored tail and slowly bringing it down to the crying infant.

Seeing this, he rushed to quickly stop him from potentially causing any form of harm to the child.

"Spencer, wait!" Rex-Mall raised his voice as he watched Spencer wrap his tail around the child and lift them in front of him whilst reaching out his hand towards the child. Much to his shock, He observed as Spencer began brushing off any dirt that was on the child from the fall.

"Don't cry little one, you'll be okay." Spencer placed the child down with his tail and crouched down at their level while showing a gentle smile on his face.

Seeing that the child was still crying, he placed his attention on the empty ice cream holder in their hand and gained an idea. Snapping his fingers, the ice cream that was on his flip flops vanished and appeared as it was before the child bumped into him, not stopping there, a second holder of ice cream appeared floating in front of the child.

"See... no reason to cry little one, you have two now!" Using his time manipulation, he rewound time on the event that happened and focused it on the object to restore the ice cream to what it was before the child ran into him. He had also created a temporal duplicate by pulling the ice cream from a second ago into the current time, effortlessly creating another one.

Noticing that the child had stopped crying, he gave them the second ice cream. "Now be on your way little one!" Sending the kid off, he stood up and looked at the shocked and now baffled Rex-Mall.

"Are we going to the center or not?"

Snapping Rex-Mall out of his shock, he rubbed his head for a moment. " My apologies, I didn't mean to…".

"It's fine, let's hurry this up." Spencer cut him off and insisted that he hurry this up. The three of them continued to the Data Center by the lead of Rex-Mall.

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"So… what now?" Shaya's voice broke the silence that suddenly enveloped the trio. After the 'little exercise', they got back to the ship and sat down on their beds in the Medical Bay, just like before.

However, the place seemed boring all of a sudden. The comfort it provided was no longer there. The silence that seemed oh so inviting, no longer provided comfort. Suddenly the boorish room that meant their new 'home', wasn't enough anymore.

After venting most of the pent-up emotion, Shaya felt that it was time to take the next step and try a new venture in her life.

As the Elder taught them: "Every time a door closes, another opens." She couldn't understand the teaching at the time, but now, after many years, it suddenly started carrying some profound meaning. She kept looking towards the door, having the urge to just stand up, leave the self-proclaimed cell of these walls, and explore the ship in its entirety.

Acquiescing to this new feeling, she bolted up on her feet, surprising her best friend and the gentle giant as well. Giving them even further shock, her previously hollow and empty expression regained some of its old vigor, as a friendly smile stretched across her lips. She looked at Cassa then Milo as she motioned with her hands for the two to follow suit.

"Come on, what are you two doing here?! Get a move on, we have this whole ship to explore!" Seeing how Cassa kept looking at him with a mixture of shock and surprise, she sprung into action herself, grabbing her friend's arms, and pulling her up to her two feet forcefully.

"There you go! Come on, haven't you slept enough?! You gonna go fat at this rate!"

The teasing seemed to hit its intended mark, Cassa immediately retorted to her friend's cheekiness.

"Hey, what are you saying?! We just did some stretching!"

As both girls broke out in a sudden giggle, Milo's already gentle face, revealed an even brighter smile. Following along, he also sprung to his feet.

"Come on you two, let's check out this place!"

A few moments later, the automatic doors of the Medical Bay opened up, letting out the new explorers as they began to take in their new home in its entirety.

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Currently entering the Data facility, Spencer, Bey'on, and Rex-Mall, all made their way throughout the building without any more disturbances or unexpected events occurring near them, only receiving brief gazes from the workers and researchers around them as they noticed Spencer's drastically different attire and appearance from them, especially the shining platinum hair and tail that was difficult to miss.

As the trio entered further, Spencer and Bey'on admired the lustrous design and flare of the internal structure the facility held, whilst they made their way to the door of a specific locked area. Spencer made sure to scan the minds of every single scientist in his visual vicinity, filtering out everything else except for their knowledge on the technology of this planet and everything else that could be of use to him.

Completing his little task, the two of them entered the once locked area by following Rex-Mall. Upon entering the large room, a sea of hexagonal scalenohedral shaped crystals could be seen in front of them aligned in sections.

