Chapter 57: The Last Superhero
Facing Ian’s explanation.
The girl named Gwen didn’t pay attention.
“Gwen Stacy?”
Ian tentatively spoke up to ask.
“Hm?”
The other party seemed somewhat surprised, clearly guessed right by Ian. Sure enough, this was the girl that generations of Spider-Man Peter Parkers had never successfully slept with.
“Do you know me? Have we met?” The girl Gwen looked Ian up and down, her expression confused, as if trying to recall if she had ever met Ian before.
“No, I’ve just heard of you… and Spider-Man’s story. You just said that the former superheroes have all gone mad, can you tell me what’s going on?”
Ian wanted to seize the opportunity to extract some information.
“I woke up from sleep, and the world was like this.” He told a little white lie again. After all, compared to explaining that he came from otherworld, fabricating a story of being cursed by a witch to sleep for a long time was obviously simpler. Don’t underestimate a writer—no, he was about to have a bestseller soon—Ian felt he deserved the title of writer.
“Spider-Man, huh.”
Gwen seemed uninterested in Ian’s “story,” which disappointed Ian somewhat. Her expression looked somewhat sad, as if recalling some heartbreaking past events.
“There is no Spider-Man in this world anymore.” The girl let out a heavy sigh, her gaze melancholic as she lowered her head to look at her fair right hand gripping the firearm.
She slightly bent her wrist.
Staring at the somewhat wrinkled spot where her pulse throbbed, her expression grew even sadder.
“Here, tissue. Let me hold this heavy thing for you, wear me out a bit, then you can properly wipe your eye boogers.” Suddenly, a voice sounded beside Gwen, who was still reminiscing.
Then.
Someone tried to take the firearm from her hand.
“What are you doing!?”
Gwen was startled badly. She hadn’t noticed Ian approaching at all. Once she reacted, she immediately shoved Ian hard and then vigilantly retreated five or six steps.
In her instinctive reaction, Gwen pointed the gun barrel at Ian. But seeing Ian’s eager expression, she felt a headache and helplessly lowered the gun barrel.
“Wait, what’s wrong with you?” The girl, perhaps not realizing how dangerous Ian was, put down the firearm again and looked at the boy in front of her with an incredulous gaze.
“You’re so strong?”
Ian was somewhat stunned and rubbed his chest.
His eyes flickered.
“Don’t grab my gun again!” Gwen didn’t respond to Ian’s confusion at all, just issuing a stern but perhaps not very deterrent warning.
“Give me a chance… really, trust me. Before, I had no choice, but now I want to be a bad guy who gets shot.” Ian was drooling over that full magazine of laser ammunition. Truth be told, if he had gold bars—which were hard currency even in the apocalypse—he would have directly “rented” the other party’s firearm no matter what.
“…”
Gwen really wanted to unload a magazine into Ian.
However.
Her emotional regulation ability was still pretty good.
“To be honest, you remind me of a comic I read when I was little.” Gwen sighed speechlessly. Her gradually blurred childhood made her mood quite melancholic.
“What comic?”
Ian was curious.
But Gwen didn’t speak.
She turned her head and glimpsed several shadowy figures faintly appearing in the snow curtain.
The next moment.
“You like playing with guns so much, huh? Here!” Her attitude suddenly did a one-eighty, directly tossing the firearm in her hand toward Ian not far away.
Ian caught it steadily.
After touching his hand, the firearm let out a light mechanical whirring in his palm.
【Identity Verification Passed】
The electronic voice was exceptionally clear in the silent snowy ground.
Ian was somewhat astonished.
And Gwen’s pupils suddenly contracted.
Her complexion changed instantly.
“How is this possible!?”
Her voice was filled with incredulous horror.
“Uh… I’m pretty surprised too.” Ian could naturally guess this was some kind of usage permission identity recognition. Like Gwen, he just didn’t understand why he could unlock the firearm’s usage permission.
Unless.
Gwen was secretly in love with him.
And had sneakily authorized him earlier?
Ian thought this made perfect sense.
But not very legal sense.
He was just a fourteen-year-old little boy, while Gwen looked like an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old old woman. Ian thought about it and was about to empty the magazine to practice his bullet-catching skills.
“Creak creak~”
The sudden noise made him pause his actions. There, four fully armed soldiers and a woman in a white coat actually rode bicycles over.
Betty Rose.
Bruce Banner’s ex-girlfriend.
Ian felt he hadn’t guessed wrong.
“What’s the situation?”
The scientist Betty stopped by propping one foot on the ground. Her pant leg under the white coat was covered in snow mud, clearly having fallen many times along the way—Ian knew all too well how slippery the streets were.
He couldn’t handle it himself.
“This person is the teleporter who appeared near the corpse before we took away Hulk and Homelander and then mysteriously disappeared. The system even recognizes him as a legitimate weapon user.”
With that.
Gwen stepped forward and snatched the gun from Ian’s hand that hadn’t even warmed up yet.
