Chapter 54: The Wealthy Grinder Stark

Lotus had returned to its usual chatterbox self, relentlessly urging Luke to take it out and stir up some trouble. Luke, busy constructing the G-0 Warlord, irritably flipped up his welding mask and looked over at it. “Haven’t you caused enough chaos already? Unless you really want to get caught and dissected, I don’t care.”

“Dissected?”

“Yeah, those government types will pin you down on an operating table, a bunch of lab coats with all sorts of tools, slicing you up—piece by piece, strip by strip, bit by bit…”

“Stop!” Lotus suddenly remembered the sashimi it ate last night.

“So, you’d better learn from my way of causing trouble.” Luke shrugged, his tone instructional. “Stirring up trouble is an art, you know?”

“Art? What do you mean?” Lotus was genuinely puzzled.

“It’s a process—step by step, building up carefully. Think about how I work: from the first provocation, to making the other side breathless, faces flushed, tongue-tied, all the way to a series of climaxes—leaving them gasping, almost dead but not quite. That’s the highest level of mischief!”

Lotus nodded blankly, listening.

Luke continued his earnest instruction, “You have to be stealthy at first, then you can go wild later. Your method isn’t mischief; it’s a suicide attack.”

Lotus blinked its little eyes, convinced by Luke’s words. In truth, it was mostly afraid of being dissected.

Luke added, “That wide-range psychic attack of yours—don’t use it again. It’s too easy to get detected, and then they’ll come for you.”

“I couldn’t use it now even if I wanted to,” Lotus replied, stretching out two stubby, paw-like tentacles to either side.

“Why not?”

“I’ve used up all the energy I’d accumulated over the past few days.”

“Alright then.” Luke found this a relief—no more headline-making disasters from this creature, at least for now.

“With my current strength, I can still control one person,” Lotus declared, hugging its tentacles proudly.

“Oh? So you’re not completely useless,” Luke chuckled. “You remind me of the Scarlet Witch.”

Lotus’s psychic control was indeed potent—it could be useful to him in the future. In the Marvel universe, mind control was a formidable weapon; heroes there didn’t seem to have much resistance to it. In Civil War, the fledgling Scarlet Witch single-handedly took down all the Avengers on the registration side except Hawkeye, including Thor. Even Tony and Banner fell victim, each caught up in their own illusions.

“Scarlet Witch? Who’s that?” Lotus asked.

Luke gave it a quick primer on the Scarlet Witch’s background and her source of power.

After listening, Lotus declared, “My current power isn’t even a ten-thousandth of what it was at my peak. But even so, I wouldn’t be weaker than that Scarlet Witch.”

It hugged its two tentacles, raised a third to wag a finger confidently, and proclaimed, “Scarlet Witch? Just a little girl? Chaos magic? What’s that? Ha! If I get the chance, I’d like to meet her. Even among all the Apostles, my psychic control is unparalleled!”

Then, Lotus began to ramble on about the glorious days of its past as an Apostle—a story Luke’s ears had grown calloused to since last year.

“Alright, alright… whatever makes you happy,” Luke said, putting his welding mask back on and burying himself in his work.

Not long after, Christina suddenly reported, “Master, Tony Stark has completed his research on the Demonic Stone.”

“Oh? Really?” Luke perked up, grinning. “He finally cracked it?”

“Tony Stark is requesting a call.”

“Put him through.”

On the screen, Tony looked utterly exhausted. His palladium poisoning had advanced so far that dark veins were now visible crawling up his neck—a sign the poisoning was about to reach his head. At this point, Tony was so deeply poisoned he survived each day on vegetable juice alone.

Yet he had still managed to conquer the Demonic Stone project. Luke had watched Tony’s daily grind through Christina’s surveillance, and couldn’t help but marvel: It’s not the rich that are scary, nor the tireless grinders. The truly terrifying ones are both—wealthy and relentless. That’s what you call a real boss!

Tony was exactly this kind of relentless tycoon: money plus effort equals invincibility. Of course, this was all forced upon him.

Tony still didn’t know Luke’s true identity. Luke continued to communicate using a voice modulator—no video, just that raspy voice.

“Well done. As expected of Tony Stark. Our deal is complete.”

Tony’s face was ashen, but he forced himself to act unconcerned and replied in a casual tone, “I’m sending you the research results now.”

“Transfer complete,” Jarvis announced.

Luke received Christina’s confirmation—the data was thorough. Tony hadn’t tampered with anything.

“Payment,” Luke demanded bluntly, referring to the remaining five million.

“Transfer complete,” Jarvis replied.

Tony snorted coolly, “So, where’s your antidote?”

Luke laughed. “Relax, it’s already on its way to you. The tracking number is SF7735…”

“Wait! Wait… what did you say? What tracking number?” Tony cut him off, looking utterly bewildered.

“Delivery, of course. I sent the antidote by courier,” Luke replied.

“!?!?” Tony looked as if he’d been struck by lightning—completely stunned.

“You sent something this important by courier!?” Tony cried out, feeling as if he might die at any moment.

“Who says you can’t use a courier? You?” came the disdainful reply from the other end. “So what? Come bite me if you don’t like it.”

“I…” Tony nearly choked.

He seriously suspected this guy would kill him with anger before the poison did.

Through clenched teeth, Tony asked, “What’s the tracking number?”

“Listen up, I’ll only say it once. SF773569173US.”

“Jarvis.”

“Already noted, sir. Checking now…”

“Hmph.” Without another word, Tony cut off the call. He immediately picked up his phone to call Pepper, asking her to retrieve the package for him. With the resources of Stark Industries, intercepting a delivery would be easy, though it would still take a little time.

After hanging up, Tony rolled his eyes in exasperation. He looked every bit as weak as he felt, clutching his chest where the arc reactor gave off a faint glow.

If favorability could go negative, Luke would have just received a system prompt: Tony Stark’s favorability -100!

In the lab, Tony took a few shaky breaths and glanced at the mountain of experimental data—nearly half a month’s work without rest.

“Jarvis, any progress tracking that guy’s email?” Tony asked. “And back up all the Demonic Stone research data.”

But before he could finish…

“Sir, r, r, r, r…” Jarvis’s voice suddenly began to glitch.

The entire lab was bathed in red light—an alarm.

“Detected strong, strong… data intrusion… intrusion… intrusion… Deleting all research data…”

The next moment, the lab went pitch black—total loss of power. Jarvis fell silent.

“Jarvis?” Tony called out in shock.

There was no response. The pitch-black lab was utterly silent, not a sound to be heard…