Although Matt had been resuscitated, he was still not out of danger and remained under observation in the intensive care unit.
Schiller said to Stephen Strange, “Dr.
Stephen Strange, consider this a favor.
If there’s ever anything you need help with in the future, you can come to me.”
Stephen Strange did not look well.
After all, he had been dragged over in the afternoon and had been performing surgeries for nearly ten consecutive hours.
He said with extreme impatience, “God forbid I ever see you again, freak.”
Schiller said, “I believe you’ve already seen my abilities.
So, I will throw in a word of advice: be very careful when you drive.”
Stephen Strange replied, “Don’t play these bizarre tricks on me.
I’m going back to sleep.”
With that, he left.
Schiller shrugged.
He knew it was impossible to alter Doctor Strange’s destiny.
In Stephen Strange’s current state, there was no way he would listen to any advice.
But that didn’t matter.
When the time came and he was begging high and low to heal his mangled hands, he would naturally think of Schiller.
After returning to his clinic and getting a good night’s sleep, Schiller woke up to find he had gained two more random chat opportunities.
This meant he had once again exerted a major influence on two key characters in the plot: one must be Daredevil, Matt, and the other must be Spider-Man.
Schiller planned to use one first.
As things stood, he was indeed in dire need of upgrading his abilities.
Having witnessed Matt’s accident, he felt his defense and evasion capabilities were still lacking—especially his reaction speed.
Even if he could teleport, no one could guarantee they would react within a fraction of a second.
He couldn’t rely on his finicky Spider-Sense.
So, Schiller opened the chat system and used a random chat attempt.
Soon, his chat partner connected.
Strangely, the avatar was rather odd—the frame was pitch-black, with only a pair of glowing eyes shining out.
The moment the connection was established, a stream of incomprehensible gibberish came through.
All his previous chat partners had spoken English.
Even Ancient One, who communicated directly via brainwaves, was easy to understand.
But this time, the chat partner was babbling away, and Schiller couldn’t understand a single word.
He tapped the system interface and asked, “Can’t the chat system translate this?
What language is the other side speaking?”
Thanks to his experiences in his past life, where he had visited, toured, and done academic exchanges at various universities, he knew a bit of several European languages in addition to English and Chinese.
Yet, the other party’s language did not sound like any of them.
Schiller had never heard anything like it.
The system returned a reply: [The chat system automatically translates any language spoken by the chat partner.
If incomprehensible content remains, it indicates a biological difference in lifeforms between the host and the other party, or that understanding the language requires a specialized brain organ.]
Schiller understood immediately.
The other party was definitely not human.
This long string of unintelligible sounds probably required a specific brain organ to receive.
It wasn’t standard language but more like a signal.
As a human, Schiller lacked the specialized brain organ of their species, so he naturally couldn’t comprehend it.
Schiller clicked on the avatar.
Sure enough, a few words were clearly displayed: Knull, the God of Symbiotes.
He hadn’t expected this random chat to connect him to Knull.
The God of Symbiotes had been introduced in detail in the Venom-related comics.
In short, he was an ancient being who had existed since the dawn of the universe—the Lord of the Abyss.
He forged a weapon called All-Black the Necrosword, decapitated a Celestial, and began wreaking havoc on other civilizations throughout the cosmos. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
He devised a way to create dark creatures by splitting off symbiotes.
Leading his army of symbiotes and a legion of dragons he created, he ran rampant across the universe.
Until one day, he ordered his symbiote army to attack Earth.
Thor then blasted him into a daze with a bolt of lightning, severing his connection with most of the symbiotes he had created.
The scattered symbiotes bonded with various lifeforms across the universe, many of whom were kind and rational aliens.
This led the symbiotes to realize that their creator’s destructive behavior was evil, prompting a collective rebellion.
After their rebellion, the symbiotes imprisoned their creator, Knull, on a remote, desolate planet—the so-called symbiote homeworld.
Schiller was in no hurry to use his next chat attempt.
Instead, he began studying what Knull was saying with great interest.
Since the connection opened, Knull had been launching into long tirades, sending a rapid succession of completely incomprehensible syllables.
The setting here was actually quite realistic; it wasn’t like the comics where the entire universe spoke English.
Schiller couldn’t understand a single word of what Knull said.
Yet, as Knull kept rambling, Schiller actually managed to notice a few patterns.
After repeated verification, Schiller finally figured out what Knull was trying to express: he was swearing his head off.
Indeed, while the entire universe didn’t speak English, the tone of any creature cursing was universally similar, with certain profanities appearing at a high frequency.
Knull was no exception.
In Knull’s furious tone, Schiller heard the repeated syllable “Nataru.” He guessed this was likely the symbiote equivalent of the F-word.
So, when Knull finished another massive tirade, Schiller nonchalantly said, “Nataru.”
An eerie silence fell over the other end.
After countless eons of shouting curses into the void, the God of Symbiotes had just been cursed back.