“Wait, can’t play?”
Ian felt the other party was really off—her strength was even greater than his. Seeing that Ian no longer had the firearm, the four soldiers also lowered their weapons aimed at him.
They were all laser guns too.
Ian eyed them greedily.
“Possibly a remnant S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, or a survivor from S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.” Betty pushed up her glasses in astonishment, the lenses reflecting Ian’s figure.
“Are you?”
Gwen looked at Ian.
“Uh, I don’t know, I’m just someone who was caught by an evil witch and taken back to be prepared for…” Ian had just seized the chance to tell his story.
But the scientist Betty had no intention of giving him a chance to show off his talent.
“Let’s head back first. We can check the database later to know his situation.” Betty gave Ian a deep look, and the four soldiers around her immediately surrounded him.
“You still have a base?”
Ian didn’t resist.
His curiosity was instantly piqued. He’d been wandering in this world for some time, but before, he really hadn’t found any other living things in this city.
He hadn’t expected so many people to pop out all at once now. Regardless of whether these people were remnants from the universe’s past, Ian was really curious where they usually hid.
“Come with us, and you’ll know.” Betty and Gwen exchanged a glance. She suddenly pulled out an instrument to scan Ian, and her expression immediately relaxed a lot.
“A superhuman retaining kindness is very important to us.” Betty’s tone also relaxed considerably. Not just her—Gwen and the four soldiers were no longer as vigilant toward Ian.
Probably because the mysterious instrument lit up green?
“Of course I’m kind, I’m loyal and upright.” Ian wasn’t surprised by the test result at all. Consider the family environment and upbringing he grew up in.
Marx in his previous life.
Red underwear in this life.
Who could be more red than him?
“Let’s go.”
Gwen didn’t want to continue communicating with Ian. She proactively walked in the direction scientist Betty had come from, with Ian following closely behind. The others pushed their bicycles instead of riding.
Probably all traumatized from falling.
Soon.
Ian followed Gwen and Betty and the others to a hidden alley. Gwen deftly pried open the manhole cover, glanced back once, and jumped down without hesitation.
“Leap of faith?”
Ian didn’t want to land on his butt, so he seized the chance to jump down hard.
“…”
Gwen, who had landed, saw the falling object above.
Speechlessly, she caught Ian.
“Thank you, Gwen. You’re the real superhero.”
Ian remained polite.
Then.
The others smoothly descended using ropes. Gwen set Ian down and took the lead toward the depths of the sewer. The damp tunnel echoed only with footsteps and dripping water.
Soon.
They reached the end of the tunnel, where a door gleaming with metallic cold light stood, its faded Avengers emblem on it.
“Wait.”
Betty suddenly stopped Gwen, who was about to step forward for verification.
“Let him do it.”
She looked at Ian.
Ian raised an eyebrow.
Feeling curious, he walked to the door.
【Identity Verification Passed】
The same situation again.
The door rumbled open.
Ian was pensive.
He thought of his “setting” in this world where he couldn’t receive any harm. Was the situation he encountered now related to this special trait of his?
“How could this be!”
Gwen and Betty’s expressions were both somewhat shocked and suspicious.
“He passed the verification too?”
Gwen incredulously widened her eyes. “Could our system have been hacked? He’s a hacker who entered his identity information into our system in advance?”
This was the most plausible guess in her view. After all, she was unwilling to believe from the bottom of her heart that Ian had been a high-clearance agent.
“That’s impossible. No one can hack us.”
Betty furrowed her brows tightly.
She couldn’t figure it out.
But she still rejected Gwen’s judgment.
“So confident?”
Ian didn’t understand hacking much, but he felt that in any world, there shouldn’t be an unbreachable information system. The strongest shield was always just to highlight the strongest spear.
This was especially true in the Marvel Universe.
“You really seem to know nothing…” Betty carefully observed Ian’s reaction, her brows furrowing deeper. “The system here is absolutely the safest system in the world.”
With that.
She led Ian inside the door.
“Why?”
Ian asked as he walked.
Inside the door was an underground space the size of a football field, with dozens of people in white coats shuttling between various precision instruments. In the center of the hall stood a massive hemispherical computer.
Data streams scrolled across its surface like a waterfall.
“Because we have the world’s… last superhero.” Betty’s words were full of confidence, but the heaviness in her tone was even more pronounced.
She pointed to the computer in the middle of the hall.
“Ultron?”
Ian unreservedly voiced his guess. Anyway, his “background” information had already been fleshed out on the way. He knew he didn’t need to hide his “omniscience” in this world.
However.
The next moment.
Ian realized he might not be that “omniscient” after all.
“No, not Ultron.”
A low, magnetic male voice suddenly rang out.
“It’s me—Iron Man, Tony Stark.”
That voice.
Came from the computer.
A very handsome face was pieced together from intangible digital symbols.
〔ps: Follow-up reading for the next couple days’ chapters is crucial. Begging big shots to make time for it, thanks on my knees〕