"These are Data crystals." Rex-Mall presented the crystals to Spencer and Bey'on, walking over to one of the sections and taking one from the tray whilst bringing it over to Bey'on, who wasted no time and quickly seized the crystal from his hand and began to analyze it with pure excitement.

"We artificially create these crystals and ingrain data into these to be used for many purposes, a few of which being recording videos, storing computer data, and even storing the memories of one of our people which we can of course later project as a hologram to view said data." Rex-Mall finished his presentation as he brought another data crystal over to Spencer, which he took eagerly.

"Interesting..." Though he had already scanned the minds of all the scientists in the facility, he was still intrigued by these crystals and he was excited that he now knows the process of making them for his benefit. Gazing at the crystals, Spencer looked at Rex-Mall, "How many copies of these do you have? I'd like to take a few for further study."

"We keep backup storage in case of emergencies that are exact copies of what you see in front of you, these are simply for people to see for themselves, take as much as you'd like."

Spencer was pleased with Rex-Mall's response, immediately creating a spatial storage dimension and placing the crystal in his hand in it. Using his mind he sent a command to create a storage room for the crystals before he promptly transported all of them to the room in the ship except for the one Bey'on held.

"I transported all of the crystals to the Bioship, You can access them as you please." Telepathically informing Bey'on of what he did, her eyes immediately began sparkling with excitement as she hugged him seemingly out of nowhere, much to Rex-mall's confusion at her sudden happiness.

Patting her on the back signaling her to let him go, for now, he began walking over to the only computer in the room and placing the same small circular device on it to allow Hex to collect all of its data and send it to the Bioship. Once the process had finished he removed the device and placed it in his pocket.

As he was about to leave the computer, he noticed a small pad on the side of the table, which he casually picked it up and started to read its contents.

[The council has finally authorized project homeworld, my studies have finally come to light as we began the development of the device capable of world-changing properties! This will allow for us to travel to and inhabit different worlds freely as if we were on our home planet, the first model is already complete as we are now working on the second model to be tested soon... I just hope it works as planned!]

Spencer raised his brow as the note managed to intrigue him, "They couldn't possibly be talking about that device..."

"About what device?" Bey'on was confused a to what he was talking about. Looking over his shoulder to see what he was reading in her curiosity, causing him to briefly show a faint smile at her actions before putting down the tablet "Nothing of importance at the moment, let's head back to the ship for now.", The three of them promptly vanished from the room.

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Reappearing at the Landing Port holding the Bioship, Bey��on quickly entered the ship to examine the crystals whilst Rex-Mall promptly fell to his knees from the disorientation that came with traveling through space in an instant, struggling to get to his feet whilst he felt the need to throw up, but he held it in and stood up. In standing up, he was quickly filled with regret, his face expressing the faint sadness that he let escape his grasp.

All he could see was a field of blood as the massacred bodies of dozens of his Erkolian soldiers littered the ground. The sight was unbearable for him, but he could do nothing in response to it. Bringing his attention to Spencer, watching as he casually made his way to the center of the chaos.

Standing at a suitable spot, he stopped walking and began to levitate with his arms still behind his back from earlier whilst all the bodies around him began to liquify and converge around him, followed by the blood of the soldiers that decorated the ground. He released a pleasant grunt as the essence of all the soldiers formed a bubble around him as it slowly sank into his body permanently, greatly increasing the size of the Kryptonian Essence orb in his body.

Though to his chagrin, all Rex-Mall could do was watch and accept this nightmare of reality as real.

"This is starting to feel downright indecent at this rate." The pleasure his body felt when doing

this was a constant factor whenever he assimilated anything around him, the higher the quantity, the better. Seeing that nothing was left in the area but destroyed machines and rubble, he took a quick look at his inner word to observe what he gained.

Feeling the large increase in the new Kryptonian DNA strand in his inner world, he immediately wanted to begin stabilizing and tempering the new essence orb within his body. Levitating towards Rex-Mall, Spencer placed his hand on his shoulder, "I would like to thank you for your help thus far, if there is anything you would like, feel free to ask."