Schiller’s guess was spot on; that word was indeed a curse word in Knull’s language.
Knull fired back with a torrent of even more furious insults, but Schiller simply countered with a casual, “Nataru.”
After listening for a while, Schiller even learned a few other curse words, perfectly mimicking the trills and pronunciation.
Knull kept sending long diatribes, and Schiller would frequently pick a few of those words to throw right back at him.
It wasn’t like Knull could crawl through the connection to hit him.
So what if he was the Lord of the Abyss?
So what if he had slain a Celestial?
As he traded insults with Knull, Schiller recalled the origin story of this ancient being.
Knull was quite unfortunate, putting aside whether he was good or evil.
The very progeny shed from his own body had rebelled and locked him up, isolating their creator on a single planet.
From the looks of it, he had been imprisoned for a very long time now.
It wasn’t hard to understand why he cursed so much.
If Schiller were in his shoes, he would be swearing too.
Then, Schiller began examining Knull’s copiable abilities.
However, he hesitated.
He estimated that Knull’s ability was creating symbiotes, which Schiller didn’t really want.
He clicked on the avatar and saw that the words “Copy Ability” had turned red.
A parenthetical note appeared beside them: [Target’s ability is currently mutating.
Copy with caution.]
This was the first time Schiller had encountered this phenomenon.
To understand why, one had to go back to Knull’s origin story.
Even while imprisoned, Knull wasn’t helpless; he naturally sought ways to escape.
Schiller’s timing was impeccable—he had connected just as Knull was implementing his escape plan.
Knull was an incredibly ancient entity.
His power came mostly from innate talent; he wasn’t particularly bright.
The escape method he devised relied not on intellect but on his unique nature.
In his past life, Schiller hadn’t read much of this part of the comics, but he knew that the offspring Knull produced had different abilities—some were strong, some weak.
Some of these offspring possessed highly specialized traits.
Knull planned to exploit this by creating a unique symbiote.
He wanted this split-off offspring to have no physical body, instead existing as a conscious mist.
By transferring his consciousness into this new body, he could slip past the confines of his planetary prison.
To be honest, it wasn’t a very brilliant plan, and it might not even work.
But imprisoned on a lonely planet, what else could Knull do to pass the time?
Thus, his daily routine consisted of only two things: cursing and spawning.
Just as he had crafted this new offspring and was preparing to transfer his consciousness, Schiller connected with him.
This was why Knull’s ability was currently mutating—his consciousness was in transition, and his ability was shifting into the trait of the new body.
Normally, with a chat partner like Knull, copying his abilities would be as impossible as copying a pre-bite Peter Parker.
When Knull fought across the cosmos, he relied on the powerful living abyss, the Necrosword.
Later, his ability to split off dark creatures was born of his primordial nature—a sudden power that manifested after his defeat and fall, without any replicable source.
None of these were things Schiller could copy.
And even if he could, he wouldn’t want to.
Why would he want to slice himself into pieces?
Worse, those split-off fragments might just gang up and betray him.
It was far too risky.
Therefore, without hesitation, Schiller chose to copy the mutating ability.
If this ability granted invisibility or damage evasion, he would hit the jackpot.
Even if it was just like Venom—providing superhuman strength or acting like a living suit—it would still be a great asset.
[Symbiote Grey Mist (Special Ability) loaded.]
In an instant, Schiller felt himself suddenly possessing a second perspective.
He was still using his own eyes, yet it wasn’t him alone utilizing them.
The signals received through his eyes were still feeding directly into his brain.
It was as if he had directly copied a symbiote over.
No, it felt slightly different.
The abilities copied by the system never bestowed physical objects upon Schiller, nor could they replicate the chat partner’s gear or physical belongings.
For example, if Schiller were to copy Iron Man’s abilities, he might gain Stark’s genius intellect or his engineering prowess, but he would not receive a finished suit like the Mark V.
The system could only replicate the host’s intrinsic abilities, not external items.
Schiller felt as though a budding soul had been stuffed into his body.
Yet, it was not an external entity; it was still a part of him.
This symbiote did not become a separate entity like Venom, capable of leaving its host at will.
Instead, it became an extension of Schiller.
Simply put, it became an ability loaded onto Schiller by the system—an inseparable part of him.
Like any other ability he obtained from the system, it could not leave his body.
If Schiller died, it would perish as well.
It could not flee, let alone find a second host.
Yet, it still retained some symbiote traits.
For instance, it could think.
Schiller could feel that a region of his brain had been altered, with the symbiote functioning as a neural organ.
Their communication felt less like two separate beings and more like an internal dialogue between two personalities.
This symbiote was indeed highly unique.
In the future, Schiller would realize that when Knull created it, he had woven even greater ambitions into its design.
Once replicated by the system, in order to blend the symbiote’s nature with the mechanics of system-loaded abilities, the system made further adjustments.
This resulted in what was perhaps a completely unique—and incomparably powerful—form of life in the entire universe.