Rex-Mall looked up at him with his saddened expression,"...Just wipe out those Wegthorian bastards, make this all worth it...",

"Hmmm...as you wish."

Spencer passed Rex-Mall and entered the Bioship behind Bey'on, leaving him to his distress as he had more important matters to attend to.

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From the moment his feet touched the interior of the ship, he flickered and entered his combat room to modify and empower the Kryptonian DNA in his system. Entering the room, he quickly levitated and went into a lotus position as his body began to emanate his bluish platinum aura which quickly embraced the entire room with its radiance.

Not wanting to waste any time, he swiftly entered his mind space to begin his modifications, but as everything was about to fade into the background, he was brought out of it by a hand touching his shoulder, catching his attention.

"I would like to visit the Science Facilities this planet has to offer and learn more about how the people of this planet develop their technology." The hand was revealed to be Bey'on as she hesitantly requested freedom to explore as she wanted.

Spencer didn't really care as he was more focused on fusing the Kryptonian DNA with his current body.

"Do as you wish." He then quickly entered his mind space, leaving her lightly surprised as she didn't expect to receive permission so easily. Seeing that he was done with the conversation, she left him to himself.

As she left, he was already in the process of breaking down the fundamental properties of the Kryptonian Genome. Examining the dozens of orbs in his mind space made from Kryptonian DNA, they all held a dim crimson radiance that weakly lit his mind space.

Bringing them all closer to him, he quickly began purging all defects with anything that is limiting the potential of the genome before fusing them one by one into a singular orb of pure essence. This process didn't take long, but due to the amount of hidden potential in the genome, he had to place more of his focus on the process than he has before.

"And to think they would still be so powerful with this many factors limiting their biology!"

Fusing the last orb with the others, the old dim crimson radiance of the many orbs all converged into a new blinding crimson radiance akin to a yellow star. He admired its glistening effulgence as it floated above him like a sun over his mindscape, next to the just as massive Burning martian and Fashacalli orbs.

But he wasn't finished, reaching deeper into the genome and adding his knowledge of biology, he increased the ability to absorbed and process solar radiation to an absurd degree, even to the point of metabolizing red sun radiation to a moderate degree with the next addition of increased expression of the rarest and most powerful traits possible in the genome without changing the entirety of its structure any further.

Completing his work, the essence sphere now resembled more of a small star than anything else.

"It doesn't look like it can be enhanced or modified any further than it already has, guess I'll connect it to my main body now." Allowing the sphere to express itself through his actual body, he was caught off guard while everything went black as he was immediately flung from his mindscape vigorously.

His body began to go through an immediate and unprecedented change, natural bone-like armor formed around his chest, back, neck, and spiked bony protrusions burst from his elbows and a variety of areas on his body. In addition, sharp long fangs replaced his normal human-looking teeth, his glistening platinum hair gaining a Crimson blood-red hue at the tips of his strands. His skin took on a darker tone whilst the texture of his skin became more coarse and plated, ending the visual changes his body had gone through.

Once it had all finished, his feet slowly touched the floor of the room, him slowly opening his eyes to reveal another amazing change, his iconic, draconic eyes going through an unprecedented transformation, his sclera converted to pitch-black whilst his pupils emanated a deep golden radiance that lit up the room from him opening his eyes.

He started looking at his new appearance, "This is a little much isn't it?" seeing how drastically he has changed, he was a little intimidated, but he quickly got over it.

"Strange...I don't feel that much of an increase in my strength..." He was briefly confused but quickly came to the reason why this was the case which made him facepalm. "Solar radiation, obviously!"

Teleporting out of Krypton's atmosphere, he opened his arms and let the lesser radiation of the red sun embrace his body.

"Oh my god!" Though the star was generating a very low level of solar radiation, his body violently absorbed the rays from the star to empower him, simulating the same effect as if he was a normal Kryptonian under a yellow sun. The sensation eventually grew to an unbelievably euphoric degree as his strength began to take giant, steady leaps.

Deeming this as enough, he decided to head back.

"Maybe I'll try a yellow star the next time around..." He teleported back into the Bioship in the platform to get everything under control before he holds up his side of the deal with Rex-Mall